ABSTRACT
The growth of both large-scale commercial agriculture and non-agricultural enterprises in mining, manufacturing, construction and services together led to a growth in the wage labour force in most parts of Southeast Asia in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Labour force data collected before 1940 did not usually distinguish between self-employed workers, those working for wages and salaries, and those working as ‘family workers’ on farms and in other small enterprises, often without direct wage payments. Many workers in the last category were women. It is thus difficult to distinguish between workers who were largely if not entirely dependent on wage employment and those for whom wage employment was only an addition to the family income, the bulk of which was derived from other activities. In the early part of the twentieth century it is probable that most permanent wage employment was provided by large estate companies, and export-processing industries such as sugar refineries, rice mills, saw mills, and mining companies.
