Part One The Early Bundaberg Pioneers and Their Plantations

Chapter 8

Agricultural Labour and its Problems

The subject of labour, and its influence on the sugar industry, was intended to be covered here in a few short paragraphs. However, when one becomes immersed in the literature, reports and newspaper articles of the time, a fascinating story of conflicting needs and demands emerges. The nature of the subject, as presented by the contemporary material, tends to take over and leads one on in an attempt to understand a very complex interplay of forces.

The overriding desire of the majority of citizens opposed to indentured labour both on the subject of workers, and of citizenship in general, was expressed in the following paragraph from the Royal Commission on the Sugar Industry presented to the Queensland Parliament in 1889:

If Australia is to be a great federated dominion on the basis of the Dominion of Canada, with a dominion parliament and a dominion executive, and the federated colonies are still to retain their present governments and legislatures, then without question, the further admission into any colony of Asiatic or coloured races is definitely, settled, because federation of the colonies means the exclusion of all Asiatic and coloured races from Australia, except to a very inappreciable extent. The public men of the larger colonies of Victoria and New South Wales have already intimated in their several addresses at the recent general elections in those colonies their belief in federation, and their intention at the same time to keep Australia free from all Asiatic or coloured races. Hence it is clear that if Queensland is to join in a federated Australia – and the aspirations of all her public men are in that direction - the request of the planters for the extension of the terms of the 11th section of The Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1880 Amendment Act of 1885 is practically disposed of.

By contrast a Wide Bay opinion as expressed by the special correspondent to the Age on the 3rd August 1886 and on the same subject went on to say:

The working men of the south are in a manner bribed to obedience, and on matters connected with sugar, they know absolutely nothing. Anyone who wants to get applauded in Brisbane has only to denounce the importation of colored labor, and file crowd will applaud wildly. They would cheerfully, one and all, refuse to undertake the work which the much abused Kanakas do, even if they were paid five times the latter’s wages; for one reason, that labor on the cane-field is exceedingly trying to a white man, and for another, that far better wages can be had at any other form of industry. There is no law that is not broken not even the Licensing Act [Does the journalist intend there to be a touch of irony here? R. L. C.] – and it would not be strictly true to say that all the Kanakas in Queensland are employed exclusively upon cane; but when it is considered that field work does not last all the year around, and that it would be preposterous and ruinous to let the hands stand idle by Act of Parliament, it will be admitted that in so far as white men’s avocations are concerned, there is but a minimum of interference by the Kanakas .

In the Australia of the 1880’s the inhabitants of cities such as Melbourne, Sydney or even Brisbane had little awareness of the difficulties experienced by their own farmers even though much talk was given over to protection of work for the white settler. In Melbourne, at late 1880’s prices, sugar from Queensland had to compete with sugar from Mauritius where labour cost 1 shilling per day with no rations; Java where labour cost 6 pence per day; China where labour cost less than that for Java and in Fiji where the cost of labour was 1 shilling per day. In Queensland, allowing for the cost of introduction fees payable under the The Pacific Island Labourers Act including wages, rations, provision for return and all other expense it was calculated that indented labour costs were approximately 16 shillings per week per worker. This was considerably more than the labourer in Europe received to produce beet sugar.

PACIFIC ISLAND LABOUR

In the 1860’s, and on a world-wide basis, sugar cane was grown by coloured labour working on plantations and the Queensland pioneers would naturally have taken this into account as a viable option; however the first Pacific Island labourers were actually introduced into Australia by the pastoralists to act as shepherds of the large sheep flocks.

Indentured labourers from the islands of the Southwest Pacific had initially been brought to the Brisbane area of Queensland in 1863 by Captain Robert Towns, later of Townsville fame, to work on cotton plantations. When cotton planting slumped in 1865 these people, known as Kanakas (from the Melanesian word literally meaning man), were employed in the sugar industry. Indentured Pacific Islanders continued to provide labour in Queensland for a period in excess of 39 years and in Northern Queensland over this period, there were approximately 82,000 Pacific Island men, women (and their children) involved. [Northern Queensland was generally considered to be anywhere from Bundaberg north - R. L. C.]. The end to indentured Pacific Island labour was proposed under legislation to occur in December 1890 but, in part due to the findings of the Royal Commission into the Sugar Industry and in part due to necessity, it was extended to 1904 when an Australian-wide Government Treaty granted the Islanders equal rights, as citizens, with the original white inhabitants. The same treaty granted equal rights to labourers from other countries such as India, Burma and Malaya.

