286 
Estate Labour, Federated Malay States. 
. — 
Selangor. 
Perak. 
Negri 
Sembilan. 
Pahang. 
Total. 
Tamils^ 
17.803 
9,169 
2,327 
59 
29,358 
Javanese . . 
1.799 
1,859 
395 
17 
4.070 
Malays 
455 : 
739 
247 
58 
r.499 
Chinese 
642 
2,353 
418 
20 
3.433 
Banjares and other races 
538 i 
234 
127 
15 
914 
Total . . 
21,237 ' 
H.354 
3-5M 
169 
39.274 
Coolie Sanitation. 
The question of the health of coolies on estates, the 
sanitation of their lines and the prevention or minimising of 
malaria, dysentery, and other diseases to which the labour force 
is specially exposed, is being particularly considered by 
Government. 
The health of the labour force is one of the most vital 
matters in the success of rubber-planting, and it therefore 
becomes as important from an agricultural point of view as the 
health of the plant or the soil in which it grows. The observations 
which I have made in visiting estates and in asking the medical 
men in charge of planting districts all over the Peninsula leads 
me to the belief that there are two factors which militate against 
the highest state of health and vigour in estate coolies. 
The first being that a proportion of coolies come to an estate 
in what a lay-man may call a damaged condition, so that they do 
not start with a clean bill of health as regards malaria or other 
specific disease, or possessing an amount of reserve material which 
fits them to stand well any disease in itself trivial which they may 
contract soon after arriving. 
On one estate I specially observed the fat, healthy and 
vigorous appearance of the whole of a large force of some 200 
which had joined the estate some weeks, and the Superintendent 
informed me that he attributed it to the fact that these coolies had 
.been for four weeks or more kept in quarantine, resting, supplied 
with good food, and medically attended. 
The gain of the coolie “ starting fair ” when he first arrives 
is well worth the cost of his being looked after and fed before 
he comes. 
A Substitute for Weeding. 
One of the most important questions in relation to the 
economical conduct of a rubber estate is that of the weeding. 
