|
Argument continued by
illustration and from personal experiences in land settlement—The work of
settlement in Oudh—Fixity of tenure and easy conditions—Surveys and
improvements—Village settlements—Importation of labour—The labour
question—Misstatements and false views—Coolie labour—More labour wanted
—Anti-immigrationists—Protectionists in disguise—More abundant labour the
talisman of Australia's development—The reign of the carpet-baggers—No
progress without population—Words of an Australian poet.
Once more let me proceed by
way of illustration .from my own experiences, they are so far valuable as
being at all events suggestive of what might be done in a similar way here.
I have already alluded briefly to the working of the "Waste Lands
Regulations in India. Towards the end of 1875,1 undertook the management of
several grants held under the Waste Lands Regulations in Oudh and the
North-West Provinces. The extent of the grants was 28,000 acres. It was
mostly thick forest country, with rather a poor soil, and a not by any means
over abundant rainfall. It was in fact not unlike much existing parts of the
different Australian colonies. The former management had been content to
wait the slow progress of village settlement, with here and there a
desultory attempt at forest clearing. By including all the open glades in
the forest, the bare upland slopes, the more trampled down portions of the
jungle near the scattered hamlets—for they could not be called villages—the
first five years' measurement had been got over, and an eighth of the total
area had been reported as having been reclaimed according to the
regulations. It now wanted but three years for the next periodic survey, and
I had my hands full. My employer, however, was persuaded that it could be
done. He reposed a loyal confidence in me, and, I was determined to do what
I could to deserve it.
The country bore an evil
reputation for fever, it was as bad in that respect as New Guinea, and the
great difficulty was the want of labour. It was of no use to try to induce
settlement on the old system. Tenants would not face the jungle malaria, and
settle down even on a nominal rental. My first care, therefore, was to bring
with me a crowd of my old coolies from Behar, and, accompained by a number
of trusty old servants who rallied to my standard, I set out to brave the
fevers and chills of my forest territory.
I had here to face the same
problem that even now awaits solution in Australia; and in my limited way I
had to solve the knotty difficulty,—how was I to settle and reclaim my
domain, and make it productive ?
I found the few Ishmaelitish dwellers already in possession of the cleared
spaces prepared to meet me with the most determined hostility. They tried to
frighten my coolies with terrible stories of the decimating fever. Once they
nearly set fire to my bungalow. They invaded my fields at night, and carried
off my crops. My cattle were stolen, and my servants beaten. It was a weary
time; but temper, and judgment, and tact, began to make progress after a
while. When they found that I did not want to raise their rents, or force
any particular culture upon them, they gradually, one by one, came over to
my side, although at first they stood aloof, and used my name as a bogey to
frighteu their children. Many of my coolies deserted—ran away with their
advances; others in large numbers knocked under from fever, and I had to
send them home.
When I succeeded in getting
villagers attracted to settle in my villages, the neighbouring landholders
tried their utmost, to bribe them over to their own estates; but backed up
by my large-hearted employer, I struggled manfully on. To every resident in
my scattered villages I at length succeeded in giving a lease on easy terms;
I allowed them advantages and made concessions which they had never before
enjoyed. Formerly they were mere tenants at will, and after a generous
season the manager would make exactions to secure back-rents. At any moment
their cattle might be impounded, or their crops seized. In fact they had no
fixity of tenure. All this I altered. It was hard work at first to convince
them that I was honest, and would keep my word. Formerly, when a man ran
away, a band of armed retainers hunted him from village to village, in the
endeavour to harry his cattle, or forcibly compel him to come back. I let
them go if so minded, and made no effort to restrain them. Better an empty
house than a bad tenant, I thought. I first of all made up each man's
account, what he owed to the estate, and any disputed item I submitted to
the arbitration of the chief men in their own little " cla-clian," with a
few of my own chief servants. It was a tiresome task, but I succeeded. I got
every man to come in and sign a bond for the amount of his indebtedness. I
arranged for payment on easy and liberal terms. Where the rent seemed in any
way excessive, I reduced it. The neighbouring zemindars thought mo mad. They
insisted that I should demoralize their tenantry and raise a revolution.
