FRAUDULENT RUN JOBBING IN QUEENSLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5183, 1 November 1877, Page 3

FRAUDULENT RUN JOBBING IN QUEENSLAND.

(From the Queenslander.) A very extraordinary paper was lately presented to Parliament, viz., a “Memorandum from the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the unsettled district of Gregory South in regard to the stocking of runs in that district.” This memorandum is declared by the writer to be sent in as an answer to our leading article of July 7, on the subject of fraudulent occupation of Grown lands in the western district, and hedeniesthat the practiocsofwhioh we complained prevail in South Gregory, and gives an estimate of the stock depastured in that district, showing that on the whole there are more stock in it than are required to hold the available area of the occupied runs. It does not appear from the paper laid before Parliament that the commissioner was called upon to furnish any such report, and it will at once strike pur readers as extraordinary that this officer should have felt impelled to answer a leading article of ours on the subject of the general administration of the Pastoral Leases Act, iu which there was no personal reference made to him. The charges which we brought against the Crown Lands Department and against the run-jobhers were two:— Ist. That a fraudulent practice had been allowed to spring up of holding many thousands of square miles of country with a few hundred head of cattle by driving them over it, —the stockman, or person in charge, making a declaration that all the ground passed-over had been stocked as required by the Act,—-whereby leases were acquired of large tracts of country which were then held unoccupied, and offered for sale to bonitfide settlers. 2nd. That, owing to the desire to secure as much as possible at the low rent which is at present paid, many of the western squatters have taken up, and are now holding, larger areas of country than they have stock to hold under the-provisions of the Pastoral Leases Act. The particular case on information of which we grounded the first charge occurred in the North Gregory District. It has been so notorious and so much discussed in squatting circles that we can scarcely think that it never came to the ears of the commissioner of the adjoining district, and it therefore seems almost as if he was endeavoring to divert public attention to a false issue in assuming that his was the district alluded to.

We had at the time when tha,t article was written no knowledge of any facts which would have justified us in assuming that the provisions of the Pastoral Leases Act were evaded in the South Gregory District ; but we have now, and the commissioner himself has furnished the information. He states in the memorandum laid before Parliament ; that the available area of runs in that distrifct is 15,000 square miles, which would require to hold it 75,000 head of cattle ; and he then gives an estimate of the stock on the different stations, showing that they have 84,250 cattle, 3086 horses, and 4000 sheep—or, allowing five sheep for one beast (the proportion under the Pastoral Leases Act), equal to 88,000 head of cattle, or about 13,000 more than the number required by law to hold the country ; being, in fact, nearly six head to the square mile instead of the five required by the Act. We need hardly point out to our readers that, although five head per aqare mile is the minimum quantity which by law must be kept on the run to hold it, yet it is not supposed that on stations in working order no larger number will be fed ; in fact, it would not pay to look after cattle on country which would only run five head per square mile. Fifty head is probably nearer the number which is grazed on each square mile of a run which is moderately well stocked. As Mr, Watson gives in his return several stations having as many as 20,000, 11,000, and 8000 head respectively, it is evident that those stations must have had more stock than six to the square mile, and that some of the others must have, therefore, been very, much short of their proper amount.. He attempts, in .fact, to make use of the stock on the old-established stations, some of which have been held for more than ten years, to cover the deficiencies on the other rims which are illegally held unstocked or short of the proper quantity. . q’his can scarcely have been done inadvertently, since, in the very article to which this memorandum is a reply, we directed attention to tho fact that a comparison of the total amount of stock in the colony with the total area of leased land, although it proved our case, yet did not show the real extent of the abuse,’since the larger quantity of stock on the older stations covered, to a considerable extent, the deficiencies on those runs which were held almost nnstocked. Since Mr. Watson’s memorandum was published, however, a return has been laid on the table of the Legislative Assembly, showing the number of stock depastured in the South Gregory District on January 1, 1877 ; and, as it is compiled from the official returns for assessment, it must be, we 'believe; '"more correct than ’ Mr;" Watson’s estimate of the numbers. From this return it appears that the quantity of stock in the district is only 68,245 cattle, 2240 horses, and 15,460 sheep; or equal to 63,600 cattle, instead of the 87,800 of his estimate. Instead, - therefore, of there being about 13,000 head; more than necessary to hold the 15,000 square miles of available country, there are 11,600 less than required. If there had not. been; any case before calling for inquiry, there certainly exists one now, since it is shown that in the whole district of South Gregory there is' not the minimum amount of stock which should he required to hold the country, and as some of the older stations are known to be heavily stocked, it’is evident that a great part of the country is held almost if not quite unstocked.

