231
CHINESE
260
PAPERS RELATIVE TO EMIGRATION OF
The Government have resolved that should a Chinese immigration into the West Indies be permitted, the people should for the present only be hired and shipped at the British settlements in the Straits of Malacca.
Encl. 2 in No. 12.
If the colonies would pay the whole expense as a bounty, and leave the labourer quite free after arrival, this would be the simplest course. But failing this, such of the above questions as contemplate individuals repaying themselves by stoppage out of wages are inserted, and at any rate the colonies could hardly be expected to make a free gift of the passage both out and home.
Enclosure 2 in No. 12.
MEMORANDUM respecting Chinese Immigration into the West Indies.
Blackbrook, Monmouth, September 1, 1843.
THE Chinese within the Straits settlements, that is, Singapore, Malacca, and Penang, amount probably in all to about 50,000, but to these must be added those in the Dutch settlements of Rhio, about 60 miles from Singapore, and who, as far as emigration is concerned, are just as available as those living under our own rule, for there is a daily uninterrupted intercourse between the parties, and in fact no distinction. I do not think these are fewer than 20,000. These Chinese settlers are not, as represented in the extract of a letter, all from Amoy, that is from the province of Fokein or Hokein; but from this province and that of Canton, and the great majority from the latter. They were of course chiefly from the maritime ports of these provinces. A good many are from the island of Hainan, a poor but populous place. From the localities from which they issue, a great proportion are boatmen and fishermen; and the kind of agricultural labour that the emigrants have been used to in their own country is the rearing of culinary vegetables and the culture of rice. The artisans among them consist in general only of carpenters and blacksmiths. They become hucksters, shop-keepers, and merchants only as colonists, and I fancy few of the emigrants have been of this class in China. Nearly all of them can read and write, and many are expert accountants with the aid of the San-pan. I know one very enterprising merchant who had been for years a common porter. Having lived handsomely he died the richest man in Singapore.
Children and women never leave China, in fact never leave their own localities, even when the men emigrate from one province or district of China to another. All the men are in the prime of life. No man brings capital any more than Irish labourers coming to England. Most of the emigrants come by the junks, and I have known a single junk bring 800. The number of junks which arrived at Singapore (they never go to Penang or Malacca) from the 27th of December to the 20th of April, 1843, and this embraces the whole season, was 111 of 17,000 tons burthen, and they brought 6,391 immigrants. Eighty-eight junks of 14,580 tons had the year before brought 6,156 immigrants. Now these junks come from no less than 19 different ports of China, and nearly every one brought passengers, which indeed constitutes the most valuable part of the outward investment. European vessels occasionally bring 16 Chinese immigrants, but the number is inconsiderable. In my time, some years ago, the number of junks coming from China was about 12. The great increase has taken place since our occupation of the island in the bay of Amoy.
The Chinese settlers form matrimonial connexions wherever they go, and whenever they can, and in those countries to which they have been long accustomed to resort, as Java, Siam, and Cochin-China, a very considerable mixed population has been the result. These in the Malay language are called Peranakan, the nearest translation of which, although not quite a correct one, is "Creole." All the Creoles are brought up as Chinese, and intermarry either with Creoles or genuine Chinese. They are considered as somewhat less industrious than the true Chinese, but over those they have the advantage of knowledge of locality, and the possession of two languages.
At Prince of Wales Island and Singapore there are a few sugar plantations in which the Chinese are the labourers; but to get labourers who will cultivate the cane, manufacture sugar, and distil rum, will not be a matter of the smallest difficulty, for the Chinese may be described as a sort of ambidextrous people who can turn their hands to anything. The provinces from which the immigrants chiefly come, Canton and Fokein, are the chief sugar producing ones of the Chinese empire. Besides this, the large sugar cultivation of Java, of Cochin China, and of the Philippines, is understood by them. In Siam, and, I suppose, in the other places also, very high wages are occasionally given to foremen skilled in claying sugar, as much as 1000 dollars a-year, that is 225l. In the Straits' settlements generally, the culture of pepper is wholly in their hands; and at Singapore and the Dutch settlements the culture and manufacture of gambir, that is, a kind of terra japonica, which is largely produced for a masticatory among the eastern islanders, and of late years still more largely for exportation to this country to be used for tanning and dyeing. The same may be said of the manufacture of sago in the shape in which this article is now brought into the European market. Indeed, pearl sago was the discovery about twenty-five years ago, of a Chinese of Malacca. Now the cultivation and preparation of every one of these three articles is unknown in China, and they are consequently acquisitions made by the Chinese as colonists. In the same way they have become miners of gold to a large extent in Borneo, and of gold and silver in Tonquin; and both miners and smelters of tin in the Archipelago, of which last article the annual produce is at present probably equal to that of the mines of Cornwall, while it is a good deal better in quality.
