ALTON
(900 acres approx.)
Category - High Grown
Dec. 1964/Jun. 1966

    Alton, prior to the tenure of my predecessor, had been allowed to deteriorate very badly. When he took over, the majority of the acreage was overrun by ribbon grass and cooch and the bushes, though of a reasonably good jat, were crammed with moss and ferns and the branches spindly and, therefore, unproductive. What other problems he inherited I am not sure but from what I experienced after my arrival I expect that bad supervision at all levels was one of them. There had also been an incident where there was a dispute, which developed into a fracas, between the two unions about the hoisting of a flag and the then PD went down to sort it out and was assaulted. He went to hospital with head injuries.

   During my predecessor's tenure huge sums of money were spent on deep forking out the ribbon grass more than once each year for years, and the removal of the moss and ferns from within the bushes. To achieve this latter the bushes had to be 'opened up' when they were pruned so as to get at the moss and ferns. This was followed by the spraying of the bushes with lime (Calcium hydroxide) to kill what moss remained. When he did this pruning he went one step further and pruned extremely hard, in some cases all that was left was the stump of the bush. This was called the "Healing Saw", because extensive use of the pruning saw was made, and like the removal of shade, this created a lot of controversy, far too much of it based not on intelligent thinking but on emotion and ignorance. Due to very poor quartz soil in the topmost field or fields they were not potentially viable and were abandoned.

     This PD had also spent a lot of money on doing up the bungalow magnificently.

     The plantation started at an elevation of about 4500 ft. and went up to 5500 ft. or more. There was nothing between it and the sea scores of miles away with the result that the south-west monsoon buffeted the upper two-thirds, and it was very cold at these times. There were two divisions, Upper and Lower, with the latter in the process of being divided into two 'sub-divisions' for easier organization and supervision. This was due to the topography, and my predecessor had started building housing for a new, small community in the further sub division.

     When I took over all the heavy pruning had been completed on the usual, for this elevation, four-year cycle and most of the other the intensive work completed, although the ribbon grass still required a lot of continuous follow-up work as any tiny piece left re-grew and it was extremely difficult to remove every piece. The tonnes of grass removed each time had to be carried to the nearest road to be stacked into compost piles but I was to find later that laziness and poor supervision resulted in large quantities being buried in the field amongst the tea, thus creating further problems.

     The office staff consisted of a HC and, perhaps, four assistants and the office was situated in a very odd place. A field path led from the bungalow garden and the office was situated about a hundred and fifty yards along this on the small embankment. It overlooked the factory but was near nothing, had no apron and no vehicle access. It was also rather small. As soon as I could I designed and built a bigger, new one with staff toilet, next to the cart road that connected with the main entry road. This site was just below the edge of the PD's bungalow garden and I constructed a path from the garden to it. The old office I converted into a supervisor's house next to which I cleared a small vegetable garden.

     In the factory were the TM, an Assistant TM and, perhaps, a second assistant. Tea prices were all right but no more. I had a new diary in my new format supplied for the factory (as well as for the field staff) and got the co-operation of the factory staff with no trouble at all. The ATM, in particular, was very enthusiastic and very good. In fact, I think he was on Radella as ATM and may have been transferred here on promotion not long before I came. In due course tea prices improved but not spectacularly.

     In the field there was a Conductor on Lower Division and a KP on Upper Division. The Conductor had been on plantations in Kenya and on the plantation next door to Alton where he had been badly assaulted by the workers and, as I was to discover, was scared of workers generally - natural but not helpful. This Conductor once told me that he thought he should get furlough as enjoyed by the executives.

     During my time here I had the pleasure of training two more creepers. I get the feeling that there was another somewhere but, if there was, I cannot remember him.

