Problems of the Pacific Part 12

CHAPTER XVI

THE INDUSTRIAL POSITION IN THE PACIFIC

That our civilisation is based on conditions of warring struggle is shown by the fact that even matters of production and industry are discussed in terms of conflict. The "war of tariffs," the "struggle for markets," the "defence of trade," the "protection of our work"--these are every-day current phrases; and the problem of the Pacific as it presents itself to the statesmen of some countries has little concern with navies or armies, but almost exclusively comes as an industrial question: "Will our national interests be affected adversely by the cheap compet.i.tion of Asiatic labour, either working on its home territory or migrating to our own land, now that the peoples of the Pacific are being drawn into the affairs of the world?"

Viewed in the light of abstract logic, it seems the quaintest of paradoxes that the very act of production of the comforts and necessities of life can be considered, under any circ.u.mstances, a hostile one. Viewed in the light of the actual living facts of the day, it is one of the clearest of truths that a nation and a race may be attacked and dragged down through its industries, and that national greatness is lost and won in destructive compet.i.tion in the workshops of the world. That industry itself may be turned to bad account is another proof that an age, in which there is much talk of peace, is still governed in the main by the ideas of warfare. The other day, to Dr Hall Edwards, known as the "X-ray Martyr," a grateful nation gave a pension of 120 a year after he had had his second hand amputated. He had given practically his life ("for you do take my life when you take the means whereby I live") to Humanity. As truly as any martyr who died for a religious idea or a political principle, or for the rescue of another in danger, he had earned the blessing decreed to whomsoever gives up his life for his brother. And he was awarded a pension of 120 a year to comfort the remainder of his maimed existence! At the same time that Dr Hall Edwards was awarded his pension, an engineer thought he had discovered a new principle in ballistics. His bold and daring mind soared above the puny guns by which a man can hardly dare to hope to kill a score of other men at a distance of five miles. He dreamed of an electric catapult which "could fire sh.e.l.ls at the rate of thousands per minute from London to Paris, and even further." The invention would have raised the potential homicidal power of man a thousandfold. And the inventor asked--and, without a doubt, if he had proved his weapon to be what he said, would have got--1,000,000. The invention did not justify at the time the claims made on its behalf. But a new method of destruction which did, could command its million pounds with certainty from almost any civilised government in the world.

In industry also the greatest fortunes await those who can extend their markets by destroying the markets of their rivals, and nations aim at increasing their prosperity by driving other nations out of a home or a neutral market. There is thus a definitely destructive side to the work of production; and some foresee in the future an Asiatic victory over the White Races, not effected directly by force of arms but by destructive industrial compet.i.tion which would sap away the foundations of White power. How far that danger is real and how far illusory is a matter worthy of examination.

At the outset the theoretical possibility of such a development must be admitted, though the practical danger will be found to be not serious, since it can be met by simple precautions. There are several familiar instances in European history of a nation being defeated first in the industrial or commercial arena, and then, as an inevitable sequel, falling behind in the rivalry of war fleets and armies. In the Pacific there may be seen some facts ill.u.s.trating the process. The Malay Peninsula, for instance, is becoming rapidly a Chinese instead of a Malay Colony of Great Britain. In the old days the Malays, instinctively hostile to the superior industry and superior trading skill of the Chinese, kept out Chinese immigrants at the point of the kris. With the British overlordship the Chinaman has a fair field, and he peacefully penetrates the peninsula, ousting the original inhabitants. In Fiji, again, Hindoo coolies have been imported by the sugar-planters to take the place of the capricious Fijian worker. Superior industry and superior trading skill tell, and the future fate of Fiji is to be an Indian colony with White overseers, the Fijian race vanishing.

In both these instances, however, the dispossessed race is a coloured one. Could a White Race be ousted from a land in the same way, presuming that the White Race is superior and not inferior? Without doubt, yes, if the coloured race were allowed ingress, for they would instil into the veins of the White community the same subtle poison as would a slave cla.s.s. The people of every land which comes into close contact with the Asiatic peoples of the West Pacific littoral know this, and in all the White communities of the ocean there is a jealousy and fear of Asiatic colonisation. The British colonies in the Pacific, in particular, are determined not to admit the Asiatic races within their border. That determination was ascribed by a British Colonial Secretary of a past era as due to "an industrial reason and a trade union reason, the determination that a country having been won by the efforts and the struggle of a White Race and rescued from barbarism should not be made the ground of compet.i.tion by men who had not been engaged in that struggle." But I prefer to think that the reason lies deeper than the fear of cheaper labour. It springs rather from the consciousness that a higher race cannot live side by side with a lower race and preserve its national type. If the labouring cla.s.ses have always been in the van of anti-Asiatic movements in the White colonies of the Pacific, it is because the labouring cla.s.ses have come first into contact with the evils of Asiatic colonisation. It is now some years since I first put forward as the real basis of the "White Australia" policy "the instinct against race-mixture which Nature has implanted in man to promote her work of evolution." That view was quoted by Mr Richard Jebb in his valuable _Studies in Colonial Nationalism_, and at once it won some acceptance in Great Britain which before had been inclined to be hostile to the idea of "White Australia." Subsequently in a paper before the Royal Society of Arts Mr Jebb took occasion to say:

