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A.--It would, but the photographs would have to be renewed from year to year. The coolies chauge in features and in expression. They get very much altered, and young boys after a little service grow up and look quite different.
Q.—I don't think they change sufficiently much year by year, but it would be necessary to have new photographs from time to time. Do you know anything about coolie lodging-houses?
A. I know they lodge in one place.
Q.
And do you know that the coolie lodging-house keeper stands in the light of a master of a club to them?
A.-Well, yes.
He is headman to them and he collects so much from each man.
Q.-Do private coolies go to these lodging-houses?
A.-There are lodging-houses where private coolies go as well.
The Chairman.Do they contract then for so much a month whether they live there or not?
A.--Well, that depends upon the arrangement they make, but I think those who do not live on the premises don't have to pay anything.
Q-That is what we want to know whether they merely paid their proportion of rent whilst they were staying there?
A. -I do not know.
Q-You think the lodging-house keepers have considerable power with the coolies?
A. Undoubtedly they have. They look to the headman always for anything. They respect him.
Q.-Do yon think the chair coolies are at any time intimidated or could be intimi- dated to the extent of being compelled to boycott an employer?
A.-I think they could.
Q.--Have you known any such cases?
A.--I have heard of cases but I can't refer you to them.
Q.-But you don't think there is any regular guild or even a regular club in the ordinary sense of the term?
A.- No.
Q. Are you aware that there is a scarcity of coolies for private employ at present?
I have heard so.
A.
Q.-And
you don't think there is any particular cause for it except that they are going away on account of plague? You don't think the rate of wages earned in other occupations has an influence upon them?
A.-Well, there is this that they may be going away on account of bigh rent and the price of food going up and everything so dear. Some Chinese find it difficult to live here and they prefer, with the plague troubling them now and again, to leave the Colony and go back to their own country. What they are afraid of is that, if they get sick they will be taken to Hospital and they go away before they become sick.
Q. An explanation given to me for the exodus during the plague season is this, that they earn such high wages that they are able to go away and live on their savings of the six months without working during the months of the plague. I don't think that they go away on account of the plague altogether ?