Sure enough I did, and a blessed revolution it was to the poor struggling
peasantry. I gave each man a lease, signed, sealed, and registered. Here at
last was something tangible. They had never before enjoyed a real fixed
tenure. Ah, what a magic is in that! How can you expect, a man to improve
his holding, when he is liable at any moment to ejection, or to find a
higher bidder step over his head?
Another old system I
abrogated entirely. It was the custom there to assess the rent on the kind
of crop cultivated. Such crops as barley, oil-seeds, or pulse, were grown
under a low assessment; tobacco and sugar-cane, or poppy, which are the most
valuable crops, were assessed at a much higher figure. I told my assamies or
cultivators: "You shall pay me so much per acre, and you can grow what you
like."I divided the lands according to quality into three distinct classes—owel,
doem, and sem, or first, second, and third. The first comprised all the rich
lands near the villages, the fat rice swamps, and the loomy sugarcane
fields; the second included the poorer fields, those in which barley and
pulse or other inferior grains were grown; and the third comprehended the
grazing ground, the relapsed fields, and the purtee, or untilled, uncleared
wastes. Each man's holding was accurately measured and clearly defined.
What was the natural result? People from neighbouring estates began to come
over to survey my operations and spy out the land. My ryots by this time
were beginning to believe in me. I did not harass them. I lost a good deal
of back balance by the thriftless, the lazy, and improvident running away.
I did not worry them, but let
them go. The best of their lands I added to the portions of my most
industrious tenants, and new tenants were found in time actually to compete
for the others. I found in the jungles a wild herd of cattle, numbering
nearly 200 head. I had great difficulty at first in getting these branded.
The old herdsmen—who had stolen the calves, sold the hides and fattened on
the milk—now tried in every way to thwart me. I dismissed them, and imported
men of my own to fill their places.
By-and-by I got all the
cattle branded. Then I bought a fine half-bred English young bull. I got two
or three other native bulls. I divided my cattle into herds. I drafted out
the young ones, and broke them in to the plough. When a new cultivator or
settler came, I in many cases advanced him a little money, and sold him a
couple of young plough bullocks on deferred payments, or lent him a young
one of my own on condition that he broke it in for me; and I provided
ploughing for them on my own factory lands, the price of the labour to be
deducted from the price of the bullocks as forming part payment.
Before settling a village, I
first sank a good well, lined it with substantial masonry, and planted
bamboos, plantains, and other useful trees, for the first comers. I advanced
seed-corn and other seeds ; and while strictly just and firm, I never unduly
pressed any one, or harassed them by dragging them before the courts, as had
been formerly too often the practice. In fact, I reposed a good deal of
trust in them, for I believed that confidence begets confidence.
With the aid of my tenants,
and with my own paid labourers, I formed roads through the forest to and
from the different clearings. I worried the district officials, till I got
the mud track dignified by the name of the government high road, put in
repair. I got the rivers and creeks bridged by government, and my ryots
before the end of a couple of years could thus, on a good road, transport
their produce to Shaje-hanpore, the nearest large town. At the same time I
was willing to purchase from any of them their grain, cane, or other
produce, at the ruling market-rates. I was not averse to taking payment of
my rents in kind, allowing a fair margin for my own risk and profit.
Meantime I pursued the work
of clearing jungle, to carry out the provisions of my tenure, and employed
an army of labourers in this work. I let out parts of the jungle to the
herds of other villagers, at a cheap grazing rent. The felled timber I
leased to charcoal burners, and merchants who carted fuel to distant towns
and villages. What I could not sell or use, I burnt. A pretty considerable
revenue I thus raised from forest produce; and parts of the jungle I
reserved altogether, and would allow no wood to be cut thereon.
