natives by unscrupulous whites. The natives are firmly secured
in the possession of their lands, which they can neither sell,
lease nor dispose of, except to the government itself. Thus the
natives and the government are the only two landlords in the
country. To acquire land in Papua, the European settler must
rent it from the government, for he is not permitted to acquire
fee simple rights. The whites are thus tenants of the
government, and are subject to such rules and regulations as
their landlord may decree. The tenant is, however, recognized
as the creator and owner of any improvements he may erect upon
the land, and, at the expiration of his lease, the government
undertakes to pay him a fair compensation for such
improvements, provided he has lived up to the letter of
regulations respecting his tenure.
For agricultural land a merely nominal rental is demanded,
ranging from nothing for the first ten years to a final maximum
of six pence per acre; yet this system has had the effect of
retarding European settlement, for, although its area is twice
that of Cuba, Papua had but 1,064 whites in 1912, and only one
one hundred and seventy-fourth of the territory is held under
lease.
Men of the type who can conquer the primeval forests and create
industries prefer to own their land outright, and are apt to
resent the restrictions of complex government regulations,
however wisely administered. Socialism, while it may in some
measure be desirable in old and settled communities, serves but
to dull that sense of personal freedom which above all spurs
the pioneer onward to success in a wild and dangerous region.
Possibly in the end, the government may find it advantageous to
permit certain lands to be acquired by Europeans, in fee
simple; for until this is done the settlement of the country
must proceed with extreme slowness. Moreover, mere tenants
owning nothing but their improvements, and even these being
subject to government appraisement, may be unduly tempted to
drain, rather than to develop, the resources of the land they
occupy.
But the chief aim of the Papuan government is to introduce
civilization among the natives, and a slow increase in the
European population is of primary necessity to the
accomplishment of this result.
At present the natives are not taxed, the chief sources of
revenue being derived from the customs duties upon imports, the
bulk of which are consumed by the Europeans, and this source of
income is supplemented by an annual grant of about 25,000
pounds from the Australian Commonwealth, but, due to the duties
upon food and necessities, the cost of living is higher than it
should be in a new country.
Judging, however, from the experience of the English in Fiji
and of the Dutch in Java, the natives would be benefited rather
than oppressed by a moderate poll tax to be paid in produce,
thus developing habits of industry, and in some measure
offsetting the evil effects of that insidious apathy which
follows upon the sudden abolition of native warfare.
Every effort should also he made to encourage and educate the
Papuans in the production and sale of manufactured articles.
One must regret the loss of many arts and crafts among the
primitive peoples of the Pacific, which, if properly fostered
under European protection to insure a market and an adequate
payment for their wares, would have been a source of revenue
and a factor of immeasurable import in developing that self
respect and confidence in themselves which the too sudden
modification of their social and religious Systems is certain
to destroy. The ordinary mission schools are deficient in this
respect, devoting their major energies to the "three R's" and
to religious instruction, and, while it is pleasing to observe
a boy whose father was a cannibal extracting cube roots, one
can not but conclude that the acquisition of some money-making
trade would be more conducive to his happiness in after life.
It is not too much to say that the chief problem in dealing
with an erstwhile savage race is to overcome the universal loss
of interest and decline in energy which inevitably follows upon
the development of that semblance of civilization which is
enforced with the advent of the white man. The establishment of
manual training schools wherein arts and crafts which may be
profitably practiced by the natives as life-professions, is a
first essential to the salvation of the race. These schools
should and would in no manner interfere with the religious
teaching received from missionaries, but would indeed be a most
potent factor in the spread of true Christianity among the
natives. Whether Christianity be true or false does not affect
the case, for the natives are destined to be dominated by
Christian peoples, and it primarily essential that they should
understand at least the rudiments of Christian ideals and
behavior.
The realization of the importance of training them to the
pursuit of useful arts and trades, which would enable the
natives to become self-supporting in the European sense, has
been perceived by certain thinkers among the missionaries
themselves, and in certain regions efforts are being made the
success of which should revolutionize our whole method of
dealing with the problem of introducing civilization among a
primitive people.
Keep their minds active and their hands employed in
self-supporting work and their morals and religion will safely
fall into accord with Christian standards.
Up to the present native education has been left to the devoted
efforts of the missionaries, who have more than 10,000 pupils
under their charge, but the time is coming when the government
should cooperate in establishing trade schools wherein crafts,
providing life-vocations to the natives, may be taught.
There may be more than 275,000 natives in Papua, but, due to
lack of knowledge of the country, the actual number is unknown.
Among the mountain fastnesses, defending themselves in
tree-houses, one finds a frizzly-headed black negrito-like race
hardly more than five feet in height. These are probably
remnants of the "pigmy" pre-Dravidian or Negrito-Papuan
element, which constituted the most ancient inhabitants of the
island and who long ago were driven inland from the coveted
coast.
