TW Roberts Addresses Ceylon’s Political & Administrative Issues in the 1930s

T. W. Roberts …. was a Barbadian who served the British Empire in Ceylon from 1901 to circa 1935 before settling down in the Fort of Galle with his second wife, Miriam Perera (also spelt “Pereira”). Freed from government service, he was sufficiently committed [also see other references] to the island and its people to pen two substantial articles on the colonial order in South Asia. THIS is one … carrying no date. **

 

This is one pamphlet and has  been formatted for TPS by Mark Webster in  Perth, an Aussie married to Barbara Webster, one of TW’s granddaughers via Violet Stewart [who had married Ronald Stewart of the Ceylon Police Services].

 

 

 

OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS

Printed at THE ALBION PRESS, Galle,…. no date

Race Antagonism and the Donoughmore Constitution

The Colonial Office has set up the Donoughmore Constitution in Ceylon as a substitute for Home Rule. It accepted the argument that in the absence of party politics a Committee System, like that of the London County Council, was the best way to administer the Colony without giving a fillip to racial rancour. It regarded the Committee System as the only way to give the minority communities a chance of a real voice in the Government and a real place in the sun. Apart from such a system, elections would place power, it was thought, only in the hands of the Sinhalese who compose 3/5ths of the population, and this would add fuel to the already vigourous fire of race antagonism.

This is the same problem of race antagonism which we encounter in Palestine, India and Burma. The working and the effects of the Donoughmore solution are therefore of great interest and importance. But one thing has first to be noted. Race rivalry has never in Ceylon reached the depth and fury, which it displays in India, Palestine and Burma. The rival races have lived for centuries at peace and without race bloodshed. If the Donoughmore idea is good, it should have “worked” in Ceylon more readily than it will serve in any of the other 3 countries mentioned.

After 8 years experience, the verdict of the best minds in Ceylon is against the Donoughmore system. It is true, some find virtue in the Committee system as a training for mediocre members of Parliament, as a scheme ensuring to the individual member a voice in administration far greater than is got by any ordinary member of the House of Commons. But the leader of the Council has condemned it as a system which disperses and weakens responsibility. The Press has condemned it as a stimulus to graft. The Public agrees with the Press in that comment and finds it particularly prolific of muddle and delay.

A like condemnation holds the field of cultured public opinion in regard to manhood suffrage. It is felt that voters vote like sheep.

(2)

They blindly follow the slogans of race, caste and religion. I agree with that as a true description of the facts, but I have doubts about the remedy they propose, literary tests and a property qualification. I see no certainty that voters in Ceylon on a property qualification would be any more impervious to the instincts of race, religion and caste. I have in mind certain Local Option Polls in Colombo, held to to decide a demand for the closing of taverns in the Pettah or Maradana. It was impossible, owing to special circumstances, to prepare lists on the manhood suffrage basis then obtaining by the Local Option Regulations, but other considerations made postponement undesirable. On the advice of the then Mayor of Colombo, and an Official Committee, on which the writer was the only dissentient, rules were enacted by which the poll was held on the Municipal voters’ lists. Those lists included only persons with a certain property or income or tenancy qualification.

The Committee believed that voters on these lists would have more sense, and would refuse to close country liquor taverns and leave foreign liquor shops open (these latter being by law exempt from closure by option).

The result belied their expectation. That year the poll succeeded, whereas two years before it had failed when manhood suffrage was the law.

The point is that the voters on the property and income qualification were even more easily misled than those on the manhood suffrage list. That is to say, religion this (this being a Buddhist and Mohammedan constituency) has no less despotic power over the minds of the middle classes then over the great unwashed.

Again, it seems to me that the caste critics have overstated their point about its general dominance, and there are some constituencies where caste is no longer the first or greatest force.

But I cannot dispute their point about the domination of race and religion in the present territorial constituencies. Let us remember that the main idea of the Donoughmore Commission in adopting solely territorial constituencies was to accustomed the rival races and religions to work together in one area. They expected this cooperation to soften communal rancour.

(3)

In fact, there has been no cooperation, and communal rancour is louder and fiercer than it was before. Buddhist headquarters are trying to prevent Christian missions from recruiting school teachers from Europe! All the minorities are discontented. Not one Mohammedan has secured a seat at the last election. Only two dared to stand for election. No Singhalese has a chance in a Tamil district. No Tamil has a chance in a Singhalese district. Mostly, no British or Burgher has a chance of election in any district at all. Christians have a chance and in only two constituencies out of 60.

With their present outlook, each voter wants to vote for a man of his own race or religion. If he lives in a constituency, where 4/5 of the voters are of some other race or religion, his vote has for him no value at all.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the general outlook appears in the fact that two or three eminent men in the present Council have been converted from Christianity to Buddhism. They think, or most people suppose they think, that no candidate has a chance in most Singhalese constituencies unless he flies a Buddhist flag. They ought to be sound judges of their countrymen. In their view, the political outlook of the Singhalese voter is the tribal outlook of the middle ages. Therefore, the votes given to the Colombo Tamils and to the Burghers, Mohammedans and other residence in the Sinhalese provinces are a mockery, and are coming to be resented by those minorities as an insult.

Apply this lesson to Burma or Palestine, then it should be clear to Mr. McDonald that a system of purely territorial constituencies will be a blunder of the first magnitude. In the atmosphere of Burma and Palestine, such a system will be prolific of immediate and abundant bloodshed.

There is a simple alternative. Territorial constituencies may be implemented by communal constituencies; i.e. for example the Mohammedans of the western and Southern provinces may be separated off from the territorial constituencies of these two provinces and given the privilege of electing two or three members of their own. That is all the Mohammedans ask for.

(4)

It is at present the custom of the theorists to oppose this compromise on two grounds.

