1915-1941 colin newbury linacre college, oxford

66

THE LONG APPRENTICESHIP: labour in the political economy of New Guinea,

1915-1941

Colin Newbury Linacre College, Oxford

WHILE the conditions of recruitment and employment in New Guinea are much better understood as part of current and past research into the labour history of Pacific groups, the contribution of the administration of the Australian Mandate still remains to be evaluated. It is argued in this paper that Australian colonial officials and their departments were more than arbiters and regulators in an economic system of production for export. The administration itself as a basic service industry generated a large market for labour and financed the infrastructure of rural and urban linkages that transformed New Guinea into a partiallyunified political economy before the 194Os. The acceleration of this transformation in the post-war period enhanced the role of government. Greater market opportunities existed for private investment and for the developmen~ of independent commercial agriculture based on the sale of cash crops from the 194Os. But the rapid appearance of post-war" opportunity structure" (Townsend 1980) owed much to pre-war experience of labour migrancy and the work of a "co-operative bureaucracy" located in the urban centres and operating through frontier patrols and outstations.

The Long Apprenticeship 67

From Strategy to Investment: the revaluation of captured assets, 1915-1921

Australian wartime experience in the seizure and occupation of the German colony encouraged a shift in policy objectives from military to developmental goals. The reasons are to be found, first, in the immediate appreciation of the costs incurred in running the captured territory, and, secondly, in the active asssociation of Australian business and mercantile representatives with the Naval and Military Expeditionary Force to secure regular supplies and continue the export of copra from German plantations. Examination of German accounts revealed · that subsidies might be required in a colony that did rtot pay for itself; and costs would be aggravated by disruption of imports of rice, meat and fish on which planters, traders and labourers depended. Accordingly, the Islands Inspector of Bums Philip & Co., W.H. Lucas, was given a fairly free hand by the Australian Naval Board from September 1914 to set prices with German merchants and run an effective monopoly over external trade.!

Colonel William Holmes, as commander of the Expeditionary Force, moreover, took the view that his objective (in the absence of detailed instructions) was to occupy the islands "for colonising purposes" at the end of the war.2 Once that idea became common currency within the Ministry of Defence and the Department of External Affairs the implications of preserving a colonial economy as eventual compensation for the loss of blood and treasure elsewhere had to be treated seriously particularly as Australia already had similar responsibilities in Papua. Between 1914 and 1919 when it was formally decided not to amalgamate the two territories the experience of officials, businessmen and politicians led to the conclusion that New Guinea's assets could only be preserved and developed by Commonwealth (of Australia) financial guarantees and Melanesian manpower. The daily routine of supervising recruitment, indenture, punishment and repatriation for a workforce of some 18,000 labourers took up an unexpected amount of the time of military officials who controlled German planters and who themselves were employers of labour for essential public works, transport and other services for the troops under their command. The welfare aspects of labour

68 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95

recruitment filled a large place in official justifications for the replacement of German by Australian administration and the topic was the key factor militating against amalgamation with Papua.3

Consequently the wartime period saw a general expansion of planting and reinvestment of earnings from copra followed by a rapid decline in investment, in 1920-21, as the conditions of expropriation and expulsion of German planters became known. 4

By then too the indentured labour force had expanded to at least 27,728 at the end of military occupation though this figure includes workers outside agriculture. In fact there may well have been a decline and shortage of workers coming forward for agricultural indentures in the face of wage competition from public works and carrying. The shortage was aggravated, too, by the disruption of plantation work following the expulsion of German owners and personnel in the course of 1920 and 1921.

Australian concern for the condition of the plantations during this transition period led to a flurry of reports to the Mandates Commission on wages, punishments, taxes, ration scales etc. in the German regulations and at the same time an elaboration of these regulations to meet increased demand for labour at a period of increased working costs.s Consolidation ordinances of 1919 and 1920 rehearsed all the fine detail of older labour laws, abolished flogging but preserved penal sanctions, indentures up to three years, standard wages, deferred pay, and limitation of casual labour to three months. Important extensions of German practices were a standard head tax for unemployed males and curtailment of copra trading by villagers exce}3t through licensed buyers and plantation stores.

Our knowledge of the immediate results of these early regulations is limited by the paucity of data on the distribution of the labour force before 1920 and details of the incidence of taxes. Taxation was enforced very selectively at first. But it is obvious that there was a marked increase in the need for cash as annual head taxes rose to over £12,000 in 1916/17 and reached a peak level as early as 1918/19 at nearly £21,000. The interpretation of taxation and labour statistics (which has been neglected in more recent research) is discussed below; but it can be assumed that this sudden cash impost taken in conjunction with the extension of


recruitment and a limitation on alternative methods of earning money had an influence on the labour supply at the critical period of revaluation of plantation estates, rising costs and static wages.6

Apart from greater attention to the detail of plantation management on the ground, the period of wartime control also encouraged interest in German assets from a number of other pressure groups ranging from would-be soldier-planters and their superiors in the Expeditionary Force to the committees of the Sydney Chamber of Commerce and mercantile firms, giving evidence to the inter-state commission which reviewed all of Australia's commercial interests in the Pacific from 1916.7

In the event, much of this speculation about the fate of the territory and grand schemes "for buying out the Germans" proposed by Bums Philp had to await the terms of the Peace Treaty and their application by the Commonwealth.8 Meanwhile the basic preparations for revaluation of German assets were made by Colonel Pethebridge who produced the first inventory of plantations and trading stations at the end of 19169 and by W. H. Lucas who with Atlee Hunt from External Affairs and the territory's military administrator Brigadier-General Johnston successfully opposed amalgamation with Papua at the end of 1919. Their views which emphasised the need for longer indentures and lower wages than in Papua coincided with those of Hughes who argued at horne and abroad for total Australian control. He also adopted Lucas's plan for a board to manage the estates pending the allocation of the mandate to Australia.1O The Commonwealth cabinet approved in August 1919; rules for the liquidation of assets were laid ,down in March 1920 and an Expropriation Ordinance vested German properties in the Public Trustee from 1 September 1920. By then, Lucas as chairman of the board had already arrived in Rabaul with two accountants and seven plantation inspectors, and had begun to seize records.

Estates and Labour under the Expropriation Board 1921 - 1927

For the period of the war, then, the shift in Australian policy from defence to development in the captured colony entailed close attention to labour - "a matter of supreme importance" in the opinion of witnesses to the inter-state


commission. ll Brigadier-General Johnston, in his unpublished submissions to the commission on amalgamation with Papua, had even advocated forced recruitment of labourers by the administration in return for fees of £30,000 to £40,000.12 The Expropriation Board under Lucas, which set about managing and keeping up the value of the 268 estates and 20 stores owne.d by Germans so that these assets could be realised under the terms of the Peace Treaty, took a similar view and went into the business of recruiting on a scale not seen among the territory's officials. Formally responsible to the Public Trustee and the Custodian of Expropriated Properties (from May 1921) Lucas's board made over 500 appointments to posts for plantation inspectors, overseers, store managers, and clerical staff. For three years board officers battled with German accounts, attempts at sabotage, and the intricacies oflabourers' contracts. Misunderstandings and muddle over the validity of contracts and pay accounted for widespread shortage of labourers on board plantations between December 1921 and June 1923, perhaps by as much as 2,000.13 The planted area under board control ceased to expand before 1926, as this form of investment was neglected. In effect, the board lived off older development from before and during the war and was hard put to service its 47,000 ha. by cleaning, harvesting and bagging dried copra, particularly in the New Britain estates. Meanwhile the five principal German companies and their dependent planters had to be carried as business propositions while their accounting systems were amalgamated through 1921. Advances made through the Public Trustee and the Commonwealth Bank for the period of the board's operations, 1920-1927, amounted to nearly £1 million, most of which was used to cover the heavy losses of the first three years of the takeover. 14

Consequently there was a clash of expediency and principles as the last of the military administrators permitted board recruiters to remedy shortages by operating outside the letter ofthe regulations, while the first ofthe civilian adrninistra tors attempted to remedy abuses and answer criticisms about flogging. Administrator Evan Wisdom rejected forced labour as a remedy and opted for tighter control of indenture and a fiscal incentive to draw workers onto the plantations. IS The upshot was the massive


forty-five pages of the Native Labour Ordinance no. 15 of 1922 and the head tax system which was expanded in area of application for 1921 /22 and was supplemented by a special levy for 1922/23.

