196 TEA AND SILK FARMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 



hold, that is, are held by families direct from the Sovereign on 

 payment of a fixed annual tax, and are usually sub-let to farmers 

 and others at full rates. Wages are, according to our ideas, small. 

 " Tea-gatherers," says Williams in his Middle Kingdom (vol. ii. 

 p. 136), " are paid according to the quantity of leaves they bring 

 in, at the rate of about four or five cash per catty, and expert 

 pluckers can accomplish from thirty to forty catties per day, or 

 from 40 to 53 lbs. of leaves, for which they receive from 6d. to 9d. 

 But it is only very expert and well-trained hands that can make 

 so much. Labourers in the tea districts receive from 2d. to 3d. 

 per day and their food, which is always furnished by the farmer, 

 and may cost about 3d. or 4d. more, making the whole day's out- 

 lay for labour amount to 6d. or 7d. The food is of the simplest 

 kind, — rice, vegetables, and a small portion of pork or dried 

 fish." 



Coolies who carry heavy burdens, and who may be called upon 

 to travel for days or weeks together, such as the porters who 

 convey packages of tea from the interior to the canals or creeks 

 which lead to the various shipping ports, are remunerated more 

 liberally. According to a calculation made on the basis of some 

 of Mr. Fortune's statistics given in his Tea Districts of Clmia, 

 these men receive at the rate of about lOd. per day Another 

 class of Chinese coolies, possessing some topographical know- 

 ledge, whose duties consist in carrying European and other 

 foreign travellers about, are more highly paid still. Mr. Thorn- 

 ville Thomas Cooper, who for five years had wandered all over 

 China, in his evidence before an East Indian finance committee 

 of the House of Commons on the 23d May 1871, stated in reply 

 to questions, Nos. 5468 to 5474 (page 253) : " I had eight coolies 

 to carry my chair at 250 cash each per day ; 1000 cash are equal 

 to one tael, and I have got the tael down at the value of 6s. 8d. 

 They carried me on an average of 20 miles a day." In this 

 example it will be observed that the wages paid were exactly 

 double those previously alluded to, or Is. 8d. a day ; but it must 

 be recollected that these men were probably paid at an extra 

 rate on account of being with Mr. Cooper away from their homes 

 for months, perhaps years, at a stretch, and that foreign em- 

 ployers of Chinese labour within the country are almost invari- 

 ably charged more for similar service than natives would be. 

 Probably, then, a fair overhead estimate of the average wages' 

 paid throughout the interior of China, and presumably in the 

 tea and silk districts, would be from 8d. to lOd. per day. This 

 estimate is also based on the circumstance that much of the 

 manipulation, and all the lighter operations connected with both 

 industries, are usually performed by women and children, whose 

 remuneration is known to be very moderate. 



In India the wages paid in the various tea districts vary even 



