All these qualities made it necessary that the supercargoes should be men of ability, of good education, and of incorruptible honesty. They were paid salaries which, to modern ears, sound ludicrously inadequate. The chief of the Amoy factory in 1681 received a salary of £80 a year; his colleagues, the 'junior members of council', received £40 a year; the writers had £10 a year. When the Taiwan factory was subordinated to Amoy, the salary of its chief was reduced from £80 to £60.[1] All were lodged and fed at the expense of the Company. As an illustration of the nominal salaries and real wages of servants of the Company, we may take note of the staff sent in 1699 to open a factory in Borneo[2]:
| £ | £ | s. | d. | ||||
| Chief of factory | 100 | Chief shipwrights or master builders | each | 60 | |||
| Merchant (second) | 60 | Ship carpenters | each„ | 40 | |||
| Chief of factory | 100 | Chief shipwrights or master builders | each | 60 | |||
| Merchant (third) | 60 | Chief smith | 40 | ||||
| Factor (fourth) | 40 | Smith | 33 | 6 | 8 | ||
| Factor (fifth) | 40 | Sawyers | each„ | 35 | |||
| Writers (four) | each | 10 |
It may well be asked how men of such marked ability and of such varied attainments could be attracted to the Company's service, and how, being in it, they could be expected to be loyal, zealous, or even honest. In England and in Europe generally at that period, as in China then and to-day, the salary of a government official was but a small part of the recognized and legitimate emoluments of his office. Fees, perquisites, presents, exactions, bribes, all contributed to make up the true value of the office. The East India Company was modelled on government lines, and its servants were paid on a government scale until well into the nineteenth century; but the Company could not allow its servants to supplement their recognized salaries by the same methods as were customary with government officials. To ensure their honesty, to stimulate their zeal, to confirm their loyalty, the Company granted every possible indulgence to its servants; it usually allowed them some private trade, under such limitations as would safeguard its own interests; sometimes it granted them a commission on the prime cost of the investment made in China, and sometimes it gave them a share in the stock, both goods and silver, which the ship took from England.
The tendency at first, in accordance with the practice of the time, was for the Company to give the supercargoes nothing from its own capital, but to allow them to risk their own money and to make such profit for themselves as they made for the