(1) They say that such a separation thwarts co-operation and goodwill.

(2) They say that in England territorial constituencies have worked well and being fertile of concord between English and Scotch, Irish and Scotch, English and Welsh. They urge that even the Jews are content.

The second argument is like the theory that a fur coat must be good in the tropics because it is good at the North Pole. In the U.K. territorial constituencies rouse no discontent because the Welsh, Irish and Scotch are locally distributed in such a way as to ensure that in every parliament many Welsh, Irish and scotch will become members. So will a few Jews, in some of the London boroughs; that certainty exists apart from party politics. In Ceylon, Burma, Palestine, and India, no such certainty exists. In Ceylon the exact opposite is a certainty. In these conditions, there cannot be confidence among the minorities, so long as their vote remains a mockery. The only way to convert it from a mockery to a reality is to set up communal constituencies alongside of territorial. In fact, something like this has been done in Madras, and seems so far to satisfy. The second lesson of recent Ceylon history is that there must be some strong domestic brake on demongoguery. After watching for eight years a single chamber in action, elected on a manhood suffrage ticket the minority races, i.e. 2/5 of Ceylon regard the Legislative with fear and distrust. So do most Sinhalese Christians.

The majority community has chosen a pan Sinhalese cabinet and given the others no place in the Parliamentary sun. They ……………..

(5)

have framed half 100 schemes for the uplift of the Sinhalese peasant without any personal calculation either of their practicability or their cost. Some part of their disposal of patronage has apparently been a pure family bandy. Much of all their planning may have been well meant, but no one knows what will come next. No one is sure that the main objective much of their Legislation has not been to catch votes.

The minorities had expected the governor’s veto to be a safeguard, but no longer feel much faith in that expectation. That veto has been used in one or two matters affecting the Public Services (a reserved subject), but the general attitude of the Governor has been one of benevolent support for the Minorities in office. He boasts of being a constitutional governor. In England a constitutional monarch is a person who follows the advice of his cabinet. If that is to apply in the Ceylon, Governor’s veto can be no adequate safeguard. That one man shall function both as constitutional Governor and as a second chamber is a contradiction in terms.

It seems to me that the best safeguard would be a Second Chamber of a dozen members, elected by all persons qualified to serve on a Special Jury and all persons of professional status. Such a chamber would precisely represent the aristocracy of Ceylon, and be sometimes an honest bulwark against wildcat legislation and tribalist greed.

But it must be admitted that Public Opinion in Ceylon is not alive to the value of a Second Chamber. The demand of the minorities have ignored this safeguard and concentrated on weightage i.e. and allotment of seats giving disproportionately large representation to minorities. Some of them have demanded a 50-50 proportion by which under 2 million of the minority communities would elect as many members as over 3 million Sinhalese. This crude suggestion has received no backing in H.E. the governor’s despatch. In its practical application to existing facts, the 50-50 proposal ensures merely an increase of Jaffna Tamil Members.

(6)

H E. the governor has suggested another solution.

(1)        He proposes to to set up a new local Local delimitation which would give minorities a better chance. But in fact no change in local delimitation will produce any solid effect. H.E. does not know this island.

(2)        He proposes to give the Governor power to nominate four British and two Burgher members. But this is precisely the spirit of communalism, which other parts of his despatch condemn. It ignores the importance of the Tamil and Mohammedan minorities in Sinhalese districts, and these Tamil and Mohammedan minorities outnumber the British and Burgher minorities by fifty or hundred to one. The British and Burghers no longer have a monopoly of culture and brains and money. The Colombo Tamils are second to none in these respects.

There is a more simple and equitable solution. Reduce the present representation of the Sinhalese districts by seven. Distribute seven new memberships as follows full: –

• Representative of the British chambers of commerce
• ditto Planters Association
• ditto Burgher Association
• Representative elected by the Ceylon-born Tamils resident in Ceylon outside the Northern and Eastern provinces.
• ditto ditto     Mohammedan outside the Eastern province
• ditto ditto     Other races domiciled in Ceylon like the Mohammedans and Afghans.

There is a further grievance to be met, vis. That of the Kandyan Sinhalese who find incorporated in the voting lists of their district a hoard of Tamil estate coolies with whom they have nothing in common. They do not even understand each other’s language. These estate Tamils may well be entered in a separate register and allowed to elect two representatives of their own own. The number of territorial members of the Kandyan districts would then be reduced by two and would become six instead of eight. But these six would then be certain to be Kandyans. I believe that is exactly what the Kandyans want.

In the upshot, without aiming directly at this end, the resultant Council would, I reckon, be a case of 55/45 proportionality between the Sinhalese and non Sinhalese communities. That ought to end the present fear which obsesses minorities

A further advantage emerges. A reduction in the number of members from the backwards Sinhalese district would eliminate some of the best present rag and bobtail, who are spoiling the good name of the Council. It is a fundamental fact that gentleman of leisure are few in this colony. It cannot find 60 men willing to enter parliament via the costly road of election for the good of Ceylon; therefore, in some territorial constituencies, the only candidates are demagogues, men of straw seeking nothing but the members’ allowance and the chance of graft. By reducing the number of territorial elected members, one at once eliminate some of these self-seekers. The members communally elected by voters resident over widely scattered areas would always be men of substance and eminence.

The Public Trustee

By A. B. C.

Some 15 years have passed since one of my friends met Sir  ………E. McCallum and urged him to set up a Public Trustee for Ceylon as the only way to protect the property of minors from dishonest administrators. He cordially agreed and said he had himself made the Public Trustee of the U.K. his executor.

It is accordingly a big disappointment to find that there is dissatisfaction in Ceylon with the work of the Public Trustee, and yet another to note a total lack of imagination and insight in the report of the Committee appointed to put things right. They have investigated nothing and understood nothing.

