Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [23]
‘Varied trade gets firm off to flying start,’ scribbled the reporter.
‘Yes, he’s the man you should be talking to,’ declared Walter as his eye fell on old Mr Webb in the distance: he was sitting bolt upright in the shade over by the Orchid Garden, his back still as straight as a ramrod despite his years. Over there the younger executives of Blackett and Webb approached him in turn, evidently according to some rota system of their own, to exchange a few remarks with him. On occasion, when a young man’s name was shouted into his ear, he would reply grimly: ‘Knew your father well.’ And the faintest twinkle would appear in his steely eyes. At a little distance a cadaverous individual with shoulders so rounded that they amounted, at least in Walter’s view, to the beginnings of a hump, was observing these ritual respects with derision from behind a flowering shrub. This was the odious, crafty Solomon Langfield, chairman of the rival firm of Langfield and Bowser Limited. Though Walter could not abide old Langfield he was nevertheless pleased that he had accepted the invitation to attend: evidently Langfield’s curiosity had got the better of his desire to ignore the opening of Blackett and Webb’s jubilee celebrations, which happened to fall a year or two before his own. Having permitted himself to pause for a moment to sample the pleasure of Langfield’s company, Walter returned to the consideration of his former partner, for he was fond of recalling the skill with which old Mr Webb had managed his business in those pioneering days when disaster had seemed always to be just round the corner. In years, for example, when a famine occurred in Bengal, as they did periodically, the peasants in Burma could hold back their crops, secure in the knowledge that the merchants would have to pay what they asked or default on their shipping contracts. Gradually, though, the situation for the merchants had improved. Chettyar moneylenders from India had penetrated the rice-growing delta, entangling the peasants in debt and bringing them to the point where they could no longer hold back their crops for higher prices even when there was a shortage on the market.
At Walter’s side the Major had a gloomy expression. He did not like to hear of people being entangled in debt, even for the best of reasons. But Walter, warming to his task, went on: ‘You see, the Chettyar money-lenders in Burma and, to a lesser extent, here in Malaya, too, acted on the peasants like saddle-soap on leather. They softened them up for us. Of course, some of the Chetties became rivals in the milling of crops but that couldn’t be helped. Without them to get the peasants used to dealing in cash (which, of course, in practice meant tricking them into debts they would have to pay up) rather than in barter of produce the merchants would have all been in the poorhouse, including Mr Webb. One bad crop with forward contracts to fill!’ And Walter made his blue eyes bulge with mock horror.
‘Pliable peasants bring bulls into rice-market!’
‘But that’s dreadful,’ muttered the Major. ‘I mean to say, well, I had no idea …’
It had taken some time before the Burmese peasants were altogether subdued but by about 1893 the Rangoon merchants had their hands on the key that would lock up the market: namely, control of the rice-mills throughout the country.
‘Instantly,’ explained Walter, making a chopping gesture with the flat of his hand, ‘they cut the price of paddy in half. In 1892 they paid 127 rupees: in 1893 only 77 rupees. How’s that for a grip on the market?’
As a result of this forcing down of the price the peasants, ruined by their thousands,