There is no doubt that the recruitment industry attracted some unscrupulous ships’ captains into the trade as the British Royal Navy, which had responsibility for policing the transportation, had only a few ships to police the recruitment practices. In response to this the Queensland Government subsequently appointed inspectors to oversee conditions of employment of the Islanders in its own area of jurisdiction, the colony itself.

In the Bundaberg area during the 1880’s, where there were approximately 3,000 Islanders employed, this inspectorial post was held by Mr. O’Connell, later M.L.A. for Musgrave, who was appointed in May 1882, and by Mr. Henry St. George Caulfield, who succeeded Mr. O’Connell in March 1887. In January 1886, the work of the officer had so increased that it was found necessary, to appoint Mr. V. C. Laurie as Assistant Inspector of Polynesians. By this time a fleet of small vessels was engaged in recruiting and returning the islanders at the rate of about a thousand a year and Mr. J. Y. Walker observed that:

… the holder of this office enjoys no sinecure. It is his duty, under the Act and Regulations in that case made and provided, to supervise all shipping arrangements in connection with this artificial immigration, to protect the islanders against all illegalities and the public against the encroachment of this class of labor on the domain of the white wage-earner, to visit the plantations, to settle disputes and, generally, to supervise and enforce all contracts and agreements. The office has also, lately, been made a labor bureau for the distribution of the local supply, and in this respect has been largely useful. It goes without saying that the efficient discharge of such an office, involving intromissions with so many delicate and discordant elements, demanded not only a full measure of industry but also tact, caution, experience and firmness; and it is due to the two gentlemen who have successively held this responsible position to record that their administration has been conspicuously successful and satisfactory.

Even though the employment of Pacific Island labour was promulgated as a threat to white workers at the time, the Wide Bay & Burnett Directory of 1887 stated that:

the opinion among many is, that the Kanakas have not only been no foe to the white working man, but they have actually made matters a hundred fold better for him than they were. Instead of 15 shillings a week on a maize farm, and no alternative, he can, if he be a skilled tradesman, get from £2 to £3 a week in the mills and refineries, which could not exist without the planters’ cheap labor. The proportion of money spent in these large establishments is overwhelmingly in favor of the white man. If those Kanakas did not labor in the fields there would be no need for the artisans. It is a curious comment on the fact that the planters have always been denounced as trying to take the bread out of the mouth of the working man, that it has always been the most difficult thing to get a white laborer to remain on a plantation at field work for more than three months at a stretch. It may not be amiss to mention that the opinion of a travelling correspondent for a Sydney daily paper, who had been specially commissioned to inquire into the question of colored labor in the north was, that it was simply impossible to grow sugar with any other than Kanaka labor. This assertion, I have heard so many corroborations of, by men directly interested, and by the Government officials who themselves had supervision of the Kanakas that the assertion may now be taken as axiomatic. … The present member, Mr. Adams, was at one time a determined opponent of black labor in any form but his subsequent experience as a planter compelled him to modify his views.

As recorded in the Wide Bay and Burnett Directory of 1886-87 an Age special correspondent reported that the following remarks were elicited from an official of some standing:

When asked to comment on unsubstantiated charges made against planters re the cruel treatment of their colored employees, “he spoke of one case in which the overseer got fined £5 for assaulting an Islander, the magistrate stating that had the information been laid for grievous bodily harm, six months imprisonment would have been awarded. The overseer had since been discharged. That was the worst case that he had ever come upon, and he had been in office for the past four years.”

… and again, speaking of alleged ill-treatment, he said:

I have never known any real ill-treatment on the part of the employers themselves. Employers have always been very willing to assist me in anything of the sort. Fairymead (Messrs. Young Bros.) is at the present time particularly well looked after. The proprietors, I know, would do everything they could that would be to the benefit of their boys. They are not allowed out at nights without special permission, and this is the only grievance they appear to have. It is through other boys being let out on Saturday nights that first get drunk, and then fall out with some white man as drunk as themselves. In such rows the white man is, as a rule, the aggressor, and when once the row begins, all the boys within hearing “roll in” irrespective of the merit of the matter. There is very little real harm in the Kanaka. I can go among them at any time and quieten a row if necessary.