They rightly urge that the Buddhist Temporalities should pay their due but they doubt whether what is due can be ascertained. That is a bogey. If the total income of the properties controlled by the Trustee is 1,000,000 rupees a year and the Temporalities income managed by him is 100,000 rupees a year, the Temporalities should pay 1/10 of the cost of his department after deducting the present Government subsidy, that is a matter of simple arithmetic.

But the root of the matter lies elsewhere, in regard to the connection between the Public Trustee and Buddhist Temporalities. The true object is for him to prevent misuse of those funds. He can do this effectively only if he has power to dismiss the local managers. Without that power, his control is make believe.

Either give him that power or end his connection with those funds. One understands the disinclination of the present Cabinet, elected on a Buddhist ticket, to face this issue; but why did the Committee funk it ?

But all this is so far only the fringe of the fundamental trouble. The real question is why the volume of administration so far falling into the hands of the Trustee has not expanded faster. In the U.K. it has grown with great rapidity, because people trust the Public Trustee. In Ceylon, the present Trustee is hardly known outside Colombo; and there are not a few places where the first Trustee was unpopular.

(9)

I know, for instance, one retired civil servant who has entered a provision in his will that under no circumstances must any part of his estate be managed by the Public Trustee. He is up in arms about a settlement which the Trustee arranged between a certain widow and her joint heirs. Whether justly so or not, I cannot say.

In another case, the best property of one insolvent estate was sold for 10,000/- rupees less than its value because the first Public Trustee omitted to advertise it well enough. One of the creditors would certainly have raised the bids, if he had had notice in time. Such notice was his due.

In yet another case, the first Public Trustee sought a declaration of Court that the sole legatee and only child of the testator was insane on the flimsiest material, and had, after a long and expensive litigation, to settle the contest on the footing that she was sane.

I have heard many grumbles about his management of other estates, about the merits of which I know nothing.

The first and the most essential thing, therefore, is to select as the Trustee some one of commonsense and business ability, but most of all some one whom the people will trust. I fancy it will be hard to find such a man except on the Supreme Court Bench or in the Civil Service. If necessary, the salary should be raised to attract the best men.

The next grievance against the Trustee is even more important and has been equally ignored by the recent Committee. That is, his charges are too high. I know one retired Judge who made a will appointing the Public Trustee his executor. He has changed it and made his Bank the executor partly because of the cases mentioned above, but chiefly because the charges of the Bank are lower.

It is folly of the first magnitude when the Committee advises that charges be raised.

The same remark applies, for a like reason, to their recommendation that the Trustee should be forbidden to accept monies for investment. Surely, if any taxpayer feels that money in his charge would be better used and would be safer, if invested by the Public Trustee, than if it remained in the holder’s charge, such taxpayer

( 10 ) ought to be free to utilize the Trustee. Furthermore, it is to the interest of the colony that the Public Trustee should control a greater volume of money, because thereby the overhead charges grow less burdensome.

More business at cheap rates is the only business policy for this department.

The Committee considers the rent recovered from the department by Government to be too high, but is silent about the charge of 8,000/- for audit. I know one corporation, the income of which is greater than that coming to the Public Trustee, but which obtains audit by a well-known firm for 2,500/-  : and this includes (what the Colonial Auditor refuses) a running audit on certain limited parts of its business.

Another futile recommendation is that the Trustee should not lend money to several concurrent mortgagors. Why on earth not? All that matters is that the security is good. The only advantage of this suggestion, like that against acceptance of monies for investment, is that it would reduce the task of Audit. But no sound administrator can take his conscience or principles from his book- keeper.

The Committee further suggests that the Trustee should be allowed to have his own staff of estate Superintendents. But no reason appear why he cannot have them now. As executor in charge of any plantation, he can appoint anyone he pleases to superintend it. That needs no sanction from Government. If the Committee contemplates a staff of Superintendents for all time to be shewn on the budget and paid salary whether at work or not, that is bad economy.

The next suggestion is to make provision for the administration under the insolvency ordinance of bankrupt estates. But what now hinders the Trustee from filing a petition in bankruptcy if he finds any estate in his care to be insolvent? Can anything be worse for such an estate to get into the hands of the average official assignee? Is not the Public Trustee the best available assignee in such a case?

Further statutory amendment is urged by the Committee to enable the Trustee to be appointed next friend or guardian ad litem

( 11 ) over lunatics. I am not sure that the Civil Code does not already give the Court discretion in this respect.

All considered, the report of the Committee shows more senility than sense. There is no need to raise charges. Business will grow in time sufficiently to make the department more than self-supporting.

There is no need to tie the Trustee up with rules and restrictions. There can be no business dealing with money and land without taking some risk.

The fundamental policy is to select a sound man, whom the public will trust, and give him a free hand.

A recent case has been reported in the press, in which the Public Trustee objected to a demand for accounts and urged that the Ordinance exempts him from all liability to file accounts. The District Judge overruled his plea. Whatever the statute intended is immaterial on this issue. It is obvious that in business no one will trust any agent who tries to hide the financial position of his charge. The Public Trustee should put his cards on the table.

On the other hand, I have reason to believe that the present Trustee knows this well; the stupid plea raised in the case just mentioned was a dammosa hereditas from a previous Trustee.

I have also encountered a few people, who feel a vivid and positive appreciation of the recent work of this department in managing their estates. It is not unlikely that in the present Trustee, Government has the right man for the job.

Then, the essential thing is to reduce the charges. No shop can attract custom if it prices its goods at 50 to 100 per cent. More than market rates. That is what the present statute does with the Public Trustee’s department. Yet the Committee proposes to double this handicap!

