Stories from Deli

Sumatra’s East Coast. H.H. Van Kol. Uit onze koloniën. 1903

MEDAN ..
On March 23, the Simpang-Anas river with the the government steamer the “Brak” slowly draining, I felt that completely different travel impressions awaited me. I left the scene of years of stubborn camp and fierce struggle to enter a region of peaceful industrial development; after Aceh it was Deli’s turn …
Already in the afternoon we arrived at Pangkallan-Brandan, the main establishment of the Royal Petroleum Company, to immediately, ‘while enjoying a tropical’ sun, the gigantic petroleum refining plants. to view attention.
My plan to make the overland journey to Deli was changed on the advice of the administrator of that company, Mr. De Voogt, who was kind enough to offer me a steamlaunch so that I “slept peacefully on board” without fatigue. Belawan. would achieve. In the late evening we left this American petroleum town with the Zeta, and were soon in the open sea. However, there was no question of “restful sleep”; for lying on the lantern of the cabin above deck, I had to cling to the mast with both arms, to avoid the dizzying tumble that made us slender yet fast-moving not to be thrown overboard, as was almost the case with my servant. After a few hours of that tender embrace (of the mast), we arrived at the harbor of Deli, Belawan, before sunrise.

In the distance the blue mountains of the Batak countries, near us the great Chinese “cheek kangs” with dragon heads, who supplied the working material for the tobacco plantations. The steamships in the harbor, the mix of races, and the busy entertainment, indicated the proximity of a region where life and activity reigned. The face of a native woman with a leprosy breast, an infant in her arms; the sad spectacle of some Chinese prisoners, riveted in chains, made me immediately discern the dark sides of European industry. Through an unhealthy swamp, over a long bridge whose construction took many human lives, the train passed the deserted and desolate Laboean Deli, and, through wastelands, to the electrically Enlightened, rich and lush Medan).

Few cities on the globe contain such a rich diversity of peoples and races as this city, which owes its entire rise to the cultivation of tobacco. In the old days, barely eight years ago, in part still jungle or swamp, in which elephants and tigers sometimes lived, now move along wide streets between large and beautiful houses, people of all skin colors, customs and religion. The thin blade, with his fierce eyes and black beard, goes there in a white robe, a turban of vivid colors on the proud head; next to him a slender black-eyed woman in a colorful dress, with ringing rings on her arms and ankles, a ring through the nose and a child in natural garb by the hand. Then again one encounters an olive-colored Sinhalese, with straight hair wound in a knot and a hair comb as a crown on his head, behind the Hindu with earnest, finely chiselled face. The Malay there, with beardless face and sarong, is rushed past by half-naked Chinese coolies, who wear, pant, cry and sweat, sometimes pulling rickshaws in which Medan had, in 1901, 13 724 inhabitants, 459 of whom were Europeans.

Japanese beauties let themselves be carted around. The proud Afghan walks among Bataks, Javanese, and warlike-looking but actually bloody Bengalese. ,
But each nation retains its own country, maintains its national customs. The Chinese shopkeeper lights lanterns on holidays and burns candles on the house altar; the Major-Chinese had a real Chineese house built by Mongol craftsmen for a lot of money; the Chinese coolie brought with it the filthy vices of his race. The European left a Western mark on his clothing, food and home; the Javanese and Malay celebrate their weddings and other feasts as in desa and kampong; the Hindu burns the corpses of his kinsmen— Everything points to the wealth of a few. The Sultan inhabits an Eastern palace and wastes treasures on expensive uniforms; the resident has an expensive but ugly house there; the administrator of the Déli-Maatschappij enjoys more income there than our Viceroy of the Dutch East Indies. Life is expensive and is enjoyed to the full. A fertile soil, a regular rainfall gave this region a kind of tobacco monopoly in the fineness of the fabric and the toughness of the fibers, and thus enormous riches to all who managed to benefit from them in time.

CULTURES.
Former swamps were drained, canals dug, forests cleared, and left fallow after the tobacco yielded, to be slowly reboised by Albizzia and other fast-growing tree species. The original population of a few hundred natives was pushed aside by an imported people, which now number more than a third of a million inhabitants.
In the last l0 years of 1892-190l, the mean rainfall was 2039 mm on 139 days, spread over all months of the year. February was the driest month with 95 and October the wettest with 256 millimeters.

