LABOUR, LOCAL AND IMPORTED. II 



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 neces- 

 sarily attendant on it. It is a vexed and a very long question 

 which I care not to enter into minutely, for it has been dis- 

 cussed 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 (outside the pro- 

 tection 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 voluntarily 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 otherhired 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 ' Pro- 

 tector of Coolies/ J 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 Govern- 

 ment interference abolished. 



I do not decry Government action to the extent of seeing 



1 What a designation ! Who invented it, I wonder? A clever man, doubtless, 

 for Government interference was probably his hobby, and he quickly perceived the 

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



