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CHAPTER XXIII, 
Unemployment and Under-employment. 
The difficulties of the immigrant labourers are greatly increased 
by the scarcity of regular employment. To a considerable extent this 
is due to the seasonal character of much of the industrial work. Rice- 
milling is active from December to June and has very little work to 
offer after August. Only a small proportion of the labour is permanently 
retained. The demand for labour in the port is also substantially great- 
er between December and June than in the other six months. During 
the monsoon, activity in a number of other branches of industry ceases 
or is diminished. Industrial labour can, to some extent, turn to agri- 
culture in certain seasons, but the periods of keen demand in the two 
cases apparently overlap. There is, indeed, reason to believe that the 
industrial worker is suffering in the present depression from increased 
sompetition from workers who were formerly able to subsist throughout 
the year on agricultural earnings ; but our evidence as to the inter- 
relations of agricultural labour and industrial labour is scanty. Some 
relief is afforded by movement to and from India. The immigrant 
traffic is heaviest in November and December and the emigrant traffic 
in April, May and June, so that the supply is highest at the beginning of 
the year, when the demand is higher and least in the monsoon, when 
demand is lower. But the adjustment which these movements make is 
inadequate to counterbalance the effect of the seasonal demand, coupled 
with the movement into Rangoon of labour from other parts of Burma. 
Rangoon is a pool for the unemployed Indian labour of Burma. The 
Rangoon factory worker, who finds himself out of a job in the slack 
season, has thus to compete with Indians from elsewhere for such casual 
smployment as is available. In Rangoon in 1928 there were said to be 
7,000 Telugu rickshaw pullers, and 8,000 handcart pullers, who were 
mainly Telugus. A number of these appear to be persons who obtain 
employment in other lines when work is brisk and get what they can by 
pulling when no other work is available. Mr Bennison writes “ In the 
majority of the occupations open to the immigrant a regular income 
is not assured and there is, therefore, very keen competition for jobs in 
establishments in which wages are paid regularly. Maistries in these 
astablishments often have to pay heavy premiums for securing their 
positions, and they, in turn, extort premiums and monthly contribu- 
tions from the coolies under them ”. We believe that the maistry system 
tends to encourage more men to stay in Rangoon when work is not 
available than would otherwise remain there. 
Assisted Immigration for Rice Mills. 
Reference has been made to the fact that recruiting for rice mills 
is conducted in India. There is also said to be some recruitment in India 
for earthwork, but it is clear that the bulk of the assisted immigrants re- 
presents contract labour for the rice milling industry. We received from 
a witness with experience of Indian labour in Rangoon a proposal for a 
new system of recruitment for this labour. This started with the obser- 
vation that all the requirements of rice mills could be met by local