From the teeming population of China there can then be no difficulty in getting labourers in the prime of life, unencumbered by families, and fit to turn their hands to any employment, and this to any extent. But then comes the most difficult part of the subject; how their services are to be secured and remunerated. In the "Extracts of Letters" their character is very correctly represented. They are a sober, diligent, industrious, intelligent, and money-loving people, without being a miserly one. From all the inconvenient prejudices of Hindostan they are wholly free. They like to make money, but they have not the faculty of hoarding it that distinguishes the penurious Hindoo, for they live more comfortably, and, when they can, more luxuriously than any other Asiatic people that I am acquainted with. They must be paid the full value of their labour, or otherwise there will be no making anything of them. In a word, they must be treated with the same consideration as any class of British labourers; if they are not, they become inevitably discontented, disorderly, and roguish.
In Singapore a Chinese labourer will earn as much as two natives of Coromandel, as three Bengalese, and as four Malays. In my time the wages of a Chinese day labourer, finding everything, used to be about 15 Spanish dollars a month, which, at 4s. 4d. per dollar, is 65s., or 32l. 10s. a-year. But the labour market is now far better supplied, and wages are considerably lower. I shall suppose that good labourers may now be had at 10 dollars a month, which is equal to 21l. 2s. 4d. a-year. Can the West Indian planter pay such wages? By one of the agreements contained in the "Extracts of Letters," I perceive that a Chinese labourer engages to serve for two years at the average wages of 5 dollars a month; this is about 13l. s. 4d. But we have to add lodging, salt fish, salt, and 45 lbs. of rice a month, with 20 dollars of passage-money and loss of labour during sickness. But all this is for the Mauritius, and not for Guiana or the West India islands, three times as far from the Straits of Malacca, and where the principal article of subsistence, rice, must be higher priced.
I confess I entertain considerable doubts of the expediency of hiring Chinese labourers for the colonies, on the principle of an apprenticeship. My notion of the Chinese is, that they are industrious and diligent only when they are working for themselves, and see profit in the face at every hour of their labour. An experience of their character in this respect, hinders them from being employed on fixed daily or monthly wages in the Straits settlements, wherever it can be avoided. The Chinese labourer, who, working on his own behalf, or by job work for another, would earn 15 dollars a-month, I am confident would not produce to an employer 10 dollars a-month on day wages. But the experiment has been tried, or is under trial in the Mauritius, with 1000 labourers, and the result will be worth all the opinions on the subject that ever can be given.
There is another drawback against the employment of the Chinese in the colonies, or at least one that will exist for a number of years, -- the want of a common language for communication, and the necessity for employing interpreters. There are two distinct languages spoken by the Chinese ordinary colonists, not mutually intelligible. These are the languages of Canton and Fohkien, and in our courts of justice in the Straits settlements we must have two interpreters. These are always Creole Chinese, and communicate with us through the easy Malay, a language known more or less to all resident foreigners. In the West Indies there can be no such channel of communication, and until the Chinese shall have acquired a smattering of English, as they have at Canton, the expense and incumbrance of interpreters cannot be got rid of.
