improving, the wash has diminished in value, and the owner is obliged to relinquish it. It paid remarkably well at one time." There are those who argue that his were the first true capitalist Chinese enterprises in the country and not those of Yap Ah Loy. Innovation and leadership Chung Keng Quee was the first miner to experiment with hydraulic machinery. He was a progressive miner, farsighted and innovative and this together with his close relationship with Sir Hugh Low helped spur on the economic development of the territory. In 1878 on a visit to his mines at Larut, Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson the Governor of the Straits Settlements (1877–1879), was impressed to see a steam pump, installed by the Perak Government at Chung Keng Quee's request on the undertaking that if successful it would be taken over and rented by the mine. Sir Hugh Low introduced the portable steam pump for draining mines in the protected states in 1878 by first demonstrating its usefulness in Chung Keng Quee's mines. Convinced by the practical results of a real demonstration, owners of large mines in Perak, Selangor and Sungei Ujong soon had similar pumps installed, overcoming the periodic problem of flooding that used to bring work at the mines to a virtual standstill. Revenue farming By 1888 he held the General Farm (taxes upon gambling, spirits and pawnbroking) of Kuala Kangsar, the North and South Larut Coast Farm and the Opium Farm of Lower Perak. In 1890 he obtained the Penang Opium Farm. By 1891 he had the Kinta General Farm and the General Farm and Opium Duty Farm of Kuala Kangsar and in 1895 he had the General Farm of Perak and the Coast and Opium Farms of Lower Perak. He acquired the Kinta General Farm in August 1890 at a considerably reduced price. In 1889, after the Pangkor settlement of 1874, Sir Hugh Low, British Resident at Perak, gave over most of the Larut and Kurau opium, gambling, spirits, pawnbroking and tobacco farms to Chung, Keng Quee and his business partner, Khoo, Thean Teik. In Penang, Chung, Keng Quee and his friends and relatives made up one of three similar syndicate groups that dominated the Opium Farms there. Chung Keng Quee apart from being a man of vision was also a great risk-taker. Sir Hugh Low in his own notes describing negotiations over the leasing out of the