The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-04-04
QUEENSLAND AND HAWAII.

he premier OF queensland, non
J. r. Dickson, in his recent address
to the electors. insists that there
should be more immigration of per-
sons from the agricultural classes Of
Great Britain, but that only suitable
persons Should be encouraged to enter
the colony. He says that although the
colony needs IaborerS he desires to
speak with no uncertain sound
against the Importation of alien labor.
He also says that he intends TO pro-
pose to the Imperial government any
measures of restriction or exclusion
which may be necessary, in order to
reserve Queensland to the British
white men He says that he has secured
from the Japanese government pre-
ferential treatment of the Queensland
sugars in the Japanese market, and
he believes friendly relations with
Japan may ''be safely established and
maintained without the necessity for
admitting their laborers and artisans
into our community
This is rather significant language,
and may be studied to advantage by
our people.
Queensland is a tropical country.
The British are making there the larg
est and the most exhaustive expert
ments of the fitness and capacity of
the white man to live in the tropics;
not only to live in the tropics, but to
thrive, advance, and keep abreast of
the men of the temperate zones. In
order to make a successful experiment
they have placed the British farmer
ON the soil, because there can be no
permanent success Of British instltu-
tions in the tropics unless they are
maintained by the men who till the
ground There may be admirable gov
eminent over the people of the tro-
pics, as there is in India, but there
cannot be self government unless the
mass of the people know how to gov
ern themselves and the mass of the
people are the tillers of the soil.
The British in Queensland have not
been shouting for the Flag and then
asking the heather to inmigrate
and hold it up. They have insisted
that it should be held by British
hands.
On one of the sugar plantations of
Queensland, which yielded 10000 tons
of sugar last year, there are $50 men,
women and children from Great Brit
ain now living and working, while the
number of aliens, that is, Kanakas
and Japanese, on the place is only
four hundred and fifty. Eighty-two
small farms that supply the mills are
personally cultivated by Englishmen
1t appears, therefore, that tropical
Queensland has, on one of the sugar
plantations about One-thlrd as many
men, women and children as there
were american men, women and chill
dren i'm all of these Islands at the time
the census of 1890 was taken. This
instance illustrates what can be done
by men who are really sincere i'm their
intenticn Queensland does employ
the Asiatics and aliens, but they be
come less important every year as the
sources of labor supply. The British
in Australia know that the white man
can thrive as a laborer IN the tropics
as we'll as in the temperate regions,
and they have already proved it.
While the American appears to have
utterly failed so far in the establish
ment of the American laborer on the
soil of these Islands, and must ac-
Id !, Irrv,, 10 fhrst
the British in Queensland have made
a signal triumph in their experiments
with the white men in the tropics,
there are reasons for the failure. The
Americans in these Islands did not
until 1898, control the Monarchy and
probably could not enforce any dis
tinctively American policy regarding
immigration. When they seized the
political power, the laboring class was
overwhelmingly Asiatic, and it could
not he changed for an American class
without sacrifice of interests, a sac
rifice occasionally exhibited in the
lives of heroes and Of philanthropy
lists. but quite rare in the average life
of a community. A change of the Ia
Dor system could only be made by
heroic treatment, and that was i'm
practicable as the world goes
If the government, after '93, had not
only grasped the situation, but had
made final stand in favor of American
settlement, and had bent its energies
to secure it, the system might possibly
have been changed. It did not Perhaps
it could not.
There remains now the fact that the
British Iha1ra