As fast as I cleared, my own ploughmen tore up the soil, and I scattered
rape, linseed, and various pulses, on the rough ground; I grew rice and
grain for the 1 consumption of my own men; and on every acre I cleared, I
left about twenty of the best and largest trees. I did not believe in
"ring-barking," and denuding the country entirely of timber. Nothing can be
more foolish or suicidal than this; and yet it is the general custom in
Australia.
By clearing simultaneously at
several points, I was better able to judge of my progress, and found the men
were roused to a spirit of healthy emulation. I next got authority from my
employer to import from England a portable engine. This I intended to use
for irrigation. I had a magnificent water frontage to a small stream,
running through the forest, called the Kutna nuddee. At intervals of from
two to three hundred yards I dug a pyne, or deep cutting, into the bank; and
along the top of the ridge, whence the land sloped gently down on either
side, I formed a main water channel. Into the pyne I put a portable pump, to
be worked by the engine; and by a system of small runlets I distributed the
water over the slopes. 'I had now by this time my indigo vats, buildings,
and other appliances, ready for use. My crop was sown, and I invited the
ryots to grow indigo for me, giving them an agreement that I would pay them
for the crop, at a rate estimated on the average value of all their other
crops, taking good, bad, and indifferent together. I struck, in fact, an
average rate per acre, taking the total produce of each man's cultivation,
as the factor. The cultivation was not compulsory. Many of the ryots sowed a
small patch the first year, in fear and trembling. When the crop was cut I
measured the land, took the average returns of the produce on their other
fields, and paid them at that rate for the indigo crop. If any were
dissatisfied, the matter was referred to the Punchayiet or village council.
The only stipulation I made, and it was a fair one, was that I would pay
only for plant actually delivered at the factory. The second year, when the
ryots found I paid them cash down on delivery, the area of indigo
cultivation was more than trebled.
When I went to the jungles,
there were no artificers or handicraftsmen in these wild forest solitudes. I
accordingly settled blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, brickmakers, and grain
sellers and buyers around the head factory. To each newcomer, if he was a
good man, I gave the right to graze a couple of cows rent free, in my forest
reserves, and possessed him of a small plot of land, on which he might grow
garden produce or a little rice for himself, at a merely nominal rent.
By having accurate
measurements of all my lands, by utilization of jungle products, by letting
out the fisheries and grazing rights, and, above all, by economical
management, and by having really working tenants, paying up their moderate
rents, instead of lazy fellows nominally paying a larger rent, but
constantly running away without paying anything at all, I was able the first
year to show a bigger actually collected rental than my predecessors had
ever before been able to remit to the owner.
But all this was not done in
a day. My rapid sketch can give no adequate idea of the heart-breaking
difficulties I was continually trying to surmount. In wind and storm, in sun
and rain, I was out among my labourers, and spent nearly all my time in the
forest. I had to fight the fever and the cholera, both plagues having broken
out among my workmen more than once. 'Tis true I had glorious shooting, and
plenty of sport, but I had no society save when I could get an occasional
run into Seetapore or Shajehanpore.
The most rapid glance at what
has been. written will immediately raise the reflection, "You had surely
little to contend with that the settler has to face in Australia. You had
labour in abundance, and you had capital to back you up." It was not so. I
had to import all my labour. I had to do the same as the sugar growers of
Mauritius, the tea planters of Assam, the coffee growers of the Wynaad, or
the planters of Queensland have to do. Everywhere in the thickly populous
parts of India, labour recruiting agencies are now established. On a system
of advances, the recruiting goes on; and legislation has been provided, by
which every care is taken of the labourer, and he can only be engaged for a
specified time, and under a contract drawn up to provide for every
contingency, and scrupulously protecting him from all oppression and wrong.
Why could not some such system, drawing on the over-populated old countries
for labour, be inaugurated for Australia ? All who are interested in
immigration and settlement work, can easily get access to these acts, and
acquaint themselves with the lines of the legislation by the Government of
India on the subject.
