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History

Importing piglets

- indentured labour in colonial Malaya

Part 1

Colonial Capitalism
and its Attitude Towards Labour in the 19th and Early 20th Century

IN 1846, KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS wrote a joint work which provided an important clue to the understanding of history. For our theme this is specially relevant. They observed the following: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class, which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it."¹ They further continued: "The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in their whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch."²

As the plantation-based colonial capitalism was the dominant ideology of the ruling power in the 19th century, their ideas on the natives and the different communities, their concept of indolence and their classification of labour into useful and meaningless, became the dominant ideas of the day. In the Philippines, in Indonesia and in Malaysia, the natives had been accused of indolence. The general common sociological origin of the accusation was the natives' response to plantation labour. In Indonesia, labour was directly forced upon the natives during the period of the culture system. In the Philippines, the Spaniard had also relied on forced labour. In Malaysia, although directly there was no forced labour, indirectly there was. The system of forced labour in the Philippines and Indonesia allowed the Dutch and Spanish colonial government to dispense with immigrant labour. In Java during colonial times there was no Chinese or Indian labour, although there were Chinese and Indian merchants. There was some Chinese plantation labour in Sumatra.

Unlimited greed

The colonial capitalist ideas of development were largely based on unlimited greed for profit and the subordination of all other interests to this. Both the Chinese and British capitalists in 19th century strongly exhibited these traits. Human life and health were considered of secondary importance judging from the type and manner of abuses which took place; so much so that even the colonial government deemed it necessary to legislate against certain abuses. They were mainly connected with the recruitment and the subsequent employment of indentured labour from China and India. The capitalist enrichment in Malaya was achieved at the expense of these indentured labourers. At the time when the Chinese coolies were praised as industrious, they found themselves exploited in a situation which they could not avoid. A number of legislative measures were taken, the last one in 1912 abolishing indentured labour. In 1823, Raffles published the following ordinance: "As it frequently happens that free labourers and others are brought from China and elsewhere as passengers who have not the means of paying for their passage, and under the expectation that individuals resident in Singapore will advance the amount of it on condition of receiving the services of the parties for a limited period in compensation therof - such arrangements are not deemed objectionable provided the parties are landed as free persons, but in all cases the amount of passage money or otherwise is limited to twenty dollars, and the period of service by an adult in compensation thereof shall in no case exceed two years, and every engagement shall be entered into with the free consent of the parties in presence of a Magistrate, and duly registered."³

Raffles's ordinance was not concerned with what happened before arrival in Singapore, with the conditions of work during the two years, and with what happened after the two years. Some immigrants had sufficient means to pay for their own passage. However the demand for labour was so great that a credit-ticket system came into being. Coolie brokers in South China, Hong Kong and Singapore arranged for the shipment of batches of coolies to Penang and Singapore. On arrival the brokers found employment for the immigrant coolies. These brokers were particularly unscrupulous. The employers paid them according to the market price for each labourer. The labourers imported under this system were called "piglets" and the people in charge of their lodging houses were called "heads of piglets" (chee chai t'au).⁴ They were lured from their villages in South China by stories of prosperity to be gained or they would be lured to the city, involved in gambling where they lost their money, and then the recruiter or the lodging house keeper would cajole or compel them to emigrate in order to pay their gambling debts. The wages offered overseas were higher but they were rarely obtained in full by the labourers. The means of recruitment were inhuman even by 19th century standards. "The coolies were, in fact, treated like cattle or pigs, and there are well authenticated cases of hundreds of coolies dying during the voyage or being drowned like rats without a chance of escape when ships sank. The more serious of these abuses took place not on the short runs to Malaya but on the longer crossings of the Pacific. The surprising fact is that, despite the inhumanity with which the trade was conducted, more and still more coolies could be found to swallow the bait. Chinese authorities at the China ports did, indeed, prohibit the traffic because of the abominable abuses which were connected with it. It is on record that in 1888, a coolie broker at Swatow was decapitated for having deceived coolies into emigrating. But though sharp warnings such as this acted from time to time as checks on emigration, the business was so lucrative and the field for corruption so wide that emigration under the same old system continued, and no effective action was taken in China to ameliorate the hard lot of the unfortunate emigrant under the credit-ticket system."⁵

