AUSTRALASIA
New Zealand and Australia are to-day the only spots in the world wherein
the white race may expand without encroaching upon already existing and
developed races. The extent to which they are taking advantage of their
opportunities, the extent to which they are enlarging the scope and the
quality of progressive civilization is the measure of their right to the
maintenance of their exclusive "White-Australasia" policy.
I confess at the outset that I am at a loss for an adequate argument
against this policy. Narrow, selfish, dog-in-the-manger-like as it may
be, we are faced with the other question: From time out of mind China
and India have had two of the largest slices of the world's surface.
What have they done with them? How can India and Asia, having littered
up their domains with human beings, ask that more of the world be turned
over to them for a repetition of the same ghastly reproduction? They
have made it impossible, with their degradation of womanhood and their
exaltation of caste and ancestry, for new life to start with anything
like a decent chance. Is there not every reason to believe that
permitted to take up quarters in the open spaces of the white man's
world, they will do the same?
True that the white man, in both of these cases, has wrested his lands
from existing native tribes. But it was also true that, in New Zealand
at least, and through Polynesia, the natives were immigrants who in
their turn imposed on yet more primitive natives, as did the Japanese.
Furthermore, no race on earth has been given a better opportunity to
make good than has the Maori in New Zealand. The Australoid seems on the
whole not equipped for the effort. There have been cases of Australian
blacks making good. There is the case of the savage who after receiving
an education became a Shakespearean scholar. But the exception only
proves the rule. Furthermore, though there is bitter opposition to any
white man marrying a native black woman in Australia--an opposition that
is calling for legal action from some quarters so that such marriage
will be in future impossible--still, the White-Australia policy is not
aimed against the blacks. These will either take hold of themselves and
make good, in time, or will die out. Be that as it may, there is no
answer to the Asiatic demand for admission based on the argument about
the white man's plunder.
The only other argument is that, if this is the case, the white man must
get out of Asia. There too, it seems to me, is a weak spot. The white
man in Asia--as man to man--does not lower the standard of the
civilization of the native; nor is he ever likely to migrate in numbers
large enough to create a problem. Only politically, where a
leeching-process exists, where native industries are destroyed by cheap
foreign products (like that of cotton goods, which were forced upon the
Indians by the British, to the utter ruination of the Indian textiles)
has the havoc been serious. That is a real argument, and it is up to the
Asiatics so to adjust their own affairs and to come together as to
"oust" the white man,--a problem for the natives to solve for
themselves.
There is still another consideration. What of Japan? Japan has national
unity, she is advancing. Is she, then, to be made an exception in the
White-Australia policy? The answer is, Japan must do as she would be
done by, an answer which will be enlarged upon in the chapter dealing
with Japan.
Having thus focused on the negative phases of this discussion, let us
see what is written on the inner side of the Australasian shield. Before
we can at all understand the motives that move Australasia in the
direction she is going, and foresee the future, we shall have to know by
what channels she came to be what she is, what ideals are parents to her
being, and what ideals are her offspring.
Strange as it may seem, Britain's interest in her south Pacific
possessions have always been more or less mild. When the question of
annexing New Zealand came up in 1839, the Duke of Wellington said in
Parliament that Great Britain already had too many colonies. It is
common knowledge that she gave them as much rope as they would take,
that when she had the opportunity of acquiring the Samoan group in 1889
she let it slip, and that she took the Fiji Islands only after their
chief, Thakambau, offered them in liquidation of unjust debts to
America. In other words, it was New Zealand and Australia that held on
to the mother country, instead of the reverse. And in order to
understand the spirit of the Dominion and the Commonwealth, we must
consider the reasons for their clinging to "home."
