The Yellow Agony CRONIN

"The Yellow Agony"
Racial attitudes and responses towards the Chinese in colonial Queensland
KATHRYN CRONIN
"Let us begin by candidly confessing that in our opposition to them there is something of sentiment and of prejudice too. We have not arrived at that sublime pitch of perfection, that total absence of partiality in which socially and industrially we can like a negro or a Mongolian as well as we do men of European blood."
Brisbane Courier, 23 November 1878

The Yellow Agony
Shoals of pigtails, almond-eyed,
Flooding all the country side,
Skimmed off as their country's scum,
Odorous of opium.
Yellow rascals, cunning, knavish,
Bowed in foul vice-bondage slavish,
They, with Eastern filth imbedded,
Form one monster hydra-headed, . . .
Queensland Figaro, l9 May 1883, p. 318

CHAPTER ONE
From Plodding 'Paddy' to 'The Ching-Chong Chinaman'
The Chinese Rural Labourer
"The great object of the Queensland legislation has been from the beginning, how to get cheap labour in the colony; that is the grand legislative idea of prosperity, cheap labour at any price".
G. Carrington,
Colonial Adventures and Experiences by a University Man
London, 1871, p.15.
When in November 1848, fifty-six Chinese labourers disembarked from the steamer Nimrod at Brisbane, they received an unusually enthusiastic welcome from the colonists there¹. Any dissenters, who may have had reservations about the wisdom of introducing this alien, servile race, were, for the moment, silent: For the Chinese were here to save the pastoral industry².
The pioneering communities established on the Darling Downs and beyond were at this time gravely threatened by labour shortages. After transportation ceased in 1839, a ready source of workmen was discontinued, and pastoralists afterwards found it increasingly difficult to obtain the 'ticket-of-leave' or 'time expired' men upon whom they had formerly relied. Free immigrants were also in short supply and were too expensive, while the local Aborigines were commonly held to be too unreliable. By 1849 the situation had become desperate. The severe economic recession that marred the early years of that decade, was over, and pastoralists were now clamouring for station hands; 3 but the cost of labour had risen greatly. The Moreton Bay Courier listed the current wage rates per annum for servants as "Nothing less than 50 pounds for a man and his wife, or 30 pounds a single man and 25 pounds for a single woman"4. The pastoralists were again cast into gloom. Patrick Leslie, one of the first settlers in this area, voiced their hopes and frustrations when he wrote to his family: "All we want to be the most prosperous colony in the world is labour,⁵ and his brother George, reiterated in May of that year, "I do not at present see how we are to obtain labour and I do not care, so long as we get it"⁶. In desperation, some of the colonists argued for the reintroduction of the convict system,⁷ while others began to look to countries nearby which were already supplying “cheap coloured, reliable and servile” labourers to places like Guiana and Peru.
India, a British colony, was their first consideration. Groups of Indian coolies had been imported into New South Wales some years previously⁹ and the press at this time, gave enthusiastic accounts of their working qualities.10 Consequently, some of the northern pastoralists became quite keen to organise a labour trade from Madras, and they called meetings at Brisbane and Ipswich to arrange the matter.¹¹But their plans were thwarted, as the British government had placed restrictions on the exportation of Indian coolies, and even though the colonists pleaded their case through the Colonial Secretary in Sydney the ban was not lifted.¹² So while certain pastoralists managed to bring in small groups of Indian domestic servants,¹³ the general schemes for large scale Indian immigration were shelved, and the employers decided to direct their recruiting efforts at the Chinese.
Coolie emigration was also prohibited in China. Dr Winchester, an assistant at the British consulate in Amoy at this time wrote:
It is one of the pleasant fictions of the Chinese Government that no child of the great Emperor can withdraw himself from the paternal role; and that to leave his dominions and settle elsewhere permanently is a crime.¹⁵
But some of the coastal ports were so overcrowded that the local mandarins were actually quite "relieved” to see a number of their habitants being taken to other countries16 and the Chinese coolie trade grew quite rapidly. By I847 contracted labourers were being sent to Mauritius, the Bourbon Isle and Cuba.¹⁷ The trade had also become more of a capitalist enterprise under control of coolie brokers and was increasingly associated with scandalous oppressions. ¹⁸ The Chinese termed the transactions "buying men"¹⁹ as many of the labourers placed under contract were actually kidnapped, tricked or rnisled by unscrupulous agents. A recent study by Sing-wu Wang on Chinese coolie migration to Australia, concluded:
The most pitiful part of this system was that the majority of Chinese emigrants were cheated and brought to the receiving stations against their will. If there was any difference between the ways of procuring an African slave and a Chinese labourer it could only be that the Chinese labourer had signed a contract. ²⁰
In 1848 the settlers in the Moreton Bay area began negotiating with coolie agents in Amoy, and arranged for Chinese to be contracted for five years, at a wage of 6 pounds per year plus two suits of clothing. These Chinese were subsequently despatched on the Nimrod. The pastoralists, who were overjoyed at having obtained cheap and polite servants, eagerly put them to work. But some of the coolies were restless and discontented and several more absconded or tried to force their employers to adjust their wages to the current white rates. ²² This behaviour was hardly surprising when it is considered that some of these labourers had been deceived by the coolie brokers as to their destination or the nature of their contracts. ²³ Nevertheless their defections proved a great disappointment to their white masters and became a source of anti-Chinese feeling. Not all the coolies were dissatisfied however, and some did settle down to their new conditions and were described by their employers as "excellent shepherds and servants".²⁴ So as the labour shortages in the district persisted, the pastoralists continued to import Chinese²⁵ T.A. Coghlan estimated that there were 225 of them in the area by 1851, and 2,000 more by 1856, ²⁶ and while there is some dispute as to how accurate these figures were,²⁷ there is no doubt that there was a significant number of Chinese in the area prior to its separation from New South Wales.
