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This Peruvian Amazon Company was being floated. It was not in the hands of the British directors more than two or three years before it was floated in London, and in order to bring it to such a paying state as to tempt British capital it was important to have as much rubber collected in a short time as possible, so that from the reports it could be shown that there was a flourishing industry, and so people might be induced to invest their money in the concern. That was what was taking place in London. Then the rubber had to be collected. The officials in Peru were told that everything depended upon the rapid collection of rubber. So they started a system of collecting rubber by means of paying commissions to subordinate individuals, who were told that they would be paid, and they were paid, by means of commission on the quantity of rubber collected. These men were sent down into the depths of the forests where the rubber had to be collected, and it was a very hard task for them to get the amount which was required to make the Company sufficiently flourishing; and therefore these men could only make their living by forcing the natives to do far more than was, humanly speaking, possible. The natives did not care about collecting rubber; they would have much rather gone on working their own farmsteads, and they had to be literally driven into it. When they ran away, which sometimes they did, they had to be sought after with guns and conveyed by force, as you would compel any animal, in order to produce this rubber—in fact, they were treated much worse than you would treat any animal. The whole system was a thoroughly evil one: the individual slave-holders could not make their wages the officers down at Iquitos and elsewhere could not make their living the directors could not get their dividends the Company could not be floated-without the perpetration of these horrible barbarities, and therefore the whole thing was, as I say, due entirely to this insatiable greed for wealth. Now that is a process which is going on all over the world, and this is what we have to stop. Wealthy and civilized countries have got to take care that this greed for wealth which exists all over the world is tied down by some strict rules, which will bind people, if they are to get this wealth, to get it by civilized and humane means. (Applause.) Now there was another thing which was apparent from our investigations, and that was that all this was not hidden. It is all very well to talk about the depths of the South American forests, thousands of miles away from civilization, four or five days' journey in boats, and so forth. All that is perfectly true. But that these things were going on, were well known in Peru, and well known in the capital of Peru, there can be no doubt whatever. The Catholic missionaries who have devoted their lives to their mission work among these tribes in South America have reported over and over again—and the reports have been handed in to the officials in Lima-the existence of these atrocities, which were started when rubber was found to be valuable. Well, that was well known. The very abuses themselves were pictured in a series of newspaper articles, and

it was all very well for some of the people implicated to say these reports were manufactured. I am perfectly certain that no one who was in Peru at that time would say that they were manufactured. They knew perfectly well that this sort of thing was going on, and yet no one suggested stopping it. I am not sure that the Peruvians alone were to blame. There was a Report from the American Consul who had visited these very places, and he reported that these outrages were being committed, and in his Report he set them out perfectly openly, and he used one little phrase-I forget the exact words, but it was to the effect that, having told his superiors what was going on, it was a matter for them to decide as to whether or not it was expedient to make the knowledge public. Well, it was not made public. It went to the Foreign Office of the United States, but it was not until after the whole question had come up in this country that it was publicly known. The whole of this matter, if I may say so, came out accidentally.

I was rather disappointed, if I may be allowed to say so with great respect to those present to-day, at what we learnt about this Society. With all this knowledge that was undoubtedly in the minds of people living on the spot, this Society knew nothing about it until Mr. Hardenburg came over and brought his account. I asked one of the representatives of the Society whether they had any correspondents in South America, and he told me no. And I must say, speaking with great respect to this Society, I do suggest that it would be well to consider whether under these circumstances there ought not to be a system of correspondence with persons who live on the spot. I am perfectly certain if you had had correspondents at Peru at that time you would have heard of these abuses long before Mr. Hardenburg came over here.* Well, he came over here. His evidence was very valuable, and his book was very striking, but, as I say, that was rather an accident. The very issue of that book was the result of certain events which might not have occurred at all. He might have thought it well not to publish the book at all. But at any rate, when once it was brought to the knowledge of this Society, its officers exercised themselves with every desire to push it forward, and undoubtedly their efforts had a great deal to do, if not all to do, with the fact of the matter being thoroughly investigated and a Committee appointed. Still, as I say, it is correct to state that for some years these things were going on with the full knowledge of the people on the spot, unchecked. Now why was that? Because the people there seem to take the view that it is a normal condition of affairs.

* The Society can only rely on three sources of information :-Correspondence with persons of unquestionable reliability; reports of special investigators, and the British Consuls. The British Consulate knew of the allegation, the American Consulate knew and reported, but no information was ever published. The Society at that time had no reliable correspondents in Peru, nor had it any secret service "fund to carry out investigation. The Society has since decided (it will be remembered) to create a fund for the purpose of private enquiry.

Although they quite agree that any such crime as murder, or certain other serious abuses, ought to be stopped in their country as elsewhere, they do not see that these abuses are the necessary result of a system which is pure slavery. I see no difference whatever between what was going on in Peru and actual slavery. It all arises from an idea which is held amongst tens of thousands of people in the world—I am not sure that it is not to be found even amongst our own fellow countrymen-namely, that you are justified in forcing labour-that some kind of forced servitude is required in order to enable you to profit by the labour of the black man, which alone is available and useful in certain parts of the world, and this has been the case, as I say, in Peru. I do not suppose any Peruvian would have admitted for a moment that he was guilty of slavery. There is a treaty between this country and Peru against slavery, but if any one had ventured to suggest -I do not suppose it ever has been suggested-that this treaty was broken by the acts which were going on in the Peruvian forests, it would have been absolutely denied. But in spirit, if not in letter, the anti-slavery treaties were being broken there as badly as they have ever been broken anywhere. The fact of the matter is that we have got to reconstitute our ideas as to what is slavery-(hear, hear)-and when I say we, I mean all the civilized nations of the world. The question is rather how we can do it. Well, I believe there is only one way of doing it, and that is by some country setting the example. We have set the example before in many ways-in regard to slavery especially-and we have got to do it again; and if we set the example I believe other nations will follow us. Now what can we do? We can do as we propose to do in this Bill: We can re-define slavery, and that is one of the proposals, as I say, in this Bill. It embraces this system which is called a system of peonage, under which men are kept practically in slavery in subjection at any rate-by the simple expedient of getting into debt to the employer. That was the whole process by which these Peruvian atrocities were justified, because the whole of these poor people were in debt; the Company advanced them money for different things, and the Company did that on purpose, because if they were in debt to the Company then, according to the law in Peru, they were obliged to work off that debt.

