NOT WANTED! A Warning to New Zealanders.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 176, 14 November 1903, Page 6

NOT WANTED! A Warning to New Zealanders.

AUSTRALIANS returning from Africa have been telling 'n A world, per Press Association, that the latest of Britain's possessions over the seas are, from an employment point of view, "not whit they are cracked up to be ' The said Australians are glad to get bav;k to a land which suffers severely frotn adverse climatic conditions, labour wars, politicians, federation, and a tariff Africa is nearer Home, it has been made "j:>ossible" partially by the efforts of the class of men to which the returned Australians belong, millions of money are pouring into it, water is plentiful, minerals, precious stones, and wealth of ail kinds aie to hand, and peace is alleged to reign * * * The country is sparsely populated, building is brisk, land is cheap, and colonising over sea colonials, who are the type of men required, are given the cold shoulder Why ? Well, just recently it was cabled that assigned convict labour was +r > be used m the mines, and the oversea colonial workers are not Kaffir convicts The mine owners cannot afford to employ white men, so they work their ground with "compound" native labourers, who are forced to live exactly as the master demands, and on what food he supplies at his own pi ice TV * •* Australasians won't do this They merely helped to make it possible ii 1 the said employers, and now they have to quit New Zealanders leave this bounteous country, wheie there aie no millionaires, each week for the romantic fields of wealth in Africa They don t want to be labourers They could not be it they would They are going to- be "bosses ' — perhaps A year or eighteen months ago there weie "fat" billets galore for New Zealanders. * * # One's old friends Here inspectors of this, directors of that, or overseers .u the other, at salaries that made c, want to up-bundle and away William Jones, who used to get £2 10s a week here, got £500 a year theie That insignificant little clerk, whose earnings wouldn't run to keeping a banking account, had Kaffir servants and £500 a year for doing nothing much Glorious prospects Most of these magnificent billets were under newly-made departments They have either been wound up now, or the positions are filled bv men who have friends at Court * * * "I fought for you, I won the DS O , I earned a commission Bah ' the man whose son is going to get the job owns half-a-milhon pounds worth of stock m this concern , good day ' What did the British win Africa for? To put down abuses, protect the natives, and do uistice to the Uitlanders The abuses still exist, the natives are still bound by the "truck' system, convicts are worked by British companies in the mines, and the owners of the wealth are some of the Uitlanders for whom most of the fuss was made, and who no»v have the whip hand, and desire, as a thanks-offering to the white man, to import Chinese and Hindoos ' And

the gicat statesman who is pro-con-sul thinks he is right. * * * The Kafili believes, because he s able to obtain what the over-sea white man cannot get, that he is the better man — and later he will endeavour to prove it Here is the most probable solution of the white race hatred still seething in that vast country They must unite to prove that the nigger is not the white man's master Africa has never been a country for a poor whit© man, and it is never going to be until the millionaire, who does not Avant to die poor, is stripped of his immense powers He started the bother, and lie is consistent up to now. * * * In New Zealand wages are not so high as they are (if one can earn any) in Africa. He is a poor sort of creature who cannot earn a living, and it is generally a happier kind of a living than can be picked up m the l^nd that has been bought with Britain's best blood so that it may be handed over to those who swim on H to affluence You had better stay right here, young man