The essential features of the Ordinance were the regulation of recruiting and conditions of indentured service under penal sanctions, so as to reduce abuses and preserve the physical condition of the labourers.16 Professional recruiters, plantation managers and overseers - even labourers - could be licensed to visit villages in controlled areas. The practice of paying "hand money" to new recruits and to village officials and relatives was recognised, though the scale paid to board employees for their operations was higher in fact than the ordinance allowed. The procedure for signing on recruits before a district officer entailed medical inspection and provision for hospital care. The conditions of work contracts, wages, rations and issue were elaborateiy detailed. Indentures up to three years were permitted for plantation work and up to five years for the administration. This latter practice also extended to board recruits. Task work, tenhour days, and holiday work at the employer's discretion were prescribed for a minimum cash wage of 5 shillings for males and 4/ - for females and boys. A maximum wage was set at 10 shillings, until the labourer had special skills. Up to two-thirds of the monthly wage could be deferred because, as Wisdom explained to the Prime Minister's Department: "The object of the deferred pay is to ensure that the natives on completion of their contracts, take horne as much money, or its equivalent, as possible, to form a capital with which they can improve their position in the villages ... ".17

Deferred wages also represented an element of control and insurance against desertion and reinforced the penal sanctions open to employers and officials. Stoppage of tobacco rations, fines and imprisonment were the usual penalties. Desertion was punishable by imprisonment for three months and any such term could be added to a contrau or service instead. On the other hand District Officers could cancel contracts in cases of neglect; and assaults on labourers entailed fines and cancellation of the licence to employ recruits. At the end of the contract the employer was obliged to return the labourer to his village and deferred wages


were forwarded by the administration. A new contract could be made after a month's leave for each year of service though this could be dispensed with at a District Officer's discretion.

The outline of these regulations in the reports to the League of Nations added a gloss which claimed that the scale of wages was rising in the territory and that the employers contributed a monthly sum to an Education Trust Fund. ls The deliberate discouragement of casual labour by limiting it to periods of three months within twenty miles of a worker's residence was also presented in such a way as to preclude any comment on the more expensive wage rates entailed in this alternative to indenture. 19

Similarly, the Native Taxes Ordinance of 1922, which raised the rate to 10 shillings a month for unindentured males, passed over the fact that an Education Tax was also levied on villages for 1922/23, raising an extra £16,357 over and above the £21,551 collected in head tax for that year.

The ambiguities of the "Education Trust Funds" are discussed below. But at least one observer, Colonel Ainsworth, commented at length on sources of cash for villagers and thought it absurd that the administration of New Guinea levied a tax from which the majority of wage-earners was exempt:

The underlying reason for such exemption is undoubtedly to induce the ablebodied males to go out into some service. The effect of such legislation may have some momentary benefit but the ultimate result is an undesirable one... Such a practice had been requested by Kenya settlers 'and resisted by the Administration on the grounds that tax should be linked to earnings - whether by wage labour or by sale of produce. In New Guinea it was linked to neither, and the Territory had the dubious distinction of a unique fiscal system which was manipulated almost entirely for non-fiscal ends.20

Ainsworth also condemned much of the 1922 Labour Ordinance, especially the system of deferred pay and recruiting bonuses for village officials. None of that had any effect on Wisdom, who confided to the Prime Minister's Department that


he found this critic frorn Africa a "self-assertive, egotistical person and obsessed with the idea that everything revolves around Kenya".21 The imrnediate purpose of all this regulatory and fiscal pressure, in any case was not for the benefit of planters as a class but to rernedy the labour shortages of the Expropriation Board and exert a rneasure of control over its activities.

For the Board rernained the largest single ernployer in the territory at this period; and its records show how rnuch Wisdom's systern wasan ideal abstraction reported to the League,cornpared with the labour practices resorted to by hard-pressed managers, overseers and, to a lesser exfent, by the labourers thernselves. The Board overseers and their assistants regularly received a bonus of up to 20 shillings for new recruits, over and above the sums paid to private recruiters. According to the audit of the Rabaul Native Labour Office, there was also a comrnission for a re-sign of £1.5.0 per contract which gave every incentive for the labour clerks to prolong contracts, with the permission of the District Officer. Labour clerks at out-stations, such as Madang and Kavieng, were paid at a higher rate; and at least one official who cornbined the functions of a plantation superintendent with his duties as officer in charge of native labour, Kokopo District, received a double commission for recruits rnoved between the labour depot and the plantation under his care.22 To rneet the labour shortages of 1922, the Board (as an official agency) organised its own recruiting drives up the Sepik and Ramu rivers, netting over 900 recruits on the first expedition.

After the records of early German contracts had been accounted for it is clear that the Board paid labourers slightly higher wages than specified in the 1922 Ordinance, but deferred rnuch more than two-thirds until the end of an indenture.23 It frequently issued short weight in rice rations below the scale of 10.Slbs. per rnan per week, but it was generous with hand issues of pipes, tobacco, lap laps, etc. (so rnuch so that casual labourers sornetimes joined the lines of time-expired labour at the depot). But in general the Board rnoved into a tighter system of control frorn 1922, as labour was farmed out to its stores and plantations; hand rnoney was kept in check and vouchered; contracts were filed and a track kept of rnen who were transferred, in hospital, or

74 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vo1.18, 1994/95

on "Lim-Limbo" (leave); and the business of finalisation before a District Officer was perfected by counter-signatures and duplicate records.

But there were more frequent disputes with the administration over medical inspections, land titles of expropriated estates which "incorporated" stands of villagers' coconuts, and over the penal clauses of the Ordinance whenever plantation inspectors took the law into their own hands.24 An understanding was reached that such cases would not be sent to the courts in future.

By 1924, therefore, the Board constituted a separate administration in New Guinea responsible to the custodian in Melbourne and not to the administrator at Rabaul. It held properties valued at about £3 million and had no prospect of wiping out its debts to the Commonwealth before about 1927. Preliminary moves to sell estates to British subjects met with little response at the end of 1922 because of depressed copra prices. An official enquiry by the New Zealand plantation manager, A. R. Cobcroft, cleared the Board of any maladministration or neglect; and the public enterprise marked time to see whether the market price of properties would rise. At the end of 1925 the custodian judged that the time was ripe. It was announced that properties were to be sold in geographical groups of plantations, stores and other facilities on special terms for ex-servicemen who could tender for 5% of the purchase money (with the help of a financial backer) and repay the balance of the purchase price with interest over twenty years.

In practice these "soldier-terms" attracted the financial backing of Burns Philp and W. R. Carpenter & Co. and the Melanesia Company, all of whom found plenty of willing clients to sign for loans and indentures as nominal plantation owners. Consequently the capitalisation of the plantation industry relied heavily on advances from the principal mercantile agencies and their subsidiaries in the territory. At 1925 estimates, plantations for sale produced some 23,800 tons of copra (or 55% of the Territory's exports of copra from all sources). Added to this was a further 3,000 tons of New Guinea trade copra, mainly from Rabaul and Kavieng, which passed through the stations in those


districts and was sold to the Board. In short, some 27,000 tons of copra was at stake compared with the 16,000 tons already handled by Bums Philp and Carpenters for their other clients and for the missions. It was also in the interests of the mercantile firms to select properties giving strategic advantage in collecting and bulking and to add virgin lands with a view to future development.

Moreover, the proximity of trading stations was important especially on New Britain. Carpenters acquired many of these for clients and grouped them to avoid internal competition. Trade copra at 1925 prices could yield a profit of 150%. With 137 stations for sale throughout the territory, investors were tempted into thinking that the internal copra market could be organised and controlled as a supplement to normal plantation production, bulking and export.

A final point of commercial strategy lay in the recognition that labour could not be transferred between properties not under a single owner. The mercantile companies also required labour for cargo handling and some thought was given to the availability of indentured workers for non-agricultural tasks at the bulking centres. Some plantations on the north coast of New Britain, although poor producers of copra, offered a plentiful supply of labour for the Witu plantations on off-shore islands. When eventually much of this group went to nominees of the Melanesian Company, successful tenderers arranged "charging agreements" (mortgages) with Carpenters in return for assistance in recruiting and transporting labour.

