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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (March 16, 1899)
'f"i ' ' " I' ' , ' , VX4 ' , ' * * * ? V- . v1'iht * < lifvitt * " ' % ' * Cbe Conservative. ing knife and the nxo would bo quicldy turned against the driver in these latter days. Then no longer believe that the European is interested in their welfare , and arc well aware ( hat they arc cheated out of a large proportion of the value of the coffee harvest. However much the colonist may regret it , the period of darkness is passing away and the time of coercion in Java giving place to bet ter conditions , and any attempt to stay the tide of progress will only call forth the enmity of the natives. The Malay spirit of revenge has done much , per haps , to bring about the present govern mental era of comparative kindness , fair dealing and justice in Java. " The state committee on government coffee plantations says in its latest re ports : "If the native has not become more progressive and sensible , ho is , at least , wiser in matters about which ho should be kept in the dark , unless the govern ment means to remove coercion at the expense of the exchequer. " The army of the Netherlands is well paid and cared for. After the Indian mutiny the Dutch wore in great fear of an uprising in Java and placed less con fidence in native troops. Only Euro peans can hold officers' commissions. The native troops are all Mohammedan ; care is exercised to prevent natives of any one district or province from com posing a majority in any regiment , and they are frequently changed from one post to another. The Dutch officials condescend equally to the rich planters and the native princes , while the planters hate and deride - ride the officials , and the natives hate the Dutch of either class and despise their own princes who are subservient to the foreigners. The wars and jeal ousies of rank and race , and the caste dis tinction resulting from the intermingling of the white and dark meet , flourish with tropical luxuriance , The Dutch do not allow the yellow colonials ( Arabs and Chinese and their offspring ) so-called European freedom , an expression which constitutes a suffi cient admission of the existence of re straint over the Asiatics. The native hatred of Chinese is the inheritance of those past centuries when the Dutch farmed out the revenue to Chinese. Under this system the Chinese were given thousands of acres of land with its concomitant servile Malay labor. These boundaries werogradally extended and by increased exactions and secret levies the wretched natives wore op pressed by their Asiatic brethren in a manner that the tyranny and rapacity of the Dutch never approached. Today the Chinese hold financial supremacy over both Dutch and natives , in appreci ation of which they are unmercifully taxed by the Dutch. Formerly the Cel estials were assessed according to the length of their queues and for each long finger nail. They are mulcted on or rival and departure , for births , deaths , and for every business privilege. In 1740 the Chinese fomented insurrection against the Dutch , joining with the dis affected natives. They intrenched them selves in a suburban fort which the Dutch invested , and the 20,000 Chinese then within the walls were put to death , neither ago nor sex being spared. Many officials and planters have mar ried native wives and in the eyes of the law these wives enjoy the privileges in full of Europeans. No native man is al lowed to marry or employ a European , not oven as a tutor or governess , and no such subversion of social order as the employment of a European servant is to be thought of. The laws allow a Euro pean to put away his native wife , to bo divorced from her upon the slightest pre text or to abandon her and her children with small risk of their obtaining re dress. Railway trains in Java do not run at night , ( though night service would be a great advantage in a hot country ) , for the reason that train crows are com posed entirely of natives ( such work be ing considered beneath the dignity of Europeans ) , and the cautious Dutch will not trust native engineers after dark. Dutch affairs in Sumatra are not so prosperous. In 1872 the Dutch received Sumatra from the English in exchange for the imaginary rights of Holland in Ashauteo and the gold coast of Africa. The natives of Sumatra , warned by the sad fate of the Javanese , have resisted , and the warfare is still in progress Dutch commanders are well satisfied to hold their chain of forts along the west ern hills. In the province of Atchoen the war has been almost continuous , and the native population has in thirty years been reduced from 4150 thousand to less than 800 thousand. In one of four years of the war , xcventy million guilders were spent and seventy out of ever/ ; hundred Dutch soldiers succumbed to the climate before going into an encounter. At Batavia , the principal city of Java , which was originally situated in the midst of a deadly swamp , the mortality was appalling and the settlement in its early years was known as the graveyard of Europeans. Dutch records show that at Batavia 1,119,876 deaths occurred be tween the years 1780 and 1752 , or in 22 years ; and 87,000 soldiers and sailors died in the government hospitals be tween the years 1714 and 1776. To indicate the small per cent of whites to Malays , I mention , in passing , that at the present time the total popu lation of the district known as the Malay Straits Settlements is probably 650 thousand , of whom not four thous and are whites. Other Colonies. "Our attention in these days is fre quently called to the admirable , and , in many respects , successful administra tive machinery introduced by Great Britain in India. But it must not bo forgotten that this machinery was evolved from several centuries of rapine , corruption , disastrous blunders , savage struggles , murderous revolts and inde scribable cruelties , and that oven now many wise men in England gravely doubt in their hearts whether it was best for their country to undertake the conquest of India at all , and are troubled by gloomy forebodings of a cal amitous catastrophe that may some day engulf that splendid fabric of Asiatic dominion. " A word as to colonies further north : Macao , a Portuguese settlementfouuded 850 years ago on a little peninsula some 50 miles south of Hong Kong , has a pop ulation of 80,000 ; of whom 75,000 are Asiatics Chinese , Siamese , a few Filipinos pines and Japanese , and the usual quota of half castes , leaving but 5,000 people who may be classed as Europeans. This colony has a Portuguese governor- general and a body of troops , and its administration is but a travesty on col onial management. The greatest local revenue is derived froni the licenses issued ( sued to keepers of Chinese gambling houses , where fan tan is played , and probably the next largest incomes ac crue from opium boiling licenses and the monopoly controlling 'ricksha rentals. Hong Kong , the brightest jewel in Britain's imperial colonial crown , more properly called the Victoria Colony , on the little island at the mouth of the Pearl river , is one of the world's great est entrepots a free port and has a population of 250,000 , only 10,000 of whom are whites. Hero , as in all Orien tal colonies , there is no opportunity af forded the white laboring man to earn a livelihood. To illustrate by just one example : the Hong Kong Metropolitan Dock Co. has seven docks , and largo machine shops ; employing in round figures 8,000 Chinese. All these are di rected and controlled by only half a dozen Caucasians. Most of the steamer lines sailing from the Orient , including the three companies running thence to San Francisco , are manned by Asiatic crews. These facts I present for the cousid- oration of the laboring men of the United States of America. In discussing the question of making tropical colonies commercially profit able , and talcing the Congo Free State , because of its freedom from national rivalries , as a i'airoxample , Mr. Court ney , president of the royal statistical so ciety of Great Britain , says that nine out of eveiy ten Europeans going to tropical colonies are either buried or re turn home invalided within three years ; that the largest of the 120 Belgian trad ing companies maintains a service of only seven months out of every twenty- four. Against such a death rate no commercial profits can be shown. The ' daring colonizers have labored and per-