The burly negroid Papuans of the Great River deltas of western
Papua differ widely from the lithe, active, brown-skinned,
mop-headed natives of the eastern half of the southern coast;
and Professors Haddon and Seligmann have decided that in
eastern New Guinea many Proto-Polynesian, Melanesian and
Malayan immigrants have mingled their blood with that of the
more primitive Papuans. Thus there are many complexly
associated ethnic elements in New Guinea, and often people
living less than a hundred miles apart can not understand one
another; in fact, each village has its peculiar dialect. Social
customs and cultural standards in art and manufacture vary
greatly from the same cause, and each tribe has some remarkable
individual characteristics. In the Fly-River region, the
village consists of a few huge houses with mere stalls for the
families, which crowd for defence under the shelter of a single
roof. Along the southern side of the eastern end of the island,
however, each family has its own little thatched hut, and these
are often built for defense upon piling over the sea, reminding
one of the manner of life of the prehistoric Swiss-lake
dwellers.
Nearly 12,000 natives are at present employed by the whites as
indentured laborers in Papua, their terms of service ranging
from three years, upon agricultural work, to not more than
eighteen months in mining. Their wages range from about $1.50
to $5.00 per month, and all payments must be made in the
presence of a magistrate and in coin or approved bank notes.
At every turn both employer and employed are wisely
safeguarded; the native suffering imprisonment for desertion,
and the employer being prohibited from getting the blacks into
debt, or from treating them harshly or unjustly. Their
enlistment must be voluntary and executed in the presence of a
magistrate, and, after their term of service, the employer is
obliged to return them to their homes.
One is impressed with the many manifestations of a fair degree
of efficiency on the part of the native laborers, who are
really good plantation hands and resourceful sailors. In fact,
trade has always been practiced to a considerable extent by the
shore tribes, the pottery of the eastern end of the coast being
annually exchanged for the sago produced by the natives of the
Fly River Delta. It is a picturesque sight to see the large
lakatois, or trading canoes, creeping along in the shadow of
the palm-fringed shores under the great wall of the mountains,
the lakatoi consisting of a raft composed of six or more canoes
lashed together side by side, and covered by a platform which
bears a thatched hut serving to house the sailors and their
wares. The craft is propelled by graceful crescent-shaped
lateen sails of pandanus matting and steered by sweeps from the
stern. Trading voyages of hundreds of miles are often
undertaken, the lakatois starting from the east at the waning
of the southeast trade wind in early November and returning a
month or two later in the season of the northwest monsoon.
The Papuan is both ingenious and industrious when working in
his own interest, and with tactful management he becomes a
faithful and fairly efficient laborer. Perhaps the most serious
defect in the present system of employment in Papua is the
usually long interval between payments. The natives are not
paid at intervals of less than one month and, often, not until
the expiration of their three-year term of service. With almost
no knowledge of arithmetic and possessed of a fund which seems
large beyond the dreams of avarice, he is practically certain
to be cheated by the dishonest tradesmen who flock vulture-like
to centers of commercial activity. This evil might be in large
measure prevented were the natives to be paid at monthly
intervals, for they would then gradually become accustomed to
the handling of money and would gain an appreciation of its
actual value.
Generations must elapse before more than a moderate degree of
civilization is developed in Papua, but the foundations are
being surely and conservatively laid, and already in the
civilized centers natives respect and loyally serve their
British friends and masters.
In common with many another British colony, the safeguard of
Papua lies not in the rifles of the whites, but in the loyal
hearts of the natives themselves, and in Papua, as in Fiji, the
native constabulary under the leadership of a mere handful of
Europeans may be trusted to maintain order in any emergency. As
Governor Murray truly states in his interesting book "Papua, or
British New Guinea," the most valuable asset the colony
possesses is not its all but unexplored mineral wealth or the
potential value of its splendid forests and rich soil, but it
is the Papuans themselves, and let us add that under the
leadership of the high-minded, self-sacrificing and
well-trained civil servants of Great Britain the dawn of Papuan
civilization is fast breaking into the sunlight of a happiness
such as has come to but few of the erstwhile savage races of
the earth.
Without belittling the nobility of purpose or disregarding the
self-sacrificing devotion of the missionary for his task, let
us also grant to the civil servant his due share of praise. His
duty he also performs in the dangerous wilds of the earth;
beset with insidious disease, stifling in unending heat, exiled
from home and friends, with suspicious savages around him, he
labors with waning strength in that struggle against climate
wherein the ultimate ruin of his body is assured. Yet in his
heart there lives, growing as years elapse, the English
gentleman's ideal of service, and for him it is sufficient
that, though he is to be invalided and forgotten even before he
dies, yet his will have been one of those rare spirits who have
extended to the outer world his mother country's ideal of
justice and fair play.
