98 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL, [1 Juny, 1901. 
not its commercial value at the present price of sugar. Every well-equipped and well. 
managed mill can well afford to pay 18s. per ton; in fact, at the present time, both 
central and privately owned mills are offering as much as 14s, 6d. per ton. As this 
mill has been taken over by the Government, I trust they will sce into this matter, 
as already farmers are talking of abandoning cane cultivation. The whole question 
of the price of cane may yet claim the attention of both State Legislature and 
Commonwealth Parliament with the view of securing to the cane farmer his fair share 
of any protective duty which may be imposed. The Dominion Parliament of Canada 
recently appropriated a considerable sum of money to encourage the manufacture of 
sugar from beets, and they stipulated that the price paid for beets must not be less 
than 4 dollars, or 16s. 8d., per ton. Considering that the sugar industry was, from 
its inception, a State-encouraged if not State-created industry, that itis a State. 
regulated and State-harassed industry, that the State has a very large direct pecuniary 
interest in it, and that at the present time it presents to the Commonwealth a most 
serious problem for solution, would it not be the wisest course for that body to 
convert it into a national industry ? ' 
I now come to that much-discussed but generally little understood question, the 
ever verdant political war cry—kanaka labour. Dr. Thomatis, at the last Conference, — 
aptly termed it an industrial question. Originally it had neither an industrial nor a _ 
domestic aspect; neither was it a question of race or colour, for many of the earliest 
agitators for its abolition were men who, like myself, held the opinion that a man’s — 
country, creed, colour, and condition are each and all pure accidents, for which he 
should not be penalised; and history shows that where any of these entailed 
disabilities the country which imposed them suffered thereby. : 
The old saying, “ A man’s enemies are they of his own house,” applies in a — 
remarkable degree to the sugar industry. Unfortunately, ill chance, in the early days, 
often placed in charge of mills and estates persons ignorant of the business, unused 
to control and direct men, and devoid of tact in dealing with them. These people 
made both the most and the worst of their little brief authority ; their arrogance — 
alienated their employees, who frequently saw South Sea Islanders Para, generally 
only temporarily, to do work from which they had been peremptorily dismissed for — 
slight cause. In dealing with the cane farmers, the eee anne of cane was rarely 
made a strictly business transaction. Avarice, their own cupidity, personal ill-feeling, 
and the cane farmers’ unfortunate isolated position not naeesa oaks srompted these 
people to offer 5s. or 6s. per ton of cane, the commercial value of aia was 13s. and 
upwards. ‘The farmers had to abandon cane cultivation, valuable machinery soon lay 
“idle and was ultimately sold for little more than the value of old metal, and yet other 
mills were erected within a stone’s throw of them, paying as much as 14s. per ton for 
cane, and have been very successful. 
Although the people who wrought such ruin haye long since ceased their connection 
with the industry, those engaged in it at the present time still suffer from the paralysing 
effects of their folly ; for the cane farmers and plantation employees did not suffer 
patiently. They sought and found both revenge and relief. They knew from personal 
experience the planter’s most vulnerable and vital point. They knew that he could 
not carry on his business without the aid of kanaka labour, and struck at that point; 
and they emphasised it by assuring Sir 8. ‘W. Griffith that they could and would 
undertake to grow cane without this class of labour if they could obtain the money to 
erect mills to crush their own cane. In due course the money was made available, and 
the mills were erected. The experiment proved, as you all know, a failure, and to no — 
one did the failure cause less surprise than to the central mill farmers themselves. 
Gentlemen, I have laid before you, perhaps for the first time, the true origin of 
the anti-kanaka labour movement. 
Although myself a landlord, I was specially asked to bring, to your notice the 
question of tenants’ rights. J have seen many leases. Ihave been a tenant farmer 
myself, and except in my own case I never yet saw a lease in which the tenant had 
any rights except paying rent and taxes. ‘The ordinary lease is one Ign list of pains 
and penalties. I presume what the tenant farmers really desire is relief from their 
wrongs, and these really do—especially in the sugar districts, not only in the interest 
of the farmers themselves, but of the districts and sugar industry also—call for 
immediate inquiry. 
The short tenancies in yogue in the sugar districts —generally for five years—are 
haying a most serious effect, not only upon agriculture and land settlement, but on 
what is infinitely more important still—domestie life. Several visiting delegates to the 
Mackay Conference remarked to myself upon the poor class of buildings occupied by 
the great majority of the cane farmers. I replied that thiv was the first and most visible 
effect of short tenancies, which compels the erection of only necessary buildings of a 