"Let me enter a protest against the still popular fallacy that the Pacific att.i.tude (_i.e._ in regard to Asiatic labour) is dictated merely by the selfish insistence of well-organised and rapacious labour. Two circ.u.mstances tell decisively against this view. One is that responsible local representatives, not dependent upon labour suffrages, invariably argue for restriction or exclusion on the higher social and political grounds in relation to which the labour question is subsidiary, although essential. The second evidence is the modern adherence to the restriction movement of nearly all Australasians and an increasing number of Canadians, who are not 'in politics' and whose material interests in many cases are opposed to the extravagant demands of labour. Their insight contrasts favourably, I think, with that perverse body of opinion, to be found in all countries, which instinctively opposes some policy of enormous national importance lest the immediate advantage should accrue to persons not thought to deserve the benefit."

But whilst the industrial reason is not the only reason, nor even the chief reason, against Asiatic immigration into a White colony, there is, of course, a special objection on the part of the industrial cla.s.ses to such immigration. It is for that reason that there has been in all the White settlements of the Pacific a small section, angered by what they considered to be the exorbitant demands of the workers, anxious to enlist the help of Asiatic labour for the quick development of new territories, and in some cases this section has had its way to an extent. Some of the Canadian railways were built with the help of Chinese labour: and Western Canada has that fact chiefly to thank for her coloured race troubles to-day--not so serious as those of the United States with the Negroes, but still not negligible altogether. In Australia it was at one time proposed to introduce Chinese as workers in the pastoral industry: and one monstrous proposal was that Chinese men should be mated with Kanaka women in the South Sea Islands to breed slave labour for sheep stations and farms in Australia.

Fortunately that was frustrated, as were all other plans of Asiatic immigration, and as soon as the Australian colonists had been allowed the right to manage their own affairs they made a first use of their power by pa.s.sing stringent laws against Asiatic immigrations. A typical Act was that pa.s.sed in 1888 in New South Wales. By that Act it was provided that no ship should bring Chinese immigrants to a greater number than one for every 300 tons of cargo measurement (thus a ship of 3000 tons could not bring more than ten Chinese): and each Chinaman on landing had to pay a poll tax of 100. Chinese could not claim naturalisation rights and could not engage in gold-mining without permission. Since then the Australian Commonwealth has pa.s.sed a law which absolutely prohibits coloured immigration, under the subterfuge of an Education Test. New Zealand shares with Australia a policy of rigorous exclusion of Asiatics. In Canada the desire lately evinced of the Western people to exclude Asiatics altogether has been thwarted, so far, by the political predominance of the Eastern states, which have not had a first-hand knowledge of the evils following upon Asiatic immigration, and have vetoed the attempts of British Columbia to bar out the objectionable colonists. But some measures of exclusion have been adopted enforcing landing fees on Chinese; and, by treaty, limiting the number of j.a.panese permitted to enter. Further rights of exclusion are still sought. In the United States there have been from time to time rigorous rules for the exclusion of Chinese, sometimes effected by statute, sometimes by agreement with China, and at present Chinese immigration is forbidden. The influx of j.a.panese is also prevented under a treaty with j.a.pan.

The industrial position in the Pacific is thus governed largely by the fact that in all the White settlements on its borders there are more or less complete safeguards against compet.i.tion by Asiatic labour on the White man's territory: and that the tendency is to make these safeguards more stringent rather than to relax them. Nothing short of a war in the Pacific, giving an Asiatic Power control of its waters, would allow Asiatics to become local compet.i.tors in the labour markets of those White settlements.

But debarred from colonisation the Asiatic has still two other chances of compet.i.tion:

(1) In the home markets of his White rivals in the Pacific;

(2) In such neutral markets as are open to his goods on equal terms with theirs.

The first chance can be swept away almost completely by hostile tariffs, which it is in the power of any of the White nations to impose. There are no Free Trade ideas in the Pacific; the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, all alike protect their home markets against any destructive Asiatic compet.i.tion. If j.a.panese boots or Chinese steel work began to invade the markets of Australia or America to any serious extent, the case would be met at once by a hostile tariff revision.