Australia was first settled by men convicted of offences against
Britain's then crude sense of justice; but New Zealand was devised as a
colonial scheme under which every feature of British life was to be
transplanted. When Europeans came to America, political and religious
freedom was sought. When Great Britain went to New Zealand, eighty-five
years ago, society was politically and religiously free, but industrial
organization was awaiting an ambitious hand. In New Zealand it was not,
as Havelock Ellis puts it so vividly, "the roving of a race with
piratical and poetic instincts invading old England where few stocks
arrived save by stringent selection of the sea." They did not come
because of romantic longing, nor to escape oppression and restriction.
The story of the development of New Zealand, from settlement and
conquest of the Maories to the beginning of that legislation which has
made it famous, is the story of conservatism. When the first shipload of
colonists set out from England, their prospectus was a document of
conservatism. The aim of the projectors was to transplant every phase
and station and class of English life, to build in the other end of the
world another England.
Doubtless the fathers of this scheme were seeking to overcome the fear
of forced transplantation which had made of Australia a land of horror
in anticipation, and hence they spread broadcast accounts of the sort of
colony New Zealand was to be, which made it alluring. But such are the
erring tendencies of human nature that Australia, intended to be the
land of one of the worst forms of indentured and penal servitude and the
perpetuation of unprogressiveness, set the pace for the entire world in
untried liberalism in industry, while New Zealand, likewise advanced,
has developed her latent conservatism in regard to imperialism to a
marked degree.
[Illustration: THE MOUNTAINS ARE CALLED THE REMARKABLES
Farmer M---- had the reputation for being the worst boss in the
Wakatipu (New Zealand)]
[Illustration: THE BLUE MOUNTAINS OF AUSTRALIA
Seen from this side they look more like gorges]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA DENUDING HERSELF
Photo from Brown Bros.]
For apart from the experiments in labor legislation, New Zealand has
never lost any of the dependence on England. She seems to be afraid of
her isolation, lest, deprived of communication with the world, she
should be forced into a condition such as that in which the white man
found the heliolithic Maories. Canada might become a nation separate
from Britain; so might Australia. But New Zealand has not even that
proximity to a continent which made England what she is, for she is
twelve hundred miles from her nearest neighbor. In consequence, the New
Zealanders have always maintained a strong leaning toward the homeland,
whereas in Australia early resentment alienated the settlers. The New
Zealander to-day is the exact replica of the Englishman as we knew him;
the Australian is a compromise between an Englishman and an American.
The modern Australian on the east coast of the continent is as little an
Englishman as possible. I have heard any number of Australians resent
being called English. The last "convict" was brought to Australia in
1840; yet the Australians are very conscious of this stigma on them. The
other day an English engineer told me that in Subiaco, one of the
suburbs of Perth, it was impossible for one to join the tennis-club
whose grandfather was born in Australia--lest that ignoble ancestor
should have passed on some of the "taint" to his unfortunate offspring.
Yet in the eyes of enlightened legislation, the taint involved is of
course questionable.
It is therefore not to be wondered at that Australia kept growing
farther and farther from England. In the early days each settlement
maintained its own government, and so great was the jealousy among the
settlements that they sought to bar one another even in the construction
of railroads. Victoria built a broad-gage line, New South Wales, a
narrower, and Queensland the narrowest,--not mere engineering accident
due to any notion of superiority of the special line, but clearly and
openly to make communication of one with another difficult. But by 1900
the settlements had outgrown their childish squabbling, and they became
federated into the Commonwealth of Australia.
Though this brought them together within Australia, it awoke New Zealand
to the danger of being drawn into that union against her will. "The
Melbourne Age" prophesied that in a quarter of a century they would be
federated. "The fate and destiny of Australia and New Zealand were the
same and they should be united in the defense of these distant lands
that were held by people of the same thought and same political system."
But there never has been much love lost between them. New Zealanders
have been anathema in Australia, and Australians hadn't a ghost of a
chance of getting a job in New Zealand. Nor was this a matter of
different standards of living, except that they both discriminated
against the Englishman. And not without reason, for the type of
Englishman who set out for the Antipodes was one who generally had
nothing to sustain him at home. To the Australasians he was virtually a
foreigner, and foreigners of any sort are few in the far South, and are
encouraged still less. Yet there is excessive pride in the fact that
something like 98 per cent. of the inhabitants are British.