At the end of the day, when all estates had been tendered for, keen bidding for plantations, trade stations, virgin lands, town lots, and ports pushed the sale price well beyond the valuation set by the custodian's office. By January 1928, all estates sold to soldier tenderers fetched £3,402,830.25 Behind these transactions, W. R. Carpenter & Co. financed some 48 per cent of the nominees; Bums Phiip assisted 36%; and the Melanesian Company mortgaged 16%.26 In all, some 250 settlers were mortgaged and dependent on the mercantile companies, the Commonwealth Bank, or other private backers. The number of plantations continued to expand through the 1930s to about 490 with an estimated value of £6 millions, including former German


and other properties. The financial constraints on planters were obvious, but not so different perhaps from the credit structure offered by the German companies, and relieved the public trustee of the burden of financing a public corporation. The Board was finally abolished in 1927, though a delegate of the custodian and a small staff remained in New Guinea to deal with titles and to collect payments. The agency had demonstrated that, given a fairly free hand with labour recruitment, the plantation system founded by the Germans could be preserved efficiently and made to pay in the market conditions of the 1920s.27

Sale of the spoils meant, too, that the administration was now closely involved in supervising the capital structure of the New Guinea economy, if only to ensure that monopolies and neoGerman interests (in the shape of the Melanesia Company) were kept at bay.28 Difficulties within the Board over labour indicated a source of tension between the economic requirements of lowcost production and the professed principles of trusteeship and welfare under the terms of the mandate. The main patterns of labour mobility began to be esta blished during the Board's period of management, partly as a result of its recruitment operations, but more because of a steady rise in demand for labour in all sectors of the elementary economy. The whole labour force was expanded by indenture, as sales of properties were completed (see tables assembled in Shlomowitz 1986). And there was a steady rise in the percentage of indentured labour transferred between districts, 1922-1926, as well as a decline in local district recruitment on contracts of service. Following the lead given by Board recruiters, the Sepik and Madang emerged a6 primary source areas from 1922. In all, some 11,000 workers were transferred to new employers running Board plantations-probably more if depot and store labour is taken into account. Pressures for higher reruiting fees were already felt by 1926; but the 1922 Ordinance ensured that the wages and ration cost of the labour component remained a fixed charge for the time being. This, too, was a legacy from the Board to the plantation economy.


The Political Economy of New Guinea between the Wars

By the end of the 1920s, when expropriated properties had been sold off, the structure of government in New Guinea could best be described as a growth management which responded to the demands of an export economy. The formal division of central and district services, the powers of officials and their operational range, were continually revised and expanded throughout the eight districts and numerous subdi visions of the territory, as field officers increased from 30 in 1924 to just over 70 by 1942. The administration was keenly aware that its authority throughout 91,000 square miles of mainland and islands was severely limited by physical terrain and the cultural barriers of fragmented societies. The cartographical maps of the territory used different colours to distinguish "degree of influence", ranging from complete control in the towns to none at all in great areas left blank and unexplored.

To these limitations were added others arising from the size of the budget of the territory, dependence on indirect taxes and on communications served by mercantile companies that financed the major agricultural industry, and, therefore had an important voice in the regulation of that industry. Just as this transition from state management to private ownership was completed, a second major industry based on mining began to rival agriculture as a source of taxation and as a political lobby in both the territory and the Commonwealth parliament. In addition, missionary societies which, like plantations and mines, were also economic and social catalysts, offered a running criticism of the social effects of indenture on the lives of villagers.

It had been recognised from the outset of the Australian mandate that the management of this political economy of mixed interest groups, together with a measure of protection for Melanesians, depended on a calculated assessment of man power; and this was set at a maximum of 72,000 males in a reserve open to recruitment.29 Consequently, military and civil officers closed down areas to recruitment, 1918-1932, whenever they considered that disease or over-supply endangered reproduction rates. At various times these prohibitions applied to the Markham River, Sepik villages and Alexishafen, Matupit, the Lihir group in New Ireland district, parts of New Britain and Buka Island. But


knowledge of the demography of New Guinea grew only slowly in the inter-war years, and the population estimate of 581,000 inhabitants in 1938 still excluded large areas of the mainland interior only recently contacted by patrols. Using various methods of computation, the N ati ve Labour Commission of 1941-42 found that only 18,000 additional male labourers could be added to the 40,000 already under indenture, if a recommended proportion of no more than 30% of fit adult males were induced to leave their villages.3o

But however the arithmetic of permissible recruitment was worked out, the administration could not be sure that demand would not exceed supply. It is significant that both Papua and New Guinea took the unusual step of appointing government anthropologists from 1921; and it is equally important that New Guinea's first anthopologist, E.W.P. Chinnery, came to his post with experience of organising labour for copper mines. One of his first · tasks in 1924 was to examine the demography of heavily recruited areas of New Ireland and off-shore groups. He later recognised, in a frank and perceptive account ofthe obligations of anthropological research, that villagers who had been "thrown into the melting pot" deserved as much study as more spectacular and untouched people; and that plantations and mines could not be ignored: "since administrative activities depend on customs revenue and taxation, the Government has definite obligations to Europeans, as well as to the natives" (Chinnery 1932: 171).

This basic premise of development through the employment of indentured labour, surrounded by as many safeguards as the administration could enforce, was never really in doubt until challenged by changing views on welfare after the war. There were, moreover, constraints imposed on the administration itself, as a major employer, by the financial self-sufficiency demanded by the Commonwealth. Revenues for the period 1914-1921, augmented by customs, head taxes and a business tax, yielded some £800,000. But very little of this was used to defray the military account with the Commonwealth and went instead to pay the cost of seven years' maintenance of basic services at Rabaul and the district stations.31 The Commonwealth was careful to make no commitment of federal funds towards a subsidy on the scale of that paid by the German government. In


future, expenditure was to be met by revenue, and this policy was adhered to for the first two years of the mandate.

As will be seen from Table I, revenues from internal receipts carne mainly from indirect taxes, notably customs. The business tax was abandoned after 1926, but was replaced to some extent by a royalty on the value of gold exports which provided for nearly one-third of all internal revenue by the end of the 1930s. The remainder of the administration's internal revenue carne from licences and fees for regulating labour and from a Native Labour Tax (known earlier as the Education Tax). From a fiscal viewpoint the head tax on' unindentured males was of minor importance.

Internal revenue amounting to £250,000 annually in the 1920s had to be supplemented by a few external loans and Commonwealth grants. The territory was not permitted to manage expropriated properties (indeed, it had to pay rent for some of these properties). The power to raise loans was very limited, and advances amounting to £98,937 were liquidated by 1939. For six years the Commonwealth made an annual grant of £10,000 to combat disease and assist education. A debt of £22,916 for military stores was waived in 1927. But there largesse ended. After the Rabaul earthquake in 1927, sums forrelief and restoration work had to be found from administration resources.

Thus it was that the territory's expenditure from loans and grants was fairly modest, compared with expenditure from ordinary revenue, including the so-called trust funds. These grew in importance and were frequently confused with the Native Education trust funds found in the earliest Annual Reports and supplemented by an extra tax on New Guinea males, 1922-23. They had, in fact, been accumulated as a result of Expropriation Board practice of holding over deferred pay; and this total from 1923 was augmented further by larger credit balances derived from "deceased natives' estates" which often went straight into revenue" owing to the difficulty in tracing the deceased's next -ofkin" .32 It is certain that the funds, which grew considerably throughout the inter-war period, were raided for purposes other than education, illegally at first. In 1928 the accumulated trust funds were earmarked for a loan of £20,000 to construct a road to the gold fields. Commonwealth Treasury reports show how the

'Table 1: Public Finance Qo <:)

Financial Public Receipts from Internal Receipts Expenditure Year Debt External Sources Revenue Nat.Ed. From From ' From From

£A'~ £A'~ £A'~ Trust Revenues Nat.ED. Loan C'wealth Fund Trust Funds Grant TOfAL

Loans Grants £A'~ Fund

'C' 1921/22 257.5 5.3 261.6 0.01 261.6 :: .., 1922/23 10.0 259.3 16.4 250.4 8.1 258.5 l 1923/24 23.9 23.9 248.7 5.1 253.3 19.0 23.9 2961 -.a. 1924/25 23.5 2.0 242.8 8.3 250.9 9.9 0.8 261.6 ;p 1925/26 24.1 2.0 10.0 259.0 10.9 243.0 7.6 24 8.5 261.4 4

'" 1926/27 52.9 29.4 10.0 282.6 11.4 280.2 10.9 6.9 6.2 304.2 Vl 12'

1927/28 66.8 14.6 10.0 364.6 9.9 331.3 10.1 37.9 12.0 391.3 1:0...

1928/29 104.0 40.0 10.0 351.0 12.4 377.5 7.4 12.1 10.0 407.0 ~.

1929/30 97.9 10.0 339.6 7.1 356.3 7.7 'l7.9 9.3 401.2 ~ 1930/31 101.7 7.0 5.0 290.2 6.1 293.4 7.0 7.0 8.9 316.2 ;...

