509 
W. Peel, Esq., 
Ag. Superintendent of Ind. Immigrants, Penang, 
Penang. loth October, 1910. 
Sir, — We have the honor to acknowledge 'receipt of your letter 
dated the 7th instant conveying the information that His Excellency 
the Governor has been pleased to allow the importation of Statute 
Immigrants to continue to the end of the present year. 
We are instructed by the Committee of the Malay Peninsula 
Agricultural Association to request you to convey to His Excellency 
their thanks for his action in so readily acceding to the representa- 
tions of the Association. 
We are further instructed to request you to lay before His 
Excellency the views of the Association regarding the immigration 
of Chinese labourers for agriculture. 
Following the gradual extinction of Tamil Contract labour, 
which seems to be settled policy of the Government, the Association 
has to recognize that estates will, as time goes on, 1 become more and 
more dependent on Chinese. The Committee therefore desires to 
bring to the notice of His Excellency the Governor the unsatisfactory 
conditions at present existing in regard to the recruiting of Chinese 
Sinkehs in their own country, and the harm which results through 
the absence of any official control by the local authorities of the 
recruiters. It is generally recognised and admitted that so long as 
the traffic remains in the hands of brokers and agents it will be 
impossible to ensure that only men likely to make useful agricultural 
labourers are exported to the Straits. At present, while very high 
recruiting fees are being paid, a certain number of undesirables are 
being brought into Malaya, and the Association feels that it is 
justified in regarding the future with some apprehension unless steps 
are taken officially to remedy the existing state of affairs. Estates 
are perfectly willing to pay reasonable prices for Chinese labour of a 
suitable class and the cost of the establishment by the Government 
of the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States of an 
official recruiting agency in China would easily be defrayed by 
recruiting fees and such an agency would benefit both the coolie and 
his employer by the elimination of the middleman. A certain 
proportion of the exorbitant recruiting fees at present paid to the 
brokers might then be paid to the coolie and this fact, together with 
the placing of the traffic under official British control, would have 
the further effect of cutting away the ground beneath certain mis- 
informed persons in England who are already beginning to agitate 
against the employment of Chinese contract labour in Malaya- 
Should the Government not see its way to establish an official 
recruiting agency in China, the Committee trust it may yet be 
possible to eliminate some of the more pressing disadvantages of the 
present system by the institution of a labour bureau, financed and 