The second chance, open to the Asiatic industrial, that of competing with White labour in neutral markets, of cutting into the export trade of his rivals, is greater. But even it is being constantly limited by the tendency to-day which makes for the linking up of various nations into groups for mutual benefit in matters of trade; and which also makes for the gradual absorption of independent markets into the sphere of influence of one or other group. Some students of tariff subjects foresee the day when a nation will rely for export markets on dominions actually under its sway and on a strictly limited entrance to foreign markets paid for by reciprocal concessions. They foresee the whole world divided up into a limited number of "spheres of influence" and no areas left for free compet.i.tion of traders of rival nations. Under such circ.u.mstances a Power would have free and full entry only into those territories actually under its sway. Into other markets its entry would be restricted by local national considerations and also by the interests of the Imperial system having dominion there.

Present facts certainly point to the dwindling of neutral markets. An effort is constantly made by "open-door" agreements to keep new markets from being monopolised by any one Power, and great nations have shown their appreciation of the importance of keeping some markets "open" by intimations of their willingness to fight for the "open door" in some quarter or other of the world. Nevertheless doors continue to be shut and events continue to trend towards an industrial position matching the military position, a world dominated in various spheres by great Powers as jealous for their trading rights as for their territorial rights.

Imagining such a position, the Asiatic industrial influence in the Pacific would depend strictly on the Asiatic military and naval influence. For the present, however, there are many neutral markets, and in these, without a doubt, Asiatic production is beginning to oust European production to some extent. In the textile industries, particularly, Asiatic production, using European machinery, is noticeably cheaper than European. Yet, withal, the cheapness of Asiatic labour is exaggerated a great deal by many economists. It will be found on close examination that whilst the Asiatic wage rate is very low, the efficiency rate is low in almost equal proportion. Some effective comparisons are possible from the actual experience of Asiatic and other coloured labour. In the mining industry, for instance, Chinese labour, the most patient, industrious, tractable and efficient form of Asiatic labour, does not stand comparison with White industry. In Australia Chinese labour has been largely employed in the Northern Territory mines: it has not proved economical.[9] The Broken Hill (silver) and Kalgoorlie (gold) mines in the same continent, worked exclusively by highly-paid White labour, show better results as regards economy of working than the Rand (South Africa) gold mines with Kaffir or with Chinese coolie labour.

The Chinaman has a great reputation as an agriculturist, and at vegetable-growing he seems able to hold his own in compet.i.tion with White labour, for he can follow in that a patient and laborious routine with success. In no other form of agriculture does he compete successfully with the White farmer. In Australia, for example, where the Chinese are still established as market-gardeners, they fail at all other sorts of farming, and it is an accepted fact that a Chinese tiller will ruin orchard land in a very short time if it comes under his control.

In navvying work and in dock-labouring work the Asiatic coolie is not really economical. To see four coolies struggling to carry one frozen carcase of mutton off a steamer at Durban, with a fifth coolie to oversee and help the voluble discussion which usually accompanies coolie work; and to contrast the unloading of the same cargo by White labour, with one man one carcase the rule, is to understand why low wages do not always mean low labour costs.

When any particular problem of production has been reduced to a practically mechanical process, when the need of initiative, of thought, of keen attention, has been eliminated, Asiatic work can compete successfully with White work, though the individual Asiatic worker will not, even then, be capable of the same rate of production as the individual White worker. But in most domains of human industry the Asiatic worker, in spite of his very much lower initial cost, cannot compete with the European. Intelligent labour is still the cheapest ultimately in most callings, even though its rate of pay be very much higher. In practical experience it has often been found that a White worker can do more whilst working eight hours a day than whilst working ten hours, on account of the superior quality of his work when he has better opportunities for rest and recreation. The same considerations apply, with greater force, to comparisons between White and "coloured"

labour.

A fact of importance in the discussion of this point is the effect of impatient White labour in encouraging, of patient Asiatic labour in discouraging, the invention and use of machinery. The White worker is always seeking to simplify his tasks, to find a less onerous way. (He discovers, for instance, that the wheel-barrow saves porterage.) Now that coloured labour is being banished from cotton-fields and sugar-brakes, we hear talk of machines which will pick cotton and trash cane-fields.