The Chinese were incorporated into the existing labour structure in the district. The Moreton Bay settlement had begun as a detention centre for recalcitrant convicts, and, although it had been closed down in 1839, the pattern of enforced and servile labour, implicit in the convict system, persisted far beyond these years. The Masters and Servants Act 28 to which the Chinese and other contracted labourers were subject, reflected these authoritarian concepts. This legislation, as its title suggests, was concerned with the rights of employers and employees but it was enacted by a parliament dominated by pastoralists, and the bill was therefore designed, almost totally, to serve the interests of the employers. Servants could be punished for absconding from their jobs or for refusing to obey a master's. "lawful command". If workers wished to lay charges against their employers, they had to produce witnesses to corroborate their accusation while the statements of their employers were accepted without verification.
Finally there was no provision in the Act for punishing who had acted unjustly to their workmen. In
this legislation became one of the most important means by which the status quo of the highly stratified levels of power and degree in the Colony was preserved.
Although the labouring population was referred to as a single unit under this Act, it was actually a highly differentiated group. The free British, German or Danish immigrants were quite distinct from the 'dispossessed' Aborigine or the Chinese and Indians who had been specially imported as cheap, bonded labourers. Coloured servants were paid lower wages and only allowed in specific occupations. The Chinese were immediately cast as shepherds, shearers, gardeners or domestic servants as their employers maintained that these were the only jobs suitable for them.²⁹ George Sandeman, a pastoralist from Moreton Bay, stated that "the employment of shepherding is unsuited and irksome to the more active mind of the European; it is peculiarly adapted to the comparatively listless and passive disposition of the native of the East".³⁰ Donald Gunn reiterated the same sort of sentiments:
[The Chinese] were very good shepherds, cooks, gardeners and some made good shearers but when it came to hut building, fencing and work that needed strength and brains the white men were much superior.³¹
So, although the Chinese were initially suggested only as a temporary solution for the early labour shortages, they soon became essential workmen in jobs considered badly paid or too menial or boring for Europeans.
In l86l the colonists again attempted to secure and regulate the large-scale importation of coolies, ³² for landowners interested in branching into the cotton and sugar growing industries wanted inexpensive field workers. Thus, the argument that the "light work" of cotton growing was suited not to the “more active, energetic European" but to the 'enduring' plodding Asiatic' was once more repeated.³³ The planters also pointed out that the tropical heat "was unhealthy for Europeans” that work in the cane fields "would mean death to the man from cold climates"³⁵ whereas the Chinese were "a race habituated to work at field labour under a tropic sun"³⁶. Therefore the planters maintained: "It would be utterly impossible to continue the cultivation of the Tropical production suitable to the Northern portion of the colony... without coloured labour of some description"³⁷
As a result Chinese coolies were brouqht into the Colony right throughout the ensuing decades, and were generally imported by shipping agencies acting for individual planters.³⁸ For instance, A.J. Cowley, the manager of Gairloch on the Herbert River, claimed in 1889 to have introduced 300 Chinese at a cost of 20 pounds each.³⁹ Yet, efforts were still made at various times to organize a regular governmentally controlled coolie trade. In 1875 at the height of the anti-Chinese uproar on the northern goldfields, a memo was sent to the Colonial Secretary suggesting that
the class [of Chinese] at present arriving shall be discouraged, that a superior class from the Agricultural Districts of China should take their places and that their influx shall be in the Northern Districts of Queensland where the Sugar Planters have a demand for such description of Labour.⁴⁰
Again, in 1883, in the midst of a fierce anti-Chinese and anti-coolie movement, the planters tried to-organize an officially sponsored importation of indentured Chinese.⁴¹ An election campaign in progress at this time was dominated by “The Chinese Question”⁴² The planters' group maintained the Chinese were essential, cheap, servile labourers who could be kept in fixed economic and social positions: while the anti-Chinese enthusiasts, obsessed with numerical strength were convinced that all restraining influences would fail before un overwhelming 'invasion' of 'the yellow hordes’.