Given a level handicap in respect of charges to his clients, the Public Trustee will reap a quick and abundant crop of patronage from the fact that he alone among administrators can obtain letters of administration without preliminary deposit of stamp costs.

Cheap rates are the straight road to a big turnover of business, and a big turnover is the straight road to low cost of production.

( 12 )

Policy of Repatriating Indians in Ceylon

Ministers in the Ceylon Government have recently put forward a policy of repatriating all Indians employed in the Public Services in Ceylon: But on the advice of H. E. the Governor they have restricted this proposal to repatriation of Indians on daily pay, whose sojourn in Ceylon has been less than 5 years long.

They defend this policy as the quickest way to solve unemployment among the Ceylonese. No one will deny that since the depression in the cocoanut and plumbago industries and the restriction of rubber output the problem of unemployment has become more serious than before. Its difficulties have been greatly accentuated by the land policy of these same Ministers since they have put a ban on the sale of Crown land to capitalists. Such sales used to abound, and the buyers in opening up the waste Crown land used to employ much of the growing population. Ministers still close their eyes to the blunder involved in closing this chance of work to the labours of Ceylon, and have turned their thoughts to repatriation of Indians as a quick and easy road both to provide the Ceylonese with jobs and the Ministers with popularity. Hitting the foreigner sounds attractive as an electioneering plank for the hustings of 1940.

Ministers propose to gild the pill by compensating any Indians, who accept their offer and go back to India, with a free passage and a gratuity of 6 weeks’ pay. They have at present no power to make the Indians go. They have, it seems, failed to consider the possibility that all the 8,000 Indians involved may choose to stay and seek private employment. If they do stay and find such new employment by undercutting current wages, it is obvious that the effect on unemployment of dismissing them from public service will be precisely nothing. They will then oust from private employment as many Sinhalese as those, who take their places in public employ.

Nor does is appear that Ministers have considered whether they could not do more to mitigate unemployment by spending the million of rupees, which they calculate to be the cost of compensation to the repatriated, on direct action such as the exploitation of uncultivated Crown land.

( 13 ) In the light of these facts, all unprejudiced observers will write down the policy of Ministers as stupid in the highest degree. It is bad economy, which seeks a solution of under employment in a mere shifting of labour from one race to another and does nothing to increase total national output.

Already, Ministers have stumbled on some branches of industry where their policy will hardly work at all. Their own Salt Department has announced that probably no Ceylonese labour can be found to take the place of the Indians employed in that department, since few Ceylonese will accept those jobs on the current rate of pay and the existing hard conditions and since hardly any Ceylonese have the necessary experience of that work. Opinion of most or much of the Colombo Municipal Council is emphatic that Colombo cannot find Ceylonese to fill the place of the Indian scavenging and other coolies who keep Colombo clean.

Ministers have further to deal with repercussions in India. It must now be plain to them, unless they are determined to close their eyes and ears, that India will not take it lying down. From all directions in India popular demands are pouring in to the Indian Government for tariffs, boycotts and other retaliation. Travancore State has already imposed a heavy duty on tobacco from Ceylon, which will inevitably cripple for a time the already indigent Tamils who grow tobacco in North Ceylon. Other Indian Governments are considering tariffs against copra and oil from Ceylon.

Now, cocoanuts are the mainstay of Ceylon. Cocoanut prices lay sunk in the depths of despair till 1936, when Indian demand suddenly gave them new life. The uncertainty of consumption on the Continent will necessarily involve a dark future for cocoanut growers, if they depend solely on European demand. The recent recognition by scientists of the high food value of cocoanut oil relative to other vegetable oils and the growth of margarine and soap factories in India were the first silver lining which appeared in the long standing clouds. If the Indian Government kills the Indian demand for Ceylon copra as part of a retaliation policy, the heaviest loss will fall on the Ceylonese.

• . It is true that the Ceylonese can hit back. Ceylon buys 6 or 7 times more from India, than India buys fromCeylon. That is to say, (14). It is an economic conflict. Ceylon holds 3 of the 4 aces: or at least it held them till the outbreak of war made rice imports more vital and difficult for Ceylon. But hitting each other will do neither any good. India cannot produce all the copra, which Indian factories need. Ceylon cannot for some generations to come provide itself with the rice and fish and curry stuffs and cheap clothing which it now imports from India. Countervailing tariffs and retaliation and boycotts between these two countries are pure loss and no gain to each.

But no one expects the politicians to understand this. All of them, both in India and Ceylon, are men bitten by the protectionist microbe. All have a firm grasp of the electioneering need of a protection programme, and not a few attach more weight to their personal success at the polls than they give to the economic prosperity of their people.

It is therefore not easy to be hopeful of a settlement as the out-come of Jawarhalal Nehru’s visit. He is personally liked in Colombo, and that may go a long way. But in business, one cannot rely on that alone.

There must be on both sides a will to give and take.

Now the real leader of the Ministerial party is Mr. W. S. Senanayaka. His greatest admirers would never describe Mr. Senanayaka as a votary of the gospel of give and take. Unless Mr. Nehru is a remarkably patient and long suffering person, it is hard to see how conferences between him and Mr. Senanayaka can lead to an entente.

People, who hope for such an entente, can do nothing more than draw attention (1) to facts which may lead each side to understand the other (2) to the abundant harm which protectionism against labour and goods has done in world history and may do to India and Ceylon.

The first such fact is the existence of provocation for this policy of repatriating Indians. I do not suggest that this justifies repatriation, but it helps to explain its causation and excuse it. That is, the 8,000 Indians recruited into the public service in the last five years, were so recruited in the teeth of a solemn demarche, in which the Chief Secretary assured Minister that it was the settled policy of all departments to fill all vacancies by appointing Ceylonese, (15 ) ………if suitable Ceylonese could be got. That was never communicated to heads of departments. It is in effect a broken promise. It is natural for Ministers to take umbrage over this want of common care or good faith.