1931/32 91.5 306.1 6.3 2824 6.4 0.1 288.9 ,Qo

..... 1932/33 n.o 22.0 321.9 8.0 321.6 6.3 22.0 349.8 <c

<c ..... 1933/34 55.8 350,4 0.7 348.8 5.4 354.2 <:0

t.n 1934/35 55.0 388.2 367.5 2.6 370.0 1935/36 47.2 490.9 425.8 425.8 1936/37 39.4 481.1 460.1 460.1 1937/38 31.5 506.4 508.6 508.6 1938/39 23.6 460.8 502.6 502.6 1939/40 16.2 496.7 500.6 500.5

T.bl~ Z: ubouren' &btn .nd Dd~rr~d P.y 8~I.ncu In Trust Fund •• lancn1

Dec61sed Natives' Estates Natives' DefelTe~ Pay Total Trust ~nd Total Estates, Balance Deferred Pay

Rec. Expend. Bali\nc~ Rec. Expepd. Balance Forwud Forward

£ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ %

1922/23 n .•. n.a. 4,665 n.a. n.a. 1,118 53,921 5,783 10.72 1923/24 1,711 1,969 4,406 5,783 ~,9~9 1,932 SO,024 6,338 12.67 1924/25 2,709 3,()95 4,01~ 5.471 3.818 3,585 56,878 7,604 13.36 1925/26 2,1.97 2,800 3,516 5,603 S.6.i16 3,492 52,398 7,oos 13.37

~ 1926/27 2,176 1,731 3,960 7,430 5,355 5,567 56.951 9,527 16.72 1927/28 1,913 1.244 4,629 10,857 i!,2~8 8,157 26.725 12,786 47.84

S 1921/29 2,739 3.872 3.497 13,314 IO,2p4 11.1~ 45,559 14,683 32.23 1929/30 2,364 2,908 2,953 8,547 1~5~5 7.16 44.101 10,122 22.95 1930/31 2,091 2,427 2,618 9,724 9.6~3 7,230 45.015 9,848 22.09 ::t.

~ 1931/» 2,755 3,os7 2,316 10,789 8,2;4 9.745 70,231 12,061 17.17 l 1932/13 2.072 1,892 2,495 10,845 ~,5~5 11.005 68.487 13,500 19.71 19»/34 2,178 2,431 2,243 6,187 7,,2~2 9,910 105,9425 12,153 11.47 ~. 1934/35 2A72 1,903 2,812 6,618 6,553 10,175 138,.53 12,987 9.38 1915/» 2,903 2.328 3,387 10,102 li.3il 11,915 188,361 15,302 8.12 ~ 1936/37 2,477 2,990 2,87. 13,()47 10,4;l9 14,533 257,788 17,407 6.75

~.

1937/31 3,109 2,736 3,247 15,921 13,8fl6 16,568 255,877 19,815 7.74 1938/39 2,407 3,052 2,602 14,685 12,317 18,936 283.025 21,532 7.60

1. 5ourc45lre tN n!J'OftS of th~ Auditor-General contained In Comnlon\fe;,lth Parliamentary Papers: 1923-24, III, pp. 154; 1925, U, pp. 210; 1926-%7-28, In, pp. 2*)4, 3054,3324; 1929, II, pp. 1104; 1929-30-31, IV, PfJ. 2689. 2979; 1932-33-3.c; Il, pp. 1796,2077,2323; 1934-35-36-37, IV, pp. 2402. 2645, 2907; 1937-38-39-40, V, pp. 1825, 2128, 2420. Acc0'lnt~ of the Trust Fund oue not available for 61rlifto years and W~e not printed for 1939/~. There are occasIonal di5Crepandes In totais 'dlle 10 rounding. Initial balances have been omitted.

2. These Include balances form all sources. 3. B«ween 192.V24 and 1928/29 estates are pr~Ied in Iwo calegories, It,ough lhe reason Is nol stated. TIley have been combined here. 4. letwr.en 1929/30 and 1931/32 private employers' nalive deferral pa~' i~ presented in separate lOla Is. These have been combined with

administration deferred pay. Co

~. Funds /lUI\' include larJo;l' b.llancCS from 'MI!\C~naneous' (l.Inds and 1,1I;llng). superannuation. and Ih~ COinage fund from 1935/36. .....

S2 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.IS, 1994/95

balances were usefully built up from wages owing to indentured labour and other sums held over from the Education Tax, the Commonwealth grant for welfare, an official superannuation fund, out-station remittances and suspense acounts. As other items were added, the proportion of labourers' "estates" fed into this general purposes fund declined; but in death as in life they rendered their due (see Table 2).

So much so that one patrol officer, touring and taxing villages in Morobe in 1936, spent a good deal of time handing over sums for deceased estates and taking money back from the same source:

If the whole of the Wain and Naba were taxed Ihavenot the least doubt that they could pay for taxation out of the amount received from the deceased estates of natives forced into indentured labour. The amount has been over £100 per annum for many years as patrols have visited the area [in the Markham Valley]. I estimate that 40% of the na ti ves who have made contracts have died. This in itself is an argument against taxation which can only be paid for by death in the middle and upper Naba. The price is too big.33

One other method used to cut administrative costs was, of course, administrative reliance on the same system of indenture that lowered labour costs for agriculture and mining. It is almost impossible, however, to arrive at an accurate account of labour employed by officials in the central departments and out-stations. Some of it was casual three months' service in the early 1920s with a fairly regular turnover and did not enter the contract labour statistics any more than carriers used for patrols whose services do not figure as an aggregated sum in administrative costs (cf. Shlomowitz 1986). There is som~ evidence that difficulty in replacing casuals in newly opened areas sucn as Morobe and Aitape/Sepik in competition with mining caused the administration to change to indentures after 1926.34 But government indentures are not given in consolidated labour statistics till 1930, after which they double to two thousand a year in the decade before the war. This still leaves casuals and carriers out of the


reckoning, though it would be safe to conclude from the evidence of the patrol reports and district and departmental labour accounts that work for government was more widespread than the tables for indentured recruitment suggest.

For example, when Ambunti station was opened in the Sepik in 1924, it r~gistered a total complement of close on one hundred workers in the space of three years, consisting of the district officer, assistants, police, prisoners, indentured and casual labourers.35 This strength had to be fed from station lots cultivated by police and prisoners, from imported stores and by purchase of yams, sac sac and other produce from local villages. Timber for buildings, carriers and recruits for the constabulary came from the same source; and it is clear from the stati'on diaries that Ambunti also provided police recruits, foodstuffs and indentured labour for central departments in Rabaul.

Everywhere, elementary barter and labour recruiting were features of patrols. One expedition into the Mount Hagen/Sepik region in 1939 purchased some 1,300 lbs. of kau kau (sweet potatoes) daily to feed 198 carriers. And as a patrol officer noted, "trading was our mainstay in contacting the natives and all the information regarding place names and anthropology was obtained as a result of contact first made through trading."36 In such conditions of early contact, patrols mak.ing a census, collecting taxes, or inspecting village books, resembled itinerant caravans bearing knives, axes, cloth, salt and gold-lip shells, as well as currency in coin to provision carriers. Sections dealing with local food supplies and rates of exchange occupied considerable space in patrol reports, because of concern for surplus available for trade and the maintenance of patrols and stations. It is not surprising, therefore, that by the end of the inter-war period a grand operation such as the Mount Hagen patrol, 1937-39, cost at least £10,000 to employ both carriers and air services to contact new populations and change the colour of "uncontrolled areas" on the territorial map.

In this way, too, central departments in Rabaul reached out to the districts, created paper, and established new-sources of labour supplies, as the periphery economies became dependent on the colonial capital. Another way of looking at this interdependenc.e is through the availability of manpower at controlled


prices to help keep down expenditure in departmental and district service accounts. From Agriculture and Audit to Wharves and Public Works, there was no central department that did not employ some New Guinea labour, usually on contract of service. Even a commission of enquiry into labour supplies incurred a labour charge of £909 for 1939/40 - probably for transport. More regular employers, such as the Lands and Survey Department, recorded very large increases in wages and allowances from 1932, when caniers were transported by air for work with surveyors on the gold fields. Less obviously, the Public Health Department expanded more than any other section by employing large teams in sanitation squads and labour lines for mosquito control, refuse burning, night soil disposal and carrying for medical patrols.

Enforcement of the regulations was in itself an important consumer of manpower. By far the most expensive of the central departments for labour was Police and Prisons. This arm of authority was only kept strong by incessant recruitment of new trainees and by increases in rates of pay and leave. Police also served as firemen and as an armed militia. After the Rabaul strike in January 1929 (see Gammage 1975), in which Police NCOs were prominent, the central training depot was closed down and the police were dispersed to the districts under warrant officers reinforced by members of the Auxiliary European Constabulary. In all, the cost of wages and allowances for Police and Prisons rose to over £5,000 a year, while the force expanded to just over a thousand men. Patrol reports frequently refer to their recruitment; and the care taken in assessing character reliability and the local influence of constables is testimony to the critical importance of these indentured officials.

The labour factor in the cost of administration helps explain government's sympathetic response to political pressures from other sectors in the interwar period. The Planters and Traders' Association had its mouthpiece in the Rabllul Times. The New Guinea Mining Association was a more ephemeral organisation and carried less weight than the principal mining companies or the meromtile companies which could exercise influence more directly through Commonwealth departmentsand the legislature. The missionaries did not speak with one voice but they could not be ignored and couk! make representation outside Australia to

Tile Long Apprenticeship 85

the League of Nations. All were employers of labour with a common interest in maintaining supply while perhaps reforming the conditions of recruitment.