Before examining the debate that raged over the Chinese question it would be profitable to examine the theories which were invoked to justify the condemnation and/or exploitation of the Chinese. For it is significant that they arrived in the Colony at a time when ancient popular ideas of folk racism were elevated to the status of an undisputable scientific theory which declared them non-assimilatible on biological grounds.
This scientific theory had its beginnings in the debate between monogenesists and polygenesists. As the monists saw all men as the children of Adam and Eve, and all racial differences as the product of environmental variation, most of them were usually confident that if the environment of a racial group was changed then the physical and cultural characteristics of the group would alter. Some even argued that skin colour differences were subject to change within a single life-time, given the proper conditions of climate and diet.⁴³ The polygenesists (or pluralists), in contrast, were not so confident that culture contact situation could be so easily resolved. As they saw it, the various races were distinct biological species, and would always remain separate. They claimed that the different species created their own distinct social, cultural and political institutions which could not be properly assimilated by people from another race.⁴⁴ Yet it was miscegenation -- viewed by pluralists as the unnatural mating of different species which provided for them the ultimate horror.
Although these theories were somewhat modified by the ideas of Charles Darwin, they still continued to influence public opinion.⁴⁵ This was very noticeable in Queensland, when after the northern gold discoveries, the media took up the Chinese question in earnest. The polygenesists’ horror of miscegenation and their ideas on cultural racism were enthusiastically endorsed by propagandists of the early labour movement, while some of the advocates of cheap coloured labour responded by repeating the monist idea that the coolies would be civilised by contact with a superior race. But regardless of their economic But regardless of their economic interests, colonists in both camps were influenced by the basic assumption underlying the ideas of monists, pluralists Social Darwinists – that of European superiority. It appeared self evident to both scientists and laymen alike that the peoples of Africa, Asia, America and the pacific were inferior, for they were not able to successfully retaliate against the advancement of European military, economic or political institutions. It was no idle boast for a nineteenth century Anglo-Saxon like James McHenley, the Chinese interpreter at Cooktown, to declare:
We are the only people of the earth that are capable of impressing their character on our neighbours, while our antecedents' institutions, our pesent position and acknowledged aspirations, proclaim aloud in every tongue that we are the ruling people f the world.⁴⁶
Western nations were therefore accepted as the model for all progress and civilization, and other cultures were arranged in order of merit according to how closely they approximated to this idea. This arrangement was generally represented as a continuum of darkening pigments, at the top of which were the Caucasian and other lighter coloured races while the Negroes and Australian Aborigines were placed near the bottom.
Nevertheless, although seemingly secure in their own immutable superiority, Europeans were forced to concede the rival claims of the ancient and highly developed civilizations of China and Japan. China's acheivements were usually explained away by the allegation that "...they seem to have been always living in the same stage of advancement as in the present day".⁴⁷ The argument continued -- "The Chinese are constant in their adherence to old established customs and ideas",⁴⁸ they have "no desire for progress"⁴⁸ whereas "The genius of the Western nations is that of change and progress".⁵⁰ In an article entitled "The Mental Condition of the Chinaman", Isaac Headland elaborated further on this theme:⁵¹
Tell a Westerner something new or show him some new invention that makes labor more easy or more effective and at once he copies and improves it. No product of thought is too difficult for him to understand, too intricate for him to work out, What about the Chinaman? He looks at it with open-mouthed wonder or self-satisfied indifference, but he is without either the ability or desire to appreciate, improve, understand or use it.