Then came the question:

Do you think that there is any cause for this imputation of Kanaka slavery?

Certainly not - I have known the district altogether fourteen years, and, with the exception of a few cases of ill-treatment, which would have occurred in any other district of the same population, there has been nothing to complain of. The boys are, as a rule, very well located, and thoroughly understand their agreements. They come to me continually to know when their time is up, and they keep notched sticks for thirty-six moons or three years. The fact that there are three extra moons to make up the time, seems to be difficult for them to understand.

Do they re-engage willingly?

They generally do so; out of three ship loads of Kanakas who came here, only fifty-two went home when their time had expired. That would mean that 100 out of the 152 re-engaged.

Do you think that the importation of Kanaka labor injuriously affects the district in any way?

Bundaberg would never have been more than a village without it, instead of the prosperous town it is. There were next to no employers when I came here fourteen years ago, and the town consisted only of four public houses, two stores, and half-a-dozen little humpies; the total population not exceeding 200. This number has now increased to 3000. The farmers who got Kanakas were the first that seemed to do any good for themselves. As a rule, the farmers had lived on what they grew themselves.

What do you think of the Kanakas?

I am a great admirer of them. You could not wish for better laborers. They are well satisfied with their treatment generally, and I have known boys re-engage for the third time. There has been only one charge of rape against the Kanakas in this district for the past four years. There are, of course, occasional cases of drunkenness on the plantations, but it should be remembered that there are 2,000 in the district.

However not all commentators were as complacent; some submissions to the Royal Commission resulted in the inclusion in the final report of the following claims:

In some instances the introduction of coloured labour has proved objectionable. At Rockhampton there are, according to the evidence of the Polynesian Inspector, 200 Kanakas in the district; he was only able to account for 82 of them. It is known that there is quite a colony of South Sea islanders in North Rockhampton, some of whom have married white women, have drays and carts of their own, and are competing with Europeans in the cutting and sale of firewood, and many of them are also employed in other ways. At Bundaberg there are at least 300 South Sea islanders walking about, engaging for short periods, and are thus in open competition with Europeans. It is clear that, even with the safeguards already established by the Legislature, the South Sea Islanders are coming into active competition with white men, and are doing work which by no straining of words can be called tropical agriculture.

EUROPEAN LABOUR

On the question of white labour in the Bundaberg area The Wide Bay & Burnett Directory of 1887 observed that some rather emphatic results on the subject had been elicited:

There have been three shiploads of white men come here, the first in the Renfewshire in 1882, which brought something over 300, the other two vessels each bringing the same. Some turned out well, but they all had an idea that they were worth very much more at the start than they were. There was a great deal of difficulty in making them understand that they must be acclimatised, and they used to stick out for not less than £1 per week, instead of taking the first thing that offered. Some of the Renfewshire men were engineers, and these soon found employment; others got ordinary farm work for 15 shillings a week. There were good and bad amongst them, of course. The only employer who gave his experience of white laborers said that they were a nuisance; that they worked fairly well at the start, and then seemed to become dissatisfied about things generally.

And in explanation of the foregoing, my informant added,

The men will undertake to do work for which they are entirely unfitted. Such a man, for instance, will say he is a ploughman, in order to get a place; and his employer, in too many cases, will find that he knows little or nothing about it. [In order to obtain assisted passage the potential migrant had to be able to provide assurance that he, or she, had a particular skill useful to the Colony such as farm labourer. Many who claimed to have such a skill quite often did not, but by then they had been provided with their assisted passage to the Colony - R. L. C.]. And when such men stick out for the highest wages in the face of all this, it is sometimes a matter of great difficulty to deal with them at all, inasmuch as full wages mean a definite loss to the employer. The small farmer cannot afford more than £30 or £40 per year, and his employee has to work hard for it.

The Wide Bay & Burnett Directory went on to comment that the white men would not work on the cane, and the farmers were actually importing South Sea Islanders at £10 to £12 per head in 1878 even though the cost had doubled in 1887, and the price of sugar had gone down by fifty per cent over the same period.

