Sessional_Paper_1901 — Page 910

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month's warning. My usual reason for sacking him would be if he was not strong enough to carry me.

The Chairman.-Don't you see that you could make an arrangement with your coolie whereby he could take a day's notice, and, moreover, if he absented himself with- out leave or disobeyed a lawful order, you could dismiss him on the spot?

Witness. Probably with a month's wages.

You could always get

The Chairman.—I think you could arrange with him when you engaged him to give him a fixed notice. Take him on trial, say, for a week. over the difficulty that way.

Witness. When the coolie says his mother is dead and country, how are you to make him give a month's notice?

he wants to go to the You can't insist upon

a month's notice. If the coolie really does go back to the country that would be a reasonable ground for giving up the month's notice.

The Chairman. If he is not able to prove it, you could keep his registration ticket till his return.

In the meantime he would be on leave of absence.

Witness.--I think you want to be clearly certain that you will effect the objects and not experiment. I am against experimenting.

The Chairman.--If everybody were as satisfied as you are, this Commission would never have been appointed, but the ground of the appointment of the Commission is that there have been many and frequent complaints that there is something lacking in our methods of controlling private chair and ricksha coolies, to remedy which an attempt must be made, and that is the object of this Commission.

Witness. Is not the same thing lacking everywhere? Even at Home, servants are not what employers want them to be.

The Chairman.--We quite agree that the servant question is an acute question at Home, but we think that we might introduce legislation out here to deal with the ques- tion. The Chinese require to be dealt with in a peculiar way, and we might suggest certain effective means of removing or minimising the present trouble. Leaving the question of registration and whether it is desirable or not, I understand that you are strongly opposed to masters who employ unregistered coolies being liable to a fine. The question is whether they are willing to take a little trouble in the matter and to look at it from this point of view: "Well, it is a bit of trouble to us, but having regard to the general advantage of the community, is it not as well that we should put ourselves to a little personal inconvenience to help the majority?" On that point you ask whether everybody was not opposed to being fined? We sent out to the public a series of questions and in answer to question No. 6, we had a return of 76 persons who were in favour of a penalty being inflicted, 24 persons who were opposed to this, and 26 who agreed conditionally. The condition generally was to the effect that they agreed if we could guarantee a constant supply of coolies. So, from these answers, it seems that the large majority of 76 state that they are in favour of the idea, and would be willing to be liable to punishment if they engaged unregistered coolies.

Witness. Because they thought that otherwise they would not have registration. They don't want to be fined.

The Chairman. They think that the system would not be complete without this. Witness. If you want registration, I think it is necessary to fine people for employing unregistered servants.

The Chairman. I take it that your answer is that, if registration is introduced, then you think, in order to give perfect effect to that registration, it must be made penal for the master to employ unregistered or unlicensed coolies? That is your view?