mte QUESTION. _ The London Times, referring, to the action of tUb Queensland Gotflriimoht' in regard to Chinese emigrants, says :—“We can understand and sympathise with the dislike of our Australian follow-subjecta to the catastrophe they thus apprehend. Our Australian colonies arc something more to us than wide regions under the dominion of tho English Crown, with indefinite capabilities for almost every kind of material progress. : We value them rather as thb ; homes of men of our own race, as capable of receiving and providing for the vast multitudes which from time to time arc driven from our own shores, and as likely in tlie distant future to grow up to a greatness equal to our own, and not wholly unlike it in the typo it offers. It would sadly interfere with this agreeable vision if Australia wore really destined to bo peopled, not with English, but with Chinese settlers, if tlie abominations of a Chinese quarter are to bo found everywhere, and if white labor is to bo driven out before tho advancing steps of its rivals. Queensland, under such a system, might produce more cotton and more sugar, and at a lower rate than before. Tho lauds of Australia might bo better tilled and her cattle might increase and multiply under tho cheap supervision of tho stranger. But if these results were to be obtained by the substitution of Chinese for Englishmen, if Australia, in short, wore to become another China, with the addition only of a few great capitalists and landholders, we should feel that we had lost well-nigh all for which Australia is now valuable to us. We could look with no satisfaction at a country in which the great mass of the inhabitants were, in the fullest sense, aliens —in which English capital might be engaged with profit, but from which Englishmen would bo practically excluded, or would find a - place ' only such as the poorer qiass of whites did in the late slave States of America, under the designation of “ white trash.” As far as this is the prospect at which our Australian colo- ' uies have taken alarm, we can only say that 1 we dislike it as much as they do. Our only doubt is whether the ease be as urgent as 1 they seem to believe, and whether the pre- \ ventive measures they are wishing to apply i are, in point of fact, at all called for. The Chinaman in Australia and in California is nothing more as yet than an exceedingly useful | auxiliary.. The departments of work which he i has appropriated are such, for the most part, as the white man is only too glad to be relieved from. There is nothing too mean, or too for- [ bidding, or too irksome for the catholic taste o! the Chinese. In waiting, or soavengering, or washing dirty clothes he is simply without a rival. There are plenty of spheres of this kind which may be" surrendered to him without grudging, and in which no Englishman need w:"sh to enter into any competition with him. It is chiefly, when he goes beyond these, when he offers his services in the generallabor ’ market, or when he sets off to the diggings to gather gold on his own account, that his presence becomes at all questionable. Thereupon 1 the white laborer who is underbid or thrust aside by the Chinaman calls out, at once, against the low tastes and habits of his intrusive rival. The remedy, it appears to us, is sufficientlyinhisowuhands. Werefusetobelieve that white labor is not, for the vast majority of purposes, superior to what is termed yellow labor, or'that it would not in itself be very ■ much preferred by the employer. But when white men make exorbitant demands for 1 wages, when they begin striking and giving trouble in a thousand’ ways, the employer of ; labor may be very glad that he is not abso- ; lately dependent on them, and that he has at ’ command a more docile race of beings, who 1 can be satisfied on more easy terms, and who 1 will be leas forgetful of the relation in which ' they stand to him and the corresponding duties ; which it entails. That our great Australian ‘ colonies should be wholly or in any considerable degree worked and cultivated by what in many aspects is little better than slave labor 1 we should think most undesirable. But we do not believe that there is any good reason for supposing that they ever will be. The white man has got at present a firm hold on them, and he comes of a stock which is apt to main- ' tain its ground stubbornly, and is not easily to be dislodged. But neither can we wish that capital in Australia should be placed in a worse ' position than capital elsewhere, or that its profits should be reduced unfairly by the peculiar condition of the labor market. If the white laborer wishes to keep possession of the field he has had hitherto to himself, he can do ■ so more by direct means than by imposing special restrictions and deterrent taxes on the Chinese. It will be his own fault if he suffers himself to he supplanted. The danger, anyhow, is remote, and it can he met and averted by fairer arts than prohibitive legislation can furnish. Our ideal for Australia, or for any other possession we have occupied and made our own, is certainly not one in which high profits are secured to capital by tlie sacrifice of everything else. The well-being of the country, in any sense in which we need much care for it, is not thus to be attained, and a division of Australia between a few great English capitalists and a swarming mass of emigrant Chinese is what we should be the first to deprecate. But as little can we wish that labor should be supreme too absolutely, or should be subject to no such restraints as are imposed by wholesome competition. We look forward already to the day when Australia will be the free home of many millions of men of our own race, and when the enormous natural resources of the country will have been made available by their steady industry and employed as the necessary basis of a hopeful and progressive civilisation. But we thiuk, too, that in that wide expanse of territory, with its many wants and many rewards for labor of every kind, there may be room found for the handful of Chinese emigrants who are at all likely to make their way there.