On the other hand. Ministers cannot justly penalise Indians for that. They have been given jobs and some of them have rendered faithful service for 5 years.

I do not believe that in private life any one of the 7 Ministers would, save for dire necessity, get rid of an Indian in their domestic or other employ after 5 years’ good service. Each would feel that such service creates a mutual obligation. It is not playing the game to disregard such long association, service and obligation. The Senanayaka family has long been noted in Ceylon as a firm champion and protector of the men or their estates and in their mines. These mines are a refuge, where the down and out and even the absconding criminals have found a safe home.

It is hard to understand how the 7 Ministers have been blind in their public policy to this simple point of honour, which in individual life they would scrupulously observe.

A further fact, which Mr Nehru ought to have in mind, is that the Ceylon Ministers had grave provocation in the immigration report of Sir Ernest Jackson. He was paid a large fee to submit a definite scheme for restricting immigration, but contented himself with a reply that no such restriction is desirable. Now, almost all civilized countries restrict immigration. A large or a sudden influx of immigrants will always dislocate the current distribution of employment. To Ceylon, like the rest of the world, restriction of such an influx is a necessity. It should be easy to draft such a law. It might admit all tourists or persons of substance, but bar all labourers above a certain number per annum, e.g. 5,000 estate coolies and1,000 other labourers in 1940, 4,000 and 750 in 1942 and so on.

In respect of estate coolies, it would have to define the limit of 5,000 as meaning not the gross number of immigrant coolies but the number by which the incoming coolies of that year exceeded those returning to India. It should restrict all immigrants. To restrict only Indians is an insufferable insult.

( 16 ) I believe that such a bill would content Ceylon public opinion, and I see no reason why Indians should oppose such a bill. It should be easy to leave enforcement of the Bill to the Indian Government.

On the other side of the argument it is necessary to remind Ceylon Ministers that civilized world opinion has almost always condemned both involuntary repatriation and expulsion. It condemned it 40 years ago in South Africa, when Gandhi put up his gallant fight in Cape Colony. It condemned similar action against Greeks and Armenians in Turkey and against Jews in Germany. Such action is like pulling up trees by their roots. It is felt to be bullying.

Our last point for the consideration of Ceylon public men is that a truculent protectionism is one of the radical courses of international bitterness in Europe. There is no sense in fomenting a like bitterness between India and Ceylon. This point does not condemn all tariffs. The true use of tariffs for Ceylon is to induce the countries affected to reduce their own tariffs so far as they damage Ceylon. There should always be a readiness to bargain, to adjust and to meet the other side halfway. Is that too much for the vision of Statesmen in Ceylon ? The present stringency of the rice market is ample reason for them to eat humble pie.

Let them remember that by the naturalization laws of many European countries any foreigner may after five years residence becomes a citizen of the country where he has lived. That example is good enough for us.

(17)

The Condition of Labour in Ceylon

The following; according to my information, are the rates of wages current in Galle and like places.

1. Skilled Labour.  .
2. Unskilled Labour in one or two Ceylonese factories
3. Women in Fibre Mills      European owned
4. Domestic Servants
5. Ordinary Coolies

Juvenile Domestics are given food without pay.

90 cts. to 1/50 per day, without food

2 cts. to 1/50 per day, with lunch

35 cts. to 1/50 per day, without food.

10 cts. to 30 per day, with food

20 cts. to 50 per day, without food.

That is to say, the wages paid for unskilled labour, except in the very special case of the women in the fibre mills, (which I will discuss below), do not suffice to provide workpeople with anything beyond curry and rice, or anything beyond a low average even of curry and rice.

Next to nothing remains for clothes, amusement and house rent. Their only regular recreations are pinkamas and football matches. Some of them forego an occasional meal in order to find a thrill at the pictures or on the turf. Some used to stint them- selves and join a cheetu club as their provident fund: but most cheetu clubs proved to be frauds, and present day efforts to save take the form of betting on horse races, where the winners know they will get payment if they win.

Almost all live in one-roomed or two-roomed houses holding within them families of five to fifteen. In those houses the fire-places have no chimneys, ventilation consists of one door and one window, and all sleep on the mud floor. The misery and dirt of their existence beggars description.

In many compounds, there are sundry such huts, but the only sanitation is one cesspit. In others, I understand, there are neither cesspits nor buckets.

All this is inevitable if a man has to support wife and children on 50 cents a day. That is the average wage, and 60 percent. of the population earn only the average wage.

But there is a deeper tragedy behind. If you look below the surface, you find many of the other 40 per cent., who earn good wages, living in conditions almost as bad.

( 18 )    The people who earn good wages, are the skilled mechanics, in engineering works British and Ceylonese, the old male hands in the fibre mills owned by Europeans and the domestic servants of local Europeans and a few Ceylonese. The women in the fibre mills also earn good wages, although the rates given above (35 cents a day) are low: for them, 35 cents a day are a good wage because two or three of them are usually members of one household.

Why then do many of those earning good wages live in the same overcrowded equalar as those who earn a bare pittance?

The reason is that all have large families to maintain.

In almost every household, from which 2 or 3 workers come, there will be 2 or 3 old folk, 2 or 3 adult loafers mostly men, and half a dozen children, all getting their daily bread from the 2 or 3 sisters who work.

Two deductions will be plain to every practical sociologist.

(1) It is important to eliminate the loafers. To this end it would be a good thing to substitute primogeniture for the present land law. But public opinion is hardly ripe for that. Therefore the only remedy is to tighten and enforce the law against vagrancy. The loafers should be sentenced to penitentiary camps and should be given full ration of food only when they do an honest day’s work.

