496 
.'itatistics,  and  I  have  to  express  my  indebtedness  to  him  for  the  very 
considerable  amount  of  trouble  which  he  took  in  the  matter.  The 
labour  involved  made  it  out  of  the  question  to  attempt  to  classify  the 
whole  of  the  estates  in  the  Island,  but  a  number  of  estates  in  different 
districts  were  selected  by  me  entirely  at  random,  without  any  personal 
knowledge  of  them,  some  being  banana  plantations  and  others  sugar 
estates,  and  I  presume  they  represent  a  fair  average. 
The  return  included  females,  but  I  have  only  taken  into  account 
the  male  indentured  coolies. 
Although  a  very  accurate  record  is  kept  of  the  total  number  of  days 
spent  in  hospital,  no  record  is  kept  on  the  estates  of  the  nature  of  the 
illness,  although  this  might  be  obtained,  with  a  great  deal  of  labour, 
by  extracting  the  information  from  the  hospital  records.  I  would 
venture  to  suggest  that  each  estate  should  keep  a  record  of  the  nature 
of  the  illness  for  which  a  coolie  is  sent  to  hospital,  and  this  could  be 
done  by  a  simple  return  to  be  furnished  to  the  estate  by  the  District 
Medical  Officer.  It  would  be  of  extreme  value  in  arrivinp-  at  a 
o 
knowledge  of  the  prevalence  of  any  disease  on  a  particular  estate, 
and  for  the  purpose  of  indicating  the  remedial  measures  necessary. 
But  though  the  number  of  days  lost  through  malaria  are  not 
specifically  shown,  I  think  I  shall  be  under-estimating  it  if  I  put  it  at 
50  per  cent,  of  the  total  illness  among  coolies  ;  in  some  places  it  is 
certainly  much  more. 
I  have  in  Table  VIII  condensed  the  information  supplied  by  the 
Director  of  Immigrants,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  the  percentage  of  days 
lost  through  sickness  varied  from  2-4  to  as  much  as  417,  the  average 
for  1907  being  15-5  and  for  1908  18-3,  the  average  for  the  two  years 
being  i6'9  days  lost  from  illness  out  of  every  100  working  days.  In 
other  words,  i6'9  men  out  of  every  100  on  these  twelve  estates  were 
incapacitated  from  work  daily  throughout  the  year,  that  is  to  say,  that 
if  it  were  possible  to  attain  the  ideal  of  no  sickness,  these  estates  could 
have  been  worked  with  i6’9  less  of  a  staff.  On  one  or  two  estates, 
during  certain  months  each  individual  coolie  on  the  estate  spent  ten 
to  fourteen  days  in  hospital  out  of  every  month  of  twenty-eight  or 
thirty  working  days.  This,  it  must  be  admitted,  represents  an 
enormous  loss  of  labour,  in  addition  to  what  I  have  already  alluded 
to  the  cost  to  the  Colony  of  maintenance  in  hospital — and  I  do  not 
think  it  will  be  disputed  by  any  practical  business  man  that  if  it  is 
