Colonial work regulations protected workers partly to conserve scarce labor

Evidence

Along with regulating the pecule, the new code imposed various obligations upon employers. These constituted the second group of provisions in I925. The employer was responsible for transportation to and from the place of work. In order to guarantee all workers adequate remuneration, the decree allowed the administration to determine a minimum wage. A whole section of Carde’s I 926 arrete on the code’s local application was devoted to work hygiene, prophylaxis, and medical care: “humanitarian reasons,” but also “the future of colonization” required such measures, “in order to prevent the abusive use of unfortunately limited [human] resources.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 840

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing later: how much of the 1925 labor code’s protective provisions was genuine humanitarianism versus labor-supply conservation, and how Carde framed this publicly.
• XREF: The ‘protect limited human resources’ logic parallels the earlier chapters’ method of the civilizing mission pairing rights-granting with labor discipline.