What concerns us here in
Australia is the fact that assisted immigration has been worked, and worked
successfully, despite all that has been asserted to the contrary. I do not
want to flood this country with coloured labour—black, yellow, or coffee
coloured—if the will of the nation is against it, and the all powerful vox
populi cries out that the thing shall not be. But if ever Australia is to be
opened out in a manner at all worthy of her natural endowments, we must have
more labour, and that labour must not be procurable only at prices that are
practically prohibitive. Why do not our workmen ask themselves, Where is the
benefit of wages at twenty shillings per diem, if the loaf of bread costs
half a crown, the pair of boots forty shillings, the good wife's calico gown
seven or eight shillings per yard, and everything else in proportion?
Men talk about the hardness
of the times; why what are people to do? Suppose a man has made a little
money, for which he has no doubt worked hard enough. Then he buys a bit of
land. He finds it will cost him 501, an acre to get it ready for the plough.
He could get it done in England for less than one-fourth of that. He wants
to build a house. He finds it will cost him a sum so large as to be quite
out of all proportion to the result to be achieved. Timber is plentiful,
building material handy, but labour is at prohibitive prices, so he will
content himself with a " humpy" or a rough log-hut roofed with stringy bark.
He might think of taking a
servant-man or housemaid. It is a chance if he has not introduced into his
service one who thinks the whole duty of life is to do as little work as he
can for as much wage as he can get. I know dozens of cases where the
mistress of a neat cottage, chooses to do all the house-work herself, rather
than put up with the insubordination, laziness, and thoughtlessness, of a
female help.
The ridiculous cry against
immigration in Australia is got up, not by thinking working-men themselves,
but by unthinking spouters and windbags. I asked a man the other day whom I
knew to be a good workman and a thinking man, during a noisy debate with one
or two of his mates about labour and immigration, "Come, Tom," I asked,
"what's your opinion?" "Oh, sir," he replied, "I let's Jim do all the jawin'
there; he's more accustomed to it, d'ye see, and this work's got to be
done." Now that's just it. The " jawin' " lot neglect their work, to seek a
royal road to wealth and independence, and the "workin'" lot have to work
double tides, to do their own work and that of the "jaivin' " fraternity
besides.
How can a small struggling
farmer ever hope to succeed if he has no population to buy his products?
How can he raise those
products if he cannot employ labour except at prohibitive rates? How shall a
capitalist risk his wealth, the outcome of good sturdy work, and thrift, if
his labour is to eat into his capital? And all this, when other countries
can supply him with the same article at a lower rate. Men talk of
protection. They say encourage native industry by bonuses, by protection, by
prohibiting the import of foreign goods. Now if we cannot compete with other
nations without protection, we can't compete at all. Protection grows by
what it feeds upon. Protect your woollen manufactures, and linen will claim
the same right. Protect manufacturing interests, and agriculture will follow
suit. Protect flour-mills, and butchers, and grocers will claim it too;
where would it stop? The cry of anti-immigration is Protection in its
grossest shape.
Work here is lying waiting to
be done on every side, crying out for labour. Lands want clearing, farms
want tillage, districts want opening up. Timber, valuable timber, is rotting
in the bush, because there are not found men to work it up. Minerals and
metals lie unused by the ton, because there is no labour to raise them, and
bring them to market. Valuable meat is wasted, and cattle are shot and rot
on the ground because there are not mouths to eat the food. Our plains are
covered with countless flocks. Our seas swarm with multitudes of fish. Our
water runs unused and wasted to the sea. With labour, our lands could be
irrigated, our wool and our hides manufactured, our fisheries established,
our timbers and building materials utilized. Towns and villages would spring
up over the length and breadth of the land. Our solitary places would be
made glad, and the wilderness would rejoice and blossom like the rose." In
the face of all this pusillanimous outcry, one might well ask, whether our
working-men are descended from the unflinching did Anglo-Saxon race. Do they
fear the competition of what they spurn as inferior races ! Are they no
longer able, by the honest sweat of their brows, and the brave, unflinching
strength and labour of their strong right arms to maintain their own?
