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CHAPTER XIX.—THE PLANTATIONS. * “3 Co 
Plantation System. 3 a N 
We now pass from industries, properly so called, to branch of 
activity ‘which, while it is predominantly agricultural, has many features 
in common with industry. The plantation represents the development 
of the agricultural resources of tropical countries in accordance with the 
methods of Western industrialism ; it is a large scale enterprise in agri- 
culture. The plantation system connotes the acquisition of a limited 
but fairly extensive area for the cultivation of a particular crop, the 
actual cultivation being done under the direct supervision of a manager, 
who in some cases may himself be the actual proprietor. A consider- 
able number of persons (the number may run as high as 4,000) are employ- 
ed under his control in the same way as the factory workers are under 
the control of the factory manager, but there is one important difference 
in that the work is essentially agricultural and is not concentrated in a 
large building. Factories are to be found on certain plantations. Most 
tea gardens have their own factories for dealing with the harvested crop. 
A number of the coffee plantations in South India also have their own 
factories, but in them the process of manufacture is only a preliminary 
stage, the coffee being cured and finally prepared for export in fac- 
tories outside the plantations. The factories in North India are open 
intermittently for a little over half the year, and those in South India for 
the greater part of the year. In both areas they employ only a small 
fraction of the workers engaged on the plantation. A point which 
deserves notice in connection with the plantation system 1s the extent 
to which it is under European management. About 909, of the 
plantations in North India and nearly all those in Madras and Burma 
are controlled and managed by Europeans ; the small province of Coorg 
is the only area where the Indian planters are in the majority. The 
plantations managed by Indians in most areas are not only much by 
but generally smaller in size, than those managed by Europeans. Lhe 
cultivation of indigo was the earliest agricultural enterprise of the 
European in India, but the system of cultivation was not strictly iy 
plantation system, as generally the indigo planter did not cultivate is 
lands with the help of hired labour, but preferred to enter into contrac : 
with his own tenants and those of other landlords to sow a portion 0 
their holdings with indigo. which was then sold to him at a fixed price. 
349 
Migration. 
The plantations lie mainly in forest tracts largely cleared by the 
planters themselves, a process still going on over large areas. As a rule 
the local population was extremely sparse (or even non-existent) and, mn 
the leading planting regions, a large supply of labour could only be secured 
by recruitment from distant parts of India. Thus, like the factory 
industries, the plantations have depended for their development on a 
continuous flow of labour from tracts far afield. The bulk of the planta- 
tion labourers, coming from other provinces and speaking & number of 
different languages, have to work in areas whose peoples. languages and