China's civilization was therefore described as "arrested'',⁵² "left in an imperfect state"⁵³ and dwarfed by age".⁵⁴ Her place in the hierarchy of civilizations was the allocated accordingly. In theAnthropological Review of 1866, it was stated:
As the type of the Negro is foetal, that of the Mongol is infantile. And in strict accordance with this we find their government, literature and art are infantile also. They are beardless children, whose life is a task, and whose chief virtue consists in unquestioning obedience.⁵⁵
Westerners also defined the behavioural traits they observed as hereditary racial characteristics. Thus they were inclined to regard such features as Chinese 'inscrutability' as indicating an inborn imperviousness to pain or suffering. G.E. Morrison, an Australian doctor who visited China in the 1890's, wrote that "the sensory nervous system of a Chinaman is either blunted or of arrested development".⁵⁶ He made this assertion after witnessing "...the calmness with which he can sleep amid the noise o[ gunfire and crackers... and the indifference with which he contemplates the suffering of lower animals, and the infliction of tortures on higher".⁵⁷ The practice of attributing observable traits to racial characteristics was not simply confined to the lay observer. Scientific journals also described Chinese manners and customs in purely racial terms. In 1897, the Australasian Anthropological Journal described the Chinese in the following way:
When the yellow species of man is uncrossed... it has a broad flat face, prominent cheek bones, oblique almondshaped and cut eyelids, black straight coarse hair, yellow coloured skin -- They are of enduring, patient, plodding regular work habits, and disposition. They have a constitution which upon poor food they continue to work, day after day, in bad climates of many and varied kinds. -- They are slow, methodical, patient, induring [sic] labourers, cultivators, and mechanics, exact copyists as artisans, but not capable of many new inventions. -- They have moral ideas different from other people, which are peculiar to themselves.⁵⁸
The common stereotype reiterated in the colonial press and elsewhere, pictured the Chinese in the same fashion. They were described as "temperate, frugal, hardworking and law abiding",⁵⁹ and as "useful, practical and docile servants".⁶⁰ A Chinese labourer was usually characterized with the label of 'Paddy' and declared to have had his "servility bred into him".⁶¹ It was claimed that "the untiring industry, the frugality and perseverance of the Chinaman are the inherited instincts of his race".⁶² As the Brisbane Courier reported:
The Chinese are a race of workers in whom uncounted generations of serf-like toil have developed a capacity for unremitting labour, while killing out every spark of that higher nature which makes men capable of being true citizens of a free state.⁶³
Similarly, J.K. Tucker, a clergyman, wrote:

[The Chinese] physiognomy indicates no beam of intelligence or play of fancy bur rather stolid stoicism.⁶⁴...They have been described as 'materialism put in action' being sceptical and indifferent to everything that concerns the moral side of man and destitute of religious feelings and belief.⁶⁵
It was not a great step to proceed from these notions to the pluralist-orientated idea that 'Paddy' was "not a man at all",⁶⁶ but closer to a plodding animal or a mindless machine. The pro-coolie group argued that ". . the introduction of Asiatic labour would be to Queensland what Machinery has been to England",⁶⁷ while Flora Shaw, the Times correspondent in Queensland wrote that they were "employed as a sort of self-acting Machine"⁶⁸. The Chinese were variously described as "vermin",⁶⁹ "a flock of sheep"⁷⁰ and "working animals of low grade but great vitality".⁷¹ According to Henry Challinor, one of the early Liberal parliamentarians:
...if we were justified in passing a bill to prevent diseased cattle and sheep from coming over the border from New South Wales, the Government in that colony would be justified demurring to the passage of ... [Chinese]... through Queensland across the border.⁷²
In many of these statements the dehumanization of the Chinese was obviously done unconsciously. Nevertheless by distorting their image in this way, the whites made it easier for themselves to rationalize their prejudices against the treatment of the Asiatics.
Yet even though the Chinese were pictured as decidedly inferior to the European, they were still regarded as superior to other coloured groups in the Colony In keeping with the idea of a racial heirarchy workers were paid wage commensurate with their racial status. on the plantations the unskilled Chinese field worker was generally awarded about 30 pounds per year, which was 22 pounds less than that given to a European, but 18 pounds more than a Melanesian received, while Aborigines were usually given only their rations."⁷³ Labourers were likewise assigned to jobs which were regarded as suitable to their racial skills and status, rather than to their own individual physical or intellectual abilities.⁷⁴
Manual field labour in the service of others was felt to be degrading for the whites, although the colonists took care to stress that '...white men are physically capable...to do... whatever coloured men can do"⁷⁵ It was just that "...in North Queensland the climatic conditions are such as to render the cultivation of the soil a labour fit only for the coloured races".⁷⁶
Amongst the non-white workers the Chinese were classed as "much more intelligent humsn beings than the Polynesians they were now importing, and probably they were more intelligent and skillful than the natives of British India"⁷⁷ According to the manager of Goondi Plantation: "The' Chinaman is stronger physically and more powerful than the Kanaka, and is able to fell scrub, clear it, make roads and make formations and excavattons better than the Kanaka".⁷⁸ The Malays, Melanesians and Aborigines were, on the other hand, described as progressively more apathetic and unintelligent, and more dependent on strict supervision and discipline from white overseers.
