of illustration are nevertheless at times neces. sary. I hope. therefore. I will be excused for making use of them in the present case.
A P. & 0. mail steamer enters this port and pays 24 cents a ton for that one entry; she pro- geeds to Shanghai and pays 66 cents a ton, this would clear her for four months in all Chinese treaty ports, but, as she does not go to these, it practically amounts to her entry at Shanghai, and she can only return once during the fou months for which the "chop" holds good.
A Canadian Pacific Railway steamer enters Shanghai, pays 66 cents a ton for a few hours, and proceeding to Hongkong lies here three weeks at a cost of 2 cents a ton. The entry at Shanghai ou the return voyage reduces the cost of the "Grand Chop" to 33 cents, but only by making two complete trips in four months can she reduce her payment to China to about 30 per cent. more than for those trips she has paid in this British port.
So much for the "trank liners." On the other hand, a "Douglas" or "Indo. China" steamer enters, pays the same 24 cents à ton, remains here for 12 or 24 hours, and re- turning again in three days from Canton or the Coast has to again pay light dues.
A quarterly or half yearly port tax seems, therefore, to be the fairest. Vessels could then go in and out continually, availing themselves of the lights, or lie in harbour occupying space, as may seem best for the peculiar circumstances of each branch of trade. But, of course, that tax could not remain at 2 cents a ton..
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
Then again as to the present dues paid by river steamers. Twenty years ago or there abouts when light dues were first imposed on European shipping (junks had contributed to the revenue for eight years previous to this), these river steamers were given exceptional rates in order to foster a particular trade. That trade has now arrived at a position quite capable of paying a fair share of the expenses of a Govern- ment under the agis of which it was created.
At the present rate of light dues these vessels, under the special privilege of paying only one- third of the fixed rate, and that only for those of them which arrive at night (all the other being free of the port), paid lest year $3,506 for a total tonnage arriving, adauting to considerably over a million and a half of tons, or at the rate of less than à of a cent per ton, and side by side with this they have been paying, if my informa- tion is correct, about $17.000 at Canton for the same period.
in unity, unity in duality, for capital is but stored up labour, and if it can purchase twice as much in the East as it can in the West, to the East it will go, sooner or later. Yet the West has reason in declining to accept silver, when the fortunate accident of having gone gold has doubled the value of its gold investments. What to the West is impoverishment of land- lords? It means but the submergence of a class who had their day in the good old times of corn laws and railway manias. There are so many wealthy people in England now, wealthy from the double returns coming in from gold lodged abroad, that they can afford to buy up these impoverished landlords as they drop out of the running, without pansing to count the cost. What to them are low prices for farm produce, what to them an exodus of farm labourers to the cities? Nothing but more land for game preserves, fewer wire fences to impede hunting, abandon ment of the dales and glades of Eugland to the Hebrew and the money lender. It would be more to the point were they to wake up some day and find a sixpenny loaf oosting a shilling, milk threepence a pint advanced to sixpenos, and batter a shilling a pound, before unobtainable except for two shillings. Would there not be plaints from the charitable, would not philan- trophy run mad bewailing the lot of the poor (the poor capitalist) under such altered condi. tions? The West can still point to no diminution of chimneys smoking in the manufacturing dis- tricts, to no reduction in the weekly wage of operatives, now worth all the more owing to the low price of provisions, and can also advance this great test point, that the earnings of work people, the earnings of railways, and therefore the visible earnings of commerce, show no shrinkage. Why, then, should the West submit to the diction of bimetallists that everything will be ruined un- less it decides to exchange gold for silver at very much above what silver sells for P There has been no struggle yet between capital and labour, no great nor general labour war, why then should the West anticipate an evil day and provide against what may never occur? If people in the West choose that agriculture should be secondary to game preserving, why should people in the East trouble themselves about it? If people in the East say the manufacturing industries of the West are being slowly transferred to the East, surely that will be good for the East aud is no more than should be expected, hoped for. looked for, from the well known energy and enterprise of Englishmen who seek for tune abroad. But when the East speaks
manufacturing industries of of the West being ruined by Eastern competition, the East knows not what it is talking about, and whole factories continue to smoke and work people do full time and draw full wages the people of the West will be governed by hard facts before their eyes rather than by fancies which originate in the East. And yet with every respect for the opinion of the West, the people of the West do close their eyes to what must come to pass if there is any truth in the sentence which heads this paper-wages unchanged in the East, wages doubled in the West. The inefficiency of labour in the East compared with labour in the West may be sevenfold Given the appliances of the 37.-Telegraphic and telephonic communica. Fast it might be, and where those appliances tion, with some few breaks, has also been kept have been turned to manufacture it is. very up with the Gap Rock and Cape D'Aguilar much less, but on the broad ground of wages, daring the year. From the former station, 373 labour costs one seventh less in the East than it vessels have been reported as passing, and in does in the West If labour in the West through addition 233 me ssages were received and 1,615 appreciation of gold has advanced one hundred sent, including the daily weather report for the per cent., the East should now command fourteen Observatory.
fold the labour of the West, and it does for From Cape D'Aguilar 983 vessels were re-whereas before the East could buy only 4 ounces ported, and in addition 31 messages were sent of silver, or 10 rapees, or 4 dollars, for a and 106 received.
sovereign, it can now buy 9 ounces of silver, or as much as is contained in 24 rupees or in 101 dollars. Twenty years ago the wage maker in the THE SILVER QUESTION.
