AMAZON SLAVERY.*
THE revelations that continue to be made of the labour con- ditions over a large area of Latin America seem to pour scorn on all the efforts of the past to alleviate the lot of subject humanity. It is a hundred years since the first of the South American States to proclaim their independence—the River Plate Republic, Chile, and Venezuela—proclaimed also the abolition of the traffic in slaves. Their example was followed, sooner or later, by all the rest. Mexico did away with slavery in 1829, Brazil—in the economy of which negro slavery had played the largest part—in 1888. In all the Latin American Codes slavery now stands utterly condemned and banned. Yet the evidence accumulates to prove that, except in certain favoured regions where the conditions of the labour market give no occasion or excuse for it, a slave system exists as hope- less and as cruel as any that inspired the efforts of the abolitionists of the last century.
In certain parts the slave traffic is open and unabashed. Tradition and public opinion, which regard the Indian as having no " rights " as against the white man, are stronger than the law. Hence the man-hunts (scoriae) in the Amazon
• The tipper Beeches of the Ammon. By Joseph F. Woodroffe. With es Introduction by Senhor Alfredo Parolee &Faris. Londcos Methuen and Co, El0e. ad. neq
forests, slave raids pure and simple, the kidnapping of women and children, and the whole gamut of cruelty culminating in the unspeakable atrocities revealed in Sir Roger Casement's Report. As for these things, says Mr. Woodroffe in telling the pitiful story of the sale of two small Indian children which he witnessed, they are so much a local custom, and as such tolerated and protected, that it would be extremely dangerous to attempt any disclosure of them while still in the country. But though this open enslavement of the Indians is common enough—and not only in the vast Amazon wilderness, into which the arm of the law is scarce long enough to penetrate— it is insignificant in comparison with that other system of slavery, masquerading under a semblance of legality, and far wider in its scope and inure indiscriminate in its incidence, which is commonly called "peonage," but has been better described as debt or loan slavery.
This widespread and deep-seated abuse is an outgrowth of the system of indentured labour necessitated by the peculiar conditions of these countries, and is based on the legal obliga- tion of the contracted labourer (peon) to work off any debt he may have incurred to his master (patron) before be can obtain the certificate of discharge (buleta de disponibilidad) without which he cannot lawfully seek other service. Since it is customary for the peon to receive a large advance on his wages, as an inducement to take service (competition for labour being keen), he starts in debt, and it is easy for the patron—if he so desire—to keep him there; for the labourer is bound, either under his contract or by force of circumstances, to make all his purchases at his employer's store, at which exorbitant monopoly prices are usually charged. If the peon, realizing the hopelessness of ever paying what he owes, attempt to escape before his account is adjusted, he may be pursued and punished as an absconding debtor. Even without the fraud which, in the case of ignorant Indian and other labourers, is easily and commonly practised, it is not hard to see how diffi- cult it is for the peon to escape enslavement at the hands of unscrupulous employers. Be cannot change his service with- out the permission of his creditor-master, and the new patron, in taking over his debt, practically buys a slave.
On the working of this system Mr. Woodroffe, though he discusses it with studied moderation, throws a lurid light. The most startling revelation to most, though not to all, of his readera will be that it is not only the natives who fall victims to it, but that white men can be, and often are, enmeshed in its toils. Of this Mr. Woodroffe speaks from bitter personal experience; for he himself, under stress of dire necessity, has worked as a peon among peons, and—as he admits with a frankness that does him credit—has shared, as a " loan-slave " of the Peruvian Amazon Company, in carrying out the cruel system which he has now made it his mission to denounce ;—•
"The perpetrators of these-crttel deeds," says Senhor da Faris, in his introduction, "are no respecters of race. Most of them are Peruvians and Brazilians, managing companies registered in England, and financed largely by British capitaL Among their victims are men of their own race, Americans, and Europeans of every nationality who have been induced to go out by the idea that they could soon earn enough to enable them to return to the homeland. . . Disillusionment comes to most of them in good time. . . . Far away from any town, with no means of communi- cating with any representative of a civilized Government, cunningly enmeshed in debt by his employers, the white man realizes that, like his coloured brother, he is a slave in every sense of the word, to be used as long as his labour is profitable, and when, from any cause whatever, he can no longer earn his food, to be left to die, far away from home and friends. In my travels over some of the districts traversed by the author I have met men from my own country . . . broken in spirit and without the slightest hope of escaping from a system which renders it impossible for them ever to save enough money to take them back home. They have implored me, in the name of God, to warn my fellow-countrymen of what they must expect if ever they venture into that inhospitable region."
It is to be hoped that the warning will not fall on deaf ears. It is to be hoped also that the public conscience in England will be aroused by Mr. Woodroffe's accounts of Englishmen enslaved and brutalized under this system, and that it will soon be made a penal offence for British subjects, directors of companies or others, to share, however indirectly, in responsi- bility for these iniquities.
We have enlarged on this aspect of Mr. Woodroffe's book because it is that which has the most immediate practical importance. It forms4 however, but a minor part of the volume, which gives a very vivid and intimate account of many aspects of life on the Upper Amazon. The ethnologist and the naturalist will find much in it to interest them, and those who love tales of adventure will not be disappointed, for the author would seem to have a genius for getting into" tight places" and out again. Very thrilling, for instance, is his account of how he was lost for nine days in the jungle, and how, falling into a swoon from exhaustion and hunger, he woke to con- sciousness in the hut of painted savages, who nursed him back to health with great tenderness and skill Of this adventurous side of the life, indeed, he writes with enthusiasm, and he enlarges on the attractions of these regions for sport-loving Englishmen. The incursions of "the right sort of men" in quest of game would, be incidentally urges, do much to help to solve the problem which he has at heart. Very sensible, too, are his remarks on the shortsightedness which has concen- trated commercial enterprise on the exploitation of rubber, to the neglect of the other resources of these regions—their untouched mineral wealth, their immense reserves of timber and precious woods, and the numberless edible products of a soil of incomparable fertility. This moral has already been enforced by events in the disastrous "slump" in Amazon rubber. If the great riches of the Amazon are ever to bo made available for mankind, the more pressing moral of Mr. Woodroffe's book must also be generally taken to heart. Want of labour is the great need of these countries, as it is the cause of, and the excuse for, "peonage," and they can never be properly developed until the labour system has been put on a sound basis. The present system is not only cruel, it is stupid; for it wastes and deteriorates the indispensable "arms" of wealth, and, in an insensate lust for rapid profits, prepares the bankruptcy of the future.
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