I perceive by the "Extracts of Letters" that the cost of an emigrant's passage from the Straits of Malacca to Guiana is estimated at about 12l., which is about 57 Spanish dollars. Now, to the best of my recollection, the cost of a passage in a Chinese junk from Canton or Amoy, which in the right season is usually made for the one in seven or eight, and from the other in ten or twelve days, is not above five dollars. It is evident therefore that the Guiana planter in some shape or other, must pay the difference. Filial attachment is one of the most laudable qualities of the Chinese; indeed it is a religious and political duty. All those who quit China as emigrants, do so in hopes of returning to their families, and to the tombs of their forefathers, although but a small proportion do so. In all the countries in which they have heretofore settled, they have the easy means of doing this, of hearing from their families, and of remitting funds to them through the junks. Of those facilities they must necessarily be deprived in the West Indies.
The Commissioners are of course aware that the experiment of Chinese labour was once tried at Trinidad about 30 years ago and failed, but this was during the period of slavery and in war time, when it was impossible that the experiment could have had in any respect a fair trial. Chinese labour was then much higher than it is now, and the means of procuring labourers not comparable to the present.
I agree entirely with one of the opinions which seems to be implied by the Commissioners in their queries, that by far the most eligible plan will be for the Colonial Governments to take the matter wholly into their own hands, paying the passage money of the emigrants and leaving them on their arrival in the colony at perfect liberty to engage in any kind of labour, and on any terms they think proper. It is not necessary that the whole expenditure made on this account should be sacrificed. Each emigrant before embarkation may be called on to sign a personal bond payable within a reasonable stated time, for reimbursement of at least a portion of the fund advanced for his passage. As to the Government or private parties paying for the return passage, I think such an arrangement, except in very peculiar cases, will be inexpedient. The Chinese will certainly in great numbers, should the project as a labour scheme succeed, settle permanently in the West Indies, and a passage-money of 10l. or 12l.
* Letters submitted by the West India Committee to Lord Stanley.
† When pepper was extensively cultivated on Prince of Wales Island, the European owner of the land had the forest cleared by contract, and the vines planted by contract, and when the vines came into bearing, the plantation was farmed to the Chinese from year to year, on payment of a specific quantity of pepper. Any other plan would have ruined the capitalist.
CHINESE LABOURERS.
261
1
231
CHINESE
260
PAPERS RELATIVE TO EMIGRATION OF
The Government have resolved that should a Chinese immigration into the West Indies be LABOURERS. permitted, the people should for the present only be hired and shipped at the British settlements
in the Straits of Malacca.
Encl. 2 in No. 12.
If the colonies would pay the whole expense as a bounty, and leave the labourer quite free after arrival, this would be the simplest course. But failing this, such of the above questions as contemplate individuals repaying themselves by stoppage out of wages are inserted, and at
passage any rate the colonies could hardly be expected to make a free gift of the home,
Enclosure 2 în No. 12.
MEMORANDUM respecting Chinese Immigration into the West Indies.
both out and
Blackbrook, Monmouth, September 1, 1843.
THE Chinese within the Straits settlements, that is, Singapore, Maland, and Penang, amount probably in all to about 50,000, but to these must be added those in the Dutch settle- ments of Rhio, about 60 miles from Singapore, and who, as far as emigration is concerned, are just as available as those living under our own rule, for there is a daily uninterrupted inter- course between the parties, and in fact no distinction. I do not think these are fewer than 20,000. These Chinese settlers are not, as represented in the extract of a letter, all from Amoy, that is from the province of Fokein or Hokein; but from this province and that of Cantou, and the great majority from the latter. They were of course chiefly from the maritime ports of these provinces. A good many are from the island of Hainan, a poor but populous place. From the localities from which they issue, a great proportion are boatmen and fisher- and the kind of agricultural labour that the emigrants have been used to in their own country is the rearing of culinary vegetables and the culture of rice. The artizans among them consist in general only of carpenters and blacksmiths. They become hucksters, shop-keepers, and merchants only as colonists, and I fancy few of the emigrants have been of this class in China. Nearly all of them can read and write, and many are expert accountants with the aid of the San-pan. I know one very enterprizing merchant who had been for years a common porter. Having lived handsomely he died the richest man in Singapore.