I have been all through
Queensland. You have read, if you have followed me thus far, the account of
my visit to the sugar estates on the Mary River. At Yengarrie I saw a sugar
refinery, replete with every modern improvement in the mechanical arts. To
look at the complicated machinery alone, gave one almost a headache. This
one establishment gives employment to a very large staff of overseers,
engineers, skilled labourers, clerks, and workmen of various kinds. A large
village with a neat school, a comfortable reading-room, and other
establishments for the moral and intellectual advancement of the employers,
has been raised; and all this has been brought about by the employment of
Kanaha cheap labour. Without that, this fine tract of country,- these
smiling tracts of waving sugar-cane, finding remunerative work for these
busy factories, would still have been covered with primeval bush, the haunt
of the wallaby and the guana, the pestilent abode of fevers and agues.
Why, there is room here in
Australia, not for tens and twenties, but for hundreds and thousands of
emigrants. Half a million Kanahas, or Hindoo labourers, or honest, willing,
hard-working British workmen could find work here if they were willing; and
the men who now wield the pick and shovel, would become overseers,
contractors, foremen, and managers, if they were able to take such places.
If not able to oversee the labour of inferior races, they have no business
to be anything more than they are at present, "hewers of wood, and drawers
of water." They will never rise, and to stop the development of a grand
colony for such men is nothing short of monstrous.
Instead of suppressing Kanaha
immigration in Queensland, government should actually encourage it.
Production would increase, arts spread, agriculture advance, and where one
white man now finds employment, thousands would be eagerly sought after, and
would find remunerative occupations in the teeming industries that would be
inaugurated.
The cry against increased
population and abundant labour is but the old howl against machinery. You
may remember how the sewing machine was railed at for taking the bread out
of the mouths of. the poor seamstresses. What family could now do without
its sewing machine ? Has it not given industry to thousands who could never
have made a living with needle and thread but for its help. It has raised up
new channels of labour, and done more to raise the condition of industrious
young women than twenty thousand labour leagues, anti-emigration societies,
and anti-machinery organizations could ever have done.
How on earth are cotton and
woollen mills to spring up, when where are none to wear the coats, and
shirts, and trousers? How are tanneries to be established when you bar the
country against the advance of boot and shoe wearing bipeds? Give us
population and abundant labour, and the country cannot fail to become a
great productive colony, a grand centre of industrial activity, supporting a
contented, prosperous, and progressive population.
If our policy is to be guided
only by the passing sensations and cravings of an easily appeased hunger,
then by all means let us stick to our anti-immigration theories; let us
continue our present land muddle, and throw prudence, forethought, and
statesmanship to the winds. In the mad scramble for the plunder of the
State's patrimony, let us throw aside all restraint, think no more of
posterity, scatter restrictions to the winds. Let it be each man for
himself, and the devil take the hindmost.
Thank God there are yet some
good men left, even in Sodom. The words of the Australian singer can yet
raise responsive echoes in the hearts of many of Australia's best sons. Let
Henry Halloran speak:—
"Repel them from our shores!
Ungenerous thought! Our friends and brothers in that distant land "Where
strength of purpose, skilfulness of hand, Can hardly bring the toilers
bread, or aught Which, in abundance, here is found if sought. Here are broad
acres open to demand, "With right of choice and means of payment, plann'd So
that the poorest has whate'er he ought. God ! who in very plenteousness hast
spread This goodly continent of sunny wealth— This Paradise, blue-skyed and
golden-stored— That all Thy children, lacking daily bread, Should have
abundance here of food and health— Shall we Thy bounty circumscribe, O Lord?
Come one—come all! for there
is room to share "With all who can, in this brave land of ours— "Where the
kind earth, with unexhausted powers, Gives food for toil, and something
still to spare. Our flaccid veins want blood, that we may bear In flowing
tides, thro' near-approaching hours, Our front of strength wherever danger
lours, And weakness fails, however much it dare.
The motherland may need the
growing might Of brave descendants in this favour'd land To join her
standards and support her right, And hold unquestion'd still her wide
command. Come one—come all, and make our Future bright, Co-heirs of Fame, to
answer her demand. |
