QUININE AND RUBBER

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 October 1928, Page 9

QUININE AND RUBBER

Lite on Malay Plantation Means * Endless Toil For White Overseers . . •

seems strange that quinine should have anything to do with the ' lUililaVJn tyres on a motor-car, but it is nevertheless true that, but for the value of quinine in the treatment of malarial diseases, rubber tyres, if indeed they existed, would be neither as popular nor as cheap as they are. The various species of “rubber trees” all seem to thrive best in ma-laria-infested districts and those who are apt to visualise a rubber planter’s life as a round of cigar-smoking and whisky-drinking “bees” would. I think, suffer disillusionment could they spend even a few days on an estate in Malaya where most of the world’s rubber is grown. More often than not your planter is better acquainted with his doctor than

his bank manager while his daily work —seven days a week —occupies a number of hours that makes the average New Zealand farmer, with his sixteen-hour day, look like a goslow trade-unionist. The planter usually starts his day at 4 a.m., and despite the popular conception of life in the tropics, needs an overcoat as he hears the roll-call of a couple of hundred coolies, allocates the work, and issues the orders of the day. Roll-call is over he finds time to gulp a cup of cocoa before assuming the role of doctor to his large family. The complaints he has to deal with include diseases that the doctor, without tropical experience, knows but little about, but it’s all in the day’s work. I shall never forget performing three successful (lucky for me!)

surgical operations with a pocketknife —and without the assistance of an anaesthetist! Malaria and pneumonia are the two commonest complaints, but before, breakfast a planter may strike anything from a maternity case to the stitching of a big ’knife wound. Il he has any appetite for breakfast he sharpens it, after dismissing his sick parade, by a hurried tour of his “tap ping” area to see that all the tappers are on the job. By the time he has taken half an hour for breakfast, the result of the morning’s “tap” will start arriving in the factory. He must be there to check it, grade it amt supervise its handling. Then off on a tour of inspection of the coolie lines, weeding-gangs and tree-doctors and back to the factory to supervise the rolling, drying and smoking of the sheet rubber and the packing of rubber for export. Lunch over, he forgoes the afternoon siesta (popularly supposed to be enjoyed by all who live in tropical zones) in an attempt to keep pace with his office work and correspondence.

As he has about 30 daily returns to make out; sundry reports concerning weather, births and deaths, and the supervision of the commissariat department, his hands are full enough until the hour for afternoon tea. The daily issue of rice and meat to, perhaps a hundred coolies follows, and the evening sick muster. He may or may not Aiave time for a stroll or a half-hour’s entertainment with the gramophone before dinner, but he has none after, for his mandors (foremen) are waiting to report on the day’s work and the doings of every coolie on the estate. Encased in a mosquito-proof corner of the verandah he enjoys (?) the remainder of the day posting into the office-rolls the doings of a couple of hundred coolies and sometime between ten and eleven will, if he is not going out after “bolters,” offer up the timehonoured prayer: “Put me east of Suez, where a man can raise a thirst, and there aint no ten commandments” . . . take a dose of quinine and ’’hit the feathers.”

GEORGE E. PLANE