614: PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



2. In referring to statistics wliicli I quoted of whites and kanakas, 

 in Queensland, lie says the comparison is not valid, and that we ought 

 to be guided by statistics of the death rate of kanakas in their own 

 islands. I took pains to state that the statistics of whites and kanakas 

 in Queensland are not on all fours, and I was, and am, prepared to 

 make all necessary allowances in order to arrive at a true estimate of 

 the conditions. He refers to the kanakas in their own islands, and 

 asks for a comparison. I say, " If there are any facts or figures regard- 

 ing these death rates let us have them." I know their trend. He 

 talks of the kanaka at home. I have seen and studied the kanaka at 

 home. Does he work like a white man 1 Does he work in the New 

 Hebrides as he works in Queensland ? In the Pacific Islands, where 

 half an hour's labor will supply his wants for a week, and where he can 

 live all the year round on a little more than nothing, the kanaka does 

 not see why he should work. Neither do I. Nor have I yet seen any 

 cogent or logical reason brought forward by anyone why he should 

 work. The tropics are not conducive to labor, to bodily or mental 

 exertion, in either the white or the black. I do not deny that the black 

 can be made to work, and to work hard. He can be fed, and on good 

 " feed " can be made a better man for the contractor ; but for how long ? 

 and is he a better man for himself or anybody else, as we regard a man ? 



3. Malaria. — Mr. Macfie argues or quotes with apparent approval, 

 from what he characterises as a learned and unanswerable work, that 

 the black is free from malaria because the actinic rays cannot pierce 

 his pigmented sldn. The statement in this explanation is very refined, 

 very scientific looking, quite in accordance with the latest discoveries 

 in physiology and optics. But what is the real fact that is being so 

 scientifically explained ? The truth is, science has now shown that 

 the black possesses no immunity from malaria ; he is saturated with 

 it from his picanninyhood to old age, and is in a condition to pass the 

 disease on, through the medium of the mosquito, to the white man who 

 is foolish enough or ignorant enough to give him the opportunity. 



I had occasion to refer yesterday, in this Section of the Congress, to 

 the subject of pigmentation, and I quoted Dr. Semon's experiences 

 in Queensland, and his observations at Amboyna, that pigment de- 

 veloped in the white subject in the tropics according to requirements. 

 I have no fault to find with Mr. Macfie's quasi-theological quotation 

 or statement to the effect that the Creator put pigmented races in the 

 tropics, and non-pigmented people in the cooler regions. It has a 

 historical look about it ; but it is not history. The assertion can neither 

 be proved nor disproved, and is therefore outside the scope of science. 

 The scientific counterpart of the statement is that persons, whether 

 indigenous to the tropics or immigrants to those regions, will develop 

 pigment naturally. As to the assertion that the white man was never 

 intended for work in the tropics, and the assumption or inference that, 

 therefore, the black was — where is the scientific evidence for such 

 reasoning, or what is the logical validity of it ? It may be true that 

 the white was not so intended, and it may yet be proved that he cannot 

 work ; but the evidence adduced to prove this, and the valid arguments 

 founded upon it, tell with manifold force against the assumption of 



