28 August 1942

Last night just before turning in composed a melody for a Cavalier ballad quoted in Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Woodstock’, chapter 20 titled ‘Glee for King Charles’.  This is the second song I have made since coming here.  The first one, which I completed about a month ago is a to a little poem called,’My Lady verily awaited me’ by Austin Dobson and quoted in F Amtey’s novel, The Pariah.  Many more people arrived overnight, apparently mostly young lads.  Out for a walk round 9.30 to 10.45 am.  Out again from 3 to 4.30 pm.  Walk and one ball game.  My rib is still painful on getting up in the morning.

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My appointment was specified in the contract as that of book keeper to the Estate but it was stipulated that the manager could make use of me in any other capacity such as necessity demanded.  One point I omitted to mention in connection with my interview in London was Mitchell Thom’s reply to a rash query of mine as to the working hours on the Estate.  He just fixed me with his eye and replied coldly ‘twenty four hours a day and seven days a week!’ This was a slight exaggeration because we did go to sleep overnight.  However, it was the company’s intention that young men like myself should be trained in every branch of Estate work with a view to forming a reserve of future managers from those who displayed the required ability during the first five years.  A book keeper’s duties were not at all a full time job, so after a month or two I was given the whole manufacturing process from the reception of the liquid latex to the dispatch of the finished article and it was quite a mouthful for me to chew, considering that I had never before occupied a position of authority.  Besides I found myself all at once with almost 150 people under me and with all the power and responsibility pertaining to such a charge.  One department especially used to reduce me to a state not very far from blue funk.  This was the Sole Crepe room where between 50 to 60 girls and women were employed and I had to screw up my courage every time I entered there in order to be able to withstand the glances from a battery of over a hundred eyes and the smiles and soft spoken comments of the one to the other of the damsels there assembled.  It was most uncomfortable, the more so as I did not yet understand their languages and was therefore uncertain as to whether their observations were complimentary to myself or otherwise.  But one gets used to anything in time (even imprisonment) and it was not very long before I had a complete grasp of all the necessary details of manufacture and packing, I will endeavour to describe briefly what goes on inside an Estate rubber factory.  When the latex (literally the milk of the rubber tree) arrives in the factory it is received into large vats or tanks for the preparation of what is known as Crepe Rubber or into small rectangular basins in preparing Smoked Sheet Rubber.  Whether Crepe or Smoked Sheet is to be produced, the first equipment is to cause the latex to coagulate or bind together like, say, a corn flour pudding, by the addition of formic acid.  After being allowed to stand for two hours or so the mass is sufficiently congealed to be handled as required.  For making Crepe the coagulated latex is passed through a battery of rollers in lumps, starting with rough and grooved and ending with smooth rollers, eventually producing a strip of wet rubber, light yellow in colour, and from 8 to 10 inches broad.  This strip, which could be, if required, continued to any length, is cut off in lengths of about 10 feet to allow of their being hung up to dry on racks in the drying house.  The drying house is just a big shed containing four or five tiers of wooden rails about 5 feet from the ground and between each tier, some 8 inches apart and extending the whole breadth of the interior with the exception of a narrow passage down each side.  The Crepe strips are hung over these rails and left to dry, drying being complete within 5 to 8 days, depending on the humidity of the air.  In very wet weather, the drying process can be assisted by introducing a current of hot air into the shed by means of a special apparatus.  When the Crepe is dry it is removed from the racks, folded and packed in the regulation veneer chests for export of rubber.  Smoked Sheets being with coagulated cakes contained in the small rectangular basins which measure approximately 24 by 12 inches.  The flabby slab from each basin has these measurements and is, before milling, about 2 inches, thick and pure white.  This slab is passed through a battery of four graded rollers, ultimately emerging as a sheet of wet rubber, still opaque white, measuring 36 by 24 inches and about 1/8” thick.  These sheets are then hung to dry and cure in what is known as the Smokehouse.  Simply described the Smokehouse consists of a row of rooms fitted with racks as in the Crepe Drying Shed.  These rooms are situated on the first floor of the building, the ground floor containing large drums, usually converted oil drums, in which wooden logs are kept smoldering to produce both heat and smoke.  Each room has its corresponding drum and the heat and smoke rise through interstices between the planks forming the floor.  Within 7 to 10 days, depending on the weather, the sheet are dry and smoked to a golden brown and are semi transparent.  They are then removed from the racks and packed in veneer cases as is the Crepe.

