The Labour (Question. 281 
employed by an industry not using imported labour, this tax would be 
open to the same objection as a law making it obligatory on all industries 
to employ imported labour. You simply could not impose it on the 
smal] rice-farmer making use of no other Jabour but his own and that of 
his family, because it would appear in the guise of a tax on their right 
to earn their livelihood. By the chiefs of the bush industries, many of 
whom are strangers to the colony, whose previous experience of labour 
conditions leads them to think of a labour supply as something given by 
God and as untaxable as air, rain, and sunlight, such a tax would be 
resented and the existence of such a feeling would operate as a check to 
enterprise. But if you cannot go on taxing one industry only, because 
it results in limiting the labour supply, and you cannot tax all because it 
is impracticable, what remains to be done but to make imported labour 
free to all ? 
Wuar Recent History TEACHES. 
Remember, you must increase the labour supply if you are to have pro- 
gress. The objections that the cost is prohibitive and of its being unjust 
to the labour already in the colony need not detain us long. The man who 
stands aghast at the cost of giving free labour to all industries must have 
persuaded himself that no economic development results from addition 
to our labour forces. Surely he must have forgotten recent history? Let 
him study history and see what was the state of economic stagnation in 
which the colony was sunk just before the coming of the coolie, carefully 
comparing it with the position of to-day. This he should find helpful in 
eradicating his hallucinations. And if he would get a firm grasp of the 
fact that the colony has borne the cost of an immigration system of a sort 
from 1845 and earlier, and has not only not suffered but derived benefit 
from it in spite of the fact that the burden was thrust almost entirely on 
a section of the community, his doubts as to the whole colony being able 
to pay for the immigration it needs will vanish. 
To those who believed that paying for the immigrants that the 
colony needs out of general revenue means taxing the labourers already 
in the colony to bring in others to take the bread out of their mouths, 
I would also recommend a study of the history of their country. Such 
study would teach them that the coming of the coolie took the bread out 
of no man’s mouth; on the contrary, it produced an economic develop- 
ment that made it easier for everyone, from the highest to the lowest in 
the land, to make a better living. And since economic development 
meant expansion of the revenue, the cost of bringing them here fell as a 
tax on no man, but represented an investment that was repaid to the 
colony nearly eight-fold. There is no trouble about finding the money, 
and there is no question of injustice to any inhabitant of the colony. 
The real difficulty that would arise if the Government provides 
imported labour free would be to find enough employers willing to take 
advantage of the new labour to secure a sufficiently large immigration 
to produce economic development on the scale all are hoping for, From 
