April 9, 1898.]
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
he remarks in the memorandum, that the influential companies, those magnificent and wealthy corporations, should actually say and believe that the effect of light dues will be to exclude certain ships from the harbour. What ships will be excluded? Why, if any ships will be excluded it will be the tramps, so that the influential companies will be able to get better rates and obtain the means to pay off the trifling amount which will keep the tramps away. The estimates will be prepared next October, but I may not then have returned to the colony. I therefore venture to hope you will excuse me for putting these views before you, as I shall not then have the opportunity to say anything. But I do think it is a matter which the influential shipping people of Hong- kong may well reconsider. I have great pleasure in proposing the adoption of this voluminous, most valuable, well-considered, and well-written report. (Applause.)
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and August, 1894; in the Colonial Surgeon's report on the epidemic of bubonic plague dated March, 1895; and in
the report of the Medical Officer of Health for 1896. But the sanitary reform посев sary to render the port clean and healthy has not yet been effected. The work should be undertaken forthwith, done thoroughly irre- spective of the cost in money, because until it is. effected "we shall never make any real perman. ent progress towards immunity from filth and disease.” Your new Committee should keep the Government alive to the dangers to public life and property to be apprehended from a con- · tinuance of the plague and should leave no stone unturned until Hongkong is rendered. an uncongenial abode for the plague bacilli. There are advocates who recommend a sys- tematical medical inspection of all vessels entering the waters of the colony, and such inspection could no doubt be carried out, but without proper surveillance would the system prove effective? When the Chinese are ill they will not venture to come to Hongkong. They are afraid of the wholesome treatment extended here to plague patients. The incubation period of plague is usually from three to six days, the limit is ten days, and it appears to me that in view of the large number of Chinese arriving daily in the colony from Canton, Macao, and the mainland, that effective surveillance over so large a number of persons, may be 5,000 or 6,000 or more, is really not practicable, In 1894 medical inspection was in force here, but I understand no plague cases were thereby de- tected. Out of every twelve cases now dis- covered I am credibly informed that about nine or ten are found dead, which shows that the search for cases is very ineffective. remedy is in the hands of the Government, who should at once authorise the requisite increase in the Sanitary Staff, take immediate steps to put the city into a thoroughly sanitary condition, and render Hongkong as far as human energy and ingenuity can make it the reverse of a congenial habitation for the plague bacillus. While this task is being accomplished the question of medical inspection and the stop- page of immigration should be studied, carefully reconsidered, and grappled with in the light of more recent experiences. The demand made by the Imperial Government in the beginning of last year for an increased colonial contribu- tion to the mail subsidy was on 27th February, 1897, referred to a sub-committee composed of Mr. Herbert Smith, Mr. N. J. Ede, and myself, as it was impossible for your committee to pro- nounce an opinion on so important a matter without further information than was then, on 1st March, 1897, before them. The sub-com. mittee made due enquiry, studied the subject, and fully considered despatches and papers on the question, but were unable to obtain from the Imperial through the Colonial Gov- ernment a statement showing the weight of mail matter carried and the gross re- venue derived by each of the following govern ments:-The Imperial Government, the Indian Government, and the various Colonial Govern- ments, from mail matter carried by the English mail service under the subsidy contract with the British Government for the year ending 31st March, 1896. The refusal to supply the infor- mation we asked for is ominous and I conclude that the statement would have shown the de- mand of the Home Government to be unfair, unreasonable, and iniquitous, and an imposition so monstrously unjust that for the present it has been abandoned. The Committee's reply, dated 5th June last, to the Government was based on information and material supplied in the Sub- Committee's report, which report has not been published as usual, though it contains nothing of a confidential nature. In view of the possibility of the internal waters of China being partially opened to foreign trade and steam navigation
Chamber should keep alive to the importance and to the necessity of the maintenance of the freedom of commerce in the markets of the adjoining Empire still largely undeveloped. As an evidence that other Chambers are awake to the vast changes which are taking place I may here quote the memorial addressed to the President of the United States on 3rd Febru- ary last
one another in reference to taxation instead of our all standing shoulder to shoulder ready to pay not two and a half cents per ton but 25 cents per
ton if necessary for the pro- | tection of the British Empire ? We see 16 Chinese run away with a ton of granite. How are they able to do it ? Sixteen Englishmen could not do it-nor 26. It is by their patient application, each one bearing his own burden, and to their ingenuity in so distributing that burden, so that it shall fall fairly upon all I called upon the Harbour Master the other day to ask him a few questions. He pulled out of his desk a paper which I have never seen before, and which I suppose very few in the colony have seen a paper which was provided by him for submission to the Commission which was appointed to investigate the charges upon shipping, and which I really think ought to have been laid upon the table of the Legislative Council, and I hope sincerely that one of the unofficial members will ask that Captain Rumsey's memorandum of July, 1897, upon this important question may be published "In the margin Inoted a pencil memorandum, "Empress steamer, 450 feet radius, 900 feet diameter, 636,174 square feet." I said, "What is that p'i "Oh,” he said, "She goes round and takes up 14 acres in the harbour." Ob," I