HEALTH AND WELFARE IN PLANTATIONS, 415 
that, on the plantations of its members, * children aged 4 or 5 were all 
working children ”. Another association declared that it had no policy 
in the matter, and that individual members exercised their own discre- 
tion. As a result, where one manager admitted that children generally 
started work at 4,5 or 6 years of age, and another that they started on 
light tasks “as soon as they could walk ”, yet others stated that their 
children did not become workers before 9, 10 or even 11 years of age. 
The normal practice seems to be to allow children to accompany their 
parents at any age, their earnings being added to those of their 
parents, although in some gardens the managers are accustomed 
to send home young children found at work with their parents. In 
many areas children are not normally entered separately in the wage 
hooks as employed persons until about 10 years of age. It was explain- 
ed to us more than once that managers desired to keep their labour con- 
tented by interfering as little as possible with its customs, and that plan- 
tation workers, being agriculturalists, were accustomed to allow their 
children to start work at a very early age. Nevertheless progress has 
frequently to be made by gradual and tactful interference with customs 
which, under altered conditions of life and labour, no longer apply with 
the old force. 
Exclusion of Young Children. 
We believe that the unrestricted age limit for the employment 
of children on the plantations of India is a case in point. We consider 
it undesirable that children below the age of 10 years should be employed, 
nor do we believe that the work of such children is of material benefit to 
the gardens, Moreover this is the statutory age limit for Indian children 
employed on plantations in Ceylon and Malaya. We accordingly recom- 
mend the legal prohibition of the employment, either directly or 
with their parents, of children on plantations before the age of 10 years. 
We do not suggest any restriction of the hours of work of persons above 
that age, as we believe that common sense and individual physical 
rapacity already apply the necessary brake in the vast majority of 
cases. Nor do we advocate any elaborate machinery, such as the certifi- 
cation by an independent authority of children of employable age. 
We recommend that, in the case of children not born on a plantation and 
therefore without registered birth certificates, the garden doctor should be 
required to determine the age before the child is allowed to start work, 
and that the names of all employed children should be entered in the 
wage book. The district health officer, when visiting the garden, should 
be required to satisfy himself that no working child is below the legal 
age. 
Claims of Education. 
The regulation of the labour of children has always been bound 
ap with the question of their education. ‘We feel that the case of the 
plantations presents certain characteristics which make it not unreason- 
able to look to the employer for a bigger contribution towards the educa- 
tion of the actual and potential child worker. Their labour has been 
recruited from a far field and frequently brought into an area populated by