CH. Ill] POPULAlTOW^SWD LABOUR 15 



in Guiana is there any important native population of British 

 Indians, and even in those countries a few hundred thousand 

 is the total after many years. 



Coolies to use the common Indian word for men upon 

 daily pay who go from the densely peopled countries, having 

 learnt at home to work comparatively hard, are as a rule ready 

 to do a fair amount of hard work, whereas the actual inhabitants 

 of thinly or insufficiently peopled countries are as a rule very 

 "lazy," nature being so bountiful to them that they do not 

 need to work hard to make a living. It is but comparatively 

 rarely that one finds an individual that has ambition to "better 

 himself," and willingness to work hard for that end. It 

 therefore follows that in thinly inhabited countries it is 

 necessary to import labour if any serious work is to be done, 

 especially by white men, or if any agricultural progress is to be 

 made. Thus Ceylon 1 and the Federated Malay States import 

 labour, the former from India, the latter from India, China and 

 Java ; the more thinly populated West Indian islands import 

 labour from the more thickly populated islands and from India ; 

 Hawaii from Japan ; whereas India and Java do all their own 

 work with their own inhabitants. 



The following figures of value of exports from the different 

 tropical countries (omitting mining products) will serve roughly 

 to illustrate the point we have been endeavouring to indicate : 



Value of Exports in . Population 



Ceylon, 1902 7,382,111 3,703,615 2 



Jamaica, 1900-1 1,797,077 745,104 3 



Sandwich Islands, 1902-3 5,419,308 100,000 4 



Siam, 1902 4,533,972 12,000,000 



Manila, 1901 1,861,941 5,500,000 



Indo-china, 1902 6,153,142 22,000,000 



1 Ceylon (or at least S.W. Ceylon) is not thinly populated, but the Sinhalese 

 are averse to hard or regular work, which has therefore to be done by the Tamils 

 imported from South India, especially in the colder "up country" districts 

 where tea is chiefly cultivated, and in which the Sinhalese do not willingly live. 



2 Export trade created by aid of about 450,000 imported coolies, and about 

 400,000 natives, the other natives having nothing to do with it. 



3 A large part of the native population engaged in the export trade in fruit ; 

 many English planters. 



4 The whole population (largely imported Japanese coolies) engaged in 

 growing sugar, etc., for export under American planters. 