     It did not take me long to find out that the standard of field supervision at all levels was not good. From this came the inevitability of bad work. I have mentioned above the burying of ribbon grass and I discovered other things as time passed. With my views in regard to shade being what they were, when I was walking through the tea if I came across a young shade tree I used to pull it up and throw it away - a stitch in time saves nine! I had stopped planting shade from the time I arrived. In one field I found that the plant I pulled up was still in its plastic sleeve, so I pulled up another, and another, and so on, and they were all the same. So I went to the office and from the diaries et al managed to find out which kangany supervised that work and spoke to him the next day. I asked him if he was the one who had supervised that work and he said he had. I asked him whether the work was well done and he answered in the affirmative, so I told him to come with me and went to that field where I pulled up one plant and showed it to him, and then another, and so on and so on and so on. Then I told him that he was fired as a kangany. On a cart road one day I happened to notice, some distance away, about six tea bushes that were starting to brown, and when I investigated this I found that a 112 lb sack of fertilizer had been buried(46) there rather than broadcast, or because someone got his calculations wrong and ended up with a bag unused. For numerous such reasons, within a couple of months from when I stated taking action I had fired two thirds of the field staff. I think the Conductor at some time also left or was pushed. Not only was he accountable, but I discovered that, like most of them, he did not go to the fields during the afternoon! From Radella I got Welsh (on promotion) and some others, so I then had staff familiar with what I wanted and willing to get it done.

     The previous PD had a lot of VAing, gave talks on "Healing Saw" pruning etc. and these took him off the plantation a lot. He also had a fixed schedule of being in the office in the afternoons. I had my own way of doing things and, on Alton, because of its size in comparison to my previous plantations, used binoculars to check on work. I used to stand in the back of the Land Rover and scan the fields, then descend on the places where work was bad. The workers thought I had magical powers! Early one morning I came out to the front steps of the bungalow and noticed, at the far reaches of one side of Lower Division, a big gang of men applying fertilizer. This was meant to be done one man per tea row but they seemed to be seven to eight rows apart. I went inside and got my binoculars and had a look and, yes, I was correct. Soon after, I went to the field - by this time, having seen me coming, everything was being done properly - and asked the people in charge how the work was going and whether it was all being properly done and so forth, and was assured that all was perfect. So I said, 'Good, come with me and we will have a look.' The look confirmed the gross slackness I expected and I sent the entire gang and the kanganies off without pay. To get home they had to walk past me on a field road and I stood there, facing away from the road, stick firmly grasped in my hand, until they had all gone past.

     At one time there was a major strike in the district but the Alton workers had decided to work - they may not have been members of the striking union - and a gang of pruners was pruning a field on the face of a hill at the top of which was some jungle forming the boundary between Alton and the neighbouring plantation. As my then creeper and I reached the field on foot the men started coming down complaining that they were being intimidated by striking men, from outside, on top of the hill. I told them, 'This is disgraceful! You have the knives, go and get them!'(47) but it made no difference. I turned to my creeper and the KP and, I think, a watchman and said, 'Come on, come with me.' and went charging up the hill. In the jungle at the top was a path and we took this path in the direction we thought would lead us to the perpetrators. Suddenly we heard someone approaching so we hid in the bushes and two men came our way. I gave one a good rugby tackle and I think my creeper did the same, and we had two of the troublemakers who we then marched off down to the office where they were made to sit on the floor until I decided what to do with them. On the way down my creeper had suggested that we tie the men's sarongs around their necks to shame them but I thought that that was going a bit too far! All this had, of course, created quite a stir on the plantation by then. The two turned out to be workers from Gouravilla, my ex VA's plantation next door, so I phoned him and told him what had happened and it was agreed that they be sent over to him and that he would deal with them.