A typical case in point was presented during the interrogation of Robert Mitchell Boyd of the Herbert River District by A. S. Cowley M.L.A. for the Royal Commission. Mr. Boyd described what would appear to have been an almost universal experience where exclusive employment was given to European labour on the cane fields:

Have you had experience of growing sugar in New South Wales?

Yes; ten years’ experience.

On what rivers were you?

Port Macquarrie, the Maclay and Clarence Rivers.

Did you ever grow cane for a factory?

Yes.

What labour did you use?

White labour.

Did you make it a success - was it profitable?

I lost every sixpence I had in the world, and took a billet with £15 in my pocket after the experiment.

How does the yield per acre down there compare with the yield per acre in Queensland?

I have known it on the Clarence to average

42 tons an acre for a two-year old crop. That was an exceptional crop.

What area would that comprise?

Over 1,300 acres.

What price per ton was paid for the cane?

10 shillings on the field.

To the grower?

To the grower.

What labour was used in growing the cane?

Mostly white labour.

Can you tell us the wages paid, including rations?

They varied from 12 shillings to 18 shillings a week with rations. The labourer lived as one of the family.

You employ fifty Europeans on this plantation directly; how many do you employ indirectly?

I should say that £19,000 out of’ £20,000 a year goes to the white population.

The bulk of the money spent here goes in some form or other to the white inhabitants?

Yes; not 5 per cent gets away from them.

Have you ever had cane cut by white labourcontract or otherwise?

No.

Do your white ploughmen stay long with you, as a rule?

No; the ploughmen do not, as a rule.

Do you readily find those men in the district, or do you have to import them from outside?

In nine cases out of ten we get them from Townsville.

Do you pay their passages up here?

Yes.

And by continually losing the men you add to the cost of working the plantation?

Yes it means nearly £1 apiece to every man every three months.

You have £85,000 of capital sunk in this estate - I wish to know whether that is actually cash sunk, or includes interest from the date of operations?

It is accumulated interest for four years on an overdraft that has gone from nothing to £50,000.

The interest has been added annually?

Yes; interest is being charged at the rate of 3 per cent.

Later the Commission goes on to say that:

The climate north of Townsville is essentially tropical, the scrubs are an impenetrable jungle, and from the evidence placed before the Commission it is evident that they will cost an enormous amount of money to clear them and render the land available for agricultural purposes. Further, immediately the scrub is cleared, malaria arises, seriously detrimental to the health of Europeans and destructive to human life, as has already been proved in the construction of a line of railway from Mourilyan plantation to Mourilyan Harbour. It is the opinion of all who have had experience of the districts north of Townsville that the dense scrubs of the Johnstone, and the Barron, and the Tully, and the Russell cannot be cleared by European labour. At present agricultural labour by Europeans on their own freehold land in the districts now under consideration is evaded as much as possible.

At Herberton, where the climate is much colder, and where productions of a more temperate zone can be grown, European labour finds a fitting outlet, but without question in the coast districts north of Townsville there is, in a great many instances, a disposition on the part of Europeans to have nothing whatever to do with agriculture, until the land has been cleared and made ready for cultivation. Consequently, if the question - is Queensland able to do without the sugar industry, except on the basis of a white population? - is answered in the affirmative, then undoubtedly a very large portion of the coast districts of the North will not be cultivated, at all events for a long time to come, and from £4,000,000 to £5,000,000 of capital which has been vested in the sugar industry will be wiped out of existence, and the whole of the population now dependent upon the sugar industry for a livelihood will, for a time, and until new industries arise, be thrown out of employment.

In the Logan area, again with a cooler climate, white labour proved to be practical only where the labour was provided by the planter’s family in an area where these families had jointly contributed to a co-operative, central mill. It is also possible that there may have been some success where employees did not have to be kept on during the slack season. This would have necessitated the introduction of other industries to provide a sustainable full year income for the workers. This may have been possible to implement in a successful, established community that possessed the capability to support various other industries; but it was not feasible in a community at the pioneering stage unless some sort of artificial support could be provided – a luxury that the governments of the early colonies could not afford.

By the late 1800’s economic conditions were dictating the end of indented labour. The powerful Fowler steam ploughs and traction engines with their ploughshares and steel cable cultivators could now clear and plough the land and the development of smaller, owner-operated farms opened the way for the productive use of white labour. The day of the plantation system and the need for the employment of indented labour had passed.

