“Foreigners! Of what kind?”
“They are South Sea Islanders principally from the Solomon Islands; some of them are from the New Hebrides and some from the Kingsmill group.”
“You import them to work on the plantations, I suppose?”
“Yes; that’s the way of it. You see this country is too hot for white men to work in the field, just as your sugar-growing States in America are too hot for him to work in. The blacks are the only people that can stand it, and as for the Australian blacks, they’re no good. There are not enough of them anyway, and even if there were, we couldn’t rely upon them. An Australian black will never stay in one place for any length of time, as you have doubtless learned already. He is liable to quit at any moment, and that sort of thing we can’t stand on a sugar plantation. We must have men to work steadily, and the only way we can get them is by hiring them under contract from some of the Pacific Islands.”
“I think I have read about that somewhere,” remarked Harry. “You send small ships out among the islands to pick up the men, and the business is called ‘black-birding,’ is it not?”
“Yes, that is the name of it, or rather used to be,” was the reply. “Black-birding,” along in the seventies, was an outrageous piece of business no better than slave-stealing on the coast of Africa. In fact, it was slave-stealing and nothing else. A schooner would appear off an island, drop anchor and wait for the natives to come out in their canoes, which they were sure to do. Then forty or fifty of them would be enticed on board, and perhaps invited one by one into the cabin, whence a door had been cut through into the hold. They were shoved along one by one until a sufficient number had been obtained and imprisoned below, and then the schooner set sail and left the island.
“Sometimes one of the officers was dressed up like a clergyman, with a white necktie, broad-brimmed hat, and blue spectacles, and wrapped in a long black cloak. He carried a large book under his arm, and was a very good counterfeit of a missionary. He was rowed to the shore, where he would inform the natives that their old friend, Rev. Dr. Williams, was on board the vessel and would like to see them, and he would very much like some fresh fruit. He explained the doctor’s failure to come on shore by saying that he had fallen on deck and broken his leg the day before, and was then confined to his cabin.
“The natives would hasten to gather a large supply of fruit and take it on board the schooner. Their fruit was piled on deck, and one by one they were taken below, ostensibly to see their disabled friend, but really to shove them forward into the hold in the manner I have described. When a sufficient number had been entrapped the schooner sailed away, and there was little probability that the deceived natives would ever see their island again.
“That was the method formerly in vogue for supplying labor to the sugar plantations in Queensland. The matter became so notorious that the government investigated it and put a stop to ‘black-birding.’ At present the business of obtaining men from the Pacific Islands is fairly well conducted. On every ship that goes out for that purpose there is a government officer whose duty it is to see that no deception or trickery is practised, and that the contracts with the natives are fully understood on both sides before they are signed.
“We hire these people for three years, and when that period has expired we are obliged to return them to their homes. Formerly, they had the option of renewing their contracts here without going away, and a good many planters were careful to see that the men were heavily in debt at the expiration of their term of service, so that they would be obliged to engage again in order to get themselves out of debt, which they never did. Now the government regulation forbids the renewal of a contract here, and in order to have the agreement a valid one, it must be made in the island whence the man was brought. Of course this is a hardship where a man really does not want to go home, but, on the whole, it is for the best.”