POOE QUALITY OP WORK. 
hard work, and he would clearly demonstrate, that 
a money saving of a hundred and fifty pounds per 
annum would be saved to his employers, and for 
his great additional work which would be entailed, 
would they give him fifty, as a rise of pay — and this 
would leave a saving of one hundred to themselves? 
In many cases, this was done, too good an opportuni? 
ty to let slip, raise their much esteemed manager’s 
pay fifty pounds, after doing so, be a hundred pounds 
in pocket themselves, as compared with the former 
money cost of superintendence! I^ow, in our present 
enlightened' age of improvement, how we do look back 
with astonishment at such a course of proceeding. 
Did it never enter into the calculation of those who 
acted in this way, the money they lost, or would lose, 
by the coolies not being properly supervised, or indeed 
supervised at all, in the work. When we look back 
on the very small amount of work gone through by 
the coolies, and the inferior quality of the same also, 
as compared with the present times, the only conclu- 
sion to be arrived at is — what ? 
The coolies had better wages, they were a much 
stronger set of people as a rule, very few women or 
children amongst them, rice was plentiful and cheap, 
many estates were overstocked with coolies, had to 
refuse them, or enter into arrangements that they 
were only to work half time, or for their rice, for a 
period, previous to crop : everything was in favour of 
the planter in the labour supply. To what conclusion 
then can we come ? It must be one of these two, or 
probably part of both ; neither master nor coolies un- 
derstood the quantity and quality of the work that 
should have been performed, where there was not a 
sufiicient staff of superintendents allowtd to overlook, 
either the quantity or quality of the works which were 
said to be performed, by the head kangani, who on 
his part was allowed a premium by the junior kanganies 
for allowing work to pass off as having been performed 
while it was not. We can’t blame the superintendents 
of these times, although the blame is too often put 
upon them. They did the r work according to the 
ideas of the times ; their superiors ought to have 
known better, but, as they did not, they themselves 
were the only sufferers. 
Theii^ the only resident managing superintendent, on 
a large estate, if he did require ‘‘patching np,” ora 
small patch, one that required or called for an absence 
of a few^ weeks or months, it could not be done. The 
result was, the sore was not very bad, it was only a 
little tender, it might not break out for some time, 
perhaps not at all, and would just wear off in the same 
Y 