Because of their pre-eminent position amongst the other coloured groups, the Chinese were regarded by the white colonists as a greater racial threat. They were conscious of China's international importance, her vast population and her close proximity to the Colony. After 1852, when large numbers began to migrate from China to their own free will to the goldfields of Victoria and New South Wales Queenslanders consequently became even more conscious of a Chinese danger. As one parliamentarian pointed out, the population on the surrounding islands was "limited" and would never be sufficient to "swamp" the Colony⁷⁹  but the Chinese could "come in direct competition with the white man", and "would come in overwhelming numbers if admitted".⁸⁰ Then, as Queensland was sparsely populated, they "would entirely supplant European labour"⁸¹ and retard the progress of the Colony.⁸²
These arguments were utilized in the continuing debate on the Chinese problem. Propagandists urging either Chinese exclusion or exploitation seemed to adopt whatever racist theory was consistent with their own prejudices and to use pseudoscientificj argon gleaned frorn anthropologists to lend greater force and credibility to their position. The employers of coloured labour generally took the stand that the introduction of Chinese workers "... would not interfere with the fair claims -- of the European emigrant".⁸³ In fact, they declared it would "...elevate the European labourer to the rank of a Mechanic, and the Mechanic to that of an employer and contribut[e] in a marvellous degree to the well being of every class in society".⁸⁴ The anti-Chinese group retaliated by asserting that the Chinese would "degrade" labour and lower the wages of white workers.⁸⁵ This question therefore became inextricably linked with the issue of cheap labour and the plight of the European worker, and, as it was a highly emotional topic, it was used with effect by the press and political groups.
Although there had been some slight objections made when the Chinese were brought into the district,86 there was no strong anti-Chinese movement until 1851. In March of that year a party of drunken whites in Ipswich attacked a group of Chinese⁸⁷ Twelve of the Chinese were quite seriously wounded and the Europeans were subsequently arrested and given severe sentences ranging from twelve months to two years hard labour.⁸⁸ After the trial, the sympathies of "nearly all" the working population in lpswich, were strongly in favour of the Europeans,⁸⁹ and, in the election campaign that followed the Chinese question became an important one.⁹⁰ The Moreton Bay Courier, under the editorship of James Swan, mounted an enthusiastic denunciation of the 'treacherous' aliens,91 and for some weeks the news columns were interspersed with allusions to the "violent and revengeful dispositions" of the Chinese⁹² and to the "appalling vices" that were a conspicuous feature of their all male congregations.⁹³ Swan also argued against the pastoralists who, he claimed, were spoiling the district for "honest and virtuous populations" just to satisfy their own greed for cheap servants.⁹⁴, Still, though emotions ran high for a time, the crisis passed, and the small community settled down again without being in the least perturbed that they had reached no unanimity about whether the usefulness of the Chinese outweighed their vices.
In the years following, the whites came no closer to solving the Chinese issue and it was not until 1862 that the question was for public debate. Most of the agitation at this time centered around the Indian Coolie Bill which had been introduced after pressure from some of the planters and pastoralists. This aroused the anger of urban workers who were convinced that the importation of Asiatics would force down their wages and paralyse the workings of the existing Immigration Act.95 But a minor crisis was precipitated when, in the midst of this storm, the Lord Lyndhurst arrived with 260 Chinese passengers.⁹⁶ The Chinese then became the scapegoats for the resentful workers, and once again the Brisbane Courier organized the anti-Chinese forces led by politicians such as C.W. Blakeney⁹⁷ and William Brookes.98 Blakeney introduced a resolution imposing a capitation tax on all Chinese arriving in the Colony without their wives,99 which was defeated in the parliament by a large majority.¹⁰⁰ The Courier countered by questioning whether the Government was truly representative of the townspeople¹⁰¹ and ended by bitterly attacking the all-powerful squatters who were "voting to facilitate the introduction of the Chinese. . which they can use at a low price, and have more slavish command over than would be possible with European immigrants".¹⁰² William Brookes also fanned the animosity of Brisbane workers by graphically describing how:
The wealthy men would roll up in their carriages supported by the ill-paid labour of a foreign race,...and the relation and friends of the Europeans at present here when they came out, would be shut up in the towns being unable to earn a living in the bush, and would have to occupy a position truly contemptible.¹⁰³