Outside Medan, however, one sees only a monotonous, mournful plain, where fierce thickets grow up between high alang-alang grass, and only tobacco or dry paddy fields in a few places accentuate the barrenness of the region.
As far as the cultures are concerned, only a fairly wide spread of pepper plantations can be pointed out, and a small amount of klappers, sago and betang; Due to the low prices, the nutmeg disappears, and Deli stands or falls with the tobacco culture. Only coffee, and especially Liberia, deserves to be mentioned in this context 1).
It is not necessary to speak now about the manner of planting, the preparation for the European market and the disease of these two products. Rather, I would like to draw attention to the workforce that produces these riches. A few figures may suffice to show its importance:
In 1901, 34,000 fields were planted, with a yield of about 327,000 picols of tobacco, representing a value of NLG 40 million. The stock market value of the companies was. at the end of 1901, almost NLG 102 million, and the total proceeds from 1864 to 1900 included the enormous amount of 662 million.

How they were and are obtained is now discussed.
A strict discipline is maintained, both among the European and the Native workers. In the first, that light falls on the utter lawlessness to which they are at the mercy of their discharge; the coolie ordinances have made this possible for the virtually disenfranchised Native.
The Chinese carry out the planting and the earthmoving; the Bataks build sheds; Blades take care of the transport, and Javanese are burdened with all kinds of labor; but all are bound hand and foot, at the mercy of their employer.

x) In 1901 the coffee countries produced 33,000 picols of Liberia; its culture is very promising, but the low prices created a sharp crisis.

LABOR FORCES.
At 166 Estates on January 1, 1902, the number of coolies was no less than 99,568, apparently claiming a strong annual replenishment. In 1900 and 1901, there were still a total of 14,151 Javanese and 30,647 Foreign Easterners, or 56,783 Emigrants. From those two years resp. 3,521 and 16,998, making a total of 30,549 workers.
An Emigrant Office set up by the planters, hires ships, recruits the coolies in China, buys them at “a fixed rate, and then distributes them among the companies. The inspector registers them, and has the task of ensuring that the ordinance is faithfully enforced. Whether this supervision is sufficient in practice to keep an accurate record of, for example, mortality, and to guard against release at the end of the three-year contract, may be seriously doubted. The Dutch resident minister of China in 1888, Mr. Ferguson, refused to cooperate in this “human trade,” but the German envoy lent his support, in return he was endowed with the Grand Cross of the Netherlands Lion!
The Javanese, who conclude a “free” contract with the oak planter separately, go directly to the concerned Estates. The fact that in the recruitment in both countries annoying abuses, deceit, deception, and rip off take place, will hardly be denied any longer. The abuses have finally become world famous; further explanation is therefore unnecessary.
Many other and extremely important objections can be made against the coolie contract, even its principle must be condemned. Mr. De Coningh rightly stated in the meeting of the Indischen Bond, March 29, 1 held in Medan, that the contract-coolie system cannot be defended from a moral point of view, since it is “disguised and not even heavily disguised, albeit temporary, slavery.” Few will have the courage to deny that free immigration is desirable, but many will think it is right or wrong that they cannot make their businesses profitable without slavery, and therefore, with all kinds of fallacies, maintain the existing viciously through and through. proven system.

Art. ii and art. 13 of the Coolie ordinance (established by Gouv. Decree July 13, 1889, Official Gazette 138 and revised by Decree March 11, 1898 Stb. 72) clearly indicates the slave lot of the coolie. There, among other things, any European or Native is threatened with punishment who dares to explore a runaway coolie housing. The disdain with which some wealthy workers often speak of these “stinkers” and “contract-wattles” indicates harsh indifference. Letting them roll the dice in re-engagement time to keep them in debt; the admission of prostitutes into the establishments, the drawing up of contracts in highly deprecated dollars, and the shamefully low wages paid to Javanese women, all too clearly prove that the common rules of morality are being flouted in the face of these disastrous fellow men.