(2) The other and vital need is to reduce the size of families. Existing trades cannot pay more than a certain wage. On that wage, no workman can support a family of the present size. The same conclusion is clear if you consider the facts in the light of economic law.

If one asks whether there is any remedy for these conditions, one should first analyse their causation. It is common ground among the economists that low wages arise from 2 causes: the first and greatest is abundance of labour co-existing with scarcity of capital. The second is the low quality of labour in some countries. I am not sure that this second factor has great force in Ceylon. I suspect that the labour is pretty good in quality. So far as the unskilled labour is feeble, the existing schools and their playgrounds are perhaps the best remedy. I therefore propose to consider the first and main cause, which alone is effective in keeping wages low, even where labour is of good quality.

( 19 ) What then are the remedies for over-abundance of labour and scarcity of capital?

The first is birth control. It is absurd for people on these wages to have large families. They have these large families because they know nothing about contraception. People, who do know, for the most part care nothing about the sermons preached against this obvious commonsense. Therefore, the first step is for Government and public bodies or private benefactors to spread knowledge about this. It would cost little or nothing for the hospitals and the municipal doctors to give lectures and instructions to all who care to listen and learn, in those methods of birth restriction, which do not involve taking of life. It would cost little in labour and thought to publish in local languages a short pamphlet abridging Mrs. Marie Stopes. Priced at 5 cents, such a pamphlet might find a ready sale and resolutionize the lot of labour.

The second remedy is to attract capital in store to become capital in action. The problem of unemployment did not exist in Ceylon till recent years because a stream of capital was pouring in to open up waste land in rubber, tea and cocoanut. The Government has done its best to promote unemployment and low wages by prohibiting sale and lease of land to capitalists seeking large blocks. It is time to put an end to this folly. It can be ended without abandoning the determination to reserve part of the unopened land for the poor of Ceylon : such reservation would be amply organized by a rule limiting the alienation of waste land in each Korale to 2/3 the available acreage.

The next step is to industrialize Ceylon. Government has made a few efforts in this direction but so far botched their own plans. For example they have delayed the Hydro- Electric Scheme, they have built a coir factory 70 miles north of the proper site. Worst of all, they seem to contemplate direct Government ownership as the only method of introducing new industries. But surely it will be cheaper and more certain of success, if they finance chartered companies partly owned and wholly directed by men who really know the business. There too, we stumble on the same obstacle, the cant of nationalism. Nationalism is a good thing within the proper limits, but good wages are a greater thing in the eyes of all who really care for the poor. As things are, the gentry of Ceylon

(20 )  lack the necessary capital and courage to open up the waste lands, and seem likely to go on lacking it for another 100 years. The present policy proposes to keep the waste lands unsold and unused for those 100 years.

That is to say, it is a policy to keep wages low and make unemployment abound. That is not true nationalism. It is greed. It is this same instinct that has prompted some landowning classes in India to oppose emigration of estate coolies in order to keep up competition of labour and to keep down wages in India. It is to the interest of Ceylon labourers to attract as much capital as possible into active life in Ceylon. The present policy is an anti-Labour programme.

Another avenue, which deserves attention, is the possibility of raising wages by improving the quality of labour through vocational instruction in school. It would cost a big sum to transform the two upper forms in the urban elementary schools into technical colleges teaching handicrafts: but it should be easy and not very costly to convert the top form in rural schools into a technical agricultural college. In most places land is now fairly cheap, and it is not beyond the public purse to enlarge the present school gardens into small agricultural stations. Such stations are already in action in every province! but they are too far apart and too deeply engrossed in the admittedly essential scientific side of their job. They do not yet spread their knowledge wide enough. It is desirable that the staffs of existing stations should give extension lectures in practical agriculture in every school within their reach. That is the only way to spread a real training and fit the numerous would-be colonists to make a financial success of their land colonies.

To expect success from them without training is like expecting a boy to swim in mid ocean at his first attempt. The present programme plunges them into the depths in a hurry, and sometimes locates them in the most unhealthy and intractable localities. A practical statesman would place them on uncultivated land in healthy districts as near to civilization as possible.

Current neglect of these obvious precautions rouses a suspicion that the real object of the Government is to catch votes by a pretty programme. I do not say that this suspicion is fact: but it will persist until Government imports more commonsense into its administration.

( 21 )

T. B. Cases

We all know that a steady stream of T. B. cases takes its annual toll of the population. The pinch is most severe when the bread winner of a household becomes affected: the immediate result is unemployment and semi-starvation.

As things are, each patient lives on at home till he dies. No real effort is made to isolate him. In many cases, houses are so small as to make isolation impossible.

The essential need is to arrange for isolation. For years, local bodies have waited for Govt. to build sanatoria to receive all the patients, and a big fund has been collected for that purpose. But nothing definite is yet in sight. One doubts whether Govt. will ever build sanatoria big enough to absorb them all.

Let us remember too that there are some classes of patient who will never consent to enter a general sanatorium. Mohammedans are forbidden by their religion to eat food killed and cooked in other than Islamic fashion. Mohammedan women cannot face the ordinary life of a hospital. Ladies of gentle birth would rather die at home than enter non-paying wards in most hospitals.

We ought to cut our coat according to our means and also according to our size. If it is to work, our plan of isolation must take count of ordinary custom and average mental outlook. A practical plan of campaign should classify its activities along 4 main avenues.

