On the sug­ar es­tates of 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry Trinidad, there was an es­tab­lished nat­ur­al hi­er­ar­chy which ex­ist­ed on al­most every plan­ta­tion. This strat­i­fi­ca­tion be­gan im­me­di­ate­ly in the up­per ech­e­lon of the labour­ing rank and file–right un­der the au­thor­i­ty of the white man­ag­er or over­seer. It was born out of the di­vi­sion of labour and the nat­ur­al pen­chant for some to take prece­dent over oth­ers.In the pre-Eman­ci­pa­tion days, when the Afro-an­ces­tors of our peo­ple still laboured un­der the crack of the whip, the term "dri­ver" came in­to be­ing. This post had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the pi­lot­ing of a ve­hi­cle but was a short­ened form of "slave dri­ver." It was a post that car­ried over fol­low­ing the end of chat­tel slav­ery in 1834-38 and in­to the pe­ri­od of In­di­an in­den­ture­ship. Dri­vers were a kind of sub-over­seer and nom­i­nal­ly were sup­posed to en­sure that the field labour car­ried out the tasks that were mea­sured out for them. These "tasks" were usu­al­ly a sec­tion of the field that need­ed to be har­vest­ed or weed­ed and the as­signed por­tion was mea­sured out with a lengthy bam­boo pole.

The dri­ver

Dri­vers could of­ten be bul­lies, and sore­ly op­pressed those un­der their su­per­vi­sion with the threat of mak­ing false re­ports to the over­seers and man­agers con­stant­ly be­ing front­ed. As any afi­ciona­do of Sir VS Naipaul's works would know, his com­i­cal­ly trag­ic hero, Mr Biswas, spent a short time as an es­tate dri­ver on the fic­ti­tious Green Vale plan­ta­tion. The por­tray­al of the dri­ver by Naipaul shows the mix­ture of fear­ful re­spect mixed with con­tempt with which the post was held by the work­ers.

The sir­dar

The sir­dar or head­man was an­oth­er rung on the es­tate chain of com­mand. He was al­most al­ways an In­di­an whose nat­ur­al lead­er­ship among his coun­try­men sin­gled him out for the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of li­ais­ing be­tween the plan­ta­tion's mid­dle man­age­ment and the field hands. The Sir­dar was in an en­vi­able po­si­tion since through var­i­ous shifty means (which did not pre­clude cheat­ing the man­ag­er through false claims) he was of­ten able to ac­quire much wealth. The Sir­dar was of­ten an op­pres­sor as well, lay­ing about with a heavy hand among his sub­or­di­nates and mak­ing free with the wives of those too weak to op­pose. The Sir­dar was some­times lit­tle bet­ter than a gang­ster with a group of thugs at his beck and call. On pay­days (every oth­er Sat­ur­day), the Sir­dar and some­times the Dri­ver as well, would wait on the fringes of the pay yard where the labour­ers lined up to re­ceive their wages, and would col­lect a "hand" which was ei­ther a bribe for spe­cial favours or pro­tec­tion mon­ey.

Tech­ni­cal staff

Tech­ni­cal work­ers like boil­er­men in the fac­to­ry as well as those who op­er­at­ed the me­chan­i­cal scales at the weigh­bridge were held in some es­teem by the agrar­i­an labour­ers. Their wages were of­ten bet­ter than av­er­age and the high­ly skilled na­ture of their jobs earned them the re­spect of their neigh­bours. On some es­tates, the clerk or book­keep­er was some­times an In­di­an. In these cas­es he was most like­ly a Pres­by­ter­ian con­vert with a sound for­mal ed­u­ca­tion from one of the many pri­ma­ry schools es­tab­lished by that body's Cana­di­an Mis­sion to the In­di­ans.

The carter­man

The star of the cane­field so­ci­ety how­ev­er, was the carter­man. These men were in a class by them­selves, and may be likened in per­son­al­i­ty to the maxi-taxi dri­vers of re­cent times–fel­lows who took pride in their job with a brash swag­ger and a colour­ful per­son­al­i­ty. Carters who worked for the es­tates earned a good liv­ing dur­ing the dry sea­son crop­time since the wage could be as high as five shillings a day. Those who pos­sessed their own carts and draught an­i­mals were proud­ly in­de­pen­dent, and out­side of the cane har­vest, con­tin­ued to make mon­ey by do­ing odd jobs. In the bor­ough of San Fer­nan­do, for in­stance, the con­stant need for road met­al saw a bat­tery of in­de­pen­dent carters pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion for grav­el from the quar­ries on Carib Street and La Pique to wher­ev­er road­works were be­ing done. This was al­most a guar­an­teed source of in­come since the rains washed away the grav­el­ling at a star­tling rate. Carters took im­mense pride in their an­i­mals, which could be stun­ning white ze­bu bulls, pow­er­ful black hog-cat­tle (wa­ter buf­fa­lo) or hardy mules.Sev­er­al ma­jor trans­port and truck­ing en­ter­pris­es evolved from the carters of yore. The carts , with their huge bal­a­ta-spoked wheels, were kept most­ly in top shape with the har­ness be­ing pol­ished to a high gloss. For sheer im­age, there was lit­tle to out­do the carter, perched high and proud with his reins in hand, in the cane­fields of days past.