LABOR WAGES.
The wages of the Javanese were fixed by ordinance at 6 dollars, when the dollar had a value of NLG 2, so at NLG 2 per month; the Javanese even speaks of “ringgits” di / 2.50 value in his eye. Now that dollar amount has fallen to 1.10, and in many enterprises a Javanese coolie does not get more than -4®. The well paid, ya 8 doll. received, must hand over 3 dolls. for food, 1.50 doll. discount advances, and can therefore with the remaining 3 to 4 doll. submit little or nothing, unless their income is supplemented by dice, or by the woman’s prostitution, which is not a rarity!

Unmarried women are short of 1/2 doll. of her advance of 3 doll., and for tools still 3I, 0 dagger, so that only 2.20 doll. remain to meet all kinds of needs. No wonder, then, that prostitution is pretty much the rule among these deceivers, and that many mothers were eager to sell her “kebon children” to the highest bidder, of which I heard evidence. The venereal diseases acquired on the plantations are therefore the reason that, as a doctor dared to explain to me, in Upper Serdang half of the Javanese women were syphilitic. I saw them in great numbers in many hospitals; sometimes they were even children. The Planters-Vereeniging saw the disgracefulness of such wages for labor by no means enlightened at last, and fixed the minimum wages for men at $ 7, for women at $ 4.5. per month; the coffee countries are still sticking to 6 and 31j2 doll. per person.
The budget of a skilled Chinese tobacco planter can be estimated as follows: with a planting of 16,000 trees, he can count on an annual income of $ 112; from this is deducted: shoes and clothing 3, tools 5, help with his work 8, discount of the advances 2’h dollar per 14 days (or 60 doll. per year); together remain 34 doll. to meet all other needs. The tandil keeps a “kedei”, where the coolie usually has to buy everything dearly, and from which some administrators still demand profits. *) His payment is made in vouchers, only common on the Estate, and which sometimes, after a theft, were simply all declared invalid, despite the harm caused to many as a result. The coolie contract is only valid for three years, after which he must be released, even though he is still indebted to the company. But here too the contract is violated several times.
The elderly, the “laukeh’s”, are often lured by bounties to recruit tribesmen in China, and of course they are
*). per checks was remitted, except for cash that is being sent away. However, when it is considered that this hardly makes up £ 13 per coolie per year, and that this may largely come from the main tandils, this is very insufficient evidence of ample income.

again all kinds of abuses the inevitable consequence. The not uncommon assassinations of the “tandils” are sometimes the result of gagging, at other times of jealousy about male sweethearts, for which one does not seem to be ashamed in the slightest. The number of crimes is on the rise, reaching 148 in 1894, 189 in 1898, 236 in 1900 and 209 or 2 per thousand coolies in 1901.

Security is much better in the areas where Malays and Bataks live, than in those where the Chinese coolies rob and murder, the Javanese steal, and the Bandjarese fight and wound. The conditions at Deli thus leave a great deal to be desired, and although by no means everything is due to the European capitalists, much would be prevented by a more regulated wage-labor, and a less shameless exploitation of the treasures created by advances. 

Situations quite different will arise when free labor will have replaced the present-day coolie contract. That free labor is possible is proven in the Straits-Settlements, and in many other countries in similar conditions. At the public works there are always plenty of free coolies to be found at a daily wage of 30 to 40 cents. Manual labor would then become more expensive, but the flourishing of an industry must not be bought at the expense of such sometimes terrible conditions, such suffering and such demoralization. Higher wages can be paid from such enormous profits, though some European wage earners have had to settle for less than $ 30,000, $ 50,000, $ 60,000, and $ 150,000. The average earnings of the workers of colored race can be summed up thus on average; 000 and 150,000 guilders. The average earnings of workers of colored race can be summed up thus on average; 000 and 150,000 guilders. 

The average earnings of workers of colored race can be summed up thus on average;
a Chinese tandil gets $ 319. per year, a field coolie 135, a kongsi coolie 72, a blade 96 and the Bengalese doll 115. For the Javanese is 258 for some main mandur, 135 for a mandur and 85 doll. well calculated for a coolie. In 1901, the selling price for the 224,000 packs of tobacco or 35.8 million pounds was average. 1.11 and the total cost 70 to 75 cents, leaving a profit per Va kilo of 36 cents or NLG 12,890,000 for the entire harvest.

