Indentured Labour
lain would not be forthcoming. The House laughed. Within six months of passage of the measure for the abolition of Chinese indentured labour, every Chinese labourer had been repatriated bag and baggage. The mines survived the shock. They discovered other methods of life. And now be it said to the credit of the mine-owners as well as of the Conservatives who opposed the measure, that both these classes recognise that the abolition was a great deliverance.
Indian indentured labours is not less demoralising. It has persisted because its bitterness like that of a sugared pill has been cleverly though unconsciously concealed. The one great distinction between the two classes was that the Chinese were brought in without a single woman with them, whereas every hundred Indian labourers must include forty women among them. Had the Chinese remained they would have sapped the very foundations of the society. The Indian labourers confine the evil to themselves. This may be unimportant to non-Indians. But for us, the wonder is that we have allowed the sin to continue so long. The business about the women is the weakest and the irremediable
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