["Broome and its Pearls", The West Australian, Monday 04 July 1910, page 4]
BROOME AND ITS PEARLS.
(By "Vindex.")
"Broome," observed a leading citizen of the North-Western capital, "is like the little boy sitting on the fence; you've just got to give it one push and its down." That was his way of stating the quite exotic character of that most interesting of the Western Australian towns in sight of The Great Bear. He did not mean that Broome was weakening or unfinancial; no place could be more stable or prosperous, but his remark was an acknowledgment that Broome, in the light of the White Australia sentiment, is an anomaly. Superficially, if not actually, one has left our very English Australia and has already crossed the small stretch of sea separating us from Asia, when after steaming into Roebuck Bay and riding by tram up the long jetty and through the sandhills, one suddenly comes upon unmistakably tropical architecture in the midst of vegetation which is unfamiliar to the southerner. Sun-browned Europeans, in white and khaki suits, and wide-spreading headgear, white houses of the bungalow type, and apparently all verandah, wide streets and umbrageous native trees, and occasional glimpse of green palms, the mingling in the streets of white, yellow, and brown, and black, the repetition of Government proclamations in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Malay, and Japanese, the atmosphere (particularly the heat) of a truly tropical colour, and a general air of languorous ease--such is the new Broome. This Broome, with its churches and institutes, racecourse, golf links, tennis courts, and Masonic lodge, makes life tolerably comfortable; it is a way they have in the Orient. But down near the creek, where luggers lurch drunkenly in the mud, is the other Broome, the coloured Broome. Here indeed is
The Orient in Very Fact--
a jumble of odd tenements, heaped inextricably together, reared one upon the other, an architect's nightmare, and the population, it might also be said, a microcosm of the universe. Here are Eastern customs and Eastern clothes, Eastern life and--Eastern smells. It is a patch of Singapore under occidental influences, or a western settlement orientalised, but whichever way you choose to regard the place, it is a compromise between East and West. In the daytime it is a dangerously expensive pleasure to visit the Japanese warehouses and view the costly stock of gorgeous silks, curios, and souvenirs. At night the air throbs with the noise of tomtoms and the dainty twang of the samisan. This town is apart and distinct from the other town, for except when white Broome comes down to buy in the shops of coloured Broome, here, as the world over, "East is east, and West is west, and never the twain shall meet."
Privately and municipally the people of Broome are prosperous. Yet they subsist mainly upon an industry which, of all others in the Commonwealth, is probably the most speculative. It is explained that when things are going well
Pearling is a Soundly Paying Venture.
And the hurricanes during the last two years notwithstanding, things have been going well. The pearling industry centres in Broome, and of recent times the harvest of the sea has been bounteous, and the price of shell good. What the industry really means to the State the statistics strikingly show. During 1909 there were 344 pearling boats licensed--most of them built at Fremantle--the number of men employed was 2,114, the estimated value of boats and equipment was £166,000; the total quantity of shell obtained was 21,000 cwt., of an export value of £173,000, and the pearls obtained were valued at approximately £56,000. That is no insignificant industry to be balanced on a fence and liable to be pushed off--presumably by Commonwealth interference. Great changes for the better have come over the industry of recent years, and one of the most important has been the subdividing of the big fleets formerly controlled by a few owners and an increase in the number of people having proprietary interests. There are now over 100 boat owners engaged in the industry, and one is assured that it has been found cheaper to work detached than in combines, there is no likelihood of the old order being restored.
The Coming of the White Man.
Another beneficial change is in the fact that whereas formerly the luggers were manned entirely by coloured men, nowadays fully 85 per cent. of the boats have at least one white man aboard. He has nothing to do with the working of the boat, and as far as the gathering of shell is concerned, the diver is still king bf the situation, but the white deputy opens the shell, and, significantly enough, there has been a marked increase in the number of pearls reported. One learns that there are about 1,500 Japanese engaged in the industry, and that these ,xilo subjects of the Mikado are fast supplanting the Malays, both in the diving and in the working of the boats. It is a natural question to ask, "Cannot the industry be carried on with white labour?" The answer, one receives, "Emphatically no."
Life on the pearling luggers.
