The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1892. South Sea Slayery

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 145, 4 June 1892, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1892. South Sea Slayery

In order that our readers may form a correct opinion on the subject of slave labor in Queensland and the manner 1 of the treatment of these unfortunate Islanders by their owners, we quote 1 the following extracts which contain statements that bear the impress of truth. " Used up kanakas" says the Worker of Brisbane — "are as numerous in Bundaberg as mosquitos in a gully on a summer night, and as malodorous as a procession of overladen nightcarts. They He about, physical and moral wrecks as they are, filling the air with social disease germs more deadly than influenza or leprosy. And who is responsible for this? Every man who has not by word and deed fought against this infamous traffic." The "Bligh Watchman" says:The Queensland Government is deli, berately and with malice aforethought adding this race problem to the many social difficulties awaiting solution; and they are not only inflicting it on their own colony, but on all Australia." The following paragraph is also from "The Worker." "Lord Charles Scott and Captain Davis, of the gunboat Royalist, have sent reports to the Imperial Government on the happiness of kanakas, in Queens land. They've never worked on the plantations, and have had nothing more to do with Polynesians then shell and burn villages occasionally, so they commend the unholy traffic with their usual official zeal." " The Black Labour wave rolls steadily nearer and we may as well understand what it means from the beginning. Playford says that India is overpopulated and wants an outlet, accordingly he is providing; her with one in tropical Australia. There are some 250,000,000 people in India who can increase easily at the rate of 25,000,000 yearly. If this torrent of coloured labour is once turned upon Australia the result must be plain to everybody but born fools. The continent will speedily be lost as a white man's continent just as South Africa is being lost; Queensland will slide from the kanaka to the coollie as easily as a carpet snake slides off a log. And the men who sold their country will not be Griffith and M'llwraith alone, but every one of us who let them break their pledges and defy all public decency. We may as well understand that as a start-off for it is the solid truth."