ART. VII.-Friend of India, August 1st and August 29th, 1861.

THE

THE relations between work and wages form one of the most perplexing problems of Eastern life, and tend more than anything else to mislead European capitalists when they sit down to estimate the gains of industrial enterprise. The knowledge that a weaver is satisfied with three pence a day, that the goldsmith is content if he can earn sixpence, though the one can make the Muslins of Dacca, and the other spin the fairy webs of gold and silver which we buy at Delhi and Cuttack, has in many instances furnished the incentive to disastrous undertakings. It is natural to suppose that where nature has done so much and art so little; where life is sustained so cheaply; where patience sits in lieu of energy; and intellect abounds, whilst will is thoroughly enchained, that the wisdom, the wealth and the force of the European must always succeed as well as dominate. In countries where the richest products of vegetation grow almost spontaneously, where the most valuable minerals abound, where order is assured, labor plentiful, and cheap beyond comparison, capital very scarce, and machinery almost unknown, it seems impossible that schemes for cultivating and manufacturing with the aid of European modes and means should fail. Yet they do fail, and that so frequently and so thoroughly, that if a balance were struck between the fortunes lost and the fortunes made by such profits, it is hard to say which total would be the largest. When undertakings of this kind are set on foot, it is not sanguine men who are needed to support them. Persons who are timid from experience or habitually distrustful, enter eagerly into them, and never allow a thought of probable miscarriage to enter their minds. The calculations appear to be so sound, the expectations so reasonable, the margin of profit so wide, that success is looked upon as an absolute certainty, and the chances are, that when ruin ensues, it is set down as the effect of fraud or bad management. The existence of the 'Little rift within the lute

That bye and bye will make the music mute'

is never at any time suspected though it was there from the beginning. The plan that looked so feasible required one small element that wit could not foresee and money could not buy, and wanting which, all other probabilities in its favor went for nothing.

If one were content with educing from the records of these melancholy shipwrecks of earnest effort, a maxim of wide application, it would be sufficient to prove that the triumphs of industry like those of the intellect and the conscience, can only be achieved by slow steps, and that many props are needed to sustain one giant growth. A great manufacture like a great idea may be suddenly created, but to grow and be propagated it must have the co-operation of the people at large. Before it can be incorporated with the machinery of natural life and be allowed to influence its pulses, every part of the existing organization must suffer a change.

The steam boat and the Railway are exceptions to an otherwise universal rule, and for the reason that they are self-contained and do their work without requiring extraneous aid. The engine travels on its own pathway, which lies perhaps across swamps where the soil will not bear a man's footstep; over rivers which ordinary commerce would scarce bridge for centuries to come; through narrow tracts where the travelling merchant would never care to find his way. In new countries it begins and finishes at the same time the work of civilization so far as the means of locomotion are concerned. In the organization of an express train, invention seems to have reached the limits of natural possibility. We can travel if we like as fast in India as in England, asking no favour at the hands of Asiatic skill, no help from Asiatic resources.

It is wholly different when we come to apply the refined processes of European skill to manufactures in the East. The very perfection of our method is the cause of failure. The animate and the lifeless machine partake in this respect of the same disadvantages. If a man attains great proficiency in pointing pins he must always have pins to point or starvation meets him in the face, and the machine in like manner must always have work to do, or it will not pay. It can probably get through its tasks in a style that defies competition, but if it has cost too much to make or is left idle now and again it fails as a source of profit. Let it be ever so exquisite a specimen of ingenuity it is only part of the larger machinery of human effort that never intermits its tasks in any part of the world, and must always be in gear with it. Let us take our first illustrations in point from Cocoanut planting and Oil making in Ceylon.

A native plantation of Cocoanuts has the air of a natural jungle. There are no traces anywhere of culture. Decayed fruits and branches strew the ground from one end to the other lying where they fall till they rot, A bullock cart trying to thread its

way through the place has to wind amongst a labyrinth of trees planted usually without order or regard to ventilation. You see at a glance that vegetation is left to take care of itself, and certainly there is no part of the world where a valuable and never failing product obtains such little care from the owners.

Under these circumstances, it was quite natural to suppose that if Cingalese proprietors of cocoa-nut estates did well, Europeans would do better. It had been proved by all native experience that the tree would spring up and bear fruit without receiving proper care, and if that were bestowed, there was no saying to what extent the yield might not be increased. So an idea got abroad amongst resident merchants, Indian civilians and soldiers, and capitalists at home, that one of the best investments for money was a cocoanut estate in Ceylon, and about fifteen years ago it began to be realised. Since that period about five thousand acres of land have been planted in the peninsula of Jaffna, and maintained up to this hour at a cost of about a quarter of a million sterling with the unhappy result of total failure in every instance. Many estates have never paid their expenses, and in June of the past year a property consisting of a thousand acres, upon which more than £25,000 had been spent, was sold to the great joy of the owner for something considerably less than a sixth part of the cost. And over the same period of time it would not be possible to point out a single example where a native plantation has failed to be a source of great profit. At an average growth of eight years an acre of cocoanuts is worth £4 a year over the whole island.