Their forum in the territory, however, was carefully controlled. It was not till 1933 that seven non-official members were nominated to the legislature, representing a narrow spectrum of planters, lawyers and a few businessmen. They debated appropriations and passed or amended most important ordinances dealing with labour, shipping, markets and public works in the 1930s. They were outnumbered by officials from the Executive Council. But they had links with the Planters and Traders' Association, the Returned Soldiers League, and less directly with Chambers of Commerce, newspapers and politicians in Australia. On the whole, their time was taken up with the crisis in the plantation sector of the economy in the 1930s and with the emergence of gold mining and other sectors as employers of labour.

They had little success, however, in changing conditions of charging agreements or freight rates, though they did manage to secure relief from tax on sale of produce in Australia. They also succeeded in tightening elementary regulations on zoning internal coconut sales by barter or for cash so as to stop an alternative cash income to pay taxes and to keep native copra moving through plantation trade stations. Sc long as the custodian considered that native trading posed a threat to the value of expropriated properties this internal monopoly exercised by planters over the internal copra market was upheld.37

The miners, who were under-represented in the legislature, differed too much in the scale of their enterprise to speak with one voice. Their major advantage was to adapt labour regulations intended for agriculture to a totally different industry. Differences in scale of working practices between companies and, indi vidual tributers, employing their own labour, however, breached the standard procedures of the 1922 Ordinance and created a labour market in which skills and experience among New Guinean workers commanded higher prices. As a result of a report in 1931, mining indentures were extended from two to three years and the standard wage in the industry was allowed to rise to the maximum of 10 shillings per month. As the range of employment increased


at Morobe, however, there was considerable mobility and differentiation even for indentured labour employed by small tributers, contract mine workers, surface workers in charge of machinery and in commerce and domestic work at Salamaua and Wau.

The implications of this rapid development cannot be explored in detail here. But the indenture system carne under threat in 1935 and in 1941 from industrial disputes arising from company plans to substitute trained New Guinea labour for expensive Australians and the debatable recognition of a Miners' Union which did not include New Guinea workers (Newbury 1975). Administrative pressure and the fear of Administrator McNicoll that industrial awards might set a bad example for the agricultural sector prevented any revision of the 1922 Ordinance to encompass this development.

What is clear is that the unit cost of New Guinea mine labour for the independent miners and tributers was held down in the 1920s and 1930s by the practice of indenture.38 But for the big companies, labour charges for white employees, including housing, rations, transport and fares, were serious items in working costs. One of the points made by the general manager of New Guinea Goldfields during the 1941 strike was, that increased wages and shorter hours for whites would have to be met by enlarging the 1,500 strong complement of Melanesian workers and keeping the 48 hour week permitted by the Native Labour Ordinance.39 The system worked because much ofthe surface and underground work was carried out as a form of co-exploitation by white-supervised gangs of indentured labour whose numbers feature in the general returns of mining labour on the gold fields, but whose unit costs were borne by the contractors and tributers. It was, indeed, this very flexibility that both made it difficult for the administration to inspect and control labour at Morobe and complicated the trade disputes between white employees and the companies. Much of the mining inspection and the work of mining wardens was perfunctory (as their reports show). In one respect, too, mining was in competition with the administration, whose carriers invariably received lower rates than men who worked as casuals earning 10 shillings a month with extras for taking messages and mails.40


From the administration's viewpoint, mining and industry were regarded as valuable but potentially disruptive elements in an indentured labour system. Faced with this competition, the Planters' Association secured permission for a commission to examine the labour supply. By the time it had carried out its work, the first steps had been taken by the Commonwealth to review the wage structure of New Guinea workers and improve the political economy of the territory by setting up a Copra Control Marketing Board under National Security Regulations in 1941; and this became the model for more rigorous forms of state intervention in the wartime economy of Papua. Typically, the first three officials appointed to run the board were the manager of the Commonwealth Bank in Rabaul, the territory's Crown La wOfficer, and the delegate of the custodian, thus maintaining the primacy of investors and regulators of the plantations who had secured the revalued German properties two decades earlier. None of them had any knowledge of marketing. But they provided a continuity with the old Expropriation Board whose small staff carried on inspection work under their direction; and they were responsible through the Permanent Secretary of External Territories to the custodian whose office was still central to Commonwealth interest in the mortgaged properties which had failed to keep the high value set on them in the 1920s and on which large capital sums were still owing.

Recruitment, Tax and Labour

While there is a considerable literature on the regulatory aspects of labour migration in New Guinea, the precise influence of monetised forms of exchange and a developed requirement for cash is either ignored in the statistics of indenture or merely alluded to (McCarthy 1963; Curtain 1979). It has to be recognised, however, that the outstanding features of the controlled market for labour in New Guinea were first, suppression of alternative methods of making money from the copra trade, by upholding a planter / trader monopoly of purchase and processing; and second, a tax levy on villages that was uneven in its incidence and that could only be met by trade in surplus foodstuffs (to the administration) or by the return of time-expired workers with savings.


Basically, the demand for labour in the territory was a function of the plantation system model extended to other sectors of employment. Despite the recession of the 1930s, moreover, plantations increased in number to 517 by 1940, on 213,000 ha., half of which was under cultivation.41 If the rough ratio of workers to cultivated area demanded by the Expropriation Board had been adhered to (1 per 7.5 acres), then some 35,000 would have been required by 1940, instead of the 20,477 recorded for that year. This high demand and the unwillingness of planters or administration to encourage casual labour at higher rates from near-by sources placed a premium on long-distance recruitment and the astonishing geographical mobility of New Guinea labour.

No district was self-sufficient in contract labour; and all districts provided some kind of labour market at controlled terms (Shlomowitz 1986: table 3). Settlements and plantations were scattered in small clusters and linked by sea, the walking pace of carriers, by air and by radio. The sudden growth of the mining industry expanded the number of work sites competing for the same sources of labour located in the rural reserves, but did not result in a mining town or urban agglomeration larger· than Rabaul, Lae,Salamauaor Madang, which had populations ranging from about 7,000 to under a thousand persons.

For the inter-war period about half of the indentured labour force was employed in New Britain and New Ireland, and a further 15% was employed in the Australian Solomons and Manus District. Tl)ese markets decreased their share, as Morobe District expanded demand. For the whole period Morobeabsorbed as much wage labour as New Ireland and equalled New Britain as a market by the late 1930s.

The geographical mobility of labour is also illustrated by the statistics of recruitment by districts of contract (Table 3). The percentage of contract labour transferred increased in the interwar period by 9%. In short, well over one-third of contract labourers were recruited outside their districts of employment, and this is almost certainly an understatement of mobility in tennsofseparation from home villages by transfers within districts. New Britain, New Ireland and Manus were the largest importers of labour. Kieta, Madang and Aitape/Sepik were net export e-rsof


Table 3: Geographical Mobility of contracted labour

Year Labou r Transferred % of Labour Em ployed % of Ending between Districts total in District of Con tract total 30 June

1923 7,682 31,1 17,019 68,9 1924 8,191 32.6 16,973 67,5 1925 8,377 35,8 15,044 64.2 1926 9,092 38,6 14,477 61 ,4 1927 10,096 37,4 16,906 62,6 1928 10,442 37,0 17,811 63,0 1929 10,802 35,6 19,523 64,4 1930 10,931 36,3 19,199 63,7 1931 10,401 37,5 17,307 62,5 1932 9,267 34,8 17,389 65,2 1933 9,730 34,5 18,512 65,5 1934 11,715 38,3 13,880 61,7 1935 13,848 40,7 20, 145 59,3 1936 15,641 42,4 21,286 57,6 1937 17,161 42,6 23,098 57,4 1938 17,241 41,2 24,608 58,8 1939 16,919 40,6 24,756 59,4 1940 15,818 40,2 23,526 59,8

Source: AnnUill Reports. There was also a transfer of labour between administra tive districts within New Britain and New Ireland for which sta ti stics are not available for the whole period.

labour. In Morobe, the district labour market changed to net imports from 1928.

The absurdities of some of these transfers are clear from the case of islands in the Manus District which exported a rising percentage of recruited workers, while importing half the local labour force. Similarly, New Ireland imported some 50% of its indentured labour, while continuing to export recruits every year. Explanations for this ebb and flow tum not on choice of location or wage differentials, but on regulation and active recruitment. Labour had to be sought out, transported, kept at the job and either repatriated or re-contracted. In these circumstances opportunity-response and simple push-pull theories have very little explanatory value (Mitchell 1962). Why should villagers with standard contracts and wages find more opJX>rtunity in transferring between New Britain and New Ireland? Why was it

90 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.1B, 1994/95

necessary for labour recruited in Morobe to proceed eastwards to New Ireland or the Solomons, when mining and services required identical indentures nearer home?

