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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 82

IX.—The Labour Question

IX.—The Labour Question.

From the indolence of the Tongan natives, it may almost be concluded that any increase in the productiveness of the islands must be accomplished by imported labour. At present there are some 770 imported labourers in Tonga, of whom 270 are English subjects from Fiji. Clause 3 of the Constitution stipulates that labourers may be brought from other islands to Tonga, provided that a definite agreement is made with them as to term, wages, and return, which agreement is to be lodged with the Government, who will see that the conditions are carried out. Such labourers are to be subject to the law of the land, and pay taxes like natives. Chinese labourers are expressly excluded, and any Chinaman coming to settle in the kingdom will not be allowed to land without a doctor's certificate that he is free from disease. As I have already remarked, there is some forced prison labour, and from the results produced it would appear that the Tongans only require some stimulus in order to make them efficient workers. A noteworthy law is that under which offenders sentenced to more than two years' imprisonment are set to work on Government plantations near the centre of the island. The most remarkable thing is that these prisoners are under no physical restraint, being simply on parole and confined by a strict aukati line to a certain district of the island. There the prisoners remain, cultivating the soil and dwelling in their own houses, till their term of service has expired. To attempt to escape they well know is useless, for they cannot leave the island, and so thorough and searching is the Government system of control that any escaped prisoner would be certain to be arrested in any part of the island within 24 hours and sent back to the plantations. So long as the natives are secured in the possession of their lands, probably the only way of training them page 20 to sustained and useful manual exertion would be to magnify a few more moral offences into crimes punishable by penal servitude, when perhaps one-half of the population would be forced to work. Prison labour is not by the Tongans deemed degrading; on the contrary, the men and women whom we saw "doing the Government stroke" on the wharf were indistinguishable by dress or bearing from other natives. They were quite as dignified and independent in their manner, and did not in the least seem to feel their position. In a people so recently liberated from serfdom, this is not remarkable; but it is questionable whether the idle and immoral habits of the Tongans would justify a return to a system of semi-slavery under the name of penal servitude. The Premier has made an unsuccessful attempt to compel cultivation by the natives. An Act of the Legislature provides : "That in order to prevent difficulties in the land, in consequence of poverty arising from laziness, hurricanes, and other causes, it is hereby enacted—(I). That every male of 16 years of age shall plant in his own land, within six months of this Act becoming law, one hundred coffee plants and two hundred cotton plants, at a distance not less than one fathom and a half from each other; but in places where coffee does not grow well, it shall be lawful for the Premier to permit the whole to be planted in cotton; (2). Every Mayor shall be required to see this law carried out in his town, and to report defaulters to the Assistant Inspector of Police; (3). It is hereby required that these plants shall be regularly cultivated and inspected; (4). Any person failing to plant, as required by this Act, shall, on conviction, be fined in the sum of twenty-five dollars and costs." The principal effect of this law has, I believe, been to increase the revenue to some considerable extent, the natives rather paying the £5 fine than comply with the conditions. The hope of increased production in the Tonga islands would therefore seem to lie in imported labour. When it is remembered that the plantations only cover some 1,000 acres out of probably 500 square miles of cultivatable land, it will be seen that there is a large opening for enterprise, experience, and capital in extending the productiveness of Tonga.