Recruitment was bungled from the outset, starting with interpreters who spoke only Cantonese rather than the Mandarin dialect of these mostly northern recruits. Chinese overseers were appointed from among the workers to enforce discipline. These “Chinese Police” or “police boys” filled the role of venal middlemen found in all unfree labor systems. As in all indentured workforces, indebtedness became a manacle of enslavement, the main entrapments being gambling and opium purchases, businesses the “Chinese police” ran for their own profit.