West got 1,600 grains of silver for his sovereign COMMUNICATED. |
and the wage maker in the East got 1,650 grains Wages unchanged in the East: wages doubled for his. Twenty years later the wage maker in the West such in brief is the sum and in the East gets 3,300 grains of silver in current substance of gold monometallism. And yet there rupees or 4,000 grains of silver in dollars for his are people in the East who worry themselves to sovereign, while the wage maker of the West find arguments sufficiently powerful to convince gets, as before, only 1,600 grains for his. And people in the West that the only salvation of the West believes or professes to believe that its Western industries is bimetallism, not bime 1,600 grains of silver are and will continue to be tallism at anything like the present ratio but as effective as the 3,300 and 4,000 grains of silver bimetallism at some very much higher ratio in the East. Therein lies the mistake of the just as if the fact of wages being doubled in the West. If there was no silver coin in the West, West were not the most convincing argument if all payments were made in gold, a gold bit which could be employed to indicate the direction might be effective. But inasmuch as gold is capital will take. Capital and labour, duality I rarely employed in paying wages and is not use
They thus contribute to the Chinese revenue about five times more than to the revenue of the colony whose flag they fly and the protection of whose laws they crave,
I am not advocating the cause of the Chinese methods of obtaining revenue, I merely wish to illustrate to those. who are accustomed to hear a sort of
"commination service" read, having the "freedom of the port "for its theme, how very mild our methods are in Hongkong.
36. The lighthouses were maintained as usual during the year. The new lenses for Gap Rock. to replace those injured by the typhoon in October 1893, arrived from England and light was restored to its original condition of efficiency in May
the
April 17, 1895
ful in the every day transactions of the wage earner's life, the 80 grains of silver, or a shilling. which are given in lien of a gold bit are not effective, as may readily be seen in America, which is being depleted of gold through the efforts of government to maintain a par between their gold and silver coins. If England were a debtor nation the same thing would speedily occur there, but being a oreditor nation the divergenos between gold and silver must operate in some other way, and that way must be by re- turn to a wage basis the equivalent of twenty years ago, which means lopping off one half the operative's present earnings. It is difficult to bring such a large issue forcibly to the minds of those not directly interested. There is a population of some 40 millions in the United Kingdom of which half may be women. Of the males there are old and young non-workers, the army and navy and those connected with the government service, the upper ten and the leisured class, so that of the males there may not be 10 million workers. How many of these are wage makers, how many agricultural- ists, how many operatives, how many unproduc tive workers, how they are divided I confess I do not know, but still it is necessary to form some idea of numbers to understand how many are likely to be hit by the fall in silver and how many there are who cannot see any evil in it be cause their pockets have not yet been touched. To divide the 10 millions up some way, suppose one million to be wage makers, two millions to be non-producers, three millions to be operatives, and four millions to be agriculturalists. To take the last class first, there must be grave doubt whether they know anything about silver. Com- petition by farm produce from abroad they un- dorstand, cheap bread stuffs from America, Russia, India, cheap beef and mutton, butter and cheese from America, Australia, Holland, cheap milk and eggs from the Continent, but why those things should be cheap aad declining in value they do not stay to reason out. More- over, have they cause to reason it out, has the wage of the agricultural labourer been touched by decline in agricultural produce? I think not. The outcry for a number of years was that the agricultural labourer was underpaid and the trend of public opinion has been to feed him better, house him better, and educate him better, not to cut down his wages. While those wages are untouched he may grumble at hard times, bat it would be difficult to make him understand want a fall in silver had to do with them. could much more readily understand how tithes, taxes, and landlords could raise or lower his earnings, than he could see where cheap silver came in to interefere with them. Next, as to There operatives, the case is much the same. has been no strike, no lockout in consequence Strikes and lockouts of decline in silver. there are and have been, but none which can be immediately traced to silver, and while work and pay keep up
to the average, an artizan may take a curious but can- not be expected to take any very lively interest in a question which has not brought about any decrease in his wages, but which has very greatly increased the return he obtains for them. He might on the contrary become a lively opponent of any solution of the silver question if he mastered the fact that advance in silver would cause his bread and butter, beef and beer, to be dearer, while there would be no corresponding in- crease in wages. As to non-producing workers, their wages are probably governed by the spend. ing power of other wage earners, and while full wages prevail in other trades and expenditure is not curtailed, there is no reason to suppose that decline in silver affects them. We have thus out of the whole population of the United King! dom perhaps not more than a million people who are really in touch with silver and these million people are agricultural and manufacturing wage makers. There have been great strides of late years in labour saving appliances, both agricul tural and manufacturing; indeed, had there not agriculturalists and manufacturers would long ago have been wiped out; but still, whatever improve ments have been effected they are insufficient in themselves to compensate for the double wages of labour in the West compared with what labour commands in the East. Changes cannot be too often rung upon this one fact, that there has yet been no decline in wages in England and until that decline sets in people in England will not realise what decline in silver means. Tell the average Englishman that during the past
He