Even after it was discovered that the Chinese were,in fact, all bound for the gold fields of the southern colonies, the resentment against them was not assuaged'¹⁰⁴ In Brisbane an anti-Chinese was held, where they were reviled as "aliens of the most immoral and contaminating description", while their immigration was wholeheartedly condemned as "dangerous" to "political, religious, moral and social advancement" of the Colony.¹⁰⁵ According to the Courier:
A large number of them as permanent residents, would turn the Colony upside down; all our legislation would have to be gone over again and the change would necessarily be from legislation adapted to a free intelligent and Christian people, to a legislation brought down to the coarse and sensual capacities of pagan bondsmen.¹⁰⁶


Even though the conservative planters and squatters had been attacked as pro-Chinese, they too wanted the Colony’s “blood and traditions” to be derived “from the old country”.¹⁰⁷ They saw cheap coloured labourers as essential for tropical agriculture,108 yet they still desired to keep them under proper restrictions¹⁰⁹ and to limit the contacts between them and the other colonists.¹¹⁰
Governor Bowen, a staunch advocate of coolie labour hoped to organize the immigration of Christian Chinese families to avoid “…the moral and social evils which must ensure from the disproportion of the sexes”.¹¹¹ In the following years, as the Chinese debate became more virulent, the anti-Chinese prejudices of employers of coolies became more marked. Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, who consistently stood on a pro-coolie platform stated that: "No man knew better than he the danger population settling down and breeding; among us”.¹¹² Another pastoralist, J.D. Macanish, also admitted:
I have had a good deal of experience with Chinamen, having employed them as shepherds, labourers, gardeners and cooks and I will say that they are very good-workers,…But there is another side to the question. I think it will be admitted on all hands that they are the most immoral and degraded people on the face of earth.¹¹³
Similarly, F.R. Murphv, the lessee of Northhampton Downs in Central Queensland ,¹¹⁴ pointed out that he would only employ gardeners because of the health of his men, for “…he did not wish it to be thought that he was a friend of the Chinaman or encouraged him in any way. He hated them and would like to see them banished altogether”.¹¹⁵
It was hardly surprising then that the Chinese were subject to a number of serious restrictions. A platform adopted by the Liberal in 1884 gave this justification for their racialism:
It can scarcely be successfully maintained that any alien, who has been introduced into the Dominions of a State for a special purpose only and that purpose assented to by himself…can claim as of right to be entitled to all rights of a subject…¹¹⁶
The Aliens Act, passed in 1861,117 prevented Asiatics from becoming naturalized, unless they had been residing in the Colony for three years, and were living there with their wives. This clause was retained in the consolidating Act of 1867, and became the legitimization for future discriminatory anti-chinese legislation.¹¹⁸ It was likewise an "essential principle" of Queensland law "to prevent aliens from holding any interest in Land,¹¹⁹ so while Chinese could leasehold tenures to land for twenty-one years, only those who had been naturalized could buy it under freehold title.
These labourers were likewise more handicapped than white workmen. All of the early Chinese immigrants were imported into the Colony under contract, but it is doubtful whether many of them had any clear understanding of the nature of their bond, or what was to be their working situation. In addition, as the Moreton Bay Courier pointed out, their lot was cast "…amongst a population but little disposed, in the mass, to sympathise with [their] fortunes or to appreciate Itheir] regrets”.¹²⁰ As soon as some of them understood that they were being paid less than other workers, they openly rebelled.¹²¹ Some of them absconded, others banded together and struck for higher wages. But in their ignorance and their general cultural isolation, they were particularly vulnerable to the workings of the Masters and Servants Act, and during 1851, over forty Chinese were convicted for breaches of this legislation.¹²² Their employers were unanimous in condemning their "independent" and "determined" characters and they acted quickly to suppress all signs of coolie rebellion.¹²³
Colony for three years, and were living there with their wives. This clause was retained in the consolidating Act of 1867, and  became the legitimization for future discriminatory anti-Chinese
legislation.¹¹⁸ It was likewise an "essential principle" of  Queensland law "to prevent aliens from holding any interest in land "¹¹⁹ so while Chinese could obtain leasehold tenures to land
for twenty-one years, only those who had been naturalized could buy it under freehold title.
