CH. II] AGRICULTURAL POLICY 209 



This intermixture of races and types of agriculture is of 

 the greatest importance to the progress of agriculture in the 

 country. It helps and stimulates the villager by example and 

 rivalry; it assists to raise the general standard of living, and so 

 to improve the market for produce and provide better local 

 demand ; it helps to check the spread of disease among culti- 

 vated plants ; it provides village labour at easy distance from 

 the planting estates, and provides opportunities of earning 

 money by external work to the inhabitants of the village 

 sections. 



Not only should the Land offices attend to this breaking 

 up of the land into sections inhabited by different kinds of 

 people and different types of agriculture, but they should also 

 endeavour, when it is reasonably practicable, to prevent too 

 much of any one district becoming taken up with one cultivation 

 only. Thus if one estate section is entirely rubber, they should 

 try to get the next one, if suitable for it, taken up for sugar, 

 or for coconuts. Not only will disease be less liable to spread 

 rapidly over large areas, but the labour difficulty will be less 

 acute, the different products in a district perhaps not all re- 

 quiring their greatest labour supply at the same time, as would 

 be the case if all the estates were in one product. 



By selling all land with road frontage, the frontages on the 

 great trunk roads, and at the corners where four roads meet, 

 need no longer be allowed to go at low rates; they may be 

 charged for according to their value as building sites for 

 shops, etc. 



The next important point is the labour question. Without 

 a good, reliable, and reasonably cheap labour supply, capitalists 

 will not invest in agricultural enterprises. The introduction 

 of labourers into the country, if not already there, must be 

 made a special object of endeavour. Every possible attraction 

 should be held out, and difficulties and inconveniences removed. 

 Let coolies be well treated, sufficiently well paid, have the 

 voyage made as comfortable as possible, and be free from 

 extortion or ill-treatment on the way; let special terms be 

 offered to induce them to settle in sections of land reserved 

 for one race or caste and under their own headmen; and let 



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