The average wages of pine in the coffee countries

Javanese man 76 doll. per year, of the woman no more than 40 dolls. After deduction of the discounts for advances received, no more than NLG 43 per year remains available to meet all needs, while not a cent is paid in the event of illness.
The consequences of this meager payment have already been mentioned in passing above.
I am not misunderstood! These shameful conditions are not everywhere; there are companies that have a more humane view of the work contract, and do not take such annoying abuse of the poverty and naiveté of Javanese and Chinese. There are Estates where one really shows some heart for his wage slaves, and where sometimes generous amounts of money are donated for charitable purposes for the benefit of those at the expense of whose happiness they have obtained their millions. Such conditions are known to me; but it is also clear that besides the abuses I have come to know a lot more iniquities occur.

SICKNESS AND DEATH OF THE DELI COOLS
Strangely enough, a statistic of the mortality of the contract coolies is only used during the last two years. From data provided with the most benevolence, I will only take this:
in 1901 there were 93,468 contractors, of which 4,403 or 44 per 1000 died in the course of that year. In 1900 these figures were 106,160 and 4,296, or 41 deaths per grand.
The highest percentage of deaths among the Chinese coolies was 125 per 1000 in Tamiang; that among the Javanese in Batoe Langkat 123 per 1000; that of the other strange Orientals in Batoe Langkat 238 per 1000, or almost one fourth, and that in a single year! In Medan these figures were for Chinese, Javanese and foreign Orientals respectively. 60, 27 and 60 per thousand coolies. In 1900 it was slightly more favorable.

The most common diseases are anemia, fevers, dyssentery, eye diseases, leg wounds and ulcers. Tering appears to be relatively rare, despite the dust of the tobacco sheds, but the number of lame, blind, insane, and epileptics is by no means small. Dyssentery is also a major factor in mortality, not to mention syphilus, dropsy, and heart disease.

The anemia, or tropical bleaching, which we already found in the Ombilin mines as the “anémie des mineurs”, is often characterized by the presence of intestinal worms “ankylostomiasis”. The suspected cause of this worm disease is drinking bad water, insufficient nutrition and excessive labor.

Dr. Erni was the first to demonstrate the presence of this parasite *) in the Malay Archipelago, 15 years ago among the forced laborers in Aceh. In 1896, Dr. Maurer she at Deli among the coolies of the Senembah-Maatschappij, of which 67 pCt. were affected, and 10 to 15 pCt thereof. with symptoms of severe anemia.
From these hotbeds of ankylostomiasis, not least of which are the Ombilin mines, this disease is now, according to recent reports, being transferred to Java, and is endangering the health of the Native population of all NI!
Heart disease also seems to occur quite often due to heavy labor. In general a kind of apathy seems to overpower these physically weak people; many look as if they have all lost a lust for life; they are seen, although often still young, awaiting death with indifference. An investigation into their past might reveal a long series of misery and deprivation; these people are all too often victims of slaughter and inadequate nutrition. Those vacant features, those staring eyes, I can still see them when I think back to my visit to some of the Ankylostomum Doodenale or internal leech.

DELI HOSPITALS
As a rule, one can say that medical nursing is good on the wealthy Estates, but leaves much, yes everything to be desired on the smaller ones and on the coffee plantations. The layout of the hospitals in the capital of Medan is above all praise.
The Deli Hospital is the central establishment of the Estates der Deli society, and a beautifully situated, spacious and airy accommodation for more than 400 patients. Those who suffer from contagious diseases and from dyssentria are cared for in separate buildings by doctors who combine a scientific reputation for their noble profession.
In the emigrant asylum, created by the royal generosity of some donors in 1888, the blind, lame and mad, disabled or sufferers from falling or heart disease, are lovingly cared for. From 1888 to 1901, 1,137 were nursed in the common asylum and 374 in the leper quarters. The number of places (150) turned out to be insufficient to meet all admission requests. Some had been there for 13 years. A blade struck by lightning, whose hands had turned into drakeh claws, and whose feet had shriveled into stumps, drew the pitying attention; it is astonishing that someone in such a miserable situation can still attach to life.
There is nothing but good to tell about the European nursing care, a charity, where even the poor are helped by faithful nurses. 