These labourers were likewise more handicapped than white workmen. All of the early Chinese immigrants were imported into the Colony under contract, but it is doubtful whether many of them had any clear understanding of the nature of their bond, or what was to be their working situation. In addition, as the Moreton Bay Courier pointed out, their lot was cast "...amongst a population but little disposed, in the mass, to sympathise with [their] fortunes or to appreciate [their] regrets".¹²⁰ As soon as some of them understood that they were being paid less than other workers, they openly rebelled.¹²¹ Some of them absconded, others banded together and struck for higher wages. But in their ignorance and their general cultural isolation, they were particularly vulnerable to the workings of the Masters and Servants Act, and during 1851, over forty Chinese were convicted for breaches of this legislation.¹²² Their employers were unanimous in condemning their "independent" and "determined" characters and they acted quickly to suppress all signs of coolie rebellion.¹²³
Chinese absconding from service were almost always brought to court where they faced imprisonment or a forcible return to their previous employment. One such servant asked to be given another term in gaol rather than go back to the position he had fled.¹²⁴ In another case an employer tried to prevent his servant Bar Teong from escaping by withholding the balance of his wage, and giving him only enough food to keep him alive. Yet when Bar Teong did abscond. these facts were ignored by the magistrate, and he was ordered back to his post.¹²⁵ An even more sensational incident was narrated to the parliament by W.H. Walsh.¹²⁶ He had been informed that a Chinese labourer in Burketown has gone to a large employer of labour, a magistrate of the territory, and demanded his wages. At the instigation of his employer, the Chinese was "...set upon by a number of persons, nearly torn to pieces,stamped upon, tied to a stake [and] tortured'. It was suspected that he had been killed. Yet, in answer to this story, the Attorney-General stated that although he had evidence that the Chinese had been maltreated, he would not proceed in the matter unless their was definite proof that a murder had been committed.¹²⁷
Chinese strikers were also summarily dealt with. Those employed at Canning Downs, in protest against their contract, took up shear blade daggers and locked themselves in the station's wool store. Yet they were quickly routed by a local native trooper and armed Europeans wielding stockwhips, and were sent back to work.¹²⁸ Similarly at Pikedale Station when the Chinese shepherds joined together and marched to the homestead to state their complaints, the manager Mr Fitz became so angry that he hit at their spokesman with a hurdle head and inadvertently killed him. Although Fitz gave himself up to the local magistrate, he was acquitted of all charges as there was no white witness and the magistrate regarded the evidence of Asiatics as insufficient proof.¹²⁹
The general community likewise acted to restrict the Chinese and there were many clashes between them and white rural workers,¹³⁰ especially when '...the Chinaman competed with European labourers for employment which they could both follow.¹³¹ therefore many employers found it easier to keep their Chinese apart from the other workers and to give them jobs that were not attractive to Europeans.¹³² those aliens who had completed their contracts, were also discouraged from selling their labour in the general market, and in the early years, because complaints were made that Chinese were "wandering about without any settled occupation" some of these were then arrested as vagrants.¹³³
These cases of Chinese rebellion are not quoted to prove that all the Chinese in the Colony were ill-treated. In fact some of them settled down quite contentedly with employers who were both sympathetic and fair minded.¹³⁴ Rather, these examples are significant because they illustrate the strong institutionalized sanctions that were utilized to keep the Chinese in an unalterable, dependent position. The general community's attitude was that the Chinese had been brought to the Colony in order to perform certain restricted economic functions, not to acquire independent social and economic status.¹³⁵
Even so, after the opening of the north Queensland gold fields,it became increasingly difficult to contain Chinese labourers. Free Cantonese immigrants poured in through the new port of Cooktown, so that these rural workers could now live in Chinese communities and obtain alternative employment in gold-mining, or working for their own countrymen. Because of the exigencies of the plantation system, European employers continued to import their own indentured Chinese servants, ¹³⁶ but many of these escaped soon afterwards and headed for the gold fields.¹³⁷ Unsuccessful Chinese miners were also employed on some plantations,¹³⁸ but they too, were very independent and were generally not prepared to work for low wages.¹³⁹
Therefore the planters once more sought to apply the Masters and Servants Act to stifle Chinese rebellion, and many of those who absconded were arrested and punished under this legislation.¹⁴⁰ Other employers, such as William Langdon of the Pyramid plantation, simply withheld the wages of their Chinese until they had completed their contracts.¹⁴¹ Yet these measures no longer seemed so successful in restricting the Chinese and some planters lost heavily when their servants absconded.¹⁴² Thus, at the sugar enquiry held in 1889, European landowners were all agreed that their experiments with Chinese coolies had been totally unsatisfactory.¹⁴³
The colonists were more effective, however, in preventing the Chinese from obtaining occupational advancement and consequently, upward social mobility. White agricultural labourers continued to agitate against the "intrusion of coloured labour into other and more important areas",¹⁴⁴ and Chinese shearers were continually harassed by white co-workers.¹⁴⁵ At Terrick Station in 1885 some Chinese were nearly lynched by a group of Europeans after a furious struggle with "sticks' tomahawks and knives".¹⁴⁶ The Shearers Union later adopted, as part of their programme, the measure that Chinese, Melanesians and Aborigines should not be employed in that industry.¹⁴⁷
Similarly under the Sugar Bounty Act passed in 1905 the Chinese were effectively excluded from plantation work.¹⁴⁸ The small group of Chinese landowners also came under the fire of whites, and when a group of them opened a sugar and cotton plantation outside Cairns the parliament received a strong protest from European farmers who wrote that: ..Should the Chinese in large number once get hold of our coast lands, no measures that would be tolerated by the Imperial Government would be sufficient to get rid of them'.¹⁴⁹ But they had no real worries, for the Chinese lost heavily in this venture and there were very few amongst them who had the naturalised status,¹⁵⁰ or the capital and know-how which would allow them to repeat it.
