On this the family sleep and live when at home. The above is for the Japanese. The European cottages are often supplied with rude box bedsteads and perhaps a table and bench. All else must be furnished by the laborer. Generally a piece of straw matting serves for a mattress, a blanket or quilt for covering and a hard neck rest, common to Japan and China, answers for a pillow.
Mosquito nettings are a necessity and are found everywhere.
The European fills a tick with hay, and a pillow of the same with a blanket convinces him that this is all that a healthy man needs for a bed. Comforts and conveniences very with the ambition and tastes of the laborer, and are of course measured generally by the length of the purse. Contract laborers are expected to do agricultural and mill work. The former comprises clearing land, cutting wood and brush, grubbing out roots, moving rocks and brush, teaming and plowing, care of horses, ditching, hoeing, irrigating, fertilizing, planting, stripping and cutting cane, loading and unloading cane cars and any other necessary farming operations. In and about the mill they are occupied in feeding the cane carriers and furnaces, tending any of the mill machinery, handling sugar, loading cars, etc.