Another case is the hospital for prostitutes and the Chinese hospital.
The latter, due to the bounty of the Major and the Captain Chinese, was a filthy pen with black walls, foul-smelling air, and a dirty sewer. Of the 200 sufferers, 80 had theirs disease due to the opium use, and 40 were affected by beriberi. Coolies laid off, and Chinese people who are not working on the plantations, are included.
In the hospital for prostitutes one finds a disgusting mixture of the victims of our social institution. In the midst of foul air I found there a few dozen Chinese, Javanese and Japanese women, yes even some of apparently European bloodmix, who were brutally looking around on the long wooden couches, on which also a dying beri-beri sufferer and an insane woman. layers.
The Chinese leper asylum, located near it, was a filthy and dark place where, in the midst of filthy bunks in a gloomy room, some of these disastrous fellows engaged in weaving baskets that were sold in the city.

The European leprasyl, which has already been mentioned above, made a completely different impression. There were now 87 patients who often ran away despite the barbed wire to beg or to pursue pleasures in Medan. The sad spectacle of these men with puffy faces, swollen earlobes, and bronze-colored faces, whose arms buckled and whose hands shrank; whose nipples swelled, while bumps formed on their noses, and all extremities were also affected, so that they rotted alive, scoffs at any description. Isolation on a remote island, where one can soften their lot in life without endangering others, is and remains a duty no longer to be rejected by the Indian Government *).
Also, energetically, the long-tolerated mistreatment of coolies must be curtailed, although, at least, something has been done in the right direction in recent years.
i) Mr. Mulier, at the meeting of March 31 in Medan, announced that officially 200 lepers were known at Deli in May 1900, while Dr. Zuithoven could already estimate 1,500 in 1890. Many are established on Petina as vegetable growers, and others imported this incurable disease among the Batak tribes. In Medan they touch the merchandise of the passars with their poisoned fingers, and bathe in the river among the healthy population.

COOLIE MUSTACHER.
Complaints about this had already been made for years, those complaints were faithfully contradicted, but new facts continued to confirm earlier allegations. What a long series of often cruel beatings could be collected from the magazines in all directions, and this for years and especially in earlier times! From the Contributionsa la GéographieMédicale del ‘Archipel Malais par le Dr. JAC Tschudnowsky, written in 1898, I had to report numerous scandalous facts in the Chamber. Mr. Cremer, then minister, tried to disprove it by making suspects the author, who acted exclusively with a scientific intention; the minister only achieved the opposite.
That brochure pointed out the bad quality and the insufficient quantities of nutrients; has been reported of physical chastisement, of unlawful imprisonment, and of untimely deaths of the innocent or the few guilty in murderous dungeons. How prostitution led to syphilis, and the taking of children from the mother sometimes led to insanity; how desertion was punished with torture; how overfilled ships and bad hospitals collapsed many, while the corpses were not even given a proper grave; how troubling treatment drove some to suicide, the last resort of these defenseless….
And will people now dare to declare with one hand that such crimes never and nowhere occur again? Or is it incorrect what was told me, among other things: that here an administrator forced coolies to walk back and forth in front of his house with a heavy beam on his neck; there another had women whipped on the naked buttocks; and elsewhere many a workman seriously injured by physical abuse, was first hospitalized to remove all evidence of guilt.

To be sure, I am happy to believe that no fact of actual abuse will be brought to the knowledge of the officials or severe prosecution; but how many facts never come to their ears! And then still – Under what pressure is sometimes testified or lied to! Would it be thought that the stick with which many employees walk around should really only serve to measure the fields? Here, too, the larger corporations, at least some, are a favorable exception, and I was pleased to learn that any charge of aggravated assault brought against a supervisor is punished by dismissal from the service. Especially in the coffee countries where the coolies are poorly housed, inadequately fed and often poorly at work because of weakness, abuse seems to be more common than many apparently believe. And when sickness afflicts them, what harsh treatment, then, was sometimes their share? 

