The Daily News. FRIDAY, APRIL 29. CHEAP LABOR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 376, 29 April 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, APRIL 29. CHEAP LABOR.

Great commercial concerns find good excuses for cheeseparing. Fat dividends are more than human comfort, and "two-and-six" saved is half-a-crown earned. It is necessary for any corporation that buys or builds ships that it should have much capital and that the use of this capital should return much money. When one occasionally reads that Sir Somebody Something, the eminent Clyde shipowner, died leaving three or four millions of money, one can understand the necessity there was for Sir Somebody Something to employ Lascars instead of white men for the crews of his ships. If he had not done so he might have left fewer millions, and this would be .unkind to him. It will be seen from a perusal of a cablegram published this morning that one' of the greatest shipping companies the world ever saw justifies the employment of Asiatics as crews because "Hindoos are fellow-citizens of the Empire.,'' So are the Hottentots, the blackfellovs of Australia, the Zulus of Natal, the "Indians" of North America, the negroes of Jamaica, and so on ad infinitum. The fact that Hindoos are our fellow-citizens is as good a reason why they should displace white men as sea-farers on British boats as would he the displacement of "punka wallahs" in the Indian Army by British soldiers. If the rights of the Hindoo coolie are similar to the rights of the white worker, there is no reason why the Anglo-Indian should not pull a punkah thing for twopence a day. Said the big shipping man: "Lascars cost little, if anything, less than British sailors." The facts are that the Lascar ddes less than half the work done bj r the British, and doufile the number of colored men are required to perform the labor that can be done by white men. Again the hig shipping man: "It is impossible to get enough trustworthy British hands to run the services." This; statement is distinctly anti-British. It says, in other words, "a Britisher is not as trustworthy ,as a Lascar," and, be- j sides, it is not necessarily the fact. It is possible .to get all the Britishers required if the proper inducements are given. The inducements are good was-es for work that is arduous and demoralising, quarters that are more extensive than a boot-trunk, food of a much better quality than a Lascar needs. The Las-1 ears are herded together in stuffy quar- j ters, they are fed cheaply; they are, supposed to, have no souls. If the mer-' cantile marine is forced to employ colored labor, the Navy should honor | the citizenship of our Hindoo brethren by disbanding its firemen and recruiting from the Indian Empire or some other spot the dark peoples are subject! to King 'Edward VII. Cheap labor is, perhaps, more popular with the British 1 mercantile marine than with any other branch of commerce. In the British Isles British seamen are heing replaced by men of the Continent —men who may be the equal of Britishers, certainly, but j men who may nevertheless he opposed to the Empire in time of stress. It is certainly weird that there should be hundreds of pilots in Great Britain's ports who are not Britons, that innumerable ships flying the "-Jack" should be manned by foreigners, and that there should be a real indisposition among British owners to make it worth the while of Britons to remain sailors. The oft-repeated argument that a Britisher cannot do as much or as good work in the tropics as the man who was born at the equator will not "hold water." The white man works from daylight to dark in Queensland, in South Australian tropics, and near the tropics in Western Australia. He takes his vigor and his sports into the heat. He plays cricket in an Indian summer, tries to break .athletic records north of Brisbane, and rides bicycles across the Australian tropical desert. He is always more adaptable than the dark man, and as a general thing he can do a great deal more work. He is not so cheap, nnd he wants food and good quarters. Therefore, why should immensely wealthy, shipping companies employ him? Some of these days a Britisher will have to [ stain himself brown to get a job on a I British boat. |