The industrial position in the Pacific as regards White and "coloured"

labour is then to-day this: Owing to the efforts, sometimes expressed in terms of legal enactment, sometimes of riot and disorder,[2] of the British race colonists in the Pacific, the settlements of Australia and New Zealand have been kept almost entirely free from Asiatic colonists: and the Pacific slopes of the United States and Canada have been but little subjected to the racial taint. Asiatic rivalry in the industrial sphere must therefore be directed from Asiatic territory. The goods, not the labour, must be exported; and the goods can be met with hostile tariffs just as the labour is met with Exclusion Acts. In neutral markets the products of Asiatic labour can compete with some success with the products of the labour of the White communities, but not with that overwhelming success which an examination of comparative wage rates would suggest. Under "open door" conditions Asiatic peoples could kill many White industries in the Pacific; but "open door" conditions could only be enforced by a successful war. Such a war, of course, would be followed by the sweeping away of immigration restrictions as well as goods restrictions.

There is another, the Asiatic, side to the question. Without a doubt the Asiatic territories in the Pacific will not continue to offer rich prizes for European Powers seeking trade advantages through setting up "spheres of influence." Since j.a.pan won recognition as a nation she has framed her tariffs to suit herself. In the earlier stages of her industrial progress she imported articles, learned to copy them, and then imposed a prohibitive tariff on their importation. Various kinds of machinery were next copied and their importation stopped. China may be expected to follow the same plan. Europe and America may not expect to make profits out of exploiting her development. A frank recognition of this fact would conduce to peace in the Pacific. If it can be agreed that neither as regards her territory nor her markets is China to be served up as the prize of successful dominance of the Pacific, one of the great promptings to warfare there would disappear. "Asia for the Asiatics" is a just policy, and would probably prove a wise one.

In discussing the position of Asiatic labour in the Pacific I have taken a view which will dissatisfy some alarmists who cite the fact that the wage rate for labour in Western Canada and Australia is about 8s. a day, and in China and j.a.pan about 1s. a day; and conclude therefore that the Asiatic power in the industrial field is overwhelming. But an examination of actual working results rather than theoretical conclusions from a limited range of facts will very much modify that conclusion. Asiatic labour compet.i.tion, if allowed liberty of access for the worker as well as his work, would undoubtedly drag down the White communities of the Pacific. But when the compet.i.tion is confined to the work, and the workman is kept at a distance, it is not at all as serious a matter as some have held, and can always be easily met with tariff legislation. The most serious blow to European and American industrialism that Asia could inflict would be an extension of the j.a.panese protective system to the Asiatic mainland. Yet that we could not grumble at; and it would have a compensating advantage in taking away the temptation to conflict which the rich prize of a suzerainty over the Chinese market now dangles before the industrial world.

There are now one or two industrial facts of less importance to which attention may be drawn. The United States, with the completion of the Panama Ca.n.a.l, will be the greatest industrial Power of the Pacific. Her manufacturing interests are grouped nearer to the east than the west coast--partly because of the position of her coalfields,--and the fact has. .h.i.therto stood in the way of her seaport trade to the Pacific. With the opening of the ca.n.a.l her eastern ports will find the route to the Pacific reduced greatly, and they will come into closer touch with the western side of South America, with Asia, and with the British communities in the South Pacific. The perfect organisation of the industrial machinery of the United States will give her a position of superiority a.n.a.logous to that which Great Britain had in the Atlantic at the dawn of the era of steam and steel.

Western Canada is a possible great industrial factor of the future when she learns to utilise the tremendous water power of the Selkirks and Rockies. The Canadian people have the ambition to become manufacturers, and already they satisfy the home demand for many lines of manufactured goods, and have established an export trade in manufactures worth about 7,000,000 a year. Australia, too, aspires to be a manufacturing country, and though she has not risen yet to the dignity of being an exporter of manufactures to any considerable extent, the valuation of her production from manufactures (_i.e._ value added in process of manufacture) is some 180,000,000 a year.

To sum up: in neutral markets of the Pacific (_i.e._ markets in which the goods of all nations can compete on even terms) the Asiatic producer (the j.a.panese and the Indian at present, the Chinese later) will be formidable compet.i.tors in some lines, notably textiles. But the United States should be the leading industrial Power. British compet.i.tion for Pacific markets will come not only from the Mother Country but from the Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Neutral markets will, however, tend to be absorbed in the spheres of influence of rival Powers striving for markets as well as for territory. A position approaching monopoly of the markets of the Pacific could only be reached as the result of a campaign of arms.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The Northern Territory has been the one part of Australia where coloured labour has been obtainable in practically any quant.i.ty for mining; yet it is the part of Australia where the experience of mine-owners has been generally the most disastrous. In 1906 the production amounted to 126,000; in the last four years, according to a report just furnished by the Chief Warden (1911), it has got down to 60,000 a year, and is now shrivelling so fast that the whole industry is threatened. "The values of the properties worked in the past are not accountable for this depressed condition," says the Chief Warden, "for there is every reason for the belief that, if the mineral wealth here were exploited, it would compare favourably with that of any of the States; but the depression has been caused chiefly through the pernicious system of mining that has been carried out in the past, and the wasteful expenditure in most instances of the capital forthcoming for development."