There is another change we can make, and that is this. We can extend the law of England so that it will make British subjects liable for a much larger number of malfeasances than at the present moment. At the present moment we are behind other countries in that respect. If a British subject commits murder anywhere, he can be prosecuted and convicted for that murder in England. But murder and one or two other crimes are the only ones made amenable in this country. On the other hand under French law, German law, and the law of some other countries, a great many other crimes can be prosecuted and punished in the country of origin itself, not in the country where the crime is committed. Now that, again, is something

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which this Bill could accomplish-that all action with regard to slavery, or abuses arising from anything like slavery, by a British subject, wherever committed, anywhere in the world, shall be liable to prosecution and punished by the Courts of this country. That is a second suggestion that can be made.

The third one is that the treaties should be revised. If we define slavery as something broader than it is at the present moment, we must try by the revision of our treaties to get something done by other countries, and that is a practicable step which, if carried out with courage, I believe would be followed by other countries, and we might find then that other countries would agree by treaty to put down these systems which, although not slavery under the present definition of slavery, are at any rate so nearly akin to it that they ought to be considered as slavery.

And fourthly, our campaign for the purpose of carrying out this legislation will do much to open the eyes of the public. I believe that the Peruvian atrocities, horrible though they have been, may possibly be productive of good in that they have undoubtedly opened the eyes of people, not only in this country, but in America and other countries, to the grave dangers that now have arisen by the opening up-development as we call it-of the unknown areas of the globe; and I believe that all civilized Governments now will agree that something ought to be done to prevent this abuse growing.

I began by saying that I thought it was an abuse which was growing and likely to grow, for there still remain vast areas on the world's surface which are capable of producing this rubber-places where it can only be collected by means of cheap labour. We can regulate it, I believe, by treaties, we can regulate it to a certain extent by amending the laws as they affect British subjects, but we can amend it more than in any other way by the example we give, and by trying to persuade other civilized nations to redeem humanity from the taint of one of the most horrible crimes of which it has hitherto been guilty. (Loud applause.)

The CHAIRMAN said that they were all greatly indebted to the last two speakers for the valuable speeches they had made, and put the Resolution to the meeting. It was carried unanimously.

The Chairman then called upon Mr. R. C. Hawkin who had expressed a desire to occupy a few minutes in regard to South Africa.

Mr. R. C. HAWKIN referred to the petition of the South African Native National Congress to General Botha, Minister for Native Affairs, from which extracts were given in the Reporter * ; and said that as a reply had just come to his hands with regard to this subject, he thought that it was only right

* p. 27, April 1914.

that it should be known in England that an official answer of a favourable character had been sent to the petition.

The Government had replied that it was inevitable that some hardships should arise in individual cases, but that in reference to any hardships brought to their notice such action would be taken as was possible to relieve individual cases. With regard to the question of freedom of purchase and sale of land, which it was advocated should be given to the natives, the Government had determined not to make any alteration in that respect until the Report of the Native Land Commission, which is at present sitting, had been issued. During the course of a recent visit to South Africa he had met some of the leaders among those interested in native affairs, and a little Society was formed for doing work similar to that of the Anti-Slavery Society among the natives of South Africa.

The Rev. CANON MASTERMAN moved, and Mr. EDWARD GRUBB seconded, a vote of thanks to the Chairman, Sir. T. F. Buxton, and to the other speakers, which was carried by acclamation.

Portuguese Slavery Conference.

SPECIAL NOTICE.

WE are glad to announce that a conference on Portuguese Slavery will be held at the Whitehall Rooms at 2.30 on the afternoon of Thursday, July 16. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury will preside, supported by the Bishop of London, the Earls of Selborne and Mayo, Lords Channing and Lamington, Lord A. Thynne, M.P., Lord H. Cavendish-Bentinck, M.P.; Rt. Hon. W. H. Dickinson, M.P.; Rt. Hon. J. W. Wilson, M.P.; Hon. J. C. Lyttelton, M.P.; Sir J. Jardine, M.P.; Sir J. Compton-Rickett, M.P.; Messrs. Ian Malcolm, M.P.; W. Joynson-Hicks, M.P. ; T. E. Harvey, M.P. ; Douglas Hall, M.P.; Leif Jones, M.P.; H. G. Chancellor, M.P.; J. Higham, M.P.; C. E. Price, M.P.; J. Cathcart Wason, M.P.; A. W. Yeo, M.P.

Representatives from several organizations will be present, and the object of the conference is that of deciding upon some concerted action which will secure an acceleration of the emancipation of the slaves and a full inquiry into the conditions by which the labourers are at present being secured. The proceedings of the conference will be private, but it is open to members of the Society upon application for tickets to the offices, Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, S.W.

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