In view of the economic departures they have taken from European
conceptions, this would seem a paradox. But even among the workers, the
psychological effect of "home" is apparent to the most casual observer.
Though material security has been assured by the State, the result of
much of the legislation in the Antipodes seems to me to have been
something akin to the class system in England. The worker has become
legally recognized as a worker, he has been given a minimum wage and
protection against imposition, but any effort on the part of labor to
crystallize its ideals is still obnoxious to the masses. There is not
even any of the impulse found among American workers toward that rise in
the social scale which is essentially bourgeois. There is a most decided
tendency to accept the status of worker in the good old English fashion.
Working-people do not regard themselves as "gentlemen" or as "ladies,"
these terms in New Zealand having the same significance they have in the
old country. Deference to one who does not look like a laborer is
pronounced, and the average workman is more ambitious for the
"gentleman" than he is for himself. This spirit obtains much more in New
Zealand than in Australia.
Than dignity in labor nothing in the world could be more worthy. But if
that dignity spells merely content, it lays society open to a renewal of
the very class divisions industrial progress has sought to remove. The
laborer is too content to remain a laborer actively to enter the lists
against injustice. And in a short time you have those who refused to be
doped by the talk of virtue in labor on the top, and the laborer at the
bottom.
Yet, socially and outwardly, there are not the gaps between the classes
in New Zealand that are found in Australia. There are no great
restaurants and pleasure places for the rich. All people visit the
dainty little tea-rooms, and often workingmen come dressed in their
working-clothes, with unwashed hands. In Dunedin the proprietor of one
of the best tea-rooms handed out little cards to laborers with "Your
Patronage is Undesirable" on them, but the public howled his practice
out of existence. This is largely because the level of life in New
Zealand is more even. The wealthy do not display themselves over-much,
and the most obvious club life is that among the workers. Workingmen's
clubs are equipped with very good libraries and reading-rooms, but also
with tremendous circular bars fully as much frequented as the
book-shelves.
The result is that though, from a progressive point of view, New Zealand
is outwardly tame and sober, from a consideration of health, the
standard of life is universally good. Any great influx of peoples with
standards of living that would of necessity demoralize this normality,
would give the country a setback which might take generations to
overcome. On the other hand, though the present state of affairs might
continue indefinitely, unless New Zealand gains in numbers, her place
among the influential members of the Pacific Ocean nations is certain to
be strained, if not jeopardized.
Torn between these economic enthusiasms of a small country and the
restraining influences of a tradition that is essentially imperialistic,
New Zealand has a pretty hard time of it. Naturally enough, she is
holding on to her beloved mother country with an excessive amount of
talk, while at the same time nibbling away at the ties that bind her.
She is in the hardest position of any of the Pacific countries. By
tradition adoring England and scorning Australia, emulating the one and
trying to keep peace with the other, realizing that proximity makes her
more than a brother of her continental kin, looking toward America for
applause and assistance, New Zealand is shaping a policy that will
probably become a patchwork of colors,--and most interesting to look at.
But Australia is cutting the waters with the force of a triple-screw
turbine. And toward Australia we shall have to look for the leadership
of British policy in the Pacific. Canada is too close to Europe and
America ever to become the real leader in the destinies of the Pacific.
The truth of this statement becomes manifest when one watches the inner
workings of the island continent. Though New Zealand is more widely
known for its great liberalism, there is really more freedom of thought
in Australia, more freedom from traditional thinking, more boldness of
expression. That was manifest during the war when the conscription issue
came up. The New Zealand Legislature simply enacted a conscription
measure. In Australia, the Government tried twice to force it through by
way of a referendum, and twice it failed. William Morris Hughes, the
Prime Minister, had gone to England to attend a conference, promising
that conscription would never be proposed. He was wedded to
voluntaryism. When he returned, Australians suspected him of having
conscription up his sleeve. There was an outburst of indignation.
