ABORIGINAL AND POLYNESIAN LABOUR 371 



a fair number of your hangers-on. Go when you are tired of it, and 

 come back when you feel inclined." Later on, the actual planting 

 and culture of the cane demanded a more intelligent and reliable 

 class of field labourers, who had to be paid at a rate which would not 

 disqualify the planter for competition with employers of coloured 

 labour in the same business elsewhere. For the supply of this 

 labour the islands of Polynesia formed the only recruiting ground 

 available. The cultivation of large areas of cane entailed, ulti- 

 mately, the employment of numbers of skilled and highly paid 

 white artisans in crushing and refining. 



Recruiting among the islands for field labour in tropical 

 agriculture began practically in 1875, by which time there were 

 nearly 13,000 acres under cane. The traffic was almost from the 

 first subject to the provisions of the Imperial Pacific Islanders' 

 Protection Acts of 1872 and 1875. From 1879, Colonial legislation 

 provided, as the necessity for each became apparent, strict regula- 

 tions regarding rationing, housing, payment, medical attendance, 

 term of service, return of the labourers to their proper islands, the 

 supervision of recruiters by Government agents on board the vessels 

 and the protection of labourers by inspectors in the agricultural 

 districts. 



In the ninth decade of the nineteenth century the idea of a 

 White Australia had captured the democratic electorates of 

 Queensland. The aborigine, in whose possession an inexplicable, 

 but inexcusable, blunder on the part of the Creator had placed the 

 Australian continent before white men " discovered " it, was 

 negligible because he was dying out in obedience to a law of nature, 

 but, at all events, the immigrant black man must go. There 

 was no place for him in a Utopia where a limitless wages-fund 

 accumulated in the hands of capitalists and ipso facto wrongfully 

 accumulated awaited distribution among a restricted number of 

 white workers. It was in vain that the capitalist remonstrated that 

 the proposed action would put an end to the industry and ruin those 

 who had invested their all in it, for the labour logician was ready with 

 his answer : " That is your affair ; no industry that cannot afford 

 to pay the workers the wages they require has any right to live." 



White Labour made an outcry about the poor blacks kidnapped 

 and enslaved, and the object of the outcry was evident. The 

 impartial observer need make no mistake about it. To White 

 Labour, the black man is not a suffering brother, but a noxious 

 animal, no more and no less. But the cry of " blackbirding " 

 was sufficient to rally the force known as " Exeter Hall." 



It may be taken for granted that among the earlier labour 

 recruits there were many who had no clear idea of the term for 

 which they were to serve or the remuneration they were to receive. 

 But it was very different with those who recruited after having had 

 the opportunity of conversing with the returned boys of the first 