CHINESE LABOUR

Chinese labour was first used by the mining industry in the 1850’s and as late as 1883-89 it was being used by the South Australian Government to construct the Darwin to Pine Creek railway line. This paralleled the use of Chinese labour in the construction of the United States of America’s transcontinental lines.

In the district of Cairns the whole of the agriculture outside sugar growing was carried on by the Chinese. There were from 1,200 to 1,500 Chinese in the Cairns district, and the evidence of witnesses, including that of the Crown Lands Ranger, affirmed the fact that were it not for these Chinese there would not have been an acre of land under cultivation in Cairns outside the sugar plantations. A central rice mill was erected a short distance from Cairns with a capacity in excess of 700 tons of rice. The whole of the rice paddy was cultivated by Chinese labour and their produce supplied the mill.

Testimony to the Royal Commission declared that:

Homestead selections were taken up in the Cairns and other districts, both under The Crown Lands Alienation Act of 1876, and The Crown Lands Act of’ 1884. The selectors reside on their selections, but for the first five years they leased their land to the Chinese on a clearing lease, at 1 shilling per acre per annum. Thus, while the Chinese fulfilled the conditions of selection, the selector received a profit of 9 pence per acre from the land. At the end of the first five years another agreement was made between the selectors and the Chinese, and the cultivated land was then let at the rate of £l an acre per annum. In one case a homestead selector holding 160 acres had 130 acres cleared in this manner, and he has now for himself eight acres, with a garden planted by the Chinese, while 122 acres are let to Chinese at £1 per acre per annum, and this is apparently the general mode in which agriculture is carried on in a large portion of the Northern coast districts.

It is probable that much of the Chinese labour-force described here had originally arrived to make their fortunes in the Palmer River goldfields, though coolie labour had earlier been imported to act as shepherds to the large sheep flocks and as labourers in the mining industry. Bundaberg also had Chinese market gardeners and our mother (Marjorie Hammond Connor nee Adams, a grandchild of Walter and Mary) spoke fondly of the pleasure derived from visiting these gardens as a child in the early 1900’s. The experience probably served her well as she, pre World War II, was later employed as a violinist on the pre-World War II Oriental Shipping Line.

BRITISH INDIAN LABOUR

As early as 1839 pastoralists had engaged over a thousand indented workers from the British Indian Colonies. A mention regarding this source of labour in the Bundaberg area was made by J. Y. Walker in his 1890 publication:

In 1882 two importations from over-sea excited widely different feelings amongst the community. In September the barque Renfrewshire from the Clyde, landed 305 immigrants, who were received with welcome and satisfaction. In November the steamer Devonshire arrived at the Heads with a consignment of coolies from Ceylon, for some of the sugar plantations. The arrivals excited a perfect furore of excitement and indignation, and, to avoid scenes of violence, were landed at the Heads and allotted to the several promoters of the enterprise and waited conveyance to the intended fields of their future labor. It was not to be, however, ‘the working man’ rose in his wrath, marched to the Heads and with unseemly violence ‘boxed’ all the lots, and they were marched to Bundaberg and for protection were sheltered in the yard and outbuildings of the Queen’s Hotel. Riotous scenes and collisions with the police ensued, and one respectable citizen was arrested and for his share in the proceedings ‘was mulct in a penalty of £5.’ The unfortunate Indians ultimately got distributed somehow; but the experiment was not satisfactory and has not since been repeated.

Subsequent experience with the Ceylonese immigrants was the signal for open warfare between the new comers and the white labourers as the Ceylonese under-bid them, and did their work almost as well, provided it did not necessitate extra hard manual labour.

On the subject of Indian labour a contributor to The Wide Bay & Burnett Directory of 1887 observed:

Speaking of the Cingalese my informant stated that they made a good thing by supplying liquor to the Kanakas. They have been a regular nuisance ever since they have come into the colony. They have never done a fair day’s work, and in most respects they are as different as possible from the Kanakas. I would not take charge of any number of them for any money … .