The initial reason for widespread dispersal was the existence of a professional brokerage developed from German times. Without this service industry, which responded to the high price offered for long indentures, the economy would have relied on casuals, or the administration would have financed a labour bureau (as was sometimes suggested by district officials). The methods used by recruiters and by employers licensed to recruit have been sufficiently well documented to account for the steady flows -by intimidation, bribes, deception, the use of intermediaries (village officials, big men, indentured villagers and even police (Reed 1943; Curtain 1978). High-powered rifles, plugs of gelignite, shotguns, as well as trade goods and hand money, played their part. Transfers between planters and recruiters were not unknown. The term for recruitment - bairn boi, or pulirn boi in more outrageous cases - is fair shorthand for the New Guinea laboUl trade.

Almost any European, except an official, could recruit labour for private employers. The number of licences issued annually increased from 400 to 500 and more, 1929-1930; and recruiting and indenture fees brought in a steady £4,000 to £5,000 every year. New Guinea workers could be drafted as assistants and sent unsupervised into villages, a practice defended by a planter on the grounds that "good native recruiters going into civilised villages or to their own villages in uncontrolled areas would be safer, more efficient, and saving the white man's dignity and comfort".42 Such assistants were termed, more honestly, in the language of the professional recruiters - "gunboys". The payment of bonuses to headmen, it was admitted in 1935, had "led to a great deal of extortion" and was abolished in the revised Labour Ordinance ofthat year.43 But advances to recruits continued and were scaled from 10 shillings to £1, according to length of contract. The principle of excluding officials from the business of recruitment did not apply ,of course, to work for the administration; and officials presided at key stages of the contract system - signing on, hearing complaints, arranging payment of deferred wages, and repatriation. Their ability to check on the willingness of recruits to "make paper" mayor may not have been exercised


with any thoroughness. In one description of the process, new indentures were rehearsed in a charade of consent and prompted by the gunboys "to hold up three fingers and nod" in reply to perfunctory questions by the Assistant District Officer.44

In addition to labour brokers, the head tax was regarded by contemporaries as an important instrument for stimulating recruitment. The evidence of tax/labour correlations by districts of collection and recruitment suggests that this may well be so, particularly at the initial phase of opening up an area in the 1920s.45 It should be remembered, however, that a simple mechanistic explanation of this sort ignores the peculiarities of New Guinea head tax which fell on males not indentured and which may, therefore, have declined in effectiveness as wellrecruited areas were drained of contributors. In more general terms, tax assessment in villages was part of a wider process of incorporation by degrees into a barter and cash system of exchanges, and this process operated on New Guinea society at very different rates over a long period of intermittent contact with the outside world and its agencies.

For example, when the first census was made of villages near Ambunti in the Sepik in 1927, "Natives were warned that they would have to contribute to the Head Tax next year".46 For local males liable for tax, the option was indentured labour or some other way of raising cash. The Sepik as a whole at this stage exhibited a negative tax/labour correlation, with low payments and high recruitment, as might be expected from districts faced with this dilemma. After 1928, however, patrol reports indicate increased levels of exchange for sago, fish, tobacco, shell, shell rings and labour for the administration. Fiscal pressure was accompanied by market opportunity at a fairly limited level. For 1930/31,£1,178 was collected in the Ambuntistationarea. Forthe next fiscal year, patrols moved on into river and coastal villages previously untouched by tax demands, collecting small sums with no defaulters. Sales of foodstuffs to government posts (and to the patrols themselves) provided some of this cash, concluded J. K. McCarthy, but less than the "outside sources" from returned labourers and initial payments of hand money to recruits!7 For this phase, 1929/1934, tax and labour recruitment returns in the Sepik show a positive correlation; and this may simply mean that


more active labour brokerage was accompanied by expanded trade. Both tax and labour continued toshow a positive correlation through the 1930s, but tax was probably irrelevant to the rate of recruitment by 1940.

The general conclusion, then, is that tax "pressure" was important in the absence of alternative possibilities for cash accumulation, especially at the early stage of administrative contact. If the tax and labour series provided by the Annual Reports aie given standard correlation tests for the twenty year period, 1920/21-1939/40, for the territory as a whole, then a distinct pattern emerges. The series falls into three phases: (1) from 1922 to 1928, when taxes rose steeply and indentured recruitment lagged behind, before recovering in 1926; (2) 1929 to 1934, when tax and labour remained stead y and moved in parallel; (3) from 1934 to 1940, when a negative correlation set in and tax totals declined as recruitment rose. Qualitative evidence, should, therefore, be compared with this more general evolution. Oral evidence collected post-war simply states that: lithe pattern was for many men to go away to work on plantations. They would get cargo to bring back home to their village and money to pay the tax" (Curtain 1978: 47). But that pattern is capable of considerable refinement over the longer period apprenticeship in the sale of labour time and commercial transactions which began in differen t sections of New Guinea society at different times.

In the case of Morobe district, this initial stimulus was soon overtaken by ruthless recruiting techniques and a general expansion of market exchanges with the gold fields which allowed fortunate villages to pay tax withoufhaving to indeI1ture. Some villages in the Watut and on the Zeneg slopes near Tungu post had high cash earnings from the sale of foodstuffs to miners; and one (Galawo) was reported to be "a very rich village" with an average income per month of over f3() "in a good season".48 Probably this was exceptional, though patrol reports for the Buang in Morobe in 1936 are positive that taxes carne from cash earned from the sale of produce, including kau kau and European vegetables, to government. The strong positive correlation of tax payments with recruitment in Morobe throughout the inter-war period seems to reflect a rising cash accumulation from both labour and trade eamings.


On the other hand it has been pointed out that Australian Solomons society had few opportunities other than indentured labour to pay taxes, because the per capita return from wages in the 1930s was only about 6 shillings (Oliver 1973: 108-09). Kieta District displayed a steady positive correlation of tax payments and local labour recruitment, as did New Britain and New Ireland - all districts which had probably passed through the' tax inducemental stage of forced accumulation during the German and early Australian period. But on the plantation and mining frontiers of the mainland, this pressure overtook villagers at a later date in the late 1920s . .

Another way of looking at tax and labour returns is in relation to census enumeration. Ainsworth did this irl his. report in order to demonstrate the burden of taxes on the rna\e population for the year 1922/23; and other observers made similarealculations to estimate the potential reserve of males for labour in the territory.49 The average tax and labour percentages of male adult enumerations for the period 1927-1940 confirm the position of Manus, New Ireland, New Britain, Kietaand Madangasrel~tively high tax payers, compared with higher labour reCruitment horn Aitape/Sepik and Morobe (see Table 4). Madang seems to have contributed both high taxes and labour in proportion to the census of males. The very high percentage of tax from Manus would seem to indicate alternative sources of cash income'by sale of crops in a small population where indentured labour was highly unpopular.

Table 4: Tax and labour percentages of male adult enumerations

Average Male Adult Enumeration Taxpayers as % Contract Labour as % 1927-1940: '000 of Male Adults of Male Adults

Manus 5.6 40.0 16.2

New Ireland 20.5 35.2 19.3

lGeta 16.7 29.4 26,2

Madang 23.6 29.9 21.4 .

New Britain 35.9 28.1 17.3

Aitape/Sepik 39.5 15.5 21 .0

Morobe 36.0 14.0 16~0


Some of the more detailed effects of recruitment were measured at subdivisionallevel in Morobe in the late 1930s by L. G. Vial (1938). Although his study is more concerned with the decline of populations under "control", a correlation between tax and indenture is admitted in the practice of exempting villages with too many male absentees. In such cases, youths and men at the lower and upper ends of the age scale (fifteen to forty years) were not taxed, in order to avoid forcing them onto the labour market. The long-term effect of high taxation, concluded Vial, was to consolidate the workforce of more or less permanently absent males who returned only briefly between contracts to contribute towards taxes paid by their male kin:

It seems that the normal development of a subdivision isa fairly rapid increase in the percentage ofindentured labourers from nought to about 20% of the adult males as it is brought under control. In this early stage the people recruit regularly for the novelty of going away to work or to obtain the steel which they have seen to be much superior to their own implements. During the time between the first warning to prepare for taxation and two or three years after tax is first collected the figure rises to about 30% and then there is a gradual decline to 10% or 15% as other means of making money are discovered (Vial 1938: 394).

The" other means" are not discussed, and Vial's declining percentages seem a little low for the older districts of indenture and trade. Much depended on the degree of exposure to recruiters. As W. C. Groves noted for another part of the territory, labour demand carne first, followed by "labour exhaustion" and the benevolent protection of the administration:

Practically every adult male in Tabar, including the old men, had been at one time or another away from the village, working for a European or Asiatic. The story of European contact at Tabar is, in fact, that of the labour recruiter (Groves 1935).


