Stories from Deli

In the fields. When it is “in the fields” again in January, every true Delian tobacco assistant comes to life. That recently completed work in the musty fermentation shed, that shuffling along the rows of sorting coolies, that staring at dark, brown, faded leaves, or whatever other nuances there are (his sister’s wool is nothing compared to it), that sniffing around for pieces, specks or rust, that anxious fitting and measuring of length, the lively young man is sick of it. In addition, he has had to leave his small but own house in the fields, to move into the shared house, located near the main establishment of the company, with three or four colleagues. Pretty good people, those others, but at some distance you still remain friends better. And then the coolies, the entire five hundred have been together in that same shed for four months. The weaker ones like this life; they are well fed there, sit quietly sorting the tobacco leaves and are there fat.

But the stout ones, who will not move aside for fifteen thousand tobacco plants, get itchy from this woman’s work and long for exercise. Then they will no longer ask for English salt or quinine, as happened all too often now. The administrator is also satisfied. His harvest is now as good as delivered and almost ready for shipment; the stands, which naturally occur among all that crowded people, have turned out quite well; a good number of the coolies, who finished their contracts last year, have re-engaged; not all the fields are occupied yet, but he still has some time to provide for this by supplies from Penang or Singapore, and so he is going to meet the new harvest with good courage.

In the fields therefore Preparations have been made for four hundred; about two hundred lie along the road, on the other side of which it was planted last year. Drying sheds and houses are present there – to also to serve this year. Parallel to it, at a distance of 300 fathoms, a new road has been dug and prepared, including drainages, by a group of Javanese. The forest between these two roads has been cut by groups of Malays and Batahs, who each had a piece in contract. The coolie houses are ready and will be occupied this year with a certain curiosity. They are not, as in the past, built on the ground floor, but five feet above the ground. They have a plank floor, walls of planks and not of ataps (palm leaves tied together on a stick) and look neat and spacious.

Those coolies — they now live better than the soldiers in Medan. Two houses, each intended for eighteen men and built with the longitudinal axis perpendicular to the main road, are always together and at a sufficient distance from each other to form a small square forms, of which the side opposite the road is occupied by the house of the tandil, the boss of the 3 6 men. Behind his house is the cooking place; to the side are the wells, separately those for bathing and for drinking water. Three of these teams or congsies are under one assistant, who therefore has a good hundred men under him. Along the roads, at a distance of 10 fathoms from each other, poles are stuck in the ground, which indicate the width of the fields; these are 150 fathoms deep, so have an area of ​​1500 square fathoms or three-quarters built, and, since the tobacco plants each need a space of 1 fathom, space for 9000 plants.

Usually, however, the distances are taken so wide that a field can contain 10,000 plants, sometimes more. The fields are precisely assigned to the coolies by lot and are inspected by them with an expert eye. Heavy forest — much work, one thinks; much lalang (tall grass) — will the tobacco grow here? another; much water — that means digging ditches, a third. But whatever there is to do, there must be luck, otherwise the work is of no use. So he quickly builds a little temple with colored papers on sticks in front of his field, burns incense sticks around it and above all lights a good number of crackers (linked swarms) to drive away the evil spirits. He does all this in his Sunday clothes, and when the feast has been devoured, he smokes his pipe and stands comfortably in front of his new home (where a beautiful altar has also been erected, which is intended to remain there) or takes another look at his field. Then the European passes by, he will call out to him what problem he has discovered in his field and laugh cheerfully when he shows him that it is not so bad.

The work that now awaits the man, however, is no small matter and he who for the first time in January sees such a field, completely covered with large forest trees, lying there in an inextricable wilderness, with prickly rattan connected, cannot imagine that within four months will be planted and within six months harvested.

At six o’clock the next morning the coolie is already standing with his machete bent at the point, cutting the branches and pulling them towards him, and by piling them in large heaps, against the lying tree trunks, bringing order to the chaos. As soon as this work is done these piles are doomed to fire and especially in the month of February it glows and smokes everywhere in Deli. Then the cutting of the ground begins, not with the spade, but with the tjangkol, which the middle coolie sitting on the ground in the picture above has in his hand. With this the ground is turned over 9 to 12 inches deep, smaller tree stumps (the large ones remain standing) and roots are removed from the ground.