Australians charged him with having had his head turned by fawning lords
and ladies at "home" and with sidling up to a title himself. Australians
are not very keen about rank; in that matter they are more like
Americans. Hughes nearly committed political suicide by declaring
himself in favor of conscription. It is said that he was warned by labor
not to try to put it through without a referendum. What happened then
illuminates the Australian character.
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA IS NOT ALL DESERT AND PLAIN
South Australian Government Photo]
[Illustration: PEOPLE ARE SMALL AMIDST AUSTRALIA'S GIANT TREE FERNS
See the group on the rocks at lower right-hand corner
Photo from Brown Bros.]
For weeks the country was in as wild a state as pending civil war
could produce anywhere. The feeling was tense. Conflicts and wrangling
occurred everywhere. Up to the last night of the discussion it seemed as
though there would be war. Then came the day of the vote. The quiet and
the orderliness was one of the greatest boosts for democracy ever
staged. Everything was bathed in sunny restfulness. Workingmen lay upon
the grass of the public domain like seals. When they talked it was about
anything but conscription. Conscription lost. It lost a second time the
year after. Two main factors stood out against the sending of more men
to Europe,--labor and Asia.
Almost immediately after the referendum the coal strike occurred. The
situation became grave. To conserve fuel for industrial purposes, the
Government prohibited the use of electricity and gas except during
specified hours. Places of business on the main streets were lit with
kerosene lamps, movies were closed, the ferry stations stood in
semi-darkness. People conversed as though certain doom were impending.
Things looked forlorn indeed. Shops and factories were closing down,
throwing thousands out of work. One heard remarks about things heading
for a revolution.
Australia is reputed to have done wonders in the way of solving the
problems of capital and labor, but there are as many strikes in that
Commonwealth as in any other state. The country is crystallizing quickly
and is bound to become more and more conservative. Despite the worthy
democracy to be found there, every public utterance seemed to bear
itself as though made by a lord. One is constantly aware of the presence
of the crown, even though it has been removed, like the sense of
pressure behind one's ears after having taken off one's spectacles. For
notwithstanding its democracy, Australia is bound up in the monarchy.
Revolution was hinted at every now and then, but at its mention one also
heard the creaking of the bones of empire. It was evident and clear,
though hardly spoken. One felt the security which comes from the
accumulation of tradition and custom, but it was not comfortable. Even
in Australia change seems to be regarded as synonymous with destruction.
A marvelous structure, this British Empire, and fit for the residence of
any human being,--but not an American. He is too dynamic, too restless,
too eager for creation.
And here is where we arrive at the point of meeting and of parting in
our relations with Australia. America has determined upon keeping the
country "white" against the invasion of Asia. So has Australia. But
America has the inclusive tendencies of an empire; Australia the
exclusive. America is heterogeneous; Australia is homogeneous. American
strikes are regarded as importations, but what about the strikes in
Australia? America has a population of 110,000,000 in an area but a
little larger than Australia, while Australia has only a paltry
4,500,000. America is trying to amalgamate the diverse races it already
has without taking in such people as the Asiatics, whose racial
characters are so unyielding. But Australia is herself unyielding.
Homogeneous as her population is, she has great difficulty in keeping it
from disagreement. With a vast region not likely to be touched by labor
in generations, Australia uses the same arguments against outsiders
coming in as does America in regions already well developed.
