and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society, 



501 



Surely managers cannot say that these are bad 

 terms for the Assistant? For they used to 

 charge a premium of £100 sterling, keep for six 

 months while the assistant was learning his 

 work, and the man had to pay his own passage 

 out. There were plenty of parents ready to pay 

 the above, and there are thousands of parents 

 at home only too ready to accept the favourable 

 terms offered b}' the B.. Gr. A. 



I, personally, would like to see a first-class 

 passage out paid, for the men we wane are those 

 who would like to travel lirst. 



It is absolutely untrue to say that a young 

 fellow cannot live on good health}' food for 8125 

 per month ; but of course he would have little 

 pocket money to spare ; and on these terms the 

 parents can quite well allow their boys some- 

 thing for the first six months. 



Leave. — "Local leave not to exceed twenty- 

 one days in the year, etc." Local leave — I do 

 not mean by this going a few miles to his own 

 district cricket or football club — should be given 

 by the manager of the estate, as he is the only 

 man who really knows if the assistant can be 

 spared or not. What does the Visiting Agent 

 know about this? 



This is done by all services, and I see no 

 reason why it should not be done on estates ; but 

 I should not like to see this stop managers giving 

 all the leave they can to assistants, especially 

 if the manager is on the estate that day himself. 



If a manager has not the necessity of working 

 on Sundays, the more Sundays he allows the 

 assistant off the estate the better, but one man 

 should always be on the estate. I have repre- 

 sented to many boards that I strongly advise 



GIVING THE MANAGERS AND PROVED ASSISTANTS 

 A SOLID INTEREST 



in the profits, and my opinion has never changed 

 on this subject. As to the youngsters it is time 

 enough to be good to them when they show they 

 are any good to the estates ; and the sooner 

 good-for-nothings are out of the country the 

 better for themselves, other planters and the 

 estates. 



On one of my own estates I am just now 

 arranging to give a manager, who has done good 

 work, a commission and a substantial share in 

 the estate by agreement, he paying 6 per cent 

 interest on a low valuation of that share. Of 

 course there must be clauses to safeguard the 

 owners ; but the more our managers are identi- 

 fied with our interests the more likely will they 

 be to work for our mutual benefit. 



I have not yet referred to, (1) outside work ; 

 {2) other Companies' employees; (3) employee 

 landholders ; (4) costs ; (5) Sunday names. 



If the interests in the estates which I have 

 suggested here were given to planters, Nos. 1 

 and 3 would be very easily arranged. In the 

 case of men having a little capital of their own, 

 a certain number of unissued shares should be 

 kept for managers and assistants to take up. 



2. I consider as only a matter of courtesy 

 amongst gentlemen. 



4. This is absolutely necessary, but the R. 

 G.A. must be very careful to choose men with 

 practical experience for the sub-Committee. 



5. This point was already settled by the P,A, 

 M., and will soon be in force for all coolies. 

 In conclusion, with reference to 



MY ALLUSION TO BAD SCIENTIFIC ADVICE. 



Just at a critical time when many planters 

 were feeling the pinch of shortage of labour and 

 had to settle the critical point of either stopping 

 opening more land or letting the weeding of 

 the opened parts get out of hand, unpractical 

 scientific advice was given that weeding- was 

 waste of labour on rubber estates, and that men 

 should plant up leguminous plants such as 

 sensitive grass and Crotalaria with the object of 

 keeping out weeds and adding nitrogen to the 

 soil, disregarding the fact that nearly all our 

 low land contains, if anything, too much nitrogen 

 (see all my reports from Voltker). Voltker, in 

 one of his reports to me, once stated "You 

 might as well try to feed a baby on grease as to 

 add nitrogen to any of those soils." 



Sensitive grass would be absolutely fatal, for 

 it is as bad a weed as lalang, will not keep out 

 lalang, would give ulcers to all the labour force, 

 and be a great source of danger from fire daring 

 dry weather. 



Crotalaria. 



The cost of planting this, if spent on weeding, 

 at once would have cleaned up all weeds, and if 

 the lalang were once in the soil no Crotalaria 

 would kill it. Besides this, it would be a great 

 danger to any estate during dry weather when 

 its growth was over ; and after its first growth 

 was over, lalang would at once appear. 



A better plant than either of the above would 

 be the wild Passion Flower creeper, which has 

 for the last two years spread all over this coun- 

 try, but I should only try it where lalang is 

 already well established, and as a forlorn hope. 



I am told that the scientific department are 

 chiefly to blame for what is called ''thumbnail 

 pruning," but what should be called stopping 

 the natural growth of the tree ; and instead of 

 having a tree tapering off to the top and getting 

 lighter and lighter as it gets higher, all the 

 weight is thrown on to a knotty piece of the 

 tree in a weak unnatural way, with the result 

 that the wind from the North will blow off the 

 southern suckers (for they are, after topping, all 

 suckers, and not natural strong branches getting 

 lighter towards the top of the tree as nature's 

 engineer made them) and so on. 



Years ago, I consulted Professor Treub and 

 his scientific staff on this subject, and I took 

 him to see an experiment of about three acres 

 which had been done in this way. We found 

 that these suckers were very easy to pull off in 

 comparison to the natural stem and branch, 

 and all decided that it would be madness to do 

 such a thing, and that once done the best way 

 was to let the whole lot of suckers grow and let 

 nature rectify the mistake, which it did by 

 sending up one leader to become the natural 

 stem of the tree. 



I SAW A LAMENTABLE SIGHT IN PERAK 



the other day caused by this only. The trees 

 were done pretty high, and they were bending 

 over in all directions ; some of the weight had 

 to be cut off and the consequence will be that 

 the rest of the heavy suckers will be blown off 

 by wind. 