These are combined with the remains of the previous fire to form new piles and, after these have been burned as much as possible, the ground is turned over a second time; this is called line-tjankollen. Then it is raked and is then ready for planting. To quickly cut down the tjankollen is a hard job – one sees in the moonlight, in the cool of the night, many coolies busy at the work. No wonder that in the afternoon no attention is paid to whether they come out during the working hours. In the meantime, the first seed beds have been laid out in good time, with great care, and new ones are regularly made at short intervals, so that there is always a sufficient supply of young, strong seedlings, and in April the planting is usually in full swing. If the assistant has had to pay close attention beforehand to whether the soil has been worked over to a reasonable depth, whether the drainage is sufficient, (because in a few hours the water kills the tobacco), now he must especially see with his eyes whether the plants are placed in the ground at a reasonable distance, two by three feet.

The coolie, who works entirely on his own account, and is paid according to the number of plants and their appearance, that he brings into the drying shed, naturally wants to plant and smuggle as much as possible in the space. If he sees that the supervision is slack, then he immediately makes use of it and at the back of the field the plants are pitifully crowded together. If everything grows well, then such a field does not look bad, but the end of the story is that the planter pays almost as much for a thousand of these delicate plants as his neighbour, who pays attention, for a thousand good ones, and that after drying it turns out that the latter has almost twice as much weight and healthier, more powerful tobacco.

Moreover, the worker is spoiled by such an undertaking, because he has learned to despise his boss. And yet — there were and are still such things. In order to make supervision easier, on good undertakings when tjankollen, plots are left open in the fields at a distance of 50 fathoms from each other. So there is the main road, on which the barns and houses are located (see plate on page 534), two paths through the fields (see plate on page 537) and then a back road, all 50 fathoms from each other and thus making supervision very easy. The newly planted tobacco is protected from the sun for a few days by planks stuck crookedly in the ground; as it grows larger it is earthed up a few times and when the plant is 16 to 22 leaves, the top is broken off to prevent it from shooting into the seed and the upper leaves from remaining small.

After two or, on higher situated enterprises, three months it begins to ripen. Then the busiest time of the enterprise approaches and from morning till night everyone is at work. A few drying sheds, buildings of 30 fathoms long and 10 wide, in which four rows of tobacco plants can hang above each other, are already ready, but the contractors of others, groups of Batahs or Malays, have been idle and are still far behind. They must then be encouraged or replaced by the so-called Boijans, immigrants from Bawean, who work in teams of thirty or forty men on almost every enterprise for the rough construction work. Or there is a shortage of ataps for roofing and the hastily bought batches are brought in by the Klingalese carters with ox carts of the enterprise or hired ones in great haste.

Early in the morning the coolie goes around his field to caterpillars, worms and grasshoppers, which attack its intact leaves, and to break off the water shoots, which after the topping of the plant, shoot out above the leaf axils with tropical growth force and draw the food to themselves that is due to them. Then he has to earth up his young tobacco, plant new ones and, if the administrator or the assistant with an expert eye has determined that the tobacco is starting to ripen and cutting can be started; then the harvest pressure joins the other work. Then it comes down to good supervision again to prevent the harvest from being unripe; the coolie’s aim is of course to get rid of his tobacco as soon as possible and to cut it away before hand. The assistant must therefore look out of his eyes and be firm in enforcing his will. The fields, if all goes well, covered with plants five to six feet high, crowded together and of equal height as if they had been mowed with a scythe and as if one could walk over them, now lose their proud aspect; a breach is made in their unity.

The cut plants are carefully laid in the carrying mats on legs, a model of which can be seen on z/de weg langs de velden” (p. 534) and carried with haste to the nearby shed. There the whole plant is hung up on the lowest floor; ten plants hang on a pole, the ends of which rest on cross-pieces and can easily be lifted to a higher floor; each man hangs his plants together, the less good ones separately. The next morning the assistant comes into the shed, examines each lot and makes an appraisal of them in the presence of the workman. He pays for the first kind of plants with eight, the less good with seven, six to four dollars. He writes the quantities in his receiving book, in which each man has his own page with columns for the various prices.

