PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION P. 609 



is an energetic industrious nation sadly needing fields of labor. Nations 

 that are growing will assert their right to find room wherever there 

 is room, and untilled fields will be seized by the right of might if not 

 thrown open in some other way. People are not to hold land without 

 making use of it. If the Australians will not open their eyes and 

 listen to reason they may, some day, be surprised to find themselves 

 in trouble from which the mother country may refuse to extricate 

 them." 



As regards the kanakas, designated the " black curse " by Mr. 

 Kingston, who were captured and brought to Queensland by force 

 sanctioned by the State Government, we have the kindly- expressed 

 valuable testimony of Dr. J. P. Thomson of the Queensland Govern- 

 ment Lands Department — an official who has had many years' ex- 

 perience of these Polynesians. In a paper read by that gentleman 

 before the Koyal Colonial Institute (November 24th, 1903), he says — 

 " In intellectual capacity the Polynesian is on a far higher plane than 

 the Australian aboriginal ; he is superior to the African negro, and to 

 many of the tribes of further India, and is capable of reaching a high 

 step on the ladder of civilisation. In perceptive powers he is keener 

 than many of the colored races, and is very readily impressed. He is 

 highly receptive, easily taught, and can reason clearly, but is somewhat 



emotional, with a clear idea of right and wrong Being 



naturally domesticated, he is sympathetic, honest, and trustworthy. 

 I have found them invariably superior to white men for the class of 

 work more loyal, equally intelligent, and far-less trouble- 

 some During a period of family bereavement I had more 



affectionate care and sympathy from my Polynesian boys than from 

 my European neighbors — including those professing Christianity. 

 In the dense tropical jungle, heated by the air of a solar furnace, or 

 in the steaming canefields, the kanaka, if properly treated, will cheer- 

 fully toil from day to day : from daylight to dark, if need be 



I have tried whites at the same kind of work, with most unsatisfactory 



results His deportation will undoubtedly inflict great 



hardship, as well as prove a serious setback to tropical AustraKa 



There is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that much of the continued 

 prosperity of the sugar industry of Queensland depends on colored 

 labor." 



All attempts to reply to the varied and numerous authorities I 

 have cited in defence of the necessity of employing colored labor in 

 the Australian tropics and sub-tropics amount to little more than an 

 evasion of the real point under discussion. Mr. Walter James, ex- 

 Agent-General for Western Australia in London, read a paper on 

 April 10th, 1906, before the Royal Colonial Institute on " AustraHan 

 Immigration." The author informs us that the Immigration Restric- 

 tion Act, passed in 1901, " was intended to protect the policy of a 

 white Australia. To that policy (he says) we almost unanimously 

 agreed : It was conceived and enforced long before the Labor Party came 

 into existence, and it stands, to-day, too strongly entrenched to be 

 affected by the opposition or advocacy of that or any other party." 

 q2 