1. It should facilitate early diagnosis. At present, half the patients, who enter sanatoria, fail to find a cure, because their cases were diagnosed too late. The present methods of diagnosis i.e. by tapping the chest, by sputum analyses and by X ray skiagraphs give us no adequately sure and early test. Therefore it would be well for Local Bodies to get from their Medical Officers and elsewhere accurate advice on the cost of employing the tuberculin test, which doctors in Europe and the U. S. A. so frequently use.
2. The second approach is to offer to patients a chance of rest, a free home and decent food for a year or two. That home need ( 22 ) not be an expensive hospital. We cannot afford that. But we can afford to hire a disused resthouse or estate bungalow, and staff it with a cook and a cooly, and have it visited once a week by our Medical Officer. It should not be far from each Municipality concerned since patients must receive visits from their kinsfolk. It should not be in the moist atmosphere of a swamp or river mouth. But it may be anywhere else that is not far off. Such a home would provide the two elements essential for a cure i.e. rest and good food. It need not cost more than 25/- or 20/- a month per patient. So long as they stay in such a home, adequate isolation should not be difficult, that would be half the battle.
3. I should also like to see something done for persons unwilling to enter such a home. I suggest a subsidy of 15/- or 20/- per month for any patient who undertakes to live in a rural area like Hambantota or Kangesanturai and to satisfy the M. O. H. by a monthly certificate from some reliable neighbour or headman that the patient has in fact refrained from daily work and as far as possible refrained from visits to public places and from frequent meetings with other folk. By the monthly subsidy, you put the patient on his honour to avoid infecting other people. The quickest way to infect other people is to sleep in the same room. It should be easy for any willing patient to avoid all this. The subsidy is one quick way to foster in patients the will to avoid spread of his disease.
4. The next thing is to educate the public by lectures, pamphlets and all sorts of propaganda in the best methods of avoiding and ceasing the disease.

On many an evening stroll, I have had occasion to note that most of our townsfolk sleep with all doors and windows barred.That is one way to promote phthisis.

I have watched many people afflicted with coughs doing their best to invigorate the microbes by muffing their throats and nostrils with thick cloth.

Many patients threatened with phthisis pursue their daily

tasks, while they swallow gallons of medicine, and expect a cure from the medicine. It is high time that the medical profession told them the solid truth, viz: that a cure depends most on rest, good food and fresh air, hardly at all on medicine.

( 23 )

I remember the case of an Excise Clerk, who was found in or about 1920 to be afflicted with phthisis. He was given 3 months’ leave, during which he did no work. He was then stationed in Bandarawela on office work, for many years. He was I learn completely cured, and is now one of the leading athletes in that athletic department. Similar cures by rest at Bandarawela, Kange-santurai and like places are well attested.

We need to get all those facts across to the public mind.

Almost in sight of me dwells an estimable old lady, five of whose children or grandchildren have in the last 15 years died of consumption : still, she goes on living in that same house. Not so far off is another house where one young lady lived in the midst of her family afflicted with phthisis, and nothing was done to separate her from her brothers and sisters. Within a month or two of their leaving it, the same house was occupied by a new tenant without any steps towards disinfectment. All these are people of good education.

We need a more thorough course of hygiene in every school.

24

 Land Colonists in Ceylon 

I have recently gathered a few definite facts about the cost of peasant allotments organised by the Ceylon Government in the Southern Province, and I believe these facts to be typical of costs and results all over this island.

Each settler is given one acre to start with. When he develops that, he is given another acre, and so on up to 5 acres when land is available: in a few localities the maximum available is 2 acres instead of 5.

Each acre has a market value of about 125-. Each settler receives the following further subsidies.

1. Rs. 150- for building a house and latrine.

2,           Free timber, worth perhaps Rs. 50/-.

3. Free planting material.
4. Wages for cutting contour drains or building terraces.

I do not know the exact value of subsidies 3, 5, 4, but will roughly estimate them at 100/- taken together.

Let us then calculate the total cost on the assumption that each acre is successfully developed.

5 acres worth- each come to – Rs. 6251

Cash for the house  – 125/

Cost of planting material for 5 acres   – 500/—

Total. . . . Rs. 1,225/-.

At the end of the period of development, what is the capital market value of the allotment?

Since most settlers plant manioc and chena crops, the land at the best will be worth about 170/- per acre.

If planted in cocoanuts, it may be worth 200- per acre. (That is the present market price of good cocoanut plantations in Chilaw as found in the present level of market values in the share list.)

Therefore, on the rosiest possible estimate of results each 5 acre block, which represents Government expenditure in land and capital of 1,225- will be worth 800/- to 1,000/-.

(25)  Now, let us consider the actual results, that is the average proportion of failure and success.

In Gate Mudaliyar Weerasinghe’s Pattu, I learned that three in four succeed. In most localities, I gather that four in five fail and are abandoned, for these reasons.

1. Some settlers are idle or incompetent.
2. Some are ruined by rats, porcupine, squirrel, and other wild beasts.
3. Some are ruined by human thieves.
4. Many are ruined by cattle.

This fourth is the deadliest pest: and government has fostered this pest by prohibiting seizure of cattle straying on Village Committee road. In the upshot, 3 out of 4 settlers abandoned their blocks by the third year. Then the average cost of producing one successful 5 acre block will be the cost of that block for five years (that is Rs.1225/–) plus the cost of three other muddled blocks for two years that is about rupees 1000/– each. The total cost is rupees 4225/– and the total result, one successful block worth rupees 800/– to rupees 1000/–.

In short, the scheme is profligate finance. It is cruel to tax a poor Colony high in order to bolster up a weak–kneed peasantry in these intractable conditions.

Now, there are many ways in which Government might cheapen the cost and better the results.

The first point is a simple axiomatic fact in economic theory. Waste land is the property of this Crown in trust for all the people of Ceylon. It has an original value in the fact of its existence and the presence of mankind. It acquires a second and further value when someone improves it. It acquires and third and greater value from the growth of population and competing demand for land, which third form of value is generally called the unearned increment.

