Part 16 (1/2)

Endowed with a sunny and salubrious climate, a fruitful soil, an immense territory, Queensland has room for many millions of people; but those people must be of European birth or descent. For many years the settled policy of the country in regard to immigration was conservative. Now, however, all political parties are agreed upon the need for a larger population--but primarily an agrarian population.

The great obstacles to immigration from Europe on any considerable scale are distance and expense. America is distant but a few days'

sail, and the cost of a pa.s.sage is correspondingly low. To place Queensland on an equally favourable footing, the Government have arranged with the British-India Steam Navigation Company to bring adult males from the United Kingdom to the State upon payment by the immigrants of 4 each. The rate for adult females is 2 per head, and 8 for males and females over 40 and under 55 years of age. Free pa.s.sages may be granted to agricultural labourers introduced under contract if the employer pays a fee of 5 and guarantees a year's employment at approved wages. The balance of the pa.s.sage-money in every case is paid by the State. Female domestic servants, and the wives and children of contract or part-paying immigrants, are carried free. Immigrants may select land before leaving the old country, with the option of getting a refund if not satisfied with their choice after their arrival in Queensland. Full particulars of the various forms of immigration will be found in Appendix F.

In 1908 the number of those who came from the British Isles was only 2,584, but the numbers are increasing since the inauguration of the B.I.S.N. service _via_ Torres Strait, 2,737 immigrants having arrived during the first nine months of this year. Hundreds of desirable settlers and their families are coming every year from the Southern States and New Zealand, attracted by the cheaper land and brighter prospects. The stream of newcomers is now but a tiny rivulet; but, when each proclaims to his friends his success in the land of his adoption, that rivulet will swell to a mighty river.

Cheap pa.s.sages and the cheap land across the Atlantic have till now turned westward the eyes of the millions of Europe anxious to become their own masters and to live a wider, freer life than is possible in their native lands. Queensland is taking steps to bring her attractions more prominently under the notice of the British and European public in order to secure a share of the rural populations of the Old World for herself. She has advantages--natural, material, social, and political--in no way inferior to those presented by other countries. Life and liberty are nowhere more secure. A wide expanse of sea divides us from the nearest foreign Power. Living is cheaper and existence easier than in those lands to which the people of Europe are flocking. The sun is always s.h.i.+ning, and winter, instead of being a period of enforced idleness, is a season when labour is greatly in demand. Crop succeeds crop without pause, and seed-time and harvest follow each other in quick procession. Stock feed in the open throughout the year, and winter brings little diminution in the yield of dairy produce.

With free inst.i.tutions, individual liberty, and great natural resources, Queensland is destined to become the home of a numerous and prosperous people. It is our manifest duty to see that it forms part of a strong, self-reliant, British nation beneath the Southern Cross, linked in the bonds of affection with the Motherland and our brethren across the seas, with arms open in welcome to our kin and colour, but ready to defend ourselves against aggression. In the great work, the men who are subduing the wilderness and converting it into a smiling garden can be relied upon to play their part. Nature is a tender foster-mother; freedom is in the air. Stalwart in frame, courageous in heart, true scions of the race from which they spring, rejoicing in their manhood, grateful for their heritage, the yeomen of Queensland are the pride of their country.

”Not without envy Wealth at times must look On their brown strength who wield the reaping-hook And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape the plough Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam; All who, by skill and patience, anyhow Make service n.o.ble, and the earth redeem From savageness. By kingly accolade Than theirs was never worthier knighthood made.”

CHAPTER III.

THE SUGAR INDUSTRY.

Sugar-cane in the Northern Hemisphere.--The Rise of the Beet Industry.--Abolition of Slave Labour in West Indies.

--Reorganisation of Industry on Scientific Basis.

--Establishment of Industry in Queensland.--Difficulties of Early Planters.--Stoppage of Pacific Island Labour.

--Evolution of Small Holdings and Erection of Central Mills.--Reintroduction of Pacific Islanders.--Stoppage of Pacific Island Labour by Commonwealth Legislation.--Bonus on White-grown Sugar.--Benefits Arising from Separating Cultivation and Manufacture.--Contrast between Past and Present Methods.--Scientific Cultivation.--Recent Statistics.

--The Future of the Industry.--Queensland Leading the Van in Establis.h.i.+ng White Agriculturists in Tropics.

Long before the Christian era cla.s.sical and sacred writers made mention of that ”sweet cane” whose product plays so important a part in the everyday requirements of modern life.

