December i, 1 ^ 90 .] 
THT TROPICAL AGRiCULTURiST. 
44S 
cattle (usually the owner) a second (f) and the 
cultivator the remainder ( 9 ), 
Clearly (a) and (e) are rent, (c) and (/) the profits 
on capital, (ti), (il) and (y) are wages. 
If the crop fails wholly, no one gets anything but 
(a) and (r) remain a debt to be discharged out of the 
next harvest. If in part, the deductions are made 
in the order (b) (c) (a) and the balance, if any, dis- 
tributed by the rule. It must be remembered that 
this distribution is not the same for all fields, or 
for all parts of the country. The systems of 
distribution are many, but they are all on the same 
plan ; the one above described is for a field yielding 
10 fold ; a common class of fields. Richer fields 
yield a larger and less feriilo fields a lower rent, the 
balance being divided in different ways. The less 
fertile the field the bettor the apparent though not 
the real wages : this being, of course, to meet extra 
labour in cultivation and increased risk of loss. 
It follows that among native cultivators, pur- 
suing their cultivation in accordance with their own 
customs, the landowner gets a rent in kind exactly 
proportioned to the productive capacity of his land ; 
the capitalist gets a certain and liberal interest 
on his loan, and a proportionate return, if suc- 
cessful, on that portion of his enterprise which he 
has entered on as a speculation ; and the labourer 
a return in proportion to the success of his labours. 
But does the landowner thus get a less rent for his 
land than he wmuld if he cultivated it with some 
other product, that is, is the industry unremunera- 
tive to him ? In Colombo the native paddy-land- 
owner has turned his paddy-land into grass-fields ; 
outlying corners of fields, unfertile or incapable of 
irrigation, are in the Western and bouthern 
Provinces sometimes planted with coconuts; very 
rarely in old days the Kandyan planted coffee in 
his disused rice _field, but on the whole, once a 
paddy-field always a paddy field is the rule in 
Ceylon. Even the Jaffna Tamil who grows every- 
thing keeps his paddy-field for its accustomed use 
in its turn, burely it is probable — the writer is 
not a philanthropist and will therefore not venture 
to dogmatise, — that this is bo because it is to the 
owner’s interest ; in other words because paddy land 
owning is remunerative. For what is the alter- 
native? That a very large body of persons, and no 
inconsiderable number of whom are wealthy, 
intelligent and speculative commence or continue 
to grow rice on land which could be more 
profitably employed otherwise, because (a) it is the 
custom or (b) because they are oppressed by un- 
paid headmen or (c) because they think the cultiva- 
tion of rice a more honourable pursuit than others. 
These are the only reasons that are ever offered 
us on the other side and it is not for a seeker after 
truth to deny that they may have weight, but do 
they account for all the facts? A large body of 
persons, Sinhalese, Tamil and Malay have migrated 
from Hambantota and its neighbourhood to Tihawa 
to cultivate rice. Was it under the influence of 
custom, or at the instigation of unpaid headmen, 
or in the pursuit of reputation, or did they hope 
to make and— for they are constantly being followed 
by others — do they make money ? 
Is that wealthy speculator Mr. de Mel seeking the 
bubble reputation at Muturajawela, or is he 
terrorized by a village arachchi ? 
Under the new VValawe irrigation work in the 
S.P. not yet working 1,000 acres of Government land 
have already been purchased by private buyers : 
are they seekers of honour, slaves of custom, 
or victims of the Geat Unpaid? 
Are the rich Moormen who poured their money into 
the Government coffers in return for irrigable land 
in Batticaloa content with the mere name of 
lapdowner, or do they hope for a profit ? 
The local philanthropist tells us that they have 
engaged in the least remunerative of native in- 
dustries. Have they, and if so why have they, or 
do they by any chance understaud their own busi- 
ness better than the local philanthropist ? 
And, now comes the turn of the capitalist. 
Ho need not keep us long ; nobody ever wastes a tear 
on him. On his advance 0 ! seed paddy he 
gets 50 per cent interest certain, and he may be 
trusted to bo making a good thing over any 
other advance he makes. Let us leave him and 
turn to the labourer. Does the labourer in the 
rice-field get more or less than a similar amount 
of work would earn for him in other occupations? 
No one can certainly tell ; for though it is possible 
to measure his receipts, no one can measure the 
amount of his work, for the fact is this, that 2 or 3 
days of arduous labour at the beginning once over, 
the rest coneists of a hand’s turn done at odd 
times and is by no means incompatible with the 
contemporaneous pursuit of other industries. 
It is constantly stated in this connexion that 
Sir C. P. Layard, a very high authority, expressed 
his opinion that labour in the rice-field was the 
worst paid of all labour. It is usual for the phil- 
anthropist and sometimes for less positive and 
better informed persons to quote as nearly as ha 
can remember them Sir Charles’s words and to 
apply them to both branches of the industry — 
but this is because he has never had them with their 
context in the original. The statement is, il the 
writer — who is far from books of reference — is not 
mistaken, contained in one of the earliest printed 
Administration Reports of the Government Agent 
W. P. ,* in the course of which an account is given of 
the improvement in the position of the peasantry 
following on the extension of the coffee enterprise. 
Mr. Layard, as he then was, spoke of the wages 
to be earned by Sinhalese as carpenters, cart 
drivers, fellers of jungle, &o,, and he added, (the 
quotation is from memory): “Paddy cultivation is 
about the least remunerative industry in which a 
villager can engage.” Too much has been made 
of this very moderate statement of an opinion, which 
went in fact no further than that, at a time when 
speculation was brisk and the coffee industry 
in the height of its prosperity on the borders of 
W. P., the stay-at-home agricultural labourer could 
make less wages by following his ancestral pursuits 
in his native village than ho could earn by migrating 
to a place where business was brisker and by their 
plying such trades as he was fit for. It has no 
sort of application to the employment of the 
agricultural labour in ordinary times and at a 
distance from Europertn centres of trade and 
speculation, and it does not refer to the landowner 
at all. But, that being so, the opinion so ex- 
pressed, probably a correct one so far as it then 
went and in the place for which Sir Charles intended 
it, is not to shut out all further argument con- 
cerning consideration of the point ? Let us 
try the question by such other tests as are at 
disposal. 
What are the best known or least disputed 
points in connexion with Sinhalese labour? They 
are these. That during the periods when paddy 
farming operations are in full swing it is im- 
possible by the offer of any reasonable wages to 
induce the Sinhalese to engage in any other works 
and that no field in a fairly populous district 
ever lies uncultivated tor want of labour. If these 
two undisputed facts are not to be accounted for 
by the remunetrative nature of the work, what 
* The statement was made in answer toour personal 
enquiry and embodied in a “Summary of Informa- 
tions’’ some thirty years ago, but “A,” ’a argueneut 
is all the same very stioug.— Ep, T. d, 