In short, incidence of recruitment and tax was very uneven, depending on accessibility and to a lesser extent on the work of patrols and cash alternatives. Where force was used, the incidence could be high. The Phillips Commission into recruitment abuses in 1927 found that in one village with 61 "able-bodied" males, some fifty-three were absent on contract.50 Other villages were untouched.

Thus, the formation of an indentured work force was neither completel y haphazard nor completely controlled. Labour brokerage was probably mo.re important than head tax; but both were features of incorporation of New Guinea society into trading markets for goods and labour time. Arguably, too, the effects of the system were accumulative, in the sense that recruits remained absent for long periods and were at the mercy of officials and employers who made the rules. Labourers who were re-engaged after one contract made up a rising percentage of new contracts every year, 1927-1940. This was particularly true of workers signed on for Morobe, where over half of the indentured work force was re-signed from 1936. In the last Annual Report for the pre-war period, re-contracted workers were also listed by district of birth. This would indicate that by 1939/40 a very high percentage of recruits from Morobe re-indentured (74%) and a fair percentage of those from New Ireland (40%). The lowest percentage of re-indentured workers was among those born in Aitape/Sepik, most of whom worked outside their home district (18.7%) and madeup over one quarter of the territory's indentured labour.

There was also a shift towards longer three-year indentures and delays in the obligation to repatriate a worker, if a new contract was signed in the last three months of service. Consequently, the legal maximum of five years indenture in two contracts was stretched considerably. In Morobe this trend was towards labour stabilisation, seen in the high percentage of local re-signs and the greater numbers of casual workers on the gold fields. The mining companies, moreover, had a lower turnover of indentured workers than plantations.51


Conclusion

By the end of the 1930s, there were signs that the political economy of New Guinea was beginning to outgrow the constraints of a labour system designed for rural plantations and extended to every industrial and urban sector. The administration made every effort to use the rural reserve as way of supporting the cost of male indentures and preserving the obligation to repatriate workers and prevent a casual work force expanding in the urban areas. Resistance to the system is fairly well documented in the record of penal sanctions applied for disobedience, arson, neglect of crops and livestock and desertion. Patrol reports rarely fail to list the names of current absconders in a district. Some raised the practice to a fine art, as in a case cited by Downs for the Amari area in 1936:

The deserter Samapia (apprehended) made a contract giving fictitious names for his village, luluai and next of kin. He later deserted and returned to his village. Whenever na ti ve police or officers entered the area he made for big centres, such as Lae, Bulolo or Wau. He remained at large for two and a half years. Sosuccessful was he that he sent impudent and defiant messages to his late employer, and urged others to emulate him.52

The growth in the numbers of workers convicted under the Labour Ordinance reflects an increase in such forms of resistance, given the high proportion of desertio.n cases. Labour offences, moreover, do not include convictions in the Nati ve Affairs Courts for breaches of the curfew regulations (seven or eight hundred a year) or a very large number of convictions for gambling (846 by 1939/40).

A second form of resistance was theft of plantation coconuts for sale, and precautions against this clandestine market had been taken since German times, without ever eliminating it entirely. The gold fields gave greater opportunity for this form of enterprise, wherever labour was left in charge of workings. The urban areas also presented opportunities for making small gains through, or in spite of, the labour system. New Guinea printing workers who were paid as much as 6 shillings per day by the manager of the


Rabaul Times, used their spare hours and savings to invest in copra driers in 1937.53 The "sale" of jobs to new employees for a percentage of wages was not unknown.

But in truth the territory was so comprehensively geared to a narrow range of exports tha t secondary industry and services which might have exploded the monopoly of the indenture system by offering alternative employment did not develop very far. Two decades of Australian rule were not long enough to establish a reforming programme of investment and development. So much of that period was ~aken up with the makeshift agency of the Expropriation Board, before the partial collapse of the copra market, that the administration's first responsibility was to preserve intact the structures it inherited. Compared with colonies of similar s.ize, moreover, there was an absence of district or provincial institutions run by senior officials with a grasp of the special requirements of their own areas. Ainsworth's suggestion for three provinces was never seriously examined. His other observation that the territory lacked markets and suffered from tightly controlled regulations to cover every possible transaction was also apposite; but his suggested solution -an influx of Asianswas not acceptable. The location of power lay in Rabaul and Canberra; and the executives were administrative explorers -patrol officers - rather than regional commissioners.

The weak institutions of the territory, therefore, left a good deal of real power and influence in the hands of unofficial agencies -merchants, traders, recruiters, as well as the missionaries. The territory depended for its vital communications on copra boats and the air services introduced for mining companies. The formal channels representing the views of these agencies were also weak. When crises arrived, such as the Rabaul strike or the disruption ofthe gold fields in the 1930s by labour and management troubles, there was no machinery to debate past policies and frame new ones. The range of topics dealt with by the Legislati ve Council concentrated on matters arising from the financial health of a single industry.

Yet it would be wrong to suggest that New Guinea was locked in a static framework, because of its widespread practice of labour indenture. The political economy has the appearance of an Australian monopoly which looked less certain by the end of the

98 Journal of Pacific Studies, V01.18, 1994/95

1930s. Just over half of the non-indigenous population of 6,500 was of British origins, and well over one quarter was Chinese. The rest were a mixture of nationalities, including 470 Germans who were still the second largest European group. The half million New Guineans on the census of villages (certainly an undercount) supplied just over 40,000 indentured workers and unknown numbers of casual workers. The administration also drew on this source. Quite large numbers of New Guineans were already familiar with the small urban and industrial centres on the gold fields and at the ports. The numbers of indentured and casual workers engaged in mining, domestic service, shipping, commerce and industry were not far short of those employed in agriculture. The continuous revision of regulatory controls was a sign that a system designed for a plantation mode of production operated with difficulty in the commercial and mining centres of Rabaul and Morobe. Paradoxically, the biggestchallenge to the indentured labour system was gold mining which exploited its advantages and offered opportunities to test its constraints.

Despite this development which raised Australian and international stakes in the territory, it proved very difficult to diversify New Guinea's exports (as the Germans had tried to do) or to encourage commercial agriculture outside the plantations. The Department of Agriculture was able to demonstrate in the 1930s that Ra baul hot air dried copra was only slightl y inferior to the product of the Straits or the Dutch East Indies; and by 1935 most of the territory'S copra export was of this quality. The premium received by planters for extra care in preparation was about 50% above the lowest prices in the depression period. The possibility of local milling was also explored in detail and the advantages of copra by-products considered. It was never clear, however, how to overcome Commonwealth resistance to processed imports. Failing any changes in the capitalisation, production or marketing of the territory's second largest industry, sensitive to settler and mercantile pressures, the indentured system was retained to minimise risk and working costs in what was a labour intensive industry. For its own purposes the mining industry followed the regulations made for planters; and the administration which was also an employer of low-cost labour endorsed them to keep the political economy going.


NOTES

National Library of Australia (NLA), 52/346; Hunt to Murray, 19 Oct 1914; Australian Archives, Canberra Office (AA), A456 1917/ 361, Holmes to Patey, 14 Sept 1914,encl. in Patey to Naval Board, 21 Sept 1914; AA All 08 59 section B, Burns Philp to Hunt, 3 Sept 1914; Hunt to Defence, 4 Sept 1914. For the background, see Newbury 1988.

NLA, Holmes to Defence, 26 Dec 1914, W. Holmes MSS, Uncat. 15/1.

Commonwealth Parlia~entary Papers (CPP), 1920-21, vol. 3, Interim and Final Reports of the Royal Commission on Late German New Guinea, pp.42-43.

The most detailed report on the assets of German companies and private planters listed a total ofl19,243 ha. for some 250 plantations with a culivated area of 47,716 ha. About half of the cultivated area consisted of palms planted before 1915 and a small proportion of New Guinea stands (8.3%) taken into plantation estates. The other half of the cultivated area consisted of new trees or replanting from early 1915. CPP, 1923-24, vol. 4, Report on Expropriated Properties and Businesses, by Yanvood, Vane and Co., with Mason Allard. The general report by Cobcroft, a plantation manager from Samoa, covers his inspection in 1923 and is undated, but was probably written between March and May 1924.

5 CPP, Territory of New Guinea Annual Reports, 1921-1922 (for details of the Native Labour Consolidation Ordinance, 1920); and Annual Report, 1921/22. 6 The evidence of rising plantation costs for rations, stores, medical expenses (64-100%), 1914-1921, is culled from CPP, 1917-18, p.66, British and Australian Trade in the South Pacific: report and evidence; Rabaul Record, 1 Feb, 1 April 1917; and the following plantation records from Burns Philps and Company Archives (BPA), Fisher Library, University of Sydney-namely, "Rough Costs Book, 1915-17", "Plantation Companies Annual Working 1918-24, no.4" and "Plantation Companies Annual Figures, 1921-22". By contrast, wages rose only 6% over the same period.


