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Updated: May 21, 2025
Sometimes the coolies die, and the money is lost altogether; sometimes, and not unfrequently, they abscond, and in the latter case it is such a difficult matter to trace them that the planter simply resigns himself to the loss of the money. Then as regards money advanced to maistries to bring coolies, somewhat similar difficulties occur.
But besides the advances made directly to local labourers by the planter, there are the advances made by him to maistries to bring in coolies from a distance. In former days the sums advanced were very small, and amounted to little more than a retaining fee of a few rupees a head.
And though the services of doubtful maistries cannot as yet be altogether dispensed with, a preference is of course given to those of well established reputation, and the class of maistries generally is beginning to understand and appreciate the system of registration, which has every prospect of becoming general, and will, I need hardly add, be of great advantage to planters.
In quite recent times the maistries, who obtained large sums from the planters to make advances to the coolies, sometimes absconded with the money and thereby great losses ensued. But a better class of maistries have arisen, and Messrs.
Matheson and Co. have now, with the aid of their permanent European labour agent, established a system of private registration by which the antecedents, status, and resources of the maistries are duly recorded.
The dates of feasts and holidays should be entered, and a section should be devoted to financing the estate, accounts and rates of pay, and the advances given by the estate to coolies, or maistries. Another section should be devoted to giving a complete inventory of all the tools, sawn timber, machines, carts, cattle, bungalow furniture, in short, everything on the property.
The maistry may die, he may abscond, and sometimes he advances to coolies who decamp and take advances from another planter or his maistry. In short, whether the planter advances directly to coolies, or to maistries to bring coolies, he finds himself involved in a mixture of losses and worries and uncertainty as to getting through his various works at the proper time.
The next source of loss which calls for observation is that arising from the system of giving advances to labourers and to maistries the name for a class of men who take large sums to advance to coolies, and are paid a commission on the number they bring in.
But if maistries sometimes swindle their employers, the former are often liable to be swindled by the coolies to whom the advances have been made, and until a system of compulsory Government registration of advances to coolies is introduced, as recommended in one of my chapters on coffee planting in Mysore, it will be impossible to put our peculiar system of giving advances to coolies on a reasonably safe footing.
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