No settler or improver can ever have a moral right to earn the first or the third of these values. These values should never be alienated outright. Such land should be given out on long leases, which will secure to a settler compensation for his improvements, on low ground rents to be raised when the earned and unearned incremental values begin to accrue.

( 26 ) If this had been recognised in the alienation of land to tea and rubber and coconut planters 100 years ago, present ground rents would have paid half the present annual cost of administration and reduced by half the present burdens on taxpayers. The early planters have reaped those values in sales at 100 to 500 per cent above cost and retired to a life of plenty and leisure abroad.

All this was observed 30 years ago by the Colonial Office, and steps were taken to preserve these rising values for the people of all Ceylon by a ban on outright alienation. Sir Lewis Harcourt, I think, was the Colonial Secretary in question. He had studied Henry George on Progress and Poverty. Later rulers (including the present Government) do not appear to have heard of the unearned increment.

It is time for taxpayers to remind them of their duty. They must not sell land outright. Still less must they give it away outright. A long lease, say, for 100 years, has all the magic ascribed to outright ownership.

The second point, where they may cheapen cost, is in the buildings required for allotments at an early stage. It is waste to build a house on every 5-acre block. The only settlers, who succeed in this district, are men who leave their houses and live on the new allotment. But these allotments stand side by side. The settlers seldom take big families with them. The only economic settler is a bachelor or a temporary bachelor. One house big enough to hold 10 such settlers is the only sensible programme. Such a house would cost 300/- or 400/- in local conditions. Contrast that with the present plan of building 10 houses at a cost of 1,500|- plus free timber !

There may come a time when the settler will wish to marry and so need a separate house. But for that he should and will be content to work and wait till he can provide it for himself. He should not and does not expect to have luxuries showered on him from the start. To give him the unlimited assistance now provided in the form of a separate cottage and a land fully drained at Government cost is to spoon-feed the adult and pauperise him. He becomes a beggar without seeking it. In his heart he despises mendicancy as much as any one.

(27)  A third point is that the land, after being rent free for 3 years, should pay a low rent of 1/- or 2/- a year for the next 3 years and thereafter a real rent proportioned to its output. Further, if it is planted with a permanent cultivation and becomes worth while selling, the leasehold should be saleable at the tenant’s option on the condition that one third the price realised shall go to Government and two thirds to the settler.

The fourth point is that every effort should be made to make the plantation on each allotment a really profitable thing. It is unsound to produce on the 5 acre block a five acre plantation of cocoanuts which will be worth only 250/- an acre. The settler should turn his hand to a variety of plantations, especially of goods now imported, some of which, like pineapples, citronella, papaw, sugar and plantains, give promise of giving higher capital values. In the drier zones, mango and oranges may be added to this list.

All of these can be grown by small holders except sugar. But sugar requires big plant and capital. Big plant demands a big acreage in one block or blocks not far apart. I fancy that the wisest programme would map out an acreage

sufficient to supply Ceylon with the sugar and oranges, which it now imports, and would finance the planting of such an acreage in sugar and orange trees by a company of business men owning a part interest in the plantations and giving a defined share of the profits to its men besides ordinary wages. No other plan will ensure sufficient plantation.

It is a settled fact in economic history that a business will not be efficient, unless the man in charge of it has experience and full control and unless his own money is at stake. He has no real control when he is at the beck and call of politicians.

It is a further and vital fact, to which socialism calls attention, that a business will be more efficient if its workmen have also a stake in the dividend.

The present land policy scatters public money broadcast into the pockets of workmen of little experience and capacity. So far it has failed.

(28)  There is another unpleasant feature of the Government policy. Government subsidies have been almost all for the Goiya and hardly for any other class of person. Mr C.E.A.Dias used to criticise the ban on alienation of land to capitalist as designed to clip the wings of the Karave community no less than of European capital. Mr J.B.N.Pereira regarded the present electoral system as one that ties the Karave community to the wheels of triumphant Goigama chariot.

I do not know how far those views are sound. But one thing is clear. For many years, millions of rupees have been showered on the Goiya in the form of remitted irrigation rates, free land and advances of capital. Most of that has gone into the pockets of the Goigama community.

The government has now a chance to address the balance. It may devote 1/5th of its million rupee food production fund to the fishing industry. It may equip that industry with deep sea boats and train them in the use of such boats and in canning the catch.

The fisher people are slow to learn new ways. But they have great virility and perseverance. If once they got started on the right road, they will make good. So spent 1/5th of the million Rupee fund may yet produce more food and more money than the other 4/5ths about to be scattered among the Chena-diggers.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

** I will be presenting an article on his life’s journey in the course of this month. Note that my father and his first English wife generated a large family in the typical fashion of their times. But she  passed away on 25 March 2025 (from diptheria I believe?).

Florence in Ceylon with her first four daughters and an Ayah…… & her Gravestone at Kanatte in Colombo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Words on memorial plinth

Florence Euphemia – Mrs T W Roberts (nee Tarrant) Gravesite

THE MEMORY OF ISABEL AND DIANA,

DAUGHTERS OF MR & MRS T.W. ROBERTS

AND TO THE MEMORY OF FLORENCE ROBERTS, THEIR MOTHER,WHO DIED IN AUGUST 1926 or 1925?

Place of burial – Possibly Kanatte Cemetery

*******************************

ALSO SEE … A Vale in Appreciation by Norah Roberts, 1 July 1976 … https://www.elanka.com.au/tw-roberts-r-i-p-july-1976-by-michael-roberts/

TW Roberts passed away at his daughter Pamela’s house in  Streatham, London  in mid-1976.  I was in  Germany then but attending a conference in Amsterdam when I received a telegram saying “Deine Vater is tot”. I was therefore able to attend his funeral….. Michael Roberts