Rabaul Record, 1 July, 1 Nov, 1916, 1 April, 1 May, 1 June 1917; AA A 3934 SC 30, Mackenzie, ' ~Promoting British interest in German New Guinea", 4 May 1916; Sydney Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report and Members' Directory, 1915, pp.23, 61, and 1916, p.45.

NLA, 696/7032-7151, Burns to Munro-Ferguson, 25 Nov 1918. The Treaty of Peace Act was passed by the Commonwealth Parliament and assented to on 28 Oct 1919 and came into force from 10 Jan 1920.

9 AA A 2939 SC 116, Circular, 15 Oct 1916, and Pethebridge memorandum, 25 Oct 1916. Hughes approved this policy in September 1917.

10 NLA, 52/1627, Atlee Hunt, "Memorandum for Cabinet", 29 Mar 1920. Hunt was instrumental in speeding up the acceptance of Lucas's proposals.

11 CPP, 1917-18, British and Australian Trade in the South Pacific, Report, pp.57-66.

12 NLA, 696/6664-6685,Johnston to Munro-Ferguson, 15 Oct 1919; Johnston to Ferrands, 20 Oct 1919.

13 CCP, 1923-24, Report on Expropriated Properties, p.38.

14 CPP, 1929, Vol. 2, Report of the Auditor-General, 1928-1929, pp.32-33.

15 AA, F 840/1/3, Wisdom, memorandum, 23 June 1921; Native Labour Ordinance, 1922, in wws of the Territory of New Guinea, vol. 3, pp.149-93.

16 Annual Report, 1921-22, pp.54-55.

17 AA, A 518 Q 840/1/3 Pt. 1, Minute, 8 Dec 1922.

18 Annual Report of the Territory of New Guinea to the League of Nations, 1921-22,§201,304.

19 Ibid., §208.


20 CPP, 1923-24, vol. 4, Report by Colonel John Ainsworth ... .on Administrative Arrangements and Matters affecting the interests of the Natives in the Territory of New Guinea, p.21. Ainsworth had been employed in the British East Africa Company to organise transport and labour in Uganda and became a provincial official and Chief Native COmmissioner of Nyanza Province, Kenya. He had implemented forced labour policies in 1923 and made a very summary inspection, to judge from his diary. Rhodes House Library (Oxford), Ainsworth Papers, African MSS. s.782 1/3.

21 AA, CP 290/13, Wisdom to McClaren, 23 June 1924.

22 AA (Melbourne), MP 230/1/922, C.H. Ling to Auditor.

23 AA (Melbourne), MP 230/1/922; AA (Canberra), A 571/46/7.

24 AA, F 840/1 /3 for disputes and the case of plantation inspector P. Shelley convicted for flogging a labourer.

25 AA, A43229 /1859; Sale of Expropriated Properties ... in the Territory of New Guinea (Melbourne, 1926-27); Custodian of Expropriated Properties, List of New Guinea Properties Sold by the Custodian of Expropriated Property as at 1st. January 1928.

26 AA, A 518 D818/1, Custodian to Home and Territories, 18 May 1928 (encl. list of clients); Wisdom to Prime Minister's Department, 14 May 1931 (encl. copies of indentures and mortgage agreements).

27 CCP, vol. 4, 1929-31, Report of the Auditor-General, p.31.

28 The Melanesia Company was a 'front' from 1926 for the Disconto Gesellschaft and Warburg & Co. of Hamburg. It went into liquidation in 1931.

29 Annual Report, 1921-22, Appendix B, p .75.

30 NLA, Report of a Commission to Inquire into the Matter of Native lilbour in the Territory, 17 Sept 1941, pp.9-12.

31 Annual Report, 1914-1921, Appendix G; CCP, General, vol. 2, p.962 and Appendix L.

102 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.lB, 1994/95

32 CCP, 1923-24, vol. 3, p.154; CCP, 1926-27-28, vol. 3; Auditor-General's Report for 1924-25, p.36.

33 Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Canberra (PMB) 607, I.F.G. Downs, Report, Salamaua, 1 Mar 1937 (for Nov-Dec 1936).

34 AA, A 518 AD 841/1/3, Commission of Inquiry, p .9.

35 PMB 602, Townsend, station diaries.

36 PMB 607, Downs, report of Hagen-Sepik patrol, 24 Jan 1939.

37 The issue of trading cannot be discussed in detail here. See AA, A 518 X 840/1/3, "Native Trade Board of Inquiry"; Legislative Council Debates, 7 Feb, 8 Feb 1934, 16 Jan 1935.

38 AA, AM 834/2, Report, 7 Feb 1933.

39 AA, AV 834/2 Pt. 3.

40 AA, 1782 C 85.

41 Dwyer 1941. Slightly different figures are given in An Economic and Cost Survey of the Copra Industry in the Territory of Papua New Guinea, Department of Commerce and Agriculture Bulletin No.9 (Canberra, 1953), p.6 Only about 1.5% of the total area of the territory was appropriated for administrative useand foreign plantations, though the ratio of alienated land to arable and viIIage lands was certainly much higher. The amount of freehold remained much as in the German period, but total area roughly doubled after 1916 under the leasehold system introduced in 1922. By the rnid-1930s over 300 new leases had been granted, half of which were under 100 ha. By the end of the 1930s the area under alien culti vation amounted toone-third of the appropriated area which stood at 365,602 ha.

42 V.A. Pratt, in Legislative Council Debates, 15 Jan 1935.

43 E.W.P. Chinnery, in Legislative Council Debates, 15 Jan 1935.

44 R.A. Beazley, cited in Curtain 1978:109. ThePhiIIipsCommission report of May 1928 (AA, AD 840/1/3) uncovered a good deal of evidence on recrui ters' methods.


45 Annual Reports, 1920/21-1939/40.

46 PMB 602, Woodman, 19 Aug 1927. For the Native Taxes Ordinance, see Annual Report, 1921-22, p.l02.

47 PMB 602, McCarthy, 3 July 1930.

48 PMB 918, Downs, 1 March 1939. Tax and labour returns for Morobe exhibit a strong correlation (rH 0.84) throughout all phases of recruitment. The district supplied most of its external labour, allowing wages to be returned to villages for tax payments more frequently than elsewhere. There was also more casual labour for carrying after 1928.

49 NLA, "Report of a Commission", 17 Sept 1941.

50 AA, A 518 AD 840/1/3, Phillips Commission report, May 1928, 161.

51 AA, A 518 A 824/2, Warden's report, 30 June 1936.

52 PMB 607, report and diary, 12 Nov 1936.

53 PMB 603, Hoogerwerf to Mouton, 2 Feb 1937.


REFERENCES

CHINNERY, E.W.P., 1932. "Applied Anthropology in New Guinea", Report of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, 31: 165-82.

CURTAIN, Richard, 1978. "Labour Migration from the Sepik", Oral History, 6(9): 1-114.

CURTAIN, Richard, 1979. "Sepik Labour Migration: causes and consequences", PhD thesis, Australian National University.

DWYER, R.E.P., 1941. "Rubber Production inNewGuinea and Papua", New Guinea Agricultural Gazette, 2(2): 249-79.

GAMMAGE, Bill, 1975. "The Rabaul Strike, 1929", Journal of Pacific History, lO(3): 3-29.

GROVES, W.c., 1935. "Anthropology and Native Administration in New Guinea", Oceania, 6: 147-52.

McCARTHY, J.K., 1963. Patrol into Yesterday. Melbourne: Cheshire. MITCHELL, J.c., 1962. "Wage Labour and Population Movements in

Central Africa", in K. Barbour and R. Pothero (eds), Essays in African Population. New York: Praeger Press.

NEWBURY,Colin,1975. "Colour Bar and Labour Conflict on the New Guinea Goldfields, 1935-1941", Australian Journal of Politics and History, 21(3): 25-38.

NEWBURY, Colin, 1988. "Spoils of War: sub-imperial collaboration in South West Africa and New Guinea", Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 16(3): 86-106.

OLIVER, Douglas, 1973. Bougainville: a personal history Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

REED, S.W., 1943. The Making of Modern New Guinea. Philadelphia: American Philosophic Society.

SHLOMOWITZ, Ralph, 1986. "The Internal Labour Trade in Papua (1884-1941) and New Guinea (1920-1941): an economic analysis", Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes, 82-83: 176-87.

TOWNSEND, Don, 1980. Economic Integration, Opportunity Structure and Migration in Papua New Guinea. Occasional Paper no. 80. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies.

VIAL, L.G., 1938. "Some Statistical Aspects of Population in the Morobe District, New Guinea", Oceania, 8(4): 383-97.

1915-1941 colin newbury linacre college, oxford

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