e knows
whereof he speaks:

"One sees a large number of healthy, able-bodied Chinese coming into
the country as laborers and, at the end of a year or two, instead of
going back to their homes with money in their pockets and healthy with
outdoor work, they go back as broken beggars, pitifully saturated with
disease or confirmed drug fiends. It is really sad to see some of them
return home after a struggle of four or five years to save money--a
struggle not only against themselves and their acquired opium habit,
but against the numerous parasites which always fatten on laborers."

During the term of his indenture the laborer is to all intents and
purposes a prisoner, his only appeal against any injustices practised
on the plantation being to the Protector of Labor, who is supposed to
visit each estate once a month. In theory this system is admirable, but
in practise it does not afford the laborer the protection which the law
intends, for it frequently happens that laborers who have been brutally
mistreated have been coerced into silence by the plantation managers by
threats of what will happen to them if they dare to lay a complaint
before the inspecting official. Moreover, many of the plantations are
so remotely situated, so far removed from civilization, that a manager
can treat his laborers as he pleases with little fear of detection or
punishment. If negroes are held in peonage, flogged, and even murdered
on plantations in our own South, within rifle-shot of courthouses and
sheriffs' offices and churches, is it to be wondered at that similar
conditions can and do exist in the world-distant jungles of Borneo.
Mind you, I do not say that such conditions exist on all or most of the
estates in British North Borneo, but I have the best of reasons for
believing that they exist on some of them.

One of the most serious defects in the labor laws of North Borneo is
that trivial actions or omissions on the part of ignorant coolies, such
as misconduct, neglect of work, or absence from the estate without
leave, are punishable by imprisonment. As a result, the illiterate and
incoherent coolie does not know where he stands. He can never be sure
that some trivial action on his part, no matter how innocent his
intent, will not bring him within reach of the criminal law. He is,
moreover, denied the right of trial by jury, his case usually being
decided off-hand by a bored and unsympathetic magistrate who has no
knowledge of the def