     Then there was another similar strike, or perhaps it was the same one and this was another day, and my workers were working. We had to try and protect our workers so I sent my creeper to the "division" at the lowest end of the plantation saying that I would look after the other three fourths. A KP of mine came to me one day and said that he and his family, they lived in an isolated bungalow near a boundary, were frightened at night that they would be attacked. I told him to put some chillie powder into jars with water and have them ready to use if anyone tried to enter their house, and that I would hear any disturbance from my bungalow and would come to their rescue if necessary. Then I waited, this time with my gun handy, and the Land Rover at the ready. I had not long to wait. I was told that one mob of strikers was approaching where the creeper was, and another approaching a field halfway up the property above my bungalow where some of my pluckers were working. So I jumped into the Land Rover and the driver drove me up to near the danger spot. Just as I arrived, the mob came round the hill towards the pluckers and I jumped out of the Land Rover and yelled at them to go back but they only hurled abuse at me. I had No. 8 shot in my gun intentionally and aimed it at the mob and fired. I knew that the shot would not reach them at that distance but they did not know that. They turned and fled, and I followed on foot. When I reached a small ravine in the tea two of my supervisors emerged from the ravine where they had taken refuge and said, 'Sir, you saved our lives! A few more seconds and they would have reached us!' There is a very funny aside to this event. My neighbour on one side was shortish but built like a tank and had a very intimidating face. He had come across a mob on his property and charged them on foot. He said that he then saw the funniest thing he had ever seen - a man, so scared and in such a hurry to get away from him, that he was literally 'running on top of the tea bushes'.

     Alton was really too big and too elongated and steep to be run without an SD. My predecessor had raised the matter with the Company and been told that he could have one for six months provided that he put him up in the PD's bungalow. Needless to say he did not take up the offer. I raised the matter again because I really believed that an SD was essential for optimum management efficiency. I wrote a long letter detailing my reasons and including a careful breakdown of how the PD spent his time. The latter included all non-plantation duties such as Planters' Association meetings, CEEF meetings and consultations, visits to GS in Colombo, leave, etc. etc. and clearly demonstrated what I stated: that a PD alone could not manage the place effectively. GS asked me to include an SD in the next year's Estimates, and this included a new bungalow, pay, allowances etc.

     On Alton I started officially allowing the staff one worker per month, paid by the Company, to assist with the maintenance of their bungalow gardens. There was good reason for this although I cannot remember what it was.

     There was a wire shute down which bags of green leaf weighing 45 lb or more came from Upper Division to the factory at considerable speed until they were slowed down as they approached the factory. One day a clerk came to me and asked whether he could have some used corrugated iron sheets. I said that he could and asked him why he wanted them and he said it was for his shed which had got damaged. Asked how it got damaged he said that a leaf bag off the shute had fallen on to it. The shed was in a corner of his garden and I was surprised that I had not noticed the shute's proximity to dwellings and decided that I would look into this. On doing so, I found that the shute ran above the corner of his garden and close enough to some others to be dangerous, particularly for children who may be playing outside. This was not good enough for me so, when I was in Colombo soon after, I raised the matter with GS's CTP Assistant and said that the shute had to be moved. This was no simple matter because the wire was, in fact, a steel cable an inch or so thick and about a kilometre long, embedded in big concrete blocks at both ends. He smiled and asked me to discuss it with the CTP Director, which I did. He was non-committal as was to be expected but I wanted a decision - in fact, I wanted the money to move it, and soon. - so I said matter of factly, 'Do I put it in black and white?' and his reply was, smiling, 'No, put it in the next estimates.'

     There was another little amusing incident with GS. I once received a letter from them quoting a section of a letter from the Board - an unusual occurrence. No matter how I tried, I could not make any sense of it so, as I was going down to Colombo a few days later, I decided not to write. When at GS, I asked the CTP Assistant what the letter meant and he chuckled and said 'Ask x!' (the CTP Director) who, when I saw him a few minutes later and put the same question to him, laughed and said, 'We couldn't make any sense out of it so we quoted it verbatim to you!' Since they got no result from me, no doubt, they referred it back to the Board for clarification! It was something to do with drains and forking.

