LABOUR, LOCAL AND IMPORTED. II 



work is required on the garden, labour is simply not 

 employed. All this makes local labour, even where the rate 

 of wages is high, very much cheaper than imported. 



The action of Government in the matter of imported 

 labour has much increased the difficulties and expense 

 necessarily attendant on it. It is a vexed and a very long 

 question which I care not to enter into minutely, for it has 

 been discussed already ad nauseam; still I must put on 

 record my opinion, after looking very closely into it, that the 

 Government has not acted wisely, inasmuch as any State 

 interference in the relations of employer and employed (out- 

 side the protection which the existing laws give) is a radical 

 mistake. As for the law passed on the subject to the effect 

 that a coolie who has worked out his agreement and volun- 

 tarily enters into a new one shall be, as before, under 

 Government protection, and his employer answerable as 

 before to Government, for the way he is housed, treated 

 when sick, &c., it is not easy to see why such enactments 

 are more necessary in his case than in that of any other 

 hired servant or labourer throughout all India. 



All evidence collected, all enquiries made, tend to show 

 that coolies are well treated on Tea estates. It is the 

 interest of the proprietors and managers to do so, and self- 

 interest is a far more powerful inducement than any the 

 Government can devise. The meddling caused by the 

 visits of the " Protector of Coolies " * to a garden conduces 

 to destroy the kind feelings which should (and in spite of 

 these hindrances often do) exist between the proprietor or 

 manager and his men. I do not hesitate in my belief that 

 imported coolies on Tea plantations would be better off in 

 many ways were all Government interference abolished. 



* What a designation ! Who invented it, I wonder ? A clever man, doubt, 

 less, for Government interference was probably his hobby, and he quickly 

 perceived the very title would, more or less, render the office necessary. 