At the end of the harvest year the amount of all deliveries is settled with the advances which the coolie has received every fortnight and the amount which he then has to pay is paid to him. This receiving or appraising of tobacco is a work which requires some routine and in which the assistant must keep a sharp eye on things. If he lets bad plants hang under the good ones and gives too high a price for them, he encourages the coolies to continue doing so and he harms the enterprise to a great extent. If he gives too low a price or does not notice the good qualities of the delivered goods, he harms the coolie, which will undoubtedly result in a complaint to the administrator or to the board, preferably in procession. But the good assistant knows his people and their fields; he knows what tobacco a man cuts and the coolie realizes that he knows it. They will not argue about the price. Two Jews know what a pair of glasses costs! It is therefore remarkable how few complaints about valuation are.

As soon as the tobacco is received, it is hung in the higher part of the shed until it is full. Each company has four sheds, which are filled one after the other. An assistant therefore has twelve sheds under him and an enterprise with more than 400 men has forty-eight barns, half of which must be built new each year. In the middle of the harvest, July-August, when the assistant has to run from barn to barn to receive tobacco, in the full barns has to watch over the drying or bundling, in the fields over the harvesting and the maintenance of the young tobacco, he hardly has time for everything and that is why the planting has recently been arranged in such a way that the strip along the main road is planted last, so that supervision of barns and young tobacco can take place simultaneously.

Drying the tobacco takes about three weeks; this must not be done too quickly, otherwise it would become brittle or discoloured; it must not be done too slowly either, otherwise it would become mouldy or rotten. The drying barn therefore has walls with flaps, which are opened as needed. In very damp weather, fires are lit on the ground, which give off a lot of smoke and thus promote the circulation of air. The leaves of the dried plant are taken, and sorted into several types, such as top leaves, foot leaves, piece, etc. These are bound together in bundles of about fifty leaves and sent by cart to the fermentation shed, where finally the harvest from all corners of the enterprise is received and weighed. The young man counts the figures of his deliveries with interest.

Will he make more than the previous year, will he beat his colleagues? would he get nine picols per field? These are questions that he asks himself and that prove that the field work with its rapid results constantly stimulates his ambition. Yes, Delian fields, you have many a young man, who at home would have remained mediocre among the mediocre, formed into men of action, fit to lead, to create and to bear responsibility. When the tobacco is off the fields, also the second cut or sucker, which shoots up from the stump of the cut plant and is sometimes as good as this one, a part of the fields is planted with rice by the barn builders or the population. The rest becomes wilderness, as does the first part after one rice harvest.

However, it is by no means indifferent what kind of wilderness will come. If it is young forest that comes up and is not destroyed by fire, then one can be sure that this forest land will be reclaimed after five to ten years will be able to deliver an excellent product. However, if there is lalang” (tall grass) then the soil becomes impoverished, and this lalang, which burns like the prairies in North America, is a danger to the neighbourhood.

Especially the rice culture on the planted and dry fields, which must therefore be driven in the rainy season, prevents the growth of the forest in the most favourable time and breeds rampant lalang. With care for forest growth Deli can, I dare almost say continuously, produce good tobacco; without it certainly not. Only forest growth gives the soil the loose humus necessary for fine tobacco.

Fertilizers have been and are being tested and applied, the result of which is in the long run, at best, uncertain. That of forest is certain. Those who now draw treasures from Deli may well consider this, especially those who are in control in Patria; because in Deli, with a few exceptions, it is not thought of; many think about it après nous le déluge. But we have now lingered long enough in the fields, especially in planted ones, where tigers, snakes and wild pigs usually do not make the stay pleasant and hope to see each other again in the fermentation barn”.

Eigen haard; geïllustreerd volkstijdschrift, 1888, no. 44, 01-01-1888