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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

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21 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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Calcutta.

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NOTIFICATION.

No. 626 T.G.-The 29th May, 1908.--In supersession of Notification No. 220, dated the 9th January, 1908, and under Clause (2) of Section 14 of the Indian Emigration Act, 1883 (XXI. of 1883), the Lieu- tenant-Governor is pleased to declare his approval of the appointment of Mr. A. Marsden to be Emigration Agent at Calcutta for Trinidad, Mauritius, Jamaica, and Fiji, with effect from the 22nd May, 1908.

H. C. STREATFEILD,

Officiating Secretary to the Government of Bengal.

(ANNEXURE B.)

MEMORANDUM BY MR. R. P. GIBBES.

It is unnecessary to recapitulate in this Memorandum the reasons already detailed in my letters, Nos. 23/20 and 52/20, of the 9th and 22nd January last, respectively, as the grounds, on which I consider that the objects of the pending amalgamation will be hest attained by placing Mr. Marsden in independent charge of the Agency's work at Madras, and appointing an assistant Emigration Agent to administer the new depôt at Faizabad, subject to my supervision. ever, to supplement briefly my previous letters in respect of two points, viz. :—

I wish, how- (a) The possible attitude of the Madras Government with regard to the status of the officer to be appointed to control Colonial recruiting operations in that Presidency; and

(b) The limited scope of the Faizabad officer's duties in relation to the work, considered as a whole, to be carried out there in connection with the Calcutta Agency.

2. Dealing first with (a), I find that I have not yet drawn attention to the fact that under Section 10 (1) of the Indian Emigration Act, XVII., of 1908, the officer to be appointed "in each port of embarkation" shall be an Emigration Agent."

An alteration of the existing law will, therefore, be necessary if the officer deputed to Madras is to be merely a subordinate; and, in view of the inconveniences and delays which, obviously, would constantly occur in the transacting of even ordinary business if the responsible Agent were stationed at Calcutta (1,000 miles away), it seems unlikely that the Madras Government will consent to such an alteration. To save time we are embodying a direct enquiry to the Indian Government in regard to this point in the letter in which we are notifying them of our selection of Faizabad as the site of the new up-country depôt. A copy of this letter is annexed to our joint report

of

3. As regards (b) it is necessary to emphasize sharply the following point in view of Mr. Marsden's contention that his official status as (independent) Emigration Agent at Madras would be inferior to that of (joint) Emigration Agent at Faizabad in connection with the Calcutta Agency, viz., that the officer at Faizabad will exercise his principal functions, ie, the selecting of suitable emigrants and the payment of commission to recruiters, only in respect of a limited percentage of the total number of coolies arriving at the Calcutta Agency. With the selection of emigrants from several of our most important districts, e.g., Agra, Ajmere, Delhi, Muttra, Cawnpur, Lucknow, &c., he will have nothing whatever to do, as it will not be practicable to side-track "these people to Faizabad for inspection on their way down to Calcutta. The Faizabad officer will, of course, be available for touring and inspecting these remoter districts from time to time as may be required; but in doing so he will necessarily act on instructions received from myself at Calcutta inasmuch as these districts will continue to be controlled, all correspondence with their local officials conducted, and all their sub-agents financed, by the Calcutta Agency as hitherto. Briefly, the officer at Faizabad, while holding a roving commission to visit at any time any district in northern India where recruiting for the Calcutta Agency is in progress, will be mainly occupied in personally selecting labourers brought in to Faizabad from the districts (a limited number of those comprised in our total recruit- ing area) for which the latter is a convenient geographical and administrative centre, and in settling money matters on the spot with the sub-agents and recruiters of those districts. It will not be possible for him to do this in the case of such distant

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districts as Delhi, Ajmere, &c., and the responsibility for emigrants recruited there must consequently continue to devolve on the Agent at Calcutta. On these grounds, therefore, I submit that the establishment of the new depôt will not modify the latter's present duties and responsibilities to an extent which will justify the allo- cating of the second Agent to Faizabad; that the duties of the officer to be stationed at the new depôt are, similarly, not sufficiently important to justify his official equality with, and independence of, the Emigration Agent at Calcutta; and that for the smooth working of the new organisation it is essential that the officer at Faizabad should be subordinate to the Agency at Calcutta, his real headquarters.

4. The objections to his being appointed to Madras which Mr. Marsden puts forward in the final sentence of his Memorandum would apply, it seems to me, still more forcibly in the case of a junior officer deputed to have charge there, for the latter, while sharing Mr. Marsden's ignorance of the language, would be still further handicapped by his entire lack of experience of emigration work in India.

5. Allusion is made in paragraph 7 of your letter of the 19th December to the matter of seniority as between Mr. Marsden and myself. It seems unlikely that any necessity for raising this question will arise, but, should it do so, I submit most respectfully that the following facts should be borne in mind :-

(1) I entered the Colonial Civil Service by open competitive examination in September, 1889. Mr. Marsden entered the Consular Service by nomi- nation in August, 1895.

(2) I was transferred to the Colonial Emigration Service in India in August,

1900. Mr. Marsden was similarly transferred in May, 1908.

(3) When I was appointed, on promotion, to the post of Emigration Agent for British Guiana and Natal, Mr. Marsden succeeded me as incumbent of the (presumably junior) appointment, which I then vacated, of Emigration Agent for Trinidad, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mauritius.

I have, therefore, a covenanted service of 23 years in the Colonial Civil Service as compared with Mr. Marsden's (uncovenanted) service of 17 years; and of 12 years in the Emigration Department as compared with Mr. Marsden's service of less than five years.

(No. 197/19.)

R. P. GIBBES,

Government Emigration Agent

(ANNEXURE C.)

Government Emigration Agency,

for British Guiana.

SIR,

61, Garden Reach, Calcutta, WE have the honour to invite reference to the despatch (with enclosures)

20th March, 1913. addressed by the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Under-Secretary of State for India (No. 22576/12), on the 19th December last, on the subject of the amalgamation of the British Colonial Emigration Agencies in India, a copy of which you have no doubt already received.

2. With regard to paragraph 2 of that despatch, we beg to report, for the information of the Government of India, that, after full consideration, we are of opinion that the new depôt to be established up country should be located at Faiza bad rather than at Benares; and that we base our conclusion not only on the belief that the former is preferable as being a healthier locality, but also on the facts that it is, geographically, a more convenient recruiting and administrative centre than Benares, and that Faizabad having been for many years the most important recruiting ground of the Emigration Agencies, the establishment of the new depôt there can be effected more conveniently than in a district where the residents are less familiar with the objects of overseas emigration and less tolerant of recruiting operations. We request, therefore, that if our decision on this point commends itself to the Government of India an intimation of their approval may be conveyed to us without delay.

2.

33391

With regard to the questions of

(1) restricting the area in which Colonial recruiters shall be free to operate,

and

M