Labour and Technique

F ROM the earliest days of the rubber industry the most important producing territories depended on immigrant labour. The estates of Ceylon, Malaya and Sumatra were worked largely by Indian and Javanese labour (with Chinese labour for special purposes in Malaya), while some native districts in Sumatra and Borneo, as well as many estates in French Indo-China, employed migrant labour. Indeed, the comparatively easy access to the ample labour supplies of India, Java and China was an important factor in the establishment of the plantation industry in South-east Asia. The rubber industry was probably more successful than most other forms of tropical agriculture or mining in dealing with the special conditions created by this situation; nevertheless, the problems of immigrant labour still dominated the labour position in the 1930’s.