84 SANITATION AND HYGIENE ON TROPICAL ESTATES 



a higher recruiting rate, and generally obtains a less 

 satisfactory type of individual, who does less work each 

 day and works fewer days each month. At the same 

 time, to get and keep him a higher rate of pay has 

 frequently to be given : this is in addition to the expense 

 of caring for a large percentage of sick persons. All the 

 foregoing appears so very obvious that it would hardly 

 seem necessary to mention it, yet many of those who 

 are connected with agricultural undertakings are still 

 apparently unconvinced that substantial and permanent 

 prosperity is so very dependent upon good health, and 

 that expenditure on the prevention of sickness is not only 

 humanitarian, but highly productive, sound, and business-- 

 like. 



Immigrant labour has been immensely valuable in this 

 country, but the introduction of labourers to a tropical 

 area but recently opened up has certain drawbacks, none 

 of which are really insuperable. In the first place, the 

 recruiting of Indian labourers from remote districts, where 

 they have not been living under good hygienic conditions, 

 increases the risk of introducing infectious diseases. 

 Before April, 1911, many estates were put in quarantine 

 every year because new arrivals brought serious illness 

 themselves, or in their clothing. To combat this difficulty 

 a system of detention for seven days on arrival was 

 instituted; this period, added to the five or six days at 

 least spent on board the steamer, has proved sufficient for 

 the detection of anyone 1 incubating illness and to prevent 

 the spread of it amongst the labour forces on estates. 

 The result of the system has been particularly gratifying; 

 since its adoption (with one exception a delayed in- 

 cubation case of small-pox) no estate has been infected 

 by new arrivals. When it is stated that over 100,000 

 persons arrived during the year 1913, and many of them 

 proved to be infected, the advantage of the system needs 

 no further comment. The method is as follows: On 

 arrival of the ship the immigrants are taken to the deten- 

 tion camp and separated into groups, vaccinated, and 

 clothing and persons are disinfected. At the end' of a 

 week, if found free from disease, they are distributed to 

 the various estates who have recruited them. A further 