Keeping Australia "white" is the keynote of all Australian politics. For
this reason half of the leaders waged war against Germany; while to keep
Australia white, the other half stayed conscription. Labor is at the
bottom of the "white" Australia policy. The most serious problem the
country has to face is her insufficient population. Yet what labor is to
be found there receives no more consideration than anywhere else in the
world. It is no better off than elsewhere. There is less poverty simply
because poverty is synonymous with over-population. To protect itself
against invasion of cheap (not necessarily Asiatic) labor, Australia
passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. To speak of restricting
immigration into a country containing only four and a half million seems
suicidal, but Australia went at it without any trepidation and declared
for the exclusion from "immigration into the Commonwealth ... any person
who fails to pass the dictation test; that is to say, who, when an
officer dictates to him not less than fifty words in any prescribed
language in the presence of the officer" fails to pass in the judgment
of the immigration officer. This is the crux of the Act; other than
that, restriction is placed only on those diseased or incapable. In
other words, this restriction places a person failing in the test on a
level with the criminal, lunatic, and the leper. It is obviously a
snare, for it means that an officer may spring any language he may
choose on an immigrant. He may ask a Frenchman to write Greek, or a
Greek Spanish, failure to comply giving the officer the power to exclude
the applicant. The law has kept Australia white, but with pallor rather
than purity.
Veiled and unveiled, this White-Australia policy was at the bottom of
the failure of conscription. The spirit which dominated both camps was
fear of invasion. Argued the pro-conscriptionist: "If we do not stand
behind the empire and the Allies in this war, Prussia or whoever may
become her ally in future will swoop down upon us." Argued the
anti-conscriptionist: "If that is the danger, then let us keep our men
at home to protect us against this possible peril." The antis were more
open. They pictured an invasion following the sending of men to Europe,
and pointed to the importation of coolies for labor in Europe. One
member of Parliament was fined a thousand dollars and made to enter into
"cognizance and comply with the provisions of the Regulation" because he
specified whom they were afraid of,--Japan. And to add grist to their
mill, a hundred natives of the island of Malta (British subjects, mind
you) appeared at the beautiful front door of Australia, Sydney Harbor,
and asked for admission. They did not land. Even Indians are excluded, a
deposit of five hundred dollars being required of any admitted, to
guarantee his return. A transport has been fitted out in Java with
native labor, but Australian workers refused to load it till the
fittings were torn out and done over by Australian labor.
Now, the White-Australia policy is, if you care to stretch a point, a
humane attempt to avoid conflict. The Australians say to themselves and
to the world: "We would rather call you names across the sea than
scratch your eyes or pull your ears over a wooden fence." They point to
the American Civil War and the present problem in the South as an
example. They wish to save themselves future operations by avoiding the
cancer and are willing to bear the burden of retarded development for
this promised peace. Let us see how it worked out.
It is interesting to note that in 1915, 890 Germans were admitted to
Australia, and only 423 Japanese; in 1914, 3,395 Germans and 387
Japanese. The number of Germans for the two years previous was virtually
the same, whereas that of Japanese fluctuated from 698 in 1912 to 822 in
1913, and 387 in 1914. From 1908 to 1915 the Germans entered in
increasing numbers, while the Japanese decreased. Chinese gained
admission in vastly greater number than the Japanese, exceeding them by
1,500 and 2,000 yearly. On the whole the preponderance of arrivals over
the departure was seldom excessive, most of the steamers from the south
bound for the Orient being taken up by returning Asiatics. With the vast
regions of the island continent uninhabited and untouched, this movement
of Orientals is only evidence of the check the Government keeps on
invasion. The fallacy in the White-Australia policy is obvious. Its
psychological significance was pointed to above,--a tendency on the
part of Australians, though politically democrats, to revert to habits
of thought inherited from England. England is an island kingdom, but the
Englishman cannot forget this even when he has taken up his home on a
vast continent like Australia. In this day and age of steel ships and
submarines, with possibilities of the airship clear before us, for any
one to think in an insular way is to lack the common sense of a King
Canute. Australia has shown that even with an enemy recognized and
fought she has been unable to remain unified in thought, yet she thinks
that merely by excluding the Asiatic she will be able to maintain her
integrity. Capital in Australia would be willing to admit the Oriental
in order to reduce the cost of labor; but as soon as he becomes a
factor in commerce--as in the case of the Chinese furniture-makers
who exploit Chinese laborers and undersell Australian furniture
manufacturers--Capital becomes wroth and shouts for the exclusion of the
coolie. Labor, on the other hand, swaggering about the brotherhood of
man and the common cause of labor throughout the world, becomes just as
nationalistic when "foreign" labor threatens to undersell it. True that
it would be easy enough to establish a minimum wage by law, so that no
Chinese would be allowed to receive less than that wage for his work,
but the principle doesn't work out so easily. Even with a minimum wage
and an eight-hour day, the Chinese with his intense application to his
job and his manner of living would threaten the white man. But have we
not the same difficulty even among a given number of white men, where
some are ready to undersell others? Australia, the experiment-station
for labor legislation, is the last country where one would expect to
find the exclusiveness which she condemns so vigorously. She has shown
herself exclusive in her discrimination against the English workingman;
she has even been exclusive in her attitude toward her neighbor, New
Zealand (an exclusiveness, which is reciprocated, of course); and
finally and foremost, she is exclusive of Asiatic and colored people.