The memory of the gruesome manner in which Mr. Elain treated his contract-coolies on Dama Glaoe kiri in that hospital, where corpses were left among the sick, has not yet been erased. This gentleman managed to escape a punishment by flight, which would probably have remained light due to the incompleteness of the coolie ordinance. Many assaults are never prosecuted because of the great cost of each trial; many things are “hushed up”, covered up. A lot has to be done before a European is prosecuted; and when a fact is all too outrageous, the culprit is often still acquitted, as the witnesses have been embezzled or bribed.
The trial against Mr. GR Bauman, administrator of the coffee company Greaban in Serdang, February 4, 1902 in Medan, also showed how some art. 13 of the coolie ordinance, to “provide adequate medical care”. Rather than send them to the central hospital at Lubuk Pakam, which cost some money, he had them, starving and polluted, created like dogs.

I personally visited that same central hospital that I think was here mentioned, on March 31, 1902, so after a number of trials had already drawn attention to it. The doctor, who has to visit 25 countries and treat 5000 coolies, is often absent; however not upon my arrival. What a trampling of all the rules of hygiene I had to see there, not to speak of those of humanity! In one room, without any partition, lay wildly filled with syphilitic women, dying malaria sufferers, swollen beriberi and lepers. One dysentery patient sat quietly, and the water was tapped from a swollen woman. as if begging for help against the harshness of my peers. Poor child, so far from Java alone in the world, in such an environment…. And meanwhile died in the Government Prison at Medan in 1901 to 13 pCt. of residents!…

And how, in earlier years, the bodies were sometimes thrown into the jungle, we have often read. That even in recent years burial leaves much to be desired, is evident from a circular of June 5, 1899 from the controller of Medan: the corpses of the contract coolies were not buried according to the adat, or burned where Hindus applied. In fact, often no separate grounds were kept available for Chinese, Hindus and Javanese. The first ones were lowered without box and without “pitjiok” or “pisak” (name plate). This is harshness towards those believers whose religious feelings were hurt by it, and it is a shame that greed could give rise to such a circular in 1899! Here too it is a bit better for the large companies, but would all those complaints really be great exceptions? Mr. Hoetink’s inquiry will, I hope, provide further information on this, of more value than the assertions of those who have an interest in enforcing the coolie ordinances.

CONCLUSION.
The existing coolie ordinances are, at recruitment as well as during contract time and beyond, a source of many abuses. As soon as possible, they should give way to completely free work.
Against the abuses in recruiting or recruiting in Java, where proletarians often fall prey to the tricks and layers of unscrupulous human traders who rob and suck them, an ordinance is well known in preparation, which still leaves too much to intermediaries; for adequate help is possible only when the Government itself takes control of the whole administration.
The “laukeh” also deceives the Chinese without possessions, who have to leave their country and stomachs to earn a sour piece of bread in distant regions. All supervision of recruiting, transport, and medical assistance at sea seems to be missing there, and the safety of the mandarins makes even the existing laws a dead letter; recruitment in China may also be studied in more detail …
In Deli itself, better control is needed on the implementation of the good contained in the ordinances; as long as these are maintained, some improvements, the supervision of the pilots, of the nursing, of the wages and of the termination of the contract, cannot be assigned as extra work to the inspectors. Art. 4: that the coolie has to do his job ”is too elastic, and especially in the coffee gardens, women, especially, often demand too much labor.
All complaints had to be investigated in the loco or at centers of companies, to be made possible for a short period of time, it is already a progress that the folly has to cases ”in Batavia, has been brought to an end since January 1 of this year. Certain assaults, quite different from being slapped in temper, had to be punishable by severe punishment, and dismissal from the post was the inevitable consequence. To physicians who commit to shocking dereliction guilty, should be taken once the authority to conduct medical practice ..
It is a credit to the Resident Steenstraten that he has withdrawn the circular Scherer of 15 November 1886 (the Administrator right giving up to 24 hours of incarceration), although this was to prevent even worse arbitrariness and assault.
The penalties of art. 9, determining 100 guilders for the rich employer and a month in prison for the worker, are unfair because of their inequality.
In a word, the ordinances have afforded many advantages and rights to the European entrepreneur, but have been a source of numerous injustices and nameless misery for the Native workman. It is contrary to the most primitive sense of justice to attribute to the egoism of individuals the power to compel Natives to work
. Under the existing provisions, European entrepreneurs have great power over the coolies, which are always at their disposal. They have the freedom of these people in their hands, and because of the less or more care in the hospitals, they actually have over their life and death.
It is therefore the duty of the Government to guard against all abuses: it gave such excessive power to these individuals, it is responsible for the proper observance of the ordinances, in so far as they contain measures for the protection of these defenseless ones. Special officers will be required for this, and an inspection of the labor must be instituted at the expense of the planters. On various other points, the ordinance must be supplemented, and the responsibility of the employers, in the event of permanent disability due to accidents, must be better regulated than in art. 8 the case.