     On the VA's first visit to Alton after my arrival, I discussed with him my proposals in regard to shade trees and the pros and cons of these, and my experiences in this regard on Radella; that the liming of the bushes be discontinued as it had served its purpose, and showed him this in the field; that the forking of all fields after pruning be discontinued because of the extensive forking done, and being done, to remove cooch and ribbon grass; and some of the other changes I wanted to make. He was only in his forties but he was only moving slowly and cautiously with change. Regarding shade, he said that he had recently started experiments on his plantation and was awaiting results before he made any decisions - and I was saying to myself 'I did that years ago.' Do not get me wrong, he and I got on well enough on a personal level, and there were no arguments; it was just that we disagreed on many major issues - the old school versus the new so to speak. He had been VA for Alton for a few years now and was obviously part of the massive cleanup that had been effected, but from my point of view it was time for change. When his Report came via GS he had not recommended any of my suggestions. Hence, in my letter commenting on his Report I started with the words ' I do not wish what I have to say misinterpreted or misconstrued, what I say I say as Superintendent of this plantation and because I feel that it is my duty to do so.' and went on item by item, giving my recommendations and my reasons for them. The next I heard was in a letter from GS stating, "the Board have instructed that Mr. Gardner's recommendations be carried out." On his next visit, the VA was consulting me as to what I wanted to do.

     With reference to the "Healing Saw" pruning the first fields so treated came up for pruning again when I was on Alton and the new wood growth was remarkable. Where there had been twigs there were now healthy, vigorous, new branches, some two inches thick; and moss and ferns were minimal and easily removed. It was obvious from this that to assess fertilizer needs the hitherto accepted policy of basing this on the yield of the previous year would be absurd, so I assessed the potential and used that assessment to determine the fertilizer requirements in the next year's Estimates when the were due.

     In regard to water. There was a line whose supply was a rusty trickle from a tap. This came from an underground spring at the base of a bank not far from the line but this spring was exposed to pollution, so I did in the bank what I had done on Radella for the PD's bungalow, but on a small scale, replaced the pipes, and gave them fresh, clean water. For the PD's bungalow all I can remember doing was replacing the existing galvanised pipe with black, flexible polythene pipe, possibly of a bigger size, buried in the ground out of reach of the long forks of the field workers. This pipe must have been about 600 yds. long. On Lower division the entire supply was woeful, so I found a grass ravine which had a spring, again coming from under a bank, and gave this ravine the "treatment" of reclamation, and piped the water quite some distance to a large new concrete storage tank. The water was crystal clear, and there was so much that the three-inch overflow pipe was full. It was a wonderful sight.

     At about this time Mr. Ronnie Brookes became the Chairman of The Board. He had a reputation for being ruthless, and there had been a story doing the rounds that when he became Chairman of Commercial Union he sacked a large number of staff in England. There were also stories circulating about his treatment of planters in Ceylon, planters in companies of which he was a Director or Chairman. One such case was to do with the PD of, I think it was Matakelle, when I was in that district. Apparently, in the course of his visit he had asked a few questions and the PD was unable to answer some of them. He said nothing at the time but at the end of his visit, when getting into his car to leave, he said to the PD, 'When I next come, if you do not have the answers to my questions I will sack you.' In this context it is interesting that my policy, since becoming a PD was that, in managing a plantation I would not clutter my brain with unnecessary facts and figures, facts and figures I could get when I wanted them from records or those of my staff primarily concerned with them. Nor would I carry a mass of such information on my person, for the same reason. Many PDs, including some in the CTP, during a visit by a Director or the Chairman, would carry information with them, but, as I said, this was not my way and I was prepared to argue the toss with any reasonable Chairman, Director or VA.

