Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1906-06-16


nlshed transportation both ways for
themselves and families. They would
be paid wages at rates ranging from
six to nine rupees ($1.95 to $3.50 per
month, and would have a certain al
lowance of rice and smoked or dried
hsh, or dohl, per week, and an allow
ance of salt and vegetable oil per
month, the amounts of which allow
ances would be wholly Inadequate for
white family of the same numbers,
but was entirely sufficient and salts
factory for the coolies, as we shall
presently see.
While annually ever since shiploads
OF coolies have been brought here,
mostly from India, comparatively few
OF them have cared to be returned to
their fatherland. Suppose an Indian
family landed here under that system.
They are taken at once to the estate
or plantation of their contract en-
ployer and set down among the trees
that skirt the cane field In a few
hours, with his cane hook, he has cut
and trimmed few armsful of bamboo
rods, which wife and children have
carried to the spot selected for his hut.
In few hours more he has those rods
woven into skeleton form for his
little hut, and while he has been doing
that, wife and children have gathered
and fetched armsful of the vacoa palm
leaves with which to thatch the roof
and walls of their little dwelling. Not
more than one night. if at all, are they
without shelter. Next day the man
goes to work in the field, under his
contract, while the family finish
matching the hut. No windows are
ever made in such huts, and only one
door is thought of. On a little fire
built outside the rice and smoked or
dried fish are cooked, and the meal is
pieced out with some wild fruits gath
cred from the forest. They are all
happy, contented and well Off A little
ground, the size of an ordinary tent
fly, cleared of it's brush and lava
stones and planted in garden vegeta-
bles, will produce an abundance. The
wages of the man are all saved and
perhaps have been augmented by ex-
ira work after hours for his employer.
or some other, and perhaps the wife,
by washing and ironing or by scrub
bling and other work, for some white
family, has been able to add her mite
to the husbands savings. At the end
of his term, if not before, he is able
to buy an acre of ground of his own,
and on that acre he will raise yearly
enough cane to produce from fifteen
to twenty tons of sugar. The family
are now independent and prosperous,
and, being far better off than they
could hope to be in India, they remain.
Their days of contract labor are now
over forever, and the husband can, by
what is called '"piece work" in the cane
fields, make several times more money
than under the contract system. His
children attend the free schools and
are better clothed and fed than they
could have ever been on the continent.
So it has been that each year has
added to the Independent, self-support.
ing coolie class, and the ranks of reg
ular laborers in the fields have been
filled by additions from India under
that contract system. OF the Chinese
only a few thousand have been
brought, and no more come except on
business. The French were good to
their liberated slaves and started
many of them in business in little
shops at all the crossroad points,
where they might supply the Indians
and Chinese with such cheap articles
as necessity would from time to time
compel them to buy. But now ali
those shops are owned and run by the
Cinnamon. Rum, which is plentiful
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