CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (Continuation).
About the same time questions such as proper lighting of the harbour approaches and adequate surveys of the China Coast arose and were dealt with; while currency questions again cropped up, a protest being lodged against the Government's decision to withdraw the dollar note of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (see 28-8-33). As regards surveying the coastline, a fund was commenced and administered thereafter by the Chamber, out of which Chinese fishermen are awarded a gratuity for drawing attention to dangerous rocks or shoals which might not be charted (see 9-11-33).
In 1874 the vexed question of the local dollar arose yet again. The Government addressed the Chamber on the advisability of admitting the American trade dollar and Japanese yen to circulation here as legal tender, owing to a scarcity of Mexican dollars. After much discussion a resolution to request that a proper standard dollar be minted for the Colony was adopted.
It was not until 1877, however, that coinage again loomed largely in the Chamber's records. In this year the chopped "dollar controversy" (how history repeats itself!) became acute, owing to the large proportion of such defaced coins—sometimes so marked by the various Chinese firms through whose tills they had passed, that the original coin had lost a great deal of weight, had lost its shape, and even the inscription become illegible. It became necessary to weigh every such coin in order to value it. Mr. Hewett wrote in his history of the Chamber at that period:
In the earlier days of foreign trade with South China the "Carolus" or "Pillar" Dollar, as it was called, was the principal medium of exchange. This was shortly followed by the Mexican dollar and later by the New Mexican and the United States trade dollar. The question was now raised by the Chinese members of the Community who presented a petition to the Chamber of Commerce praying that steps be taken to legalize the circulation of all classes of dollars (old or new) which had hitherto been in circulation, chopped or otherwise.
Considerable difference of opinion was expressed by the various members of the Chamber with regard to the proposal put forward by the Chinese, but finally the following resolution proposed by Mr. (later Sir) Thomas Jackson was accepted:
"That the Committee be instructed to reply to the Colonial Secretary's letter of 14th April, 1877, that this Chamber advocate that Government make chopped dollars weighed at 7.17 a legal tender in this Colony. Such dollars to be whole and not either clipped or pierced."
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