Australian Social Development (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...a certificate of health, suffering from disease or any mental or physical defect or disability, or having been convicted of crime or of living by immoral means. No mention is made in this list of racial objections and no races are specifically named, because, on the advice of the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the dictation test was substituted as less invidious and less derogatory to national pride. The dictation test consists of not less than fifty words of a European language. In general practice it is not, and never has been, imposed upon persons of European descent, so that no white person has ever been refused admission to the Commonwealth on any other grounds than those of health or character. On the other hand, the dictation test operates in the direction of excluding all races other than European, though the proviso exists that subjects or citizens of a country, with which arrangements have been made for regulating the admission of its citizens to the Commonwealth, shall be exempted from the dictation test. The number of persons refused admission to the Commonwealth during the period 1905-1913 was 858, while those admitted during the same period totalled 874,478, of whom only five passed (on being required to do so), the dictation test. This legislation which, being federal, superseded that of various States specifically directed against the Chinese, was aimed mainly at Asiatic races, which were beginning to flow into the Commonwealth, or had already, as in the case of the Chinese, established themselves there, with results that were patent to all, and gave the White Australia policy a national sanction. At the census of 1911 there were 42,230 persons of non-European race in the Commonwealth, of whom 25,772 were Chinese, 3,698 Hindus, 3,576 Japanese ...