The ultimate goal, however, must be and remain the obtaining of completely free labor, and exemption from the contract system> toujours abusive et vicieuse ”(P. Leroy Beaulieu, Colonization chez les peuples modernes p. 782). At the Congrès International de sociologie, held in Paris under the Presidium of the Minister of the Colonies of France and in the presence of the highest dignitaries of all the colonial powers, it was branded without protest as “slavery in disguise.” Hence, too rightly, Dr. Tshudnowsky in his above work, that in Deli, planters of all nations are engaged in an economic struggle with these nominally free workers, but who are really the Modern Slavs of the 19th century; a struggle always stubborn, not always fair. ” p. 47.
Perhaps, by way of transition, one can first shorten the duration of the contract, in order to give the planters the opportunity to learn how to cope without this kind of pledge. In the long run it will be necessary to achieve a steady population and better conditions, but right away protection of those weak is the sacred duty of the Government; and in this battle of interests I stand unimpairedly on the side of the small against the great, although this may cause the profits of some European capitalists to diminish somewhat.
The present coolie ordinances can be withdrawn if only one is restored to honor art. 2. n °. 27 of the Police Penal Code for Natives, which punishes bad faith of employees with a fine or imprisonment.
But under no circumstances may the punished person be returned to the employer, which is now the case. This is completely contrary to art. 1239 of the Indian Civil Code, which is rightly called the basis of personal liberty.
I do not want to speak of the Sultanate, the exaggerated power given to a useless Prince, perhaps a usurper; the great income enjoyed by him in idleness, without any

I do not want to judge now to give up some of that for the benefit of the country and the people. Also about the Bataks in the gouv. I do not want to elaborate on Sumatra’s East coast, of which I visited a few settlements.
Now only a few figures about the financial interests that the Indian Government has in this Residence.

THE BUDGET OF SÜMATRA’S EAST COAST.
In round numbers, in 1901, for an amount of 22 tons in expenditure, there was an income for the Government of 53 tons, or a benefit of NLG 3,100,000. In the last three years, this surplus amounted to 12 V2 million. There is therefore no legitimate reason to deny this region the necessary tools for industrial development: the road network must be further improved, the harbor at Belawan made more accessible to large ships; the expensive Deli railroad are closed by the state, and the loads are reduced. Native education must be better provided, and medical aid not relied so much on the charity of private individuals. Where so much profit is enjoyed, a generous donation may be made, provided it is done in a sensible way.

The principal income of the Government consists of the proceeds of the opium lease of NLG 1,678,000; of the Chinese dice games a NLG 448,000; arak a ƒ244,000; pawnshop lease a ƒ40,000; while the import duties annually yield ƒ1,143,000, the export duties ƒ223,000, the excise duties ƒ 317,800, the personnel tax ƒ 65,000, the patent duty ƒ158,000, the company tax ƒ 418,000 and the registration of work contracts ƒ 62,000, all taxes together in igoi amounting to the sum of f 5.3 26, g 3 4.

A prosperous region, therefore, created by the energy of European capital, and where, with the restraint of excessive greed and the attribution of human rights to the labor force, an equally prosperous population will one day be able to live. The 11 is now but a gigantic plantation, may it one day become a land righteously administered for the benefit of all who live and labor there.