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a person beyond the Colony to serve within the Colony may be executed in the presence of two witnesses and subsequently indorsed by the magistrate.
98. Every such contract shall clearly express therein the time for which it is to endure, the wages to be paid, the nature of the service to be performed, the sum of money (if any) to be chargeable against and deducted from the wages, and that the employer is bound to provide regular work at stipulated wages for the servant.
Questions between the parties are to be determined by a magistrate in a
summary manner.
99. In practice, and I can speak from several years' experience as a magistrate, the execution of a contract before a magistrate is unknown. There are, however, in the Colony at the present time, especially in the case of skilled labour imported from Shanghai, many contracts of service. In view of the failure to comply with the provisions of the Employers and Servants Ordinance one may query the validity of such contracts.
100. The Ordinance is only invoked occasionally by individual servants who claim wages due, or compensation for dismissal without notice. There were only eleven such cases in the police courts of Hong Kong and Kowloon in 1938 and in most cases the claim was for less than ten dollars.
101. There is, however, a body of law in the Colony generally enforceable only in times of emergency which it is necessary to examine.
102. Section 37 of the Offences against the Person Ordinance No. 2 of 1865 described in the marginal note as deriving from 24 & 25 Vict. c. 100, s. 41, reads:
con-
"Every person who, in pursuance of any unlawul combination or spiracy to raise the rate of wages, or of any unlawful combination 01 conspiracy respecting any trade. business, or manufacture, or respecting any person concerned or employed therein, unlawfully assaults any person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years.'
This would appear to be a survival of pre-1871 legislation. repeal of the section is referred to in paragraph 231.
The proposed
103. The proclamation of the peace under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, No. 10 of 1886, brings into operation certain provisions of the Ordinance.
Section 12 reads:
"Every person who, during the continuance of any such proclamation- (1) unlawfully combines to procure a stoppage of the sale or transit from place to place of provisions or other articles; or
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(2) unlawfully combines to procure shopkeepers, dealers, or other persons to discontinue the sale or transit from place to place of provisions or other articles; or
(3) prevents or endeavours to prevent any person from purchasing or being supplied with any such articles,
shall upon summary conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding fifty dollars, and to imprisonment for any term not exceeding three months.'
Although the section refers only to "provisions or other articles," presumably eiusdem generis, the marginal note reads "Combination to stop trade."
The ordinance was last brought into operation in September, 1931, by Pro- clamation No. 3 of 1931, which was cancelled in June, 1932.
104. In 1912 as a result of the boycott of the Hong Kong Tramways, which insisted on its fares being paid in Hong Kong currency and not in Chinese subsidiary coins, the Boycott Prevention Ordinance No. 41 of 1912 was passed. By section 2 (a) "Boycotting" means and includes the use of any words, or
the