Locked in

Neither was any effective action taken in Singapore or in the Straits Settlements. Raffles's ordinance did not include an effective machinery to enforce it, except the magistracy.⁶ After leaving the hands of the brokers, the coolies passed into the hands of the estate contractors. It was here that the characteristic evil of the system perpetuated itself. Both the European and the Chinese enterprises were guilty of it. The following description explains the system: "For example the usual system of employment on the sugar plantations in Province Wellesley whether European or Chinese-owned was the 'rumah ketchil' system. Under this system, the estate owner divided up his estate into sections each of which was in charge of a Chinese contractor. The owner arranged for the purchase of coolies and then handed them over to the contractors debiting their expenses to the contractors' account. The contractors took complete charge of the coolies, provided a house (the rumah ketchil) and made all arrangements for wages, food, etc. The coolies were not allowed to leave the rumah ketchil except when at work on the estate under supervision, and there was widespread ill-treatment. Coolies were beaten, badly fed, and locked in at night to prevent their escape. In general no medical treatment was provided and disease was rife. The contractors supplied the coolies with chandu at high prices and encouraged its use to increase their own profits. They, or their kepalas, ran 'crooked' gambling and thus relieved the coolie of what little balance of wages he might have. In actual fact the coolie did not receive any cash wages. His wages were credited to his account, and his chandu, gambling debts and other purchases were debited to his account. He was invariably in debt. Similar conditions existed wherever coolies engaged under the credit-ticket system were employed."⁷

The above system had operated for more than half a century, supplying labour for European and Chinese capitalist enterprises. The abuses inherent in the system remained unchecked with the connivance of the colonial authority. In 1871, Chinese merchants and citizens petitioned the Governor concerning the disappearance of newly-arrived labourers. In 1873, a further petition was received by the Governor from the local Chinese begging for an ordinance prohibiting the disgraceful kidnapping of new arrivals, the appointment of inspecting officers, and the establishment of depots for registration and lodging. "In 1873 a Bill was introduced to regulate the system of immigration. It was vigorously opposed by the unofficial members of Council who considered that the evils had been exaggerated and that nothing should be done to interfere with the importation of free [sic] labour because if immigration were cut off or discouraged 'enterprises of great moment that are now developing, must wither and collapse'. The Bill passed into law as Ordinance X of 1873 but was never brought into force."⁸ Succeeding ordinances, like this one, to improve the system of recruitment, especially the fate of the labourers after arrival, remained on the whole as paper measures. In 1890, the Protector of Chinese noted that no examination depots had been established and instead private depots licensed by government were established. A commission established in 1890 noted several of the familiar abuses, including the fact that coolies were forced to go to Sumatra against their will.

In Penang, the Protector of Chinese there noted some of the serious abuses. Some labourers were working in a Chinese estate under compulsion. Some having fulfilled their contract 3 or 4 years earlier, were kept continuously in debt, and compelled to work there. One man worked against his will for 9 years and still remained in debt. They could not get off the island because the watchmen of the ferry would stop them and no boatman would ordinarily take them as passenger. The circumstances surrounding their arrival were worthy of notice. European boats were used to ship them to the Straits Settlements unlike the Chinese boats used during an earlier period. The coolies were disembarked and confined for 10 days at most to the depots where there was no opportunity for exercise. The depot-keepers brought them from the ships, guarded them in the depots, and eventually obtained their employment on payment. They were treated like livestock. There was a consensus among observers during that period that the depot-keepers as a whole were totally unscrupulous. Scenes of disorder, almost amounting to riots, sometimes occurred aboard ships on arrival. Rowdies from the shore snatched ear-rings and bangles from women passengers, and incited the "unpaid passengers" to run away.⁹

Headman control

The 1890 Report of the Commission to enquire into the state of labour in the Straits Settlements, which was submitted to the government in 1891, included information on terms of contract in ordinary use for new arrivals to the Straits Settlements. For agricultural work in the Straits Settlement and the Malay States, working days were 360 in a year. The wage was $30 per year. about 8 1/2 cents per day. Of this, $19.50 was deducted for passage from China. Food and some clothes were provided by the employer. If the labourer at the end of his first year was in debt and was retained, the wages were $3 a month with food. The interesting part of the contract was the anticipation of the debt. There was some slight variation in wages and passage fees for the mine labourers in Perak and Pahang. The European estates adopted the Chinese system of contract labour. The estates paid the contractor-headman and he in turn paid his labourers. "The ordinary method of employing Chinese on European estates is as follows. The coolies are procured through the agency of a headman. The usual contract with the employer is signed at the Protectorate, but it has no practical meaning, for the men are never paid direct by the manager, nor, in many cases, are their names known to him. All that the employer does is to sign the contracts and pay the necessary expenses to the headman who obtains them. The work which they afterwards do is paid for at contract rates through the headman, whose accounts with his coolies are never examined. Thus the control of the coolies is thrown entirely into the hands of the headman, who has them completely in his power. The lines or kongsi-houses in which they live are generally dotted about the estates at long distances from the main buildings and from each other, and are practically free from supervision. This state of things is calculated to favour ill-treatment on the part of the Tyndals (headmen), and such practices undoubtedly exist. Moreover, we have not seen or heard of a single estate employing a European who speaks Chinese, so that except through the headmen, or perhaps a Chinese clerk, there is no channel by which the employer can question his coolies or they can make their complaints."¹⁰