men;
Children and women never leave China, in fact never leave their own localities, even when the men emigrate from one province or district of China to another. All the men are in the prime of life. No man brings capital any more than Irish labourers coming to England. Most of the emigrants come by the junks, and I have known a single junk bring 800. The number of junks which arrived at Singapore (they never go to Penang or Malacca) from the 27th of December to the 20th of April, 1843, and this embraces the whole season, was 111 of 17.000 tons burthen, and they brought 6,391 immigrants. Eighty-eight junks of 14,580 tons had the year before brought 6156 immigrants. Now these junks come from no less than 19 different ports of China, and nearly every one brought passengers, which indeed constitutes the most valuable part of the outward investment. European vessels occasionally bring
16 Chinese immigrants, but the number is inconsiderable. In my time, some
years ago, the number of junks coming from China was about 12. The great increase has taken place since our occupation of the island in the bay of Amoy.
The Chinese settlers form matrimonial connexions wherever they go, and whenever they can, and in those countries to which they have been long accustomed to resort, as Java, Siam, and Cochin-China, a very considerable mixed population has been the result. These in the Malay language are called Peranakan, the nearest translation of which, although not quite a correct one, is Creole." All the Creoles are brought up as Chinese, and intermarry either with Creoles or genuine Chinese. They are considered as somewhat less industrious than the true Chinese, but over those they have the advantage of knowledge of locality, and the pos- session of two languages.
At Prince of Wales Island and Singapore there are a few sugar plantations in which the Chinese are the labourers; but to get labourers who will cultivate the cane, manufacture sugar, and distil rum, will not be a matter of the smallest difficulty, for the Chinese may be described as a sort of ambidextrous people who can turn their hands to anything. The provinces from which the immigrants chiefly come, Canton and Fokein, are the chief sugar producing ones of the Chinese empire. Besides this, the large sugar cultivation of Java, of Cochin China, and of the Phillipines, is understood by them. In Siam, and, I suppose, in the other places also, very high wages are occasionally given to foremen skilled in claying sugar, as much as 1000 dollars a-year, that is 2251. In the Straits' settlements generally, the culture of pepper is wholly in their hands; and at Singapore and the Dutch settlements the culture and manufacture of gambir, that is, a kind of terra japonica, which is largely produced for a masticatory among the eastern islanders, and of late years still more largely for exportation to this country to be used for tanning and dyeing. The same may be said of the manufacture of sago in the shape in which this article is now brought into the European market. Indeed, pearl sago was the discovery about twenty-five years ago, of a Chinese of Malacca. Now the cultivation and preparation of every one of these three articles is unknown in China, and they are consequently acquisitions made by the Chinese as colonists. In the same way they have become miners of gold to a large extent in Borneo, and of gold and silver in Tonquin; and both miners and smelters of tin in the Archipelago, of which last article the annual produce is at present probably equal to that of the mines of Cornwall, while it is a good deal better in quality.
From the teeming population of China there can then be no difficulty in getting labourers in the prime of life, unencumbered by families, and fit to turn their hands to any employment, and this to any extent. But then comes the most difficult part of the subject; how their ser
CHINESE LABOURERS TO THE WEST INDIES.
261
vices are to be secured and remunerated. In the "Extracts of Letters "* their character is very correctly represented. They are a sober, diligent, industrious, intelligent, and money-loving people, without being a miserly one. From all the inconvenient prejudices of Hindostan they
are wholly free. They like to make money, but they have not the faculty of hoarding it that distinguishes the penurious Hindoo, for they live more comfortably, and, when they can, more luxuriously than any other Asiatic people that I am acquainted with. They must be paid the full value of their labour, or otherwise there will be no making anything of them. In a word, they must be treated with the same consideration as any class of British labourers; if they are not, they become inevitably discontented, disorderly, and roguish.
