From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
Читать онлайн книгу.
to Deli’s oil industry.
It was tobacco that gave birth to the first Deli millionaire. Cremer was famous for his wealth and cruelty, qualities that led to his being known in the Netherlands as “Coolie Cremer.”6 The forerunner of all those who later made millions from latex and oil, he was the first to sacrifice contract coolies by the hundreds in an effort to drain the swamps and clear the jungle in Deli three-quarters of a century ago.
I do not have the statistics to elaborate on the climate of Deli, the metals hidden in the ground, or its development in matters of population, industry, plantations, and trade over the last three-quarters of a century. In any case, it is not my intention to analyze all this here. It will suffice to present some of the facts that I have stored in my head for nearly thirty years, giving a picture of the atmosphere of Deli when I was there.
[49] There were some five hundred estates in Deli at that time.7 Travel between them was very easy and could be accomplished either by car or truck on the many roads that crisscrossed the area, or by the Deli railway. Belawan harbor was one of the largest in Indonesia. If I am not mistaken, in terms of exports it had already equalled, if not surpassed, Java by 1927.8 A rough estimate of the number of coolies in plantations, oil fields, mines, and transport at that time was about four hundred thousand.9 At a rough calculation, of the total population of Deli, numbering around two million (consisting of nearly all the nationalities of Indonesia—Javanese, Batak, Minangkabau, Bugis, Banjar, Deli-Malay, and so forth),10 about 60 percent of the families were genuinely proletarian.11 (Here I am assuming that each contract coolie, or former contract coolie, had only one child.) In short, Deli was a region of the modern Indonesian nation, and a region of the true proletariat also. Even a quick glance at its social system reveals that the upper class consisted of foreign bourgeoisie, primarily European and American, and secondarily Chinese. And the Indonesian bourgeoisie, even though it consisted of only a few individuals, cannot be dismissed out of hand. The Sultan of Serdang and the Sultan of Deli, as a result of their oil concessions, were capitalist aristocrats who had to be taken into account.12
At the top of the European bourgeoisie, sitting high on his throne far away in the Netherlands or in some other foreign country, was the great master, known by the contract coolies as the Tuan Maskapai and by the Dutch as the director.13 Beneath him as the viceroy resident in Deli was the Tuan Kebun, or chief administrator.14 Only after this level do we come across those called by the respectful title of Tuan Besar, known to the Dutch simply as administrators.15 Senembah Mij. consisted of several branches and thus had several Tuan Besar. To complete our sketch of the capitalist class we must include those appendages known as Tuan Kecil, or assistants.16 The word kecil (small) must not be interpreted as being derogatory. Here it means apprentice or prospective. Every lazy good-for-nothing and schlemiel who came to Deli from the Netherlands had hopes of becoming a Tuan Kecil, a prospective Deli capitalist.17
Deli was full of these Dutch layabouts and schlemiels. Big sticks, empty heads, and loud voices: this is the picture of the shabby bourgeois of Deli. They could get rich quickly, since they received high wages and, after a certain number of years’ work, a fixed portion of the profits. If I am not mistaken, apart from his salary of some tens of thousands of rupiah annually, a Tuan Kebun received some two hundred thousand guilders as his share in the profits.18 And the Tuan Maskapai got even more: not only did he get his salary as a director and advisor of several companies, and the dividends from the capital he had invested in them, but he also received a large share of the profits. The Tuan Maskapai was the principal shareholder and the director and advisor, but he did not work there and usually resided far away, tripping around Europe.
The rich get richer: such was the dream of the empty-headed Dutch schlemiels on the Deli plantations, sitting with their big sticks in the pool room in front of their glasses of beer and whiskey.
[50] The class that slaved from dawn till dusk, paid only enough to line their bellies and cover their nakedness, the class that lived in sheds like goats in their pens,19 who were constantly abused and beaten and whose wives and daughters could be taken away at the whim of ‘ndro Tuan, this was the class of Indonesians known as contract coolies.20 The plantation coolies, male and female, usually got up at 4:00 A.M., for the plantations where they worked were far away. They would return home at seven or eight o’clock at night. According to the contract, they were paid only forty cents a day.21 Their food was usually insufficient for the hard work of hoeing in the heat for eight to twelve hours a day, and their clothes were quickly torn to shreds from working in the jungle.22
This deprivation in all things gave rise to the uncontrollable desire to tempt fate by playing dice, a desire deliberately fostered by the company on payday. Those who lost—and usually more people lost than won—were allowed to incur debts. Because they were bound by such debts, 90 percent of the coolies were forced to sign up again on the expiration of their contracts. The debts produced the desire to gamble and the gambling gave rise to ever greater indebtedness.23
Ninety out of a hundred coolies had not the least hope of being promoted. In fact, only one or two out of a thousand had any real possibility. They would become overseers and eventually head foremen, or they would be taken on as workers or caretakers in garages, electric plants, or hospitals. But their wages remained low: twenty or thirty guilders a month for an overseer and sixty guilders for a head foreman, that is, someone who had been working there some fifteen to twenty years.24
I can recall several incidents that took place at Tanjung Morawa, the main office of Senembah Mij., where I worked.25 Tuan V. D., an electrical engineer, was at his wits’ end because the generator would not work. He had figured out all the possibilities and all his orders for repair work had been carried out, but the machine still would not function. Kario, the electrical caretaker and a former contract coolie, was called. Without saying anything he crawled under the machine for a moment, turned his screwdriver and . . . chug, chug . . . it turned over normally. Kario, the former contract coolie, had long received a wage of twenty guilders a month, while Ir. V. D. got five hundred guilders plus any number of fringe benefits.26
[51] The late Professor Walch, my close acquaintance who was formerly at Tanjung Morawa with his wife, also a doctor, had the following experience.27 A guest—I think it was the well-known malaria expert Schüffner—came to his laboratory.28 The two were engrossed in a discussion about a certain species of mosquito that had been found in only one place on one occasion and had such and such characteristics. But they had forgotten in which of the hundreds of bottles they had placed this specimen. Naturally the name of this mosquito was written in Latin. When they had given up hope of finding it, Parman produced the bottle with its specimen and its Latin name. Parman was only a graduate of the H.I.S., was paid only twenty-five guilders a month, and lived in a lean-to with his wife and children.29 Dr. Walch told me that Parman was then given the “independent” job of examining the mosquitoes of a certain location for which he was paid fifty guilders a month. The doctors Walch were not reactionaries, but, as Dr. Walch said to me, “I can’t get any more out of the company.” Such stories could be repeated over and over, but these two are sufficient to give a picture of the situation.
Obviously, tobacco, latex, palm, and hemp plantations require extensive and complex knowledge and long experience to deal with seed, soil, soil conservation, seedlings, and the crop. You could not expect the good-for-nothings and the schlemiels just arrived from the Netherlands to know about such matters. But they had white skins, the skin of the colonizer, and they carried big sticks and used loud voices against the colored, colonized people, “the gentlest people on earth.” With their white skins, big sticks, two or three words of “bazaar Malay” and thirteen different swear words, they could use the knowledge and experience of the head foremen or overseers.30 These Deli schlemiels started at a salary of 350 guilders a month plus free housing, free this and free that.31 A few of the Dutch assistants did have a smattering of general knowledge but, in general, very few in any way smacked of “erudition.”
The conflict between the white, stupid, arrogant, cruel colonizers and the colored