One must necessarily first have labour (coolies).

These are recruited in certain districts of India, usually by sending good reliable men, already in your employ, to their home country, under a contract to pay them so much a head for every coolie they can persuade (by lies or otherwise) to come to your garden.

The coolies must then bind themselves to work for you for, say, three to four years.

They are paid for their work, not much it is true, but enough to support them with comfort; the men about three annas (or fourpence) a day, the women two annas (or threepence).

As they get to know their work and become expert, the good men will earn as much as six annas a day, and some of the women, when plucking leaf, about the same.