In Singapore a Chinese labourer will earn as much as two natives of Coromandel, as three Bengalese, and as four Malays. In my time the wages of a Chinese day labourer, finding everything, used to be about 15 Spanish dollars a month, which, at 4s. 4d. per dollar, is 65s., or 321. 10s. a-year. But the labour market is now far better supplied, and wages are consi- derably lower. I shall suppose that good labourers may now be had at 10 dollars a month, which is equal to 211. 2s. 4d. a-year. Can the West Indian planter pay such wages? By one of the agreements contained in the "Extracts of Letters," I perceive that a Chinese labourer engages to serve for two years at the average wages of 5 dollars a month; this is about 137. s. 4d. But we have to add lodging, suli fish, salt, and 45 lbs. of rice a month, with 20 dollars of passage-money and loss of labour during sickness. But all this is for the Mauritius, and not for Guiana or the West India islands, three times as far from the Straits of Malacca, and where the principal article of subsistence, rice-must be higher priced.
I confess I entertain considerable doubts of the expediency of hiring Chinese labourers for the colonies, on the principle of an apprenticeship. My notion of the Chinese is, that they are industrious and diligent only when they are working for themselves, and see profit in the face at every
hour of their labour. An experience of their character in this respect, hinders them from being employed on fixed daily or monthly wages in the Straits settlements, wherever it can be avoided. The Chinese labourer, who, working on his own behalf, or by job work for another, would earn 15 dollars a-month, I am confident would not produce to an employer 10 dollars a-mouth on day wages. But the experiment has been tried, or is under trial in the Mauritius, with 1000 labourers, and the result will be worth all the opinions on the subject that ever can be given.
There is another drawback against the employment of the Chinese in the colonies, or at least one that will exist for a number of years,--the want of a common language for commu- nication, and the necessity for employing interpreters. There are two distinct languages spoken by the Chinese ordinary colonists, not mutually intelligible. These are the languages of Canton and Fohkien, and in our courts of justice in the Straits settlements we must have two interpreters. These are always Creole Chinese, and communicate with us through the easy Malay, a language known more or less to all resident foreigners. In the West Indies there can be no such channel of communication, and until the Chinese shall have acquired a smattering of English, as they have at Canton, the expense and incumbrance of interpreters cannot be got rid of.
I perceive by the Extracts of Letters" that the cost of an emigrant's passage from the Straits of Malacca to Guiana is estimated at about 127., which is about 57 Spanish dollars. Now, to the best of my recollection, the cost of a passage in a Chinese junk from Canton or Amoy, which in the right season is usually made for the one in seven or eight, and from the other in ten or twelve days, is not above five dollars. It is evident therefore that the Guiana planter in some shape or other, must pay the difference. Filial attachment is one of the most laudable qualities of the Chinese; indeed it is a religious and political duty. All those who quit China as emigrants, do so in hopes of returning to their families, and to the tombs of their fore- fathers, although but a small proportion do so. In all the countries in which they have here- tofore settled, they have the easy means of doing this, of hearing from their families, and of remitting funds to them through the junks. Of those facilities they must necessarily be deprived in the West Indies.
The Commissioners are of course aware that the experiment of Chinese labour was once tried at Trinidad about 30 years ago and failed, but this was during the period of slavery and in war time, when it was impossible that the experiment could have had in any respect a fair trial. Chinese labour was then much higher than it is now, and the means of procuring labourers not comparable to the present.
I
agree entirely with one of the opinions which seems to be implied by the Commissioners in their queries, that by far the most eligible plan will be for the Colonial Governments to take the matter wholly into their own hands, paying the passage money of the emigrants and leaving them on their arrival in the colony at perfect liberty to engage in any kind of labour, and on any terms they think proper. It is not necessary that the whole expenditure made on this account should be sacrificed. Each emigrant before embarkation may be called on to sign a personal bond payable within a reasonable stated time, for reimbursement of at least a portion of the fund advanced for his passage. As to the Government or private parties paying for the return passage, I think such an arrangement, except in very peculiar cases, will be inexpedient. The Chinese will certainly in great numbers, should the project as a labour scheme succeed, settle permanently in the West Indies, and a passage-money of 101. or 12.
* Letters submitted by the West India Committee to Lord Stanley.
† When pepper was extensively cultivated on Prince of Wales Island, the European owner of the land had the forest cleared by contract, and the vines planted by contract, and when the vines came into bearing, the plantation was farmed to the Chinese from year to year, on payment of a specific quantity of pepper. Any other plan would have ruined the capitalist..
CHINESE LABOURERS.
1
H
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