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THE CRUCIBLE
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In 1905 W.W. Bailey 'Tim' Bailey, a rather colourful Scots planter, well-known in local circles, opened up a few miles from Kuala Lumpur the Seaport Estate, which he named after his favourite race-horse; he was also responsible for planting the first rubber on the Petaling Estate nearby which had formerly been planted with coffee - the two estates between them covering most of the land on which Petaling Jaya stands today. In the meantime, during the same year on the other side of the world, a rather less well-known but certainly equally as colourful Irish Chicago lawyer on the threshold of middle age, called Paul Harris, started planting seeds of a different kind, which gave rise to the world's first Rotary Club and which in the course of time propagated the worldwide network of clubs known as Rotary International. We may fairly safely assume that Tim Bailey and Paul Harris never became aware of each other's existence and apart from the coincidence of date, there was no further connection between Chicago or Rotary and Petaling Jaya till one February evening in 1961 almost half a century later when the PJ Rotary Club was officially launched on its way.
By 1961 Rotary International was an established and mature organization, but for those thirty-five Charter members of the PJ Rotary Club that January evening their involvement in creating this latest member of the Rotary circle was like embarking on an entirely new enterprise in which they were the pioneers and pathfinders. In fact, that first post-Merdeka generation to which they all belonged had the unique and heady experience of having a new country to shape and build, and by virtue of their prominent positions in society they were to play a leading role in it. For in 1961 the nation itself was barely four years old and Tunku Abdul Rahman's first public pronouncement of the Malaysian concept still lay another three months ahead. The township of Petaling Jaya was hardly much older than the nation, the last rubber trees falling before the tractors of the developer and the first sods for its construction being turned in February 1953, merely four years before independence.
But within that brief span of eight years between 1953 and 1962 its growth and progress had been phenomenal. By the end of the first year of its existence about 1,000 building sites had been prepared and some 600 timber houses, designed for squatters from Kuala Lumpur, had been built and were ready for occupation. By the end of the following year (i.e. 1954) over 2,200 house lots had been completed - no longer only for squatters, 900 houses had been built, and 300 more were under construction. There were also 40 shops, which, according to the official report, were much more spacious than 'the existing standard type', already open and doing business. By the time of the 1957 census, PJ had a population of 16,600 and ranked 28th in size amongst the towns of the Peninsula, coming just below Jinjang, another new township which had, however, failed to throw off its squatter image.* When we come to the year 1961, the inaugural year of the PJ Rotary Club, Petaling Jaya had already acquired the characteristics of an integrated, well-balanced urban community with its own schools and medical facilities, banks, shops, government offices and entertainment, besides containing the Peninsula's first and most flourishing new industrial zone.
*Today PJ ranks fourth amongst urban areas in the country and has well over a quarter of a million inhabitants.
PJ's emergence as a new satellite town, the first in the country, in the 1950s was a direct response to the conditions which existed as a result of the four years of war and foreign occupation. During that period, while because of prevailing circumstances virtually all economic growth ceased, the increase in population did not; furthermore there was a considerable influx of people from the countryside into the major towns, above all Kuala Lumpur. The consequence was fearful overcrowding and the development of all the social and health problems which follow in its train. The situation was particularly serious in Kuala Lumpur itself, where in one area, so a World Bank Economic Mission reported in the early 1950s, there were 1,800 people crammed together within the confines of one acre. The general shortage of adequate housing was one of the most serious problems that had to be tackled in the aftermath of war. One of the steps taken to overcome it was the establishment of the Federal Housing Trust in 1951, and one of the Trust's first recommendations at the end of the same year was that a satellite town should be built just outside Kuala Lumpur in order to resettle at least part of the capital's surplus population and provide them with the means of employment.
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