This exclusiveness has left a continent with barely the fringe of it
scratched. To people like the Japanese, Chinese and Indians, this must
indeed seem the height of selfishness. True, that sparse as her
population is, Australia has done more to better the condition of her
people than has Japan or China; and there is the rub. That mere
excessive breeding gives a nation a right to invade other lands is a
principle that no decent-minded man could tolerate for a moment. Only
people to whom woman is merely a breeding-machine would advance such an
argument. And in the chapter on Japan and the Far East I shall elucidate
the basic facts in that contention for the elimination of a
White-Australia policy.
From the Australian point of view, though admitting that hardships are
bound to result, admitting that ethically discrimination is
unprogressive, the country is faced by the danger of sheer numbers.
Idealistically the Australian policy is wrong. Individually, those of us
who know the Japanese and the Chinese would just as soon live next door
to them as to any other human beings. But as long as numbers are the
racial ideal of the East, there is no solution that would not undermine
quality if quality did not defend itself against quantity. I am ready to
admit that there are many Australians who are as inferior to the Chinese
as the coolie is to us. But the Australasian has one virtue: he does not
breed like the Oriental.
The problem of assimilation and Australianization is intricate and
sometimes extremely unjust. There is the case of the young Chinese boy
born and brought up in Port Darwin, North Australia. In every way he is
an Australian citizen. To further his education and westernization, he
came to America to study at Harvard, and here fell in love with a
Chinese student born in Boston. Now, she is an American citizen. They
are to be married. He has every reason for wishing to return to Port
Darwin with his wife. But, says the Australian Immigration Law, you
can't come in because you're a Chinese. "But I'm an American Citizen,
and the wife of an Australian," she argues. "That doesn't matter. We
exclude Indians, who are British subjects, from entering Australia, and
we intend to exclude you. Australia is the only country in the world in
which the white race is still free to expand, and we intend to keep it
free for them." "What is America going to do about it?" I asked my
informer. "What can she do? The only thing she could do would be to come
to a clash of arms with us, and we intend to let the Chinese do their
own fighting if they want to. We won't let Japanese who are
American-born citizens enter Australia; we may seem a bit piggish about
it, but we intend to hold to our own nevertheless." This question was up
for the British Minister to decide upon, but at the time of writing no
decision has yet been arrived at.
That injustice such as the above is bound to result is obvious. But for
generations to come the onus rests on the Orientals, and on those white
men who would profit by either cheap or untiring laborers whose minds
ask for nothing, and whose bodies are content with little.
Though Australia's contribution to the intellectual welfare of the world
has as yet been slim, the advance in political and economic thought has
been exceedingly worth while. The freedom of the individual to go his
way in life, to develop the best that is in him, the standard of general
welfare and the quality of life as a whole so far excels the average of
Oriental social life that Australasia is justified in trying to prevent
the dilution of its concentrated comfort. We all know and admit that
both China and Japan have civilizations, intellectual and artistic, the
like of which might well be emulated in the West. But beneath it all is
the dreadful waste of human life for which China and Japan must give
answer before demanding of the West certain physical and material
advantages which we have.