"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 defendant's tongue. Moreover, the company's laws permit the punishment of unruly laborers by flogging, with a maximum of twelve lashes. In view of the remoteness of most of the estates, it is scarcely necessary for me to point out that this is a form of punishment open to the gravest abuse.
Although, as I have shown, the British North Borneo Company permits the existence of a system not far removed from slavery, a far more serious indictment of the company's administration lies in its systematic debauchery of its laborers by encouraging them to indulge in opium smoking and gambling for the purpose of swelling its revenues. Nor does its heartless exploitation of the laborer end there, for when a coolie has dissipated all his earnings in the opium dens and gaming houses, which are run under government concessions, he can usually realize a little more money for the same purpose by pawning his few poor belongings at one of the pawnshops controlled by the company. In other words, from the day a laborer sets foot in Borneo until the day he departs, he is systematically separated from his earnings, which are diverted, through the channels provided by the opium dens, the gambling houses and the pawn shops, into a stream which eventually empties into the company's coffers. For, mark you, the chartered company did not go to North Borneo from any altruistic motives. It is animated by no desire to ameliorate the condition of the natives or to increase the well-being and happiness of its imported laborers. It is there with one object in view, and one alone—to pay dividends to its stockholders. As the chairman of the company said at a recent North Borneo dinner in London: "They have acted the parts of Empire makers and yet they are filling their own pockets, for the golden rain is beginning to fall."
Let me show you where this "golden rain" comes from. The two principal sources of revenue of the British North Borneo Company are opium and gambling. Suppose that you come with me for a stroll down the Jalan Tiga in Sandakan and see the gaming houses and the opium dens for yourself. Jalan Tiga (literally "Number Two Street") is a moderately broad thoroughfare, perhaps a quarter of a mile in length, which is solidly lined on both sides with gambling houses, or, as they are called in Borneo, gambling farms, the term being due to the fact that the gambling privileges are farmed out by the government. There may be wickeder streets somewhere in the East than the Jalan Tiga, but I do not recall having seen them. It, and the thoroughfares immediately adjoining, in which are situated the opium dens and the houses of prostitution, form a district which represents the very quintessence of Oriental vice. Over virtually every door are signs in Chinese, Malay and English announcing that games of chance are played within. Such resorts are not camouflaged in Borneo. They are as open as a railway station or a public library in the United States. From afternoon until sunrise these resorts are crowded to the doors with half-naked, perspiring humanity, brown skins and yellow being in about equal proportions, for the Malay is as inveterate a gambler as the Chinese. The downstairs rooms, which are frequented by the lower classes, are thickly sprinkled with low tables covered with mats divided into four sections, each of which bears a number. A dice under a square brass cup is shaken on the table and the cup slowly raised. Those players who have been lucky enough to place their bets on the square whose number corresponds to the number uppermost on the dice have their money doubled, the others see their earnings swept into the lap of the croupier, a fat and greasy Chinaman, usually stripped to the waist. In this system the chances against the player are enormous. The play is very rapid, the dice being shaken, the cup raised, the winners paid and the wagers of the losers raked in too quickly for the untrained eye to follow. The players seldom quit as long as they have any money left to wager, but as soon as one drops out there is another ready to take his place. The upstairs rooms, which are usually handsomely decorated and luxuriously furnished, are reserved for the wealthier patrons, it being by no means uncommon for a player to lose several thousand dollars in a single night. Here cards are generally used instead of dice to separate the players from their money, fan-tan being the favorite game. I was told that the monthly subsidy paid by the British North Borneo Company to the Sultan of Sulu, who comes over from Jolo with great regularity to collect it, never leaves the country, as he invariably loses it over a Sandakan gaming-table. Gambling is a government monopoly in Borneo, the company farming out the privilege each year to the highest bidder. In 1919 the gambling rights for the entire protectorate were sold for approximately $144,000.
Crossing the Jalan Tiga at right angles and running from the heart of the town down to the edge of the harbor is the street of the prostitutes. It is easy to recognize the houses of ill-fame by their scarlet blinds and by the scarlet numbers over their doors. Should you stroll down the street during the day you will find the sullen-eyed inmates seated in the doorways, brushing their long and lustrous blue-black hair or painting their faces in white and vermillion preparatory to the evening's entertainment. Probably four-fifths of the filles de joie in Sandakan are Chinese, the others are products of Nippon—quaint, dainty, doll-like little women with faces so heavily enameled that they would be cracked by a smile. When a Chinese merchant wants a wife he usually visits a house of prostitution, selects one of the inmates, drives a hard bargain with the hard-eyed mistress of the establishment, and, the transaction concluded, brusquely tells the girl to pack her belongings and accompany him to his home. I might add that the girls thus chosen invariably make good wives and remain faithful to their husbands.
The Jalan Tiga, Sandakan
A moderately broad thoroughfare, lined on both sides with gambling-houses