In more civilized regions one might hesitate before descending, bag and baggage, upon an unknown host, to wait for a very uncertain steamer; but in the islands of the South Seas one is almost always sure of a welcome. The traders and planters lead lonely lives. They have just three things to look forward to—the monthly visit of the Pacifique, a trip once a year to Sydney or New Caledonia, and dinner. For the Englishman in exile, dinner is the greatest event of the day. He rises at daybreak and, after a hasty cup of coffee, goes out on the plantation to see that work is duly under way. He breakfasts at eleven and then sleeps for a couple of hours, through the heat of the day. His day’s work is over at six; then he has a bath and a whiskey-and-soda—and dinner. Another drink, a little quiet reading, then off with the dinner clothes and to bed.
Yes, I said dinner clothes. For dinner clothes are as much de rigueur in Ringdove Bay as they are on Piccadilly. I, who have a rowdy fondness for free-and-easy dress and am only too glad when I can escape from the world of dinner coats and white ties, suggested, on the second evening of our stay at Api, that, since Mrs. Johnson was used to informal attire, we could dispense, if Mr. Mitchell desired, with the ceremony of dressing.
“But, my dear Johnson,” said Mitchell, “I dress for dinner when I am here alone.”
That ended the matter. I knew that I was up against an article of the British creed and might as well conform.
When I first went out to the South Seas, I was disposed to regard the punctiliousness in dress of the isolated Britisher as more or less of an affectation. But now I realize that a dinner coat is a symbol. It is a man’s declaration to himself and the world that he has a firm grasp on his self-respect. A Frenchman in the islands can go barefooted and half-clothed, can live a life ungoverned by routine, rising at will, going to bed at will, working at will, can throw off every convention, and still maintain his dignity. With the Anglo-Saxon it is different. The Englishman must hold fast to an ordered existence or, in nine cases out of ten, the islands will “get” him.
It is customary to waste a lot of pity on the trader and the planter in remote places—lonely outposts of civilization, but, from my observation, they do not need pity. The man who stays in the islands is fitted for the life there; if he isn’t, he doesn’t stay, and, if he does stay, he can retire, after fifteen or twenty years, with a tidy fortune.
Of course the road to fortune is a long and hard one. The average planter starts out with a little capital—say five hundred dollars. He purchases a plot of land. The price he pays depends upon the locality in which he buys. In regions where the natives are still fairly unsophisticated, he may get his land for almost nothing. Even where the natives are most astute, he can buy a square mile for what he would pay for an acre back home. His next step is to get his land cleared. To that end, he buys a whaleboat and goes out to recruit natives to act as laborers. He needs five or six blacks. They will build his house and clear his land and plant his coconuts. Since it takes seven years for the coconuts to mature, sweet potatoes and cotton must be planted between the rows of trees. The sweet potatoes, with a little rice, will furnish all the food required by the blacks. The cotton, if the planter is diligent and lucky, will pay current expenses until the coconuts begin bearing.
Though his small capital of five hundred dollars may be eaten up early in the game, the settler need not despair. The big trading companies that do business in the islands will see him through if he shows any signs of being made of the right stuff. They will give him credit for food and supplies and they will provide him with knives, calico, and tobacco, which he can barter with the blacks for the sandalwood and copra that will help balance his account with the companies. And after the first trying seven years, his troubles are about over—if he can get labor enough to keep his plantation going.
Even in the remote islands of the New Hebrides, the labor problem has reared its head. The employer, in civilized regions, has a slight advantage resulting from the fact that men must work to live. In the New Hebrides, indeed all throughout Melanesia, the black man can live very comfortably, according to his own standards, on what nature provides. Only a minimum of effort is required to secure food and clothing and shelter, and most of that effort is put forth by the female slaves he calls his wives. Even the experienced recruiter finds it hard to get the Melanesian to exchange his life of ease for a life of toil. And the inexperienced recruiter finds it very hard. The days when natives could be picked up on any beach are past. The blacks in the more accessible regions know what recruiting means—two years of hard labor, from which there is no escape and from which a man may or may not return home. So the recruiter must look for hands in the interior, where knowledge of the white man and his ways has not penetrated. Even here, the inexperienced recruiter is at a disadvantage. For the experienced recruiter has invariably preceded him.
Each year, the number of available recruits is growing fewer, for the native population is dwindling rapidly. As a result, the cost of labor is high. In the Solomons, one may secure a native for a three years’ term at five or six pounds a year in the case of inexperienced workmen, or at nine pounds a year in the case of natives who have already served for three years. In the New Hebrides, planter bids against planter, and the native benefits, receiving from twelve to fifteen pounds a year for his work. The planters complain of the high cost of labor. But the big planters, the capitalists of the South Seas, who have their chains of copra groves, with a white superintendent in charge of each one, certainly do not suffer. I remember being on one big Melanesian plantation on the day when natives were paid for two years’ work all in a lump. About four thousand dollars was distributed among the workers. I watched them spend it in the company store. A great simple black, clad in a nose-stick and a yard of calico, would come in and after an hour of happy shopping would go off blissfully with little or no money and a collection of cheap mirrors and beads and other worthless gew-gaws all in a shiny new “bokkus b’long bell.” By night, about three thousand dollars had been taken in by the company store-keeper. I was reminded of a rather grimly humorous story of a day’s receipts that totaled only $1800 after a $2000 pay-day. When the report reached the main office in Sydney, a curt note was sent to the plantation store-keeper asking what had become of the other $200!