CO129-522-9 Chinese labour in Western Samoa 22-10-1929 - 19-1-1931 — Page 14

NOTE.

14

In 1919 the New Zealand Goverment, as

Mandatory for Western Samoa,requested the

assistance of His Majesty's Government and the

Hong Kong Goverment in obtaining indentured

Chinese labourers for the territory. After

some correspondence the Governor of Hong Kong

was informed in 1920 that he might permit

recruitment of such labour in Hong Kong, subject

to the observance of the local law as to Chinese

passengers, which presumably meant that labourers

must be technically free, that is, not have

signed any contract when they left Hong Kong.

The correspondence is printed in Command.919.

Although Chinese labour was wanted in Samoa

Chinese settlers were not, and in 1921 a request

from the Chinese Government that labourers

whose contracts had expired might be allowed

to remain was refused. They could enter

into a second indenture for three years making

six years in all, but beyond that the New

Zealand authorities would not allow them to stay.

(See 18155/21 and 39318/21)

In 1923 new terms and conditions for Agree-

ments for Chinese labour were brought into

force (See 44670/23 and 11713/24. The previous

system had apparently been an ordinary inuentured

system. Under the new one it was stated that

all inuenturea labourers would became free

labourers, but I am not sure that this is strictly

true.

The general effect of the system, which,

so far as we know, still remains in force, is that

the