CONTACT ELECTRIFICATION AND THE ELECTRIC CURRENT
BY PROFESSOR FERNANDO SANFORD
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
IN a previous paper in this journal, entitled "The Discovery of
Contact Electrification" (November, 1913), it was shown that
the production of electric charges by the mere contact of two
dissimilar metals was first discovered by Rev. Abraham Bennett,
in 1789, and that it was verified by a different method by
Tiberius Cavallo, in 1795. Meantime, in 1791, Dr. Galvani
discovered the twitching of a frog's muscle, due to electrical
stimulus. Galvani's discovery was described by himself as
follows:[1]
[1] Translation from "Makers of Electricity," p 143.
'I had dissected a frog and had prepared it, as in Figure 2 of
the fifth plate, and had placed it upon a table on which there
was an electric machine, while I set about doing certain other
things. The frog was entirely separated from the conductor of
the machine, and indeed was at no small distance away from it.
While one of those who were assisting me touched lightly and by
chance the point of his scalpel to the internal crural nerves
of the frog, suddenly all the muscles of its limbs were seen to
be so contracted that they seemed to have fallen into tonic
convulsions. Another of my assistants, who was making ready to
take up certain experiments in electricity with me, seemed to
notice that this happened only at the moment when a spark came
from the conductor of the machine. He was struck by the novelty
of the phenomenon, and immediately spoke to me about it, for I
was at the moment occupied with other things and mentally
preoccupied. I was at once tempted to repeat the experiment, so
as to make clear whatever might be obscure in it. For this
purpose I took up the scalpel and moved its point close to one
or the other of the crural nerves of the frog, while at the
same time one of my assistants elicited sparks from the
electric machine. The phenomenon happened exactly as before.
Strong contractions took place in every muscle of the limb, and
at the very moment when the sparks appeared, the animal was
seized as it were with tetanus.'
Following this original observation, Galvani made a great many
experiments on the effect of electric stimulus upon the nerves
of frogs and other animals. He found that the twitching of the
frog's muscles could be produced by atmospheric electricity,
both at the time of lightning and at other times when no
lightning was visible. During these investigations he observed
that when the legs of the frog were suspended from an iron
railing by a hook through the spinal cord, and when this hook
was of some other metal than iron, the muscles would twitch
whenever the feet touched the iron railing. He tried out a
number of pairs of metals, and found that when the nerve was
touched by one metal and the muscle or another point on the
nerve was touched by another metal and the two metals were then
brought into contact or were connected through another metal or
through the human body, the muscles would contract as they
would when stimulated by electricity.
Galvani concluded that the contraction in this case, as in the
earlier experiments, was produced by an electric stimulation,
and since the metals seemed to him to serve merely as the
conductors of the electric discharge, he concluded that the
source of the electricity must be in the tissues of the animal
body. This seemed all the more probable since it was known that
certain fishes and an electric eel were capable of giving
violent electric shocks. This electricity of the eels and
fishes had been named animal electricity, and Galvani concluded
that all animals were capable of producing this electricity in
the tissues of their bodies.
He believed this electricity was to be found in various parts
of the body, but that it was especially collected in the nerves
and muscles. The especial property of this animal electricity
seemed to be that it discharged from the nerves into the
muscles, or in the contrary direction, and that to effect this
discharge it would take the path of least resistance through
the metal conductor or through the human body. Since during
this discharge the muscle was caused to contract, Galvani
concluded that the purpose of this animal electricity was to
produce muscular contractions.
Galvani seems to have concerned himself principally with the
physiological processes which he believed gave rise to the
electric charges, but physicists began immediately to seek for
other sources of the electricity. The one observation which
seemed to offer a definite suggestion as to the possible source
of the electrical charge was the fact that, in general two
different metals must be used to connect the muscle and nerve
before a discharge would take place from the one to the other.
This made Galvani's theory that the metals served merely as
conductors seem improbable. On the other hand, it was sometimes
possible to get the muscular contractions by using a single
bent wire or rod to connect the nerve and muscle, especially if
the two ends were of different degrees of polish, or if one end
was warmer than the other.
Volta was apparently the first to suggest that the electricity
which seemed to be generated in Galvani's experiments might
have its source in the contact of the two metals. Several
writers called attention to an apparent relation between
Galvani's experiments and a phenomenon announced by J. G.
Sulzer, in 1760. Sulzer found that if pieces of lead and silver
were placed upon the tongue separately no marked taste was
produced by either, but that if while both were on the tongue
the metals were brought into contact a strong taste was
produced which he compared to the taste of iron vitriol. Here
was a case of undoubted stimulation of the nerves of taste by
the contact of two metals, and it seemed not improbable that
other nerves might be stimulated in the same manner. In the
meantime Mr. John Robison had increased the Sulzer effect
greatly by building up a pile of pieces of zinc with silver
shillings and placing these in contact with the tongue and the
cheek.
