Eastern
No. 138.
Printed for the use of the Colonial Office.
CONFIDENTIAL.
CEYLON.
economic reasons as necessitated child labour, but is not the cause of it. Child labour would exist in China with or without the mui taai system., Own children have to work, bearing burdens or taking charge of still younger ones, from the earliest possible moment. Even before that moment the child's place, directly it can leave the mother's back and can stand on its own feet, is necessarily at the mother's side, finding its play in imitating her work-a training of which the mother is ready to avail herself (indeed, is almost forced to avail herself) from the instant the child's strength is equal to the carrying of two bricks. Broadly, the mui taai is the domestic servant. The child seen working at the mother's side in the streets or on the fields is the natural-born child-responsibility which the mother would often be too glad to escape for the child's sake as well as her own, by finding it a home as a mui tsai. The child must work in either case, and perhaps the mui tsai has the better part.
CORRESPONDENCE
[November, 1921, to January, 1928]
RELATING TO THE
November, 1921.
CONSTITUTION OF CEYLON.
(In continuation of Eastern No. 133.)
COLONIAL OFFICE,
April, 1923.
326
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
CO. 882/10
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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