In all the cases we have mentioned, European superintendence was carefully maintained. The plantations were laid out regularly with ample room between each row of trees. The best nuts were selected for planting, and as they grew up, they were watered and watched with untiring care. As vegetation sprang up, it was scrupulously cleared away. The ground was often ploughed and weeded, and experiments in manuring and general treatment were frequently set on foot. But cleanliness costs money and our countrymen were out of gear with the work going on around them. To make the European device of large estates successful they required a large amount of resident labor, and that was frequently not forthcoming, or found to be so expensive that it was dispensed with when most wanted. They ought to have had machinery for watering the trees and manure for supplying the place of the decaying material, which was made such a point to be rid of. To the Anglo-Saxon confident in the strength of his will, the lasting quality of his energy, the

wisdom of his civilization, and the power of his money it is doubtless a source of mortification to be obliged to confess, that the Native's method of going to work on such an occasion, is worth them all and much more. But the fact is not to be gainsaid, and future efforts in the same direction are sure to be followed by like consequences.

The Cingalese have a proverb that the Cocoanut will not grow out of sound of the human voice. The conceit no doubt had its origin in the universal experience of the superior advantage of home cultivation to persons so placed. Their plantations average perhaps half an acre, containing usually some fifty trees which the family can look after when the owner is absent. It is no trouble to be thought of or paid for, to water the young plants so long as they need it. The cattle who are always on board wages roam in and out at pleasure being merely fenced off from the shoots till the latter are too tough for eating. The place is filthy and very hot, but the Cocoanuts evidently like dirt and thrive accordingly. Whether they would prefer being dieted on patent manures, drinking from scientific watering pots, and receiving daily visits from Europeans on horseback, is a problem, the second half of which is not likely to be solved in this generation.

If the growth of the Cocoanut disturbs our notions of the superiority in all instances of European processes in agriculture, the details of its conversion into oil are no less sugestive of doubts on the side of manufactures. The native oil mill is one

of the oldest machines in the world, exactly similar in shape to the mortar and pestle of the druggist, the former being worked by a shaft, to the end of which a pair of bullocks are attached. The cattle travel in a circle of about 18 feet diameter, and make three complete revolutions in a minute. Half a hundred weight of Copperah, as the dried kernel is called, is a charge for a full sized checkoe and a pair of stout well fed bullocks will get through four such charges in a day. The man who drives has usually a boy to assist him in taking the oil which is got out of the mortar by dipping a piece of rag into the fluid and squeezing it into an earthen vessel. It is not the purest and brightest of liquids as may well be imagined.

Of late years large sums of money have been sunk in the purchase of European machinery for oil making between which and the native mills there can be no comparison for power, quantity of work done, or the quality of the product. The copperah is first crushed to a pulp between edge rollers, and then placed in bags upon the table of an hydraulic press. The pressure

exerted is immense, and in the case of the most powerful of these machines the oil is so thoroughly extracted that the residuum of the nut feels like dry flour and falls into fine powder.

Now looking at the two modes of accomplishing a given end, the primitive and the highly refined, are we not bound to conclude that the latter must in every way bear the palm? surely so, but then on the other hand it is admitted that

and tried by this supreme test of worth we must fain adopt a different conclusion. Here are the opposite data from which it is impossible to deduce results of a pleasant complexion.

A mill of ordinary size can work off say two tons of copperah daily, and it is putting the cost of machinery, buildings, and all requisite appliances, at a sum far below actual outlay when we set it down at £2000, and at least £500 must be employed as floating capital. An Engineer would be very badly paid at £150 a year, and if he were manager of the concern as well, £300 would barely ensure the continuance of his services. All other expenses, labor and contingencies are very cheaply estimated at £25 monthly, or £300 per annum.

The depreciation of machinery is set down always at 10 per cent annually, which is a charge of £200 in the present case. We must allow the owner a like percentage on his capital or £250, and if to these are added the charges of management, labour and all other needful payments, we have an annual cost of £1050 and a production of oil from the working of two tons of copperah daily.

As before stated, the daily duty of a checkoe is 2 cwt. of copperah, so that twenty mills are required to get through two tons in the twenty four hours. The cost of the native oil mill with serviceable bullocks is rather under than over £20, but we will take it at that figure which brings the outlay requisite to compete with the European establishment in the point of outturn to £400. Here is a gain in favour of native industry at the outset of 80 per cent in the amount of capital sunk in machinery. Let us now examine the working expenses incurred by the latter.

Neither bullocks nor checkoe will last, it may be presumed, beyond five years, so that on the capital of £400, there is a yearly charge of £80, or 20 per cent. The wages of a man and boy to each mill are fifteen pence, and a pair of bullocks fed luxuriously, entail a daily cost of one shilling more. There are no other expenses and the total amounts to £755. It is

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