     Mr. Brookes was due to visit Alton and I was very interested to meet him as I had been to meet any of the others, no more and no less if one wants comparisons, but I was very surprised by what he did when he arrived early on the appointed morning. The were five or six front steps to the Alton bungalow front door and, from the bottom step, the drive sloped away and down so that, sitting in the back seat of a car coming up the drive one could not see anyone standing on the top of the front steps. When I heard the car coming, I went to front entrance and as the car came up the garden drive, there was Mr. Brookes bending down, his head almost at his knees trying to see me and - would you believe it! - trying to wave with his hands, knees and face at about the same level. He was also smiling broadly. In due course we drove round the plantation and, no doubt, chatted about various things. When we were at the top, where the tea was abandoned, he said to me, ' You know, many years ago, I sold this place to the CTP! I hate it!'(48) One of the capital items I was trying to get was an electronic stalk extractor and when we were in the factory we discussed this briefly, with me stating that it would pay for itself in four years. He looked me in the eye and said, quietly, 'And will an SD pay for himself in four years?' I looked at him in the eye and said, ' You should not ask questions like that.' And he laughed and moved on. Then the second surprise! When it was time to leave the factory it was raining heavily. I had my golf umbrella with me as we went out through the front door to the first floor overhang that forms a porch by which the driver had parked the Land Rover with the passenger side door closest to the factory. Mr. Brookes took the umbrella out of my hand, opened it, and ushered me to the further side door whilst protecting me from the rain whist I got in and then went back to the passenger door. I have never been able to figure all this out nor has anyone given me any clues. Mind you, I was not expecting to have any trouble from him.

     In due course, when the estimates came back the SD was allowed and the stalk extractor disallowed! This opened up for me a wonderful opportunity to give full rein to my creative instincts. I designed the floor plan for a reasonably spacious two-bedroom bungalow with, on the left, a single space for the sitting room and dining room separated only by a fireplace and chimney in random(49) bluestone with the odd one of white or pink here and there. This stonework continued from the chimney to the outer wall at a low level and was faced with thick polished timber and, from the timber surface, a few poles in the same timber ran up to the ceiling; the whole forming a half room divider containing a small liquor cabinet et al. On the right, but set back from the front were the two bedrooms, one behind the other so that the entry was near the corner formed by the sitting room wall and the first bedroom wall, and leading into the sitting room. The building continued backwards on the right side only to form the rear wing containing the kitchen, storeroom, servants' room and servants shower and toilet, in that order. Right at the back on the left was a small office and in front of that the garage. A verandah joined the two parts of the rear section and ran, open on one side, to the main section. The whole was under the one roof. The details of the roof design and the drafting of the design plan were done by the building arm of Hemachandra & Co. in Talawakelle, who built the bungalow. This design, though perhaps not the bluestone work, was adopted by GS as the standard for SD's bungalows.

     Then came the site. It was marvellous to have nearly 1000 acres from which to select a site but there was really only one good one. It was on a little, flatish knoll on whose side, away from the views and across a tiny valley, was ten acres of forest left, I presume, to catch and hold rainwater for the spring at its base that supplied water to the PD's bungalow and others further down. For water for the SD's bungalow, however, I had to find a spring from which I could gravity feed to it. Unless I found one I would have to look for another site. But I did find one. Added bonuses were that the cart road to Upper division ran by part of one side of the new garden, and the site was central to that part of the plantation which the SD would run if he did not run the whole.

     When the SD arrived he was put up in the guest wing of my bungalow until his was complete. It was an understanding, a rule possibly, that one did not damage the walls of Company houses but when I went into his wing one day I noticed a large green "notice" board on a wall in the dressing room which he was using as an office. On closer examination I found that this was affixed to the wall by four wooden plugs embedded in cement with the result that there were big patches of raw plaster at each corner. I have mentioned before that this house had been beautifully decorated by my predecessor and, in the circumstances, what the SD had done was outrageous as far as I was concerned. That the board was for work related self-organisation was commendable but not the manner of its erection. He got a sound lecture and severe telling off and was made to remove the board and restore the wall to its original condition at his own expense. If not for this one wonders what he might have done in his brand new bungalow!

