CHAPTER X - LABOUR

Summary

It has been observed that outside the domain of theology there is no subject which has given rise to such an amount of controversial literature as the question of the rights and wrongs of tropical labour. The expansion of Western civilisation has everywhere had the effect of displacing the native races. The process of ages, during which the inhabitants of temperate and especially of northern zones have struggled against the difficulties of their environment, has evolved a race strong of will, abounding in energy and enterprise, and above all fertile of brain in finding clues to the operations of nature and turning them to account by the application of science to economic uses. Further, the climatic conditions of their home, by compelling the race to provide in summer for the exigencies of winter, have developed the faculty of acquisition and the habit of accumulation. Accordingly, our colonists have had at their command capital, skill in organisation, and scientific methods of production. The energy which has been a motive of expansion has characteristically sought to avail itself of equal energy in developing the resources of the area of expansion. But the climatic conditions, which had been a main factor in determining their character, had unfitted them for the physical labour necessary to develop the resources of the heat-belt of the world, and their endeavours to supply the capacities they lacked form an instructive chapter in the history of civilisation.