Ixxxvii 



personal observation fully bore out this view. The carpenter dressed 

 better than he used to do ; occasionally he wore a laced tui"ban instead 

 of the invariable red cloth handkerchief of former days ; was sleek and 

 fat ; had often land of his own and was careless in his work. The 

 labourer too was to be seen with a decent cloth instead of a dirty rag 

 round his waist ; he occasionally went away at cropping time to sow 

 his small patch of land and returned to cooly work when there was no 

 cultivation going on- He was independent and would not be beaten 

 down in his wages ; and there were fewer beggars or persons who 

 stole from want, than there used to be. Any able-bodied man or 

 woman cooly got work, and the difficulty was not to select coolies 

 from a large number of applicants, but to get them at all. 



Mr. Macgregor, Collector of Malabar. — Except in the neighbour- 

 hood of large towns, wages were paid in kind and averaged two 

 Madras measures of rice for a first-class cooly. The women and 

 children earned proportionately less. The great majority of agricul- 

 tural labourers were permanently entertained by the landowners, and 

 these were paid a measure and-a-half per diem whether they worked 

 or not. This rate of pay was very little more than enough for a bare 

 subsistence. It admitted of an occasional drink. From a report 

 drawn up by his predecessor in 1863, there was little difference per- 

 ceptible since then in the rate of wages. 



There was no marked improvement in the position of the agricul- 

 tural labourers during the thirteen years he had experience of the 

 district. They were slaves in everything but name and up to no 

 very distant period had invariably been sold with the land. There 

 were abundant opportunities for this class to better themselves by 

 going to work in Wynaad, but comparatively few availed themselves 

 of this, because they preferred the freedom from anxiety which the 

 protection of a landowner afforded. 



In the towns there had been a marked increase of the rate of 

 wages, which was four annas. This class was not much better off 

 than it had been previously as the price of food had also increased. 



Jilr. Foster, Collector of Ooddvari. — -The ordinary labourers in the 

 Goddvari district got 3 or 4 annas a day ; they were almost entirely 

 paid in money ; before the anient was made, the daily wage of 

 common labourers was one anna and that was sufficient to maintain 

 them. The cultivating labourers were usually kept as private ser- 

 vants by the puttadars and were given food, &c., all the year round 

 and about two 'ptdties of grain at the harvest, which, if paddy, 

 would be worth about Rs. 40. Many of these labourers had of 

 late years become puttadars themselves, employing in their turn 

 hired labourers. In the Bellary district the practice of hiring 

 labourers to cultivate was not so common as in the Goddvari district ; 

 the poorer classes there had small holdings and all the members of 

 the family assisted in cultivating the land ; but in the delta taluks of 

 this district the landholder and his family seldom took any part in the 

 actual cultivation of the land ; they did not let it out so much as 

 cultivate it by their own private servants maintained all the year 

 round, so that the position of these labourers was much better in 

 Goddvari than in poorer districts ; but this was the case in the years 

 preceding 1872, after the anient was made. In the food the labour- 