Cooped up for three or four months in all weathers on these small craft is said to be a "hellish" existence, and the industry is one that necessitates the risk of human life. It may seem picturesque and it may appear to offer romance and adventure, but the glamour of these inducements fades as one approaches to [delose .]quarters. And though there may be excitement in the possibility of raising from the kingdom of Neptune a rubbish-encrusted shell which will be found to contain a pearl of great price, yet at bedrock the life is hard, sordid, and uninspiring. It is very much like the oyster itself--outside hard and ugly; inside possibly everything, possibly nothing. It takes
A Heavy Toll of Human Life.
for apart altogether from the deaths incidental to the periodical cyclones, the maor '.thit?tyin the-fleets, particularly amongst the -divers, is something not :understood in the south It is the perils of: the work which fdakQ1 it sucb a gamble, yet possibly in no other Austilian industry canh the man of ,limited intellectual equipment find as great ipportunity of speedy elevation- to a posi tion of comparative wealth.: Brains need not of neccssity:be included in the pearler's business outfit. Luck is the great desidera tum. A lugger and equipment cost, roughly, £700, the wages of -members of the crew' average about £5 per month, and the diver gets. from £3, to £5 per month and £25 to £30 per ton of- shell raised, the. bonus 'in creasng if the haul for the season exceeds five tons: The working' expenses of a boat mqight 'be, roughly, stated at £500 per an ?nm, and with shell at. £9t per owt. there is, an approximate profit for the year 'of £40, exclusive of the value', of any," pearls found. ..Shell has to be worth £140 , eton .before there is a profit in the business. In' ,addition'to having to outlay. £700 in' intial eapital. cost, the investor has to ,pay an advance to the diver of from £50 to £150. -With a good season' he might get a big proportion of his principal back in the first year; but suppose luck is against him, sun pose a cyclone sweeps over the pearling pgrounds and wrecks the lugger, or that, as not infrequently happens, the diver dies, or is paralysed, the investor is faced with heavy or total loss. All these circumstances ,have a bearing on
The Coloured Labour Question,
and one arrives at this proposition:--Firstly, the industry, being of a risky and speculative character, and involving the outlay of considerable capital, must present the possibility of a big margin of profit to make it worthwhile to the man with money to invest; secondly, the hardships and dangers of the life would require fairly high wages to render it attractive to white labourers; therefore, as the cost of white labour would remove the inducement of high profits, any attempt by the Federal Power to abolish coloured labour would mean the closing down of Broome and the working of the grounds from a base at Batavia, they being nearly all outside the three-mile limit of territorial waters. For these reasons Broome asks to be left as it is. Its coloured population cannot increase, because of legislative restrictions, and Australia is asked to rest content with that fact. There is also the reassuring circumstance that the white population of Broome is substantially on the increase.
The Duration of the Industry.
One other question the visitor naturally asks: Do the grounds show any sign of becoming exhausted? The old inhabitant answers: "Twelve years ago we were told that the grounds were petering out. Yet to-day we are getting as much shell as ever. The fact of the matter is that the fleets are constantly changing from one bank to another, and the old grounds on being revisited years afterwards seem to have made a recovery. Therefore, the life of the industry is indeterminable."
Illicit Pearl Buying.
Perhaps the industry is not under such close scrutiny as it might with advantage be; perhaps also the State Exchequer might benefit more from the pearling interests than at present it does. This latter deficiency might be corrected, it has been suggested, by the issuing of licences to divers, and further by the increase of the licence for pearl buyers from £50 to £100. Something is wanted to restrict the evil of illicit pearl buying which one is assured is rampant. There exists legislation on the subject, but the law is almost a dead letter. "Else you might be sure," they tell you, "that the declared value of pearls found last year would be more ike £60,000, or even £70,000, than £50,000." It is not only that pearls are bought on shore by more persons than are legally entitled to engage in the trade, but that "snide buying" takes place freely on the pearling grounds. When you hear of pearlers starting for the grounds with two or three hundreds pounds in gold on board their luggers you may make a pretty shrewd guess that they will come back with more pearls than came from shell raised by their own divers. If many of them engage in this commerce it must be an interestimg game of dog eating dog, for whilst A may be clandestinely buying pearls from B's coloured men, B may be doing a highly satisfactory trade with A's crew. Surely in such circumstances Greek meets Greek, and only the law is cheated.
