CHAPTER XV
OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE
The great majority of the people of Burma are farmers and peasants, dwellers in villages. Out of a total population of about 12,000,000 as enumerated in 1911, only rather more than a million were townsmen. The remainder constituted the rural population of whom about 8,500,000 were returned as occupied with pasture and agriculture or dependent thereon. The main occupation, agriculture, is the subject of the last chapter. Here we deal with other arts and crafts.
Dependent on the supply of rice is the important rice-milling industry which flourishes at Rangoon and the other principal ports. This is not an indigenous occupation, being directed almost exclusively by European firms; but it gives employment to large numbers of workers, Burmans, and immigrants. Other industries which owe their prosperity to foreign influences are oil-winning and oil-refining; cotton-ginning; and the conversion of timber at saw-mills. The extent to which mining is pursued has been indicated in the chapter on Minerals. Similarly, the extraction of timber for local use and export, and cutch boiling, in both of which many Burmans are employed, have been mentioned in the pages devoted to forests.
Next to agriculture fishing is the greatest native industry. It is carried on mainly in the Delta of the Irrawaddy and on the sea coast. Dependent on this is the manufacture of ngapi or fish paste.
Of indigenous handicrafts, boat-building, cart-making and the fashioning of rude ploughs and other agricultural implements, are widely spread. The making of byit (fringes) of dani leaves for walls and roofs of houses is practised