It was the question as to the possibility of producing the
electric charge by mere metallic contact which led Cavallo to
make his experiments upon contact electrification. Thus Cavallo
says in Volume III. of "A Complete Treatise on Electricity,"
published in 1795:
'The above mentioned singular properties, together with some
other facts, which will be mentioned in the sequel induced Mr.
Volta, to suspect that possibly in many cases the motions are
occasioned by a small quantity of electricity produced by the
mere contact of two different metals; though he acknowledges
that he by no means comprehends in what manner this can happen.
This suspicion being entertained by so eminent a philosopher as
Mr. Volta, induced Dr. Lind and myself to attempt some
experiment which might verify it; and with this in view we
connected together a variety of metallic substances in diverse
quantities, and that by means of insulated or not insulated
communications; we used Mr Volta's condenser, and likewise a
condenser of a new sort; the electrometer employed was of the
most sensible sort; and various other contrivances were used,
which it will be needless to describe in this place; but we
could never obtain the smallest appearance of electricity from
those metallic combinations. Yet we can infer to no other
conclusion, but that if the mere combination, or contact, of
the two metals produces any electricity, the quantity of it in
our experiments was too small to he manifested by our
instruments.'
Later, on page 111 of the same volume, he says:
'After many fruitless attempts, and after having sent to the
press the preceding part of this volume, I at last hit upon a
method of producing electricity by the action of metallic
substances upon one another, and apparently without the
interference of electric bodies. I say apparently so, because
the air seems to be in a great measure concerned in those
experiments, and perhaps the whole effect may be produced by
that surrounding medium. But, though the irregular,
contradictory, and unaccountable effects observed in these
experiments do not as yet furnish any satisfactory theory, and
though much is to be attributed to the circumambient air, yet
the metallic substances themselves seem to be endowed with
properties peculiar to each of them, and it is principally in
consequence of those properties that the produced electricity
is sometimes positive, at other times negative, and various in
its intensity.'
Cavallo then proceeds to describe the experiments on contact
electrification which were described in the previous paper
referred to at the beginning of the article.
Cavallo's experiments were evidently made in 1795. In the
following year Volta announced the discovery of the electrical
current. In a letter written to Gren's Neues Journal der
Physik, August, 1796, Volta says:
'The contact of different conductors, particularly the
metallic, including pyrites and other minerals as well as
charcoal, which I call dry conductors, or of the first class
with moist conductors, or conductors of the second class,
agitates or disturbs the electric fluid, or gives it a certain
impulse. Do not ask in what manner: it is enough that it is a
principle and a great principle.'
It will be seen that at this stage of his discovery Volta was
inclined to attribute tho origin of the current to the contact
between the metals and his moist "conductors of the second
class," though later in the same article he says it is
impossible to tell whether the impulse which sets the current
in motion is to be attributed to the contact between the metals
themselves or between the two metals and the moist conductor,
since either supposition would lead to the same results.
Later, as was shown in the previous paper by the present writer
Volta came to regard the metallic contact as the cause of the
electromotive force. In a letter written to Gren in 1797 and
published as a postscript to his letter of August, 1796, Volta
says:
'Some new facts, lately discovered, seem to show that the
immediate cause which excites the electric fluid, and puts it
in motion, whether it be an attraction or a repulsive power, is
to be ascribed much rather to the mutual contact of two
different metals, than to their contact with moist conductors.'
The new facts, "lately discovered," to which Volta attributes
his change of view were his repetitions of Bennett's
experiments of 1789.
Volta apparently thought that the current was not only set up
by the contact of the two metals of a pair, but that it was
kept up by the mutual action of the metals on each other. He
accordingly made no attempt to discover whether any changes
took place in his circuit while the current was being
generated. The chemical action on his metals and the
dissociation in his electrolyte seem to have entirely escaped
his attention. At least, he did not attach enough importance to
them to mention them anywhere in his description of his
apparatus.
In the meantime a chemical explanation of the phenomena
observed by Galvani had been proposed in 1792 by Fabroni, a
physicist of Florence. After discussing the Sulzer phenomenon
already mentioned in this paper, Fabroni argues that the
peculiar taste caused by bringing the two metals into contact
while on the tongue is due to a chemical, rather than to an
electrical, action. He then discusses the different chemical
behavior of metals when taken singly and when placed in contact
with other metals. He says:[2]
[2] The following quotations from Fabroni have been translated
by the present writer from the German of Ostwald's
"Elektrochemie," pp. 103, ff.