26 August 1942

The terms of my contract, which I do not think I have yet enumerated were as follows:  Commencing salary 250 guilders per month rising by annual increments of 25 to 350 per month in the fifth year.  Six months European furlough on full salary at the expiry of 5 years service, passage, 2nd class, free to Europe and back again to Java in the event of the contract being renewed for a further period of 5 years.  Free house, fire and light.  Free medical attendance (excluding dental treatment and illness caused by misconduct), free Personal Tax and an allowance of 12 guilders per month for a garden coolie.  Also an allowance of 40 guilders and four days local leave every 3 months.  The most important item, however, was the bonus to which every employee was entitled and which was based on the profits made by the Company in the course of a year.  In the golden days of planting bonuses were often of such proportions as to ensure an employee being in a position to retire for life at the end of his first contract.  These days had gone for ever by 1926 but there were still reasonable prospects of being able to double one’s nominal salary.  Alas for my expectations.  Rubber began to slump in 1927 and by 1931 the bottom had fallen out of the market altogether.  My first year’s bonus was 760 guilders, and the next year’s 1200, and for the next three, what will all allowances cancelled and salary cut, I might claim that the company paid themselves back for the bonuses, I had received.  This wonderful contract, for all its lovely seals and flourishing signatures, although it protected the company against my leaving their service within the 5 year on pain of the payment of £100 plus so called ascertained damages, was, as far as my rights were concerned, only so much waste paper when the company’s results began to evidence themselves in the red figures.  In my fifth year, I was much worse off than when I started, receiving only 240 guilders a month and no extras whatever except hours, fire and light.  The Personal Tax I have mentioned is a Poll, or Head Tax imposed by the Dutch authorities in addition to usual Income Tax and is based on house rent and the possession of motorcars, cycles and horses.  The four days leave every 3 months were according to the contract, to be spent at one or other resort in the mountains for health’s sake but on occasion I have been  9 months at a stretch at Langen without any such break and sometimes simply because it did not suit the convenience of the manager, Fits Verploegh who was a big built, red faced  man of about 37 who has been planting since his 18th year.  He had an air of great authority and owed his position, I suspect to this more than to actual ability.  Although there was not a soul on Langen, who by reason of his position could dispute his title as manager, he always insisted in signing himself on all correspondence and reports as ‘Head Manager’. His policy was to keep his assistants as far as was possible from adding to their planting knowledge anything more than he himself chose to impart to them in somewhat patronising fashion.  He even went as far in this matter as to take great pains to prevent the circulation of any agricultural periodical which might reach him in his official capacity.  Practically every other manager I have known was insisted on his employees reading such papers in order that they might keep abreast of the latest methods and up to date as to experiments being carried out in their particular field.  Fitz Verploegh had an efficient secret service system recruited from the native overseers on every Division, by means of which, he kept himself informed of the state of work and of everything else on the Estate without being under the necessity of exerting himself in any way whatsoever.  I have known him not to stir from his house for a whole month on end and yet, to my amazement, at the end of that period, to send me his monthly report of sometimes 12 foolscap pages to translate and type and that report consisting of a wealth of detail which one would have sworn was impossible except by personal observation and inspection.  His spying proclivities extended on occasion even to pirate correspondence and quite frequently Fenton and I, at least, have had our letters from home passed on to us days after they arrived on the Estate and displaying obvious sings of having been tampered with.  This was on account of the fact that the Estate mail was fetched from Banjdar, the nearest village and post office, every day by a native postman specially employed for that purpose.  Letters etc were collected by an agent in Bandjar and locked in a post box carried by the postman and the duplicate key of which was held by the manager.  So all letters, no matter to whom addressed, were first delivered to the Big House and thereafter, often very much at leisure, further distribution took place.  We knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that our letters were held up at the Big House from the date stamp of Bandjar post office.  While efforts were being made to form a Planters Union, we had ample proof that all letters and literature sent to each assistant individually on Langen by that body were suppressed.  It was a long established rule on Langen that each assistant should have one Sunday free every two weeks but this privilege was on most occasions torpedoed by the manager, who, making one of his rare appearances, would stroll along to the office resplendent in white ducks and topi on Saturday afternoons when wages were being paid out to the work people and say, ‘Well, gentlemen, what about a spot of hunting tomorrow?’  That meant getting up the next morning at the usual time and walking and running through the jungle from sometimes 7 am to 3 pm, more fatiguing than an ordinary day’s work.  To refuse would have been to bring upon one’s self the managerial displeasure and only one who has actually been employed on an Estate can appreciate the manifold ways and means which can be employed in the expression of that sentiment.  Fitz Verploegh has been known to confine an assistant who had offended him within the boundaries of his own Division.  It was an understood thing that even on a free Sunday we were not supposed to go beyond the Estate boundaries without first obtaining his august permission.  He was a perfect survival of the type, formerly very common, but fortunately even then almost extinct, which in the early days of planting considered itself absolute monarch of all it surveyed and whose power stopped not very far short of life and death over those under it.

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Out from 2.45 to 4.30 pm.  No run or jerks.  One ballgame.  New command specs.   Rutherford Greeuw arrived.  Perry day before yesterday.  Cell inspection and search after lunch today, looking for razors and other sharp objects apparently.  My searches greatly taken up with Ineke’s photo on my table.  Took it up and pressed it against my mouth on leaving, smiling broadly.  Search very perfunctory – just looked into cupboard and did not even open suitcase – majority not so lucky.