Thus the Chinese were eventually contained fairly successfully within a type of tenant farmer arrangement.¹⁵¹ They were forced to lease land from their naturalized countrymen or from Europeans, and in the districts of Cairns, Atherton and Geraldton --(later lnnisfail) -- almost all of the farming was done by Chinese leaseholders¹⁵² who grew fruit, particularly bananas, vegetables, sugarcane, maize and some rice. Most of the white landowners in these areas were disinclined to have anything to do with their holdings until it had been cleared and made ready for cultivation, as land in the North was very rich scrub, and when it had been felled or burnt, it often had to be cultivated with a hoe for seven years. After that time the stumps had generally out and horse implements could then be employed.¹⁵³ European landowners found that the best way of preparing properties for themselves, was firstly to lease the land to the Chinese.¹⁵⁴ Under this arrangement, they had their farms cleared and cultivated, and stood to make a profit from the rent charged.¹⁵⁵ The Chinese also managed to benefit from their leaseholds, and by the 1890's their fruit-growing industry had become a lucrative business.¹⁵⁶
But this situation was not to last. The Chinese often obtained the services of Melanesians or Aborigines to help them in clearing the land and, according to the Sub-Inspector of Police at Mackay:
the Chinese farmers who employ Aborigines treat them very much better than most of the white people who employ them. The Chinese offer better wages and what is more pay the aboriginals [sic] their wages when due, they also house and feed them well.¹⁵⁷
Walter Roth, the Northern protector of Aborigines reiterated: "The Chinese allow their aboriginal employee full use of their humpty even to smoking the same pipe and drinking out of the same billy".¹⁵⁸ They also paid higher wages to their Melanesian workers and occasionally gave them a share in the profits from their farms.¹⁵⁹ But this aroused the jealousy of white farmers who found it difficult to obtain and keep the services of the other coloured groups and the Ayr Farmers Association wrote to complain against the "cut throat" practices of the Chinese who enticed the 'Kanakas' away by "offering them higher wages".¹⁶⁰ The Barron Valley Progress Association likewise objected to their utilizing cheap labour, and reported that they were "holding all the Aborigines in thrall" by giving them opium and thus "preventing them from legitimate employment with Europeans".¹⁶¹ The Association continued to decry Chinese vice despite the fact that one of their own members, E.C. Putt boasted that: "He had shot thirteen or fourteen niggers in this district and this is all the Government has done for me. I can't get a nigger when I want one. They all go to Chinamen".162 They finally achieved their objective of having the blacks "...taken away from tne Chinese and compelled to work for any European who mi.ht require their services",¹⁶³ for under the implementation of the Aborigines Protection and Restriction of the Sale of opium Act, effected in January l898, the Chinese were prevented from employing any coloured labour. According to Charlie Wai Lee, a leading storekeeper, the Chinese would not be able to make their selections pay, "...if the law insists on their dispensing with black employees, they will have to think seriously about giving up their leases".¹⁶⁴
The Asiatics were also handicapped by their own ignorance of advanced agricultural techniques, and by European disinterest in their projects. When the rice industry at Mossman failed because of their primitive methods, the Northern Mining Register reported that "...since only Cairns Chinese were involved, there was no investigation into this disappointing show".¹⁶⁵ Similarly,white colonists took little interest in the banana exporting industry. The marketing of the fruit was entirely controlled by Chinese merchants,¹⁶⁶ but the shipments were carried by the Australian Steamship Navigation Company, which had a monopoly on the coastal trade. This company saw no reason to adapt their ships for the carriage of perishable cargo,and large consignments of fruit often arrived in Melbourne completely unfit for consumption.¹⁶⁷ Again, it seems: "There was a tendency to feel that too much trouble need not be taken over the Chinaman's produce".¹⁶⁸
The most obvious fact about the situation of the Chinese leaseholder was that his claim to the land was tenuous. Many of them were content to work for a few years to make money and then return to China. Others were able to cultivate their land for a time, only to have it reclaimed by the European owners. In 1896 much of the Chinese banana land in the Johnstone area was taken back by whites anxious to begin sugar growing there, and the Chinese farmers had to re-establish themselves in the Cairns and Tully districts.¹⁶⁹ Finally in 1920, when the Returned Soldiers Association petitioned to have Asiatics excluded from the banana industry altogether and their farms turned over for soldier settlement schemes, the Chinese agricultural industry was totally destroyed.¹⁷⁰ The white exclusionists had triumphed and plodding Paddy's fragile link with the land he had opened was broken. What remained was the 'ching-chong' Chinaman the comic coolie vegetable hawker, the butt of local larrikins and that "fearsome" figure¹⁷¹ concerned mothers warned their children against. He had come a long hard way from that day on the wharf when was enthusiastically greeted as the saviour of the Colony.