Some of the instances of cruelty on the estates are worth mentioning. In Penang, a coolie was starved to death in a little shed of a hospital in the stable yard of the employer's house, fifty yards from a police-station. The Commission had no doubt that both in the Chinese and European estates, the labourers were not infrequently beaten by the headmen. As a rule they were well fed as long as they were able to work, but the Commission was not so sure about the sick and the unfit. The Commission gave scant attention to labour in the tin mines. This was because during that time, European activity in mining was negligible. It was the accepted idea that mining in Malaya was not a profitable undertaking for Europeans. Hence the colonial capitalist government was not much interested in the problem of mining labour. While there was no acute shortage of labour for mining, for the European estates there was a problem. The 1880s was the period of European capital expansion in the agricultural sector. Late in 1912 indentured labour was abolished owing to the frequency of abscondment, in other words it created a problem for the European plantations. The growing number of free labour and the abuses in the estates encouraged indentured labourers to run away after the expiry of their term.

In some estates labourers were locked in between 6p.m. and 6a.m. These were in remote places. The Commission gave details of non-treatment of sick and diseased labourers, of illegal charges debited to the coolies, accounts, and of the supply of opium to coolies at high prices in advance of their wage, in a cruel and ferocious manner.¹¹ The health hazard to which the coolies were exposed could be judged from a case in 1873. The mentri of Larut who drew $200,000 a year from his mines, stated that the annual immigration of Chinese labour to Larut was about 2,000 to 3,000 coolies. About 10% - 20% died from fever when clearing new jungles. When the mines were first opened 50% died. In 1857, at the opening of the tin mines in Ampang at Kuala Lumpur, there were 87 coolies in the first batch. After 2 months, due to the ravages of fever and tiger, only 18 were left.¹² The most remarkable case of cruelty noted by another Commission of 1910 concerned an estate on the Kurau river. Three men were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment and the owner fined S50 for delay in sending a sick sinkheh (an arrival from China serving his first year) to hospital. He was admitted to hospital at 6p.m. and died at 6a.m. the next morning. "Diagnosis of cause of death on post mortem was dysentery. Enquiries on 25th February had elicited the fact that this sinkheh was made to eat human excrement on the day before he was sent to hospital in addition to a long course of cruelty, because he was too ill to go to bathe. The headman compelled this cooly to eat human excrement. He rubbed the excrement on the cooly's teeth. This Kong Thau was one of the three headmen who were sentenced to imprisonment for voluntarily causing hurt to another sinkheh as above stated."¹³ No further proceedings were taken in connection with this incident as the medical officer said that the excrement forced upon the victim could not be proved to be infectious. In another estate in the Krian area the labourers were terrorized by the headman who was eventually convicted. He raped the labourers. Homosexuality was not uncommon in these estates. #

End of part 1

(to be continued)

From "The Myth of the Lazy Native" by Prof. Syed Hussein Alatas. Published by permission of the author

NOTES

1.     Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, p. 39, ed. R. Pascal. Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1938.
2.    Ibid
3.     Quoted in W. L. Blythe, "Historical Sketch of Chinese Labour in Malaya", p. 68. JMBRAS, vol. XX, pt. 1, June, 1947.
4.    Ibid, p. 69.
5.    Ibid., p. 70.
6.    Ibid., p. 71.
7.    Ibid, pp. 70-7'1.
8.    Ibid, pp. 74-75.
9.    Ibid., pp. 78-79.
10.     From Straits Settlements Labour Commission Report 1890, quoted by Blythe, ibid, pp. 80-81. The Commission recommended Government inspection of Chinese labour and the abolition of private depots to be replaced by government depots.
11.     Quoted in Blythe, ibid., p. 91.
12.    Ibid,p. 111.
13.    Federated Malay States Labour Commission Report 1910, quoted in R. N. Jackson, Immigrant Labour and the Development of Malaya, p. 152. Government Printing Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1961.

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The Penang File Issue 37