Sugar-cane was introduced into Spain by the Moors early in the eighth century. The Moorish empire sank before the combined might of Spain in 1492, and in that year Columbus added a new world to the realm of Castile. Within a few years the sugar industry had taken firm root in the West Indies, and on every isle dotting the Spanish Main waved countless fields of cane, yielding crops beside which the production of Andalusia, already waning under the dead hand of Spain, paled into insignificance.

To the first Spanish planters is due the system upon which the sugar industry was conducted in the tropics for more than three hundred years. The haughty hidalgo, scorning to labour with his own hands, forced into his service the unresisting natives of the West. Unused to strenuous toil, they sank beneath the burden. Touched with pity for their sad lot, and anxious to save them from extirpation, Las Casas, ”the Apostle of the Indians,” urged the subst.i.tution of the children of Ham, whom he and all good Christians believed to have been doomed to perpetual bondage; and African slavery thus became an established inst.i.tution in the West.

Whether under Spanish or British rule, the sugar industry of the West Indies, and of all other tropical countries to which it was extended, was carried on under a system of large plantations, owned as a rule by men of good family, who, deeming personal control beneath their dignity, deputed to overseers of meaner rank the supervision of their servile labourers. The profusion of Nature, coupled with vicarious management and the absence of compet.i.tion, engendered extravagance, improvident husbandry, and wasteful and unscientific manufacture, the while there rose to Heaven--

”Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little-meaning, tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUGAR-MILL, CHILDERS, NORTH COAST RAILWAY]

Until well on in the nineteenth century little progress was made either in cultivation or manufacture. For more than three hundred years the history of the industry was one of slave labour, crude methods, and planters to whom life in the tropics meant exile from Europe, and whose sole object was to ama.s.s wealth to be spent in the pleasures of the courts of St. James, Versailles, or Madrid.

The first blow struck at the old-time theory that the tropics were created solely to supply the needs of dwellers in temperate climes was dealt by Napoleon when he took steps to establish the beet-sugar industry in France. His object was twofold--to render Continental Europe, which was then lying at his mercy, independent of Britain and the British colonies; and to cripple the trade of the only Power which had never stooped to his sway. Unconsciously, at the same time he laid the foundation of a tropical Britain peopled by the British race.

The successful establishment of the beet-sugar industry called for the application of industrial, scientific, and organising capacity of the highest order, and the Governments of France and other European countries fostered its development by heavy bounties.

The abolition of slavery in the British West Indies in 1834 and the later emanc.i.p.ation of the negroes in the United States so disorganised the sugar industry of the West that those engaged in it were too engrossed with their own affairs to heed the progress of the beet industry of Europe. The output of beet sugar steadily forged ahead until, in the early eighties, it was almost equal to the output of cane sugar. Tropical planters and manufacturers then found themselves engaged in a life-and-death struggle for which they were ill-equipped.

Forced by inexorable necessity to face the situation, they realised that only by following the example of their rivals--by calling in the aid of science both in cultivation and in manufacture, and by paying the strictest attention to the financial side of their enterprise--could they hope to hold their own.

Just at the time that the Southern States of America were fighting desperately in defence of the slave system, the foundations of the Queensland sugar industry were being laid. Despite the high prices then ruling for sugar, the profits were not large, owing to the primitive methods of cultivation and manufacture adopted on the plantations. In time, even in this remote quarter of the globe the growth of the beet industry compelled the planters to make radical changes. Antiquated husbandry, crude processes, and wasteful management were superseded by modern scientific methods. The subdivision of large estates, the subst.i.tution of small white growers for gangs of unskilled coloured labourers, and the establishment of co-operative central factories were Queensland's contribution to the solution of the problem of Beet _versus_ Cane.

As Napoleon in his wildest dreams had no conception that his anti-British policy would ultimately lead to the expansion and evolution of the sugar industry of the tropics, so the Queenslander who first planted a few sticks of sugar-cane on the sh.o.r.es of Moreton Bay half a century ago little foresaw that from that humble beginning would develop the greatest agricultural industry of this State--an industry which, if treated with continued consideration and sympathy by the Commonwealth, bids fair to revolutionise the hitherto accepted view of the relations of the white races to the tropics. Yet, if we read aright the brief history of the Queensland sugar industry, and appreciate its present position, that first planter commenced a work which is likely to lead to permanent settlement in the tropics by men of European descent.