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A. No. But at the Peak, for the very same reason of want of accommodation for coolies there are not enough chairs. I wish to increase them but it means first adding a house, unless you flood the houses of residents with the public chair coolies.
Q. When you have had applications made to you to get chair coolies for people, have you always succeeded in getting them?
A. Yes. Whenever I have made a point of it I don't think I have ever failed.
Q-How do you set about getting them?
A.-I get them through the headmen of the licensed coolies. people I have any control over.
These are the only
Q. Do you mean the men that have the ricksha licences, or the headman at the Peak?
A.—Generally, it is chair coolies that we have been asked for and I have brought pressure to bear on the licensees of public chairs. They are really the headmen.
Q. Do these men have a large number of chairs like they do rickshas?
A.--Yes.
Q. Would it not be a good thing to extend that system? Perhaps there is not sufficient demand for chairs to make it a lucrative business to be a headman for chairs and give you a real hold of them as you have of the ricksha coolies?
A. The number of public chairs is not limited and, except at the Peak, there has not been any great increase in the number of public licensed chairs for the last four or five years.
Q.-Is a chair coolie a different being from a ricksha coolie ? Will a ricksha coolie take to carrying a chair ?
A. Yes, sometimes they do that. Of course you get younger and stronger men in the rickshas. The older men go to the chairs.
Q. How long do these coolies last, only a few years? It kills them doesn't it?
'A.-I don't know that. I never enquired.
Q-When you set to work to get private coolies for anybody, do they want to know who they are for and haggle as to whether he is a well known bad master or good master?
A.--Well, I have never been able to find any cases of bad treatment where the coolies won't go to a man. I have had cases of being unwilling to carry exceptionally heavy people and so on, but it generally appears to be some petty thing. Very often outdoor coolies are asked to do household work, carry provisions up to the Peak and so on, and they object to these little additions to what they consider their sole duties of carrying,
The Chairman.-Do you
think the introduction of the tram and consequent leni- ency of masters towards their servants in providing them with tram tickets has had any influence in making the coolies more unwilling to work?
A. Yes, undoubtedly it has. They have become utterly spoiled. As regards my own servants, I make work for them. When they have nothing to do, I find something for them to do.
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Mr. Wilcox. That is a general complaint, and it is commonly stated that the chair coolies are unwilling nowadays to do any work beyond carrying a chair.
Mr. Badeley. That is a part and parcel of the system of scarcity.