[2] The Australian Labour organ, _The Worker_, boasted (Oct. 22, 1908): "When the law was not sufficient to guard race purity, 'selfish' Labour risked its life and liberty to go beyond the law, and to show, as was shown at another time in California, that the White Race would not tolerate Asiatic colonisation. The Chinese Exclusion Acts in various states of Australia were thus the monuments, not of the politicians who pa.s.sed them into law, but of the courage of the workers who were willing--as the Eureka miners were willing--to sacrifice everything in the cause of a clean, free Australia."

CHAPTER XVII

SOME STRATEGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Soundly considered, any great strategical problem is a matter of:

1. Naval and military strength; rarely exercised separately but usually in combination.

2. Disposition of fortified stations and of bases of supplies.

3. The economic and political conditions of countries concerned.

Such phrases as the "Blue-water School of Strategy" are either misleading, inasmuch as they give an incorrect impression of the ideas of the people described as belonging to such a school, wrongly representing them as considering naval strength, and naval strength alone, in a problem of attack and defence; or else they rightly describe an altogether incorrect conception of strategy. It will be found on examination of any great typical struggle between nations that all three matters I have mentioned have usually entered into the final determination of the issue; that superior military or naval force has often been countered by superior disposition of fortresses, fitting stations, and supply bases: that sometimes clear superiority both in armaments and disposition of armaments has been countered by greater financial and industrial resources and more resolute national character.

On all questions of strategy the Napoleonic wars will provide leading cases, for Napoleon brought to his campaigns the full range of weapons--military, naval, political, economic; and his early victories were won as much by the audaciously new reading he gave to the politics of war as to his skill in military strategy and in tactics. It would be a fascinating task to imagine a Napoleon setting his mind to a consideration of the strategy of the Pacific with all its vast problems.

But since to give to "strategy" its properly wide definition would be to deal again in this chapter with many matters already fully discussed, I propose to touch upon it here in a much narrower sense, and suggest certain of the more immediate strategical problems, particularly in regard to the disposition of fortified stations and bases of supplies.

A glance at the map will show that the British Empire has at the present moment an enormous strategical superiority over any other Power in the Pacific. That Empire is established on both flanks, in positions with strong and safe harbours for fleets, and with great tracts of fertile country for recruiting local military forces and providing garrisons.

(For the time being I put aside political limitations and consider only military and naval possibilities unhampered by any restrictions.) On the eastern flank of the Pacific Ocean is the Columbian province of Canada provided with several fine harbours and allowing of the construction of an ideal naval base behind the shelter of Vancouver Island. The coastal waters and the coastal rivers alike make possible great fisheries, and consequently are good nurseries for seamen. The coastal territory has supplies of coal, of timber, of oil. The hinterland is rich pastoral, agricultural, and mineral country capable of carrying an enormous population and, therefore, of providing a great army.

Considered in relation to its neighbours in the Pacific, Canada is strategically quite safe except as regards attack from one quarter--the United States. A Russian attack upon Canada, for instance, would be strategically hopeless (I presume some equality of force), since a Russian Fleet would have to cross the Pacific and meet the Canadian Fleet where the Canadians chose, or else batter a fortified coast with the Canadian Fleet sheltering in some port on a flank waiting a chance to attack. The same remark applies to an attack from j.a.pan, from China, or from a South American nation. As regards an attack from the United States, the position, of course, is different. But even in that case the strategical position of Canada would be at least not inferior to that of the enemy (apart from superiority of numbers), since that enemy would be liable to diverting attacks from Great Britain in the Atlantic and from Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific (whose forces would, however, have to subdue the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands before they could safely approach the North American coast). An attack by the United States on Canada is, however, not within the bounds of present probability, and need not be discussed.

The very great importance of Canada to the British position in the Pacific cannot, however, be too strongly impressed. Canada holds the right flank of the Pacific Ocean, and that flank rests upon the main British strength concentrated in the Atlantic. With the loss of Canada British mastery in the Pacific would be impossible. To make the strategical position of Western Canada (naturally very strong) secure there is needed--

(a) A British Pacific Fleet strong enough to meet any enemy in the ocean, and so stationed as to be capable of concentrating quickly either at a base near Vancouver on the outbreak of hostilities, or in the rear of any Fleet attacking the coast.

(b) A greater population in Western Canada with an army (not necessarily of Regulars) capable of defending Canadian territory against a landing party.