     Alton was this SD's first appointment and, from my perspective, it was necessary to instil in new SDs in particular, the fundamentals of management. Thus, when one day during a period of late plucking, I came across him on his motorcycle, on his way home at 4.30 sharp, I asked him where he was going and he replied that he was going home, and I said, ' No you are not, work has not finished. Get back to work.'

     The workers on Lower division decided on strike action(50) at the time when my then creeper was "in charge" of that division. I cannot recall the reason but it was not one that warranted compromise. At one point, when the leaf on the bushes was getting past the "recovery by plucking" stage, I told them, 'You can strike for as long as you like but remember that after you finish we will have to cut back all the overgrown tea and you will not have any plucking for even longer.' The strike petered out after not too long. It was after this strike that I found myself thinking of these workers in particular, and those on my other plantations in general, 'They are, after all, like children.'

     Meanwhile, when the factory the staff and workers had adopted, and were working well with, my refinements in manufacture and things were going well, I got a letter from GS telling me that my ATM was being transferred and being replaced by, as I discovered to my amazement, someone with no experience whatsoever. What had happened was that the PD on Beaumont had, commendably, sought to find employment in the Company for the son of his HC and, for whatever reasons, this was the outcome. I wrote to GS stating, 'I am surprised that you have seen fit to make this decision without even consulting me' and went on to explain why it was most inadvisable. The decision was reversed and the new recruit sent elsewhere.

     At the bottom of the plantation there were three fields running horizontally across the face of a hill, and it struck me one day that naturally, and as a result of tilling, the soil at the top of this hill face was inferior to that at the bottom and the variation progressive from top to bottom. That hence, the agricultural policy that treated each field as uniform was flawed and that the remedy was to re-orientate the field boundaries from vertical to horizontal so that, to put it a different way, instead of three vertical fields there were three horizontal ones, each far more uniform in condition and potential. Of course, this corrective principle applied on every slope on every plantation. Here, I cannot remember whether I allowed for the surveying and implementation of this for these three fields, as I moved again before the commencement of that new financial year.

     The nature of the site of the PD's bungalow meant that the garden was relatively small; it tapered from broad at the front to very narrow at the back and, since it was at the back, the vegetable garden was small. To improve this latter problem the previous PD had reclaimed a reasonably large grass ravine in the tea some distance away and made it a vegetable garden. As this was inconvenient and theft could be a problem, I planted this garden in VP tea and cleared a similar area of tea abutting the front of the PD's garden and established a vegetable garden there.

     I had employed a new driver for the car and Land Rover, an ex army man who proved to be a disaster where driving was concerned as he was petrified at the wheel of a vehicle. I do not think I had asked to see his licence but I did go on a trial run with him. He was nervous then, but I assumed that that was because of the circumstances of the moment - very silly! One night I was advised of a disturbance in the lines where the PD's driver's quarters were, the cause of the disturbance being the driver, so I went down to investigate. There was the driver, and he was very drunk. Anyway, matters were resolved for the moment and the driver was sacked then or soon after.

     I had a very unusual experience once. One morning in front of my garage I was talking to my building contractor who was accompanied by an old man, one of his employees, when the old man just crumbled vertically in a heap - he had died standing up without a hint of what was to come!

     The new SD's bungalow and garden were nearing completion when I was advised of my move to Dewalakande. The entrance hall in the PD's bungalow was too small for the excellent chesterfield suite that was there so I had bought a smaller cane and foam suite for the hall and allocated the chesterfield suite for the new bungalow. During my handing over, or perhaps soon after I had left, the SD told me that the new PD wanted to keep the suite I had earmarked for the new bungalow and send, instead, that which I had bought and put in the PD's entrance hall. I felt that, if this was so, it was not a nice thing to do so I told the SD that if the new PD tried to do this he should tell me and that I would ensure that it did not happen. Not long after, when I came up for the house-warming party, the furniture was where it was meant to be and there was no mention of the problem.

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