In a Parliamentary address by Walter Adams on the subject of Indian labour maintained in part that:

He was not a young colonist; he was old both in years and as a colonist, having come out in 1849, and in 1852 he remembered that two shiploads of those very people came to New South Wales without let or hindrance, and he then saw so much of them that he was perfectly satisfied that they were not suitable colonists.

NOTE : In 1837 the N.S.W’s Legislative Council’s Committee on Immigration recommended the importation of coolies from India. Some were imported; however the Government of the day frowned upon this activity and Governor Gipps refused to grant any bounty for them. In 1842-43 graziers again formed an association to import Indian labour, only to be met by serious opposition from the labourers of Sydney. The labourers produced a petition, signed by more than 4,000 persons, and addressed to Queen Victoria. These workers were part of a large influx of free immigrants, many of whom had been influenced by trade unionism prior to leaving Britain.

The importation of labour from the British Indian Colonies to the colony of N.S.W., together with its aftermath, would presumably have been the issue that had such a strong influence on Walter’s opinion. In the late 1840’s/early 1850’s Walter was employed by the Australian Agricultural Company in the Hunter River area of N.S.W. where he would have been in the position to both view, and hear accounts of, the performance of the introduced Indian labourers.

The above experiences were, no doubt strongly reinforced by the much later Bundaberg experiences mentioned above, where the Ceylonese were given transport to Bundaberg by plantation owners in 1882 to work as agricultural labour and “There was an extremely violent reaction from the local workers. None of the local planters were prepared to repeat the experiment.” (Nolan – BUNDABERG History and People ).

However nothing is ever just black or white; in 1877, a period when Walter was very active in Bundaberg’s local affairs, the sum of £50, which was a considerable amount in those days, was raised and transmitted to Brisbane from the Bundaberg district for the Indian Famine Relief Fund.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to the existing family material, which includes around the table family reminiscences and folklore of times past, information on the following subjects, has been obtained from:

The Early Planters and Pioneers of Bundaberg : Farm Labourer 18 Read And Write - Connor, John Kingsley 2004

History of Bundaberg – A Typical Queensland Agricultural Settlement , Walker, J. Y., W. C. Aitken (Bundaberg) & Gordon and Gotch, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, London, 1890.

BUNDABERG History and People , Nolan, Janette. University of Queensland Press, 1978;

BUNDABERG From Pioneers to Prosperity – Rackemann, Neville., Bundaberg City Council. Harrison Printing Co., 1992; and

Walter Adams’ Library of Queensland Parliamentary Reference Books on Debates and Reports, which Includes the Report of: The Royal Commission into the Sugar Industry , Source: Votes and Proceedings , Volume IV – being the session 1889 of the Queensland Legislative Assembly; being the second session of the Tenth Parliament.

Details of Bundaberg and Maryborough industries in the 1880’s :

Wide Bay & Burnett Directory – Muir and Mordom, 1887.

Very early cattle stations of the Bundaberg area and their survey details :

BUNDABERG From Pioneers to Prosperity – Rackemann, Neville, Bundaberg City Council, Harrison Printing Co. 1992.

Reddan and Mellor and the Knights :

Doreen Reddan of Woongarra Street Bundaberg and William Harvey Mellor of Gayndah

British Colonial India, Ceylonese labour :

BUNDABERG History and People , Nolan, Janette, University of Queensland Press, 1978

Walter Adams - an additional source :

Almanac and Queensland Directory , Pugh, T. P., Gordon and Gotch, 1887

The Early Morton Bay Planters :

Redlands - The Story of an Australian Shire , Townsend, D., 1986 History and establishment of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company and the Clarence River Mills :

South Pacific Enterprise – The Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited , 1956 – (From the chapters by Birch, A. and Blaxland, J. F.)

African slave labour :

The Australian Financial Review of 20-24 March 2008: article on The Liverpool (U.K.) Museum dedicated to the slave trade and to its abolition.

For more comprehensive readings on the history of Bundaberg refer to :

History of Bundaberg – A Typical Queensland Agricultural Settlement , Walker, J. Y., W. C. Aitken (Bundaberg) & Gordon and Gotch, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, London, 1890.

BUNDABERG – History and People , Nolan, Janette, University of Queensland Press, 1978; and

BUNDABERG - From Pioneers to Prosperity, Rackermann, Neville, Bundaberg City Council, Harrison Printing Co. - 1992.