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Q-But where I mean, you have to provide a kitchen and a yard, how can you have three cubicles?
A.-Well, at least two then.
Q. -It is a hardship now, that people can only have one cubicle?
A. It is a hardship.
Q.-Tell us why?
A.Take a man in Hongkong, earning $30 or $40 a month. He has to spend $20 or $25 for a floor. He can't live in Hongkong at all then, but if there are many cubicles then he can rent one for $5, and he can live in Hongkong. If he goes to Canton, for $2 or $3 he can get a floor or a house, a very big house, and very comfortable. If the Govern- ment does not alter this law, then when the Canton-Kowloon railway is built, there will be even less people here. Everyone will go back to the country to live, and the people in the hongs and the merchants will find it very inconvenient. Then the fokis and employees, having their families in the country, will want more leave to go home, and it will cause the inasters great inconvenience.
The Chairman.--At the present moment. we will take this man of $30 or $35 a month. If he can't take the whole floor, and if his wife and family here have to go back to their native village, where does he live? What sort of a place does that man go to live in?
A. According to the custom in Hongkong, a great many of the masters when they engage their men, give them also a place to live in, but if they dont get a place to live in, being men, it does not matter,- -a number can go into one room, and it does not matter.
Mr. Fung Wa Chun.Take Jardines, yourself, never mind the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank,-all your shroffs, when they have no families in Hongkong, where do they live ?
A.-We rent a house for them to live in.
Q.-That means a big flat?
A. Yes.
Q. And they put beds all round?
A. Yes.
Q. And in that place, they dont mind seeing one another, because they are all men ?
A. Yes.
Mr. Shelton Hooper.-Well now, if these regulations were not in force against cubicles, all these men would have a floor, and have their families up in Canton ?
A. If there were cubicles, they would bring their families down here to live.
Q-And therefore the Colony suffers first of all because it does not get so much rent for the houses, so much chow is not provided and purchased in the Colony, and if the rent is not so much for the houses, the Government loses a proportion of rates, and the Colony suffers in general?
A. Certainly..