Taz advisability of introducing Chinese labour into the tea-districts of Assam has been recently advocated in the calamus of a certain section of the Indian press. Lhuse who propose this measure, which implies the superaossion of native Inbour by imported agency, are hardly acquainted with the aspects of the question. It would be tantamount to carrying coals to Newcastle. They are apparently unacquainted with the fact, or ignore it, that there is a stream of Indian emigration flowing regularly towards the West Indies, Guiana, Natal, Mauritius, and, at individual risk and expense, towards Burma and the Straits Settlements. There must be something wrong somewhere, that, when foreign labour markets are so well supplied by Indian coolies, there is a dearth at home on the Indian tea plantations as regards the same article. The actualities of the case are:—the Indian planter pays his coolies at the rate of Rs. 5a month for three years and Rs. 6 for two years, making an average wage of Rs. 5/6 or $2.40 por measure for five years. Over and above this the Indian coolie gets in blankets and rum an equivalent of at least $3 to $3.50, in the aggregate during his five years, that would not, it is contended, be required in the case of Chinese coolies. This is going from actualities to probabilities in right earnest; but the culmination of such absurd deductions is attained when it is asserted that the Indian coolie will consume, certainly, five times as much in medicines and comforts as would be required by chinaman. This disingonuong reasoning is expanded farther into speculations as to the possibility of Chinese being able to work overtime, do extra tasks, etc., by which they might earn double, and even treble, the ordinary wages stated above. This is simply begging the question from first to last, for there is no reason to suppose the Chinaman free from the influences of climate—cold and fever—which affect the Indian in his own country to such an extent as to induce him to seek exile across the sea in preference to working on the Assam plantations, Noristhedisparity between theworkingpower of the Chinese and Indian coolies as great as some people believe. The expenditure of potential energy must be compensated for by nutriment; 60 that overtime and extra work would have to be counterbalanced by liberal dietary and enhanced cost of living. Farther, it is a well known fact that, in the Straits, the chief laborers are natives of India, and planters and engineers there find them superior Chinamen. Skilled laborers seldom have occasion to emigrate from India so that most of the artizaus in Penang and Singapore are Chinamen, The same remark applies to Burma, where carpenters are known to earn from Rs, 1/4 to Rs. 2/8—say from $ to 1 dollar—per diem. But in that country fan ordinary coolie earns from to 1 rupee or to $ dollar a day, so that it offers immeasurably better inducements to Chinese immigration than Assam. We know, too, from our own experience, that Chinese coolies in their own country, when working for native masters, got $2 por mensem, At Treaty ports, when working for Europeans, they expect at least double this, but only a limited number are employed under Europeans, and these have to belong to Guilds or Unions, and get so considerably mulcted by squeezes of all sorts that the difference in pay actually received by the coolie is prob. ably trifling. Rs. 10 ($4.44) per mensem would thus be a great inducement to Ohinese coolies, and there is little doubt that even Rs. 8 ($3.56) would tempt them. It is on such data and inferences that the whole question of Chinese labour for Indian tea-planting hinges. Comment is hardly uecessary. The fatuity of combating such delusions is palpable, Those who buoy themselves with the hope that the Chinese will prove the panacea for the ills of Assam zo labour will be sadly disappointed, Common sense is aguinst them. The Chinaman is more likely to utilise others, than offer himself as a stepping-stone to wealth, The physical endurance" which is said to have beaten (?) that of Cornish miners on the railways in America can hardly be expected to be requited with the wages of an Indian toa-plantation. For these exceptional instances there are higher inducements elsewhere 5 while the ordinary drudge would have to pass by, and is not likely to forego, the greater advantages and higher remuneration which the Malayan tiufield, plantations of Sumatra and the Peninsula, and Burma afford for his labour, before ho arrives at the terra incognita of Assam,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.