3i8 



Mr. Winstedt has the following interesting tale to tell : 



"The example of one Malay here (Matang), who sold 

 twelve acres of clean rubber for $8,000, has brought home 

 the importance of diligent supervision to his whole mukim 

 with most salutary results. Another Malay, the headman 

 of some 50 partners, got an offer, on almost the same scale, 

 for 100 acres but refused it, and is spending the hundreds of 

 dollars a month he wins from his old trees on white-ant 

 killer, fungus cures and clean weeding, and looks forward to 

 making soon his thousands of dollars a month." 



These things have afforded food for thought to Government 

 officers, and some have expressed their thoughts in the reports before 

 me. One officer, who admits that 



" Malays are among the first people who should be allowed 

 to reap any benefit that is to be derived from the planting 

 of rubber," 



has given small area to Malays, on the special condition that they 

 shall each year for five years plant five permanent fruit trees on 

 their lands. 



He has done this because : 



" The ghosts of coffee and tapioca are still in every mukim 

 in the shapes of abandoned patches waving their warning 

 blades of lalang. Moreover, one cannot but feel that, what- 

 ever be the future price of rubber, the danger to the industr^^ 

 in the Peninsula will be very great when the large estates 

 are surrounded by patches of native-grown rubber, ill-kept 

 as, in the absence of any special legislation on the lines of 

 that for the planting of coconut trees, the majority are likely 

 to be. Clean weeding will appeal only in theory to the 

 average raiat. Any infectious disease that may come will 

 almost certainly find its source in a native kampong." 



These words might have been written by a planter. They look 

 so entirely at one side of the picture. They have evidently been 

 written by an officer who has the Negri Sembilan in his mind's 

 eye, for I know of only one mukim, or it may be two, in Perak, which 

 have been spoiled by tapioca. Clean weeding has certainly not 

 appealed to the average planter. Many planters have planted up 

 more land than they could ever have properly upkept, and it is fair 

 to admit that the formation of companies has given men and money 

 to the country to enable that which was bitten off to be chewed. 

 This speculation has had its effect on the Malay. He has sold 

 patches of rubber at enormous prices, and his appetite is whetted to 

 plant more for the demented foreigner to buy. If it makes him rich 

 and makes him happy, I, as one of his friends, look on in perfect 

 complacence. 1 sec no reason to jump at the conclusion that disease 