said, "And what does she pay " Thirty dollars," he replied. Thirty dollars for three weeks?" I asked, "Well," he replied, it is two weeks one half year and three weeks the other." Thirty dollars for three weeks, that seems very little. Any remark I make must not be in the least degree taken as hostile or unfriendly to the Empress steamers. The Empress steamers and the C. P. R. once saved my life. I was dying when I left Montreal and when I got to Hong- kong I was all right. (Laughter.) The space available for shipping is 1,446 acres. I say that that acreage is worth $20,000 an acre. The land on this side is worth $8 a foot. On the other side it is worth $2 a foot, and between should be worth $5 a foot. You may say it is not reclaimed. No; it so it would be spoiled for anchorage, but I say it is worth at least $20,000" an acre and it is the only capital which the colony possesses except stones. Twenty thousand dollars an acre would give us $30,000,000, which certainly ought to bring us in three per cent. That is $900,000. We use the harbour as well as the ships. Let us out the amount in two and take off $450,000. Nine million tons of shipping would just give five cents a ton, not two and a half cents, not one cent but five cents a ton. I hope that the urgent necessity to which Mr. Chamberlain refers may not arise. I believe from what I hear that we shall be able to sustain the withdrawal of the one and a half cents without putting any further taxation on the colony-(hear, hear)— because we are in a good condition, but an urgent necessity may arise. Then again, what is the value of the shipping which comes annually to this colony? Captain Rumsey said that in 1896 it was valued approximately at 80 millions sterling. This now yields to us about £5,000 or 14d in the £100, versus property in the colony worth £4,000,000 sterling, upon which we pay about £50,000 per annum in taxation, or 2,000 times as much as the shipping does. I believe the time will come when the condition of the poor in this colony will have to be taken into account. The second and third class people are multiply. ing very rapidly indeed, and if manufactures are to prosper here we must find a home for a multitude of poor people. People have to live here upon $50 a month. I find, and I be lieve many of you find, it much easier to spend $50 a day than $50 a month and if people are to be taxed for everything what is to become of the poor people at Kowloon who live in 25 dollar a month houses, and what about some of the poor men who live in some of my houses at 54d a week? And they Government has again and again been urgently at no very distant date it is desirable that this are taxed. Mr. Chapman runs after them, puts directed to the insanitary state of the city-in down their number, and collects $1.56 from them the Colonial Surgeon's reports of 1874 and 1875 in the course of the year. The Canton Steam-ordered by the House of Commons to be printed boat Company, that excellently managed in 1881; in Mr. Osbert Chadwick's report on company which is the admiration of us all, the sanitary condition of Hongkong presented pays for 1,500,000 tons 1,700 dollars, whilst to both Houses of Parliament in August, pays the Canton Government about $17,000. 1882, and another report by him dated Captain Ramsey said the line of inducement July, 1890; in the report of the Permanent which we should hold out should be not so
Committee of the Sanitary Board dated much nothing to pay as something to earn, June, 1894; in the reports of the Com- and it is certainly most extraordinary, as mittee on Housing the Chinese dated July.
SPEECH BY THE HON. T. H. WHITEHEAD.
Hon. T. H. WHITEHEAD-Mr. Chairman, Let me offer you my hearty congratulations on the able and exhaustive address which you have just delivered. I earnestly hope that members may have the good fortune to listen to many more such lucid speeches from their Chairman in the future. I will not detain the meeting so long as the last speaker, Mr. Sharp, has done with the few remarks I have to make. Before the report and accounts are passed I desire to again point ont, as I did at last year's annual meeting, that it is very essential the committee to be elected to-day should see to it that the Government does not longer delay effecting much needed and indispensable sanitary reforms, as plague is unhappily again in our midst. I then quoted from a well considered minute written by Mr. Ede some time previous, which reads "Unless some well considered scheme be adopted to abate overcrowding, to resume, lay out, rebuild on new principles, at least the worst section of the town, we shall never make any real permanent progress towards immunity from filth and disease;" and I said, "The emasculated Sanitary Board still with us has rendered and is rendering excellent service, but the law now in existence does not give the Board the power to compel landlords to do what is essential and necessary. Though the Board applied in August, 1896, to have the Public Health Ordinance further amended, Go. vernment so far have delayed giving the powers required." The Commission appointed in 1896 to enquire into the existence of insanitary pro- perties in the colony, &c., sent in their report to Government some time ago, but so far no action appears to have been taken thereon. We know the sad and bitter experience which Bombay is again passing through, and speaking at the annual meeting of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce last month the Chairman said that the composition of Burra bazaar (or the portion of Calcutta in which the native traders and dealers carry on their business) is 75 per cent. of masonry, 15 per cent. roadway, and 10 per cent. court-yards and other open spaces, a condition of things which is infinitely worse than in any other civilised town in the world." It is to be feared Hongkong in little if any better than Calcutta, as it appears from a tabulated statement pre- pared by the Medical Officer of Health that "not more than about 18 per cent. of the Chinese dwellings in the City of Victoria can be regarded as in a fairly good sanitary con- dition." There are very many insanitary properties, many dwellings which in their present condition are unfit for human habita. tion; the back portions of a number of the houses are dark, ill-ventilated, extremely dirty, and in some cases are mere dens of filth or hotbeds of disease. The attention of the
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"The Chamber of Commerce of the State New York beg leave respectfully to represent: