October 14, 1899.}
BOWLING ANALYSIS.
8
Benn
H. E. Green... 8
17 11
Stokes
4
1
16
Isat ............... 5
11 Б
Lee............ 8
THE ROYAL HONGKONG GOLF
CLUB.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
325
regard to promotions, they are frequently 50 | kong and Macao which will afford a useful Overs, Maid, Runs. Wides. N.B. Wickets. erratio and unreasonable to the "looker on as object lesson. In short, the Inspector General to appear positively farcical. I include all shows by his careful consideration on the one branches of the Service, except perhaps the hand an utter want of consideration on the lighthouse staff. Men who have laboured hard other how to distinguish fish and flesh. and diligently for years are passed over and the plums given to comparative youngsters. Now and again, when a man has been left upon the shelf for perhaps a score of years he seems to be suddenly remembered and is perhaps raised in rank or emolument, but on the whole promotions are marked by a distinot want of system. There is no regulation for gradual rising from class to class, no specified time for an officer to spend in one grade before advancing to another, no test of ability or fitness imposed, and nothing to go by except Commissioners' confidential reports, which are frequently misleading, and in some instances at least confidential reports have de- generated so much as to have become a gross abuse.
QUARTERLY MEETING,
There was a fair attendance again on the links, but only a few cards were handed in. A tie resuited for all the events, as the undernoted returns show :---
MACEWEN CUP.
Mr. G. H. W. Sexton 103 18 85 Mr. G. Stewart.
89 Mr. J. H. T. MoMartin 91 Mr. E. E. Deacon
85
0
91
110
18
92
·
23 entries.
POOL.
Mr. P. de C. Morriss 94 9
Mr. G. Stewart
89
Mr. J. H. T. MoMurtin 91 0
16 entries. BOGEY CUP.
88888
85
85
}
91
Mr. P. de C. Morriss. 4 down rec, 7 strokes Mr. G. Stewart...
4
3
17
*
0 9
+1
Mr. J. H.T. McMurtin 6 Lieut. Tulloch, R.A... 7
Mr. E. A. Ram... 9
督要
+1
11
tie
tie
tie
19 entries. The tie for the October Captain's Cup re- sulted in a win for Mr. E. E. Deacon by one stroke.
CORRESPONDENCE.
[We do not hold ourselves responsible for the opinions expressed by our correspondents.]
THE CHINESE CUSTOMS SERVICE-No. 1.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "DAILY PRESS.'
SIE,—The revenue of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs having been pledged to sus- tain the national credit, and as under the altered circumstances the Service and its condition and workings has become a matter of public interest, I venture to ask for space in your valuable columns in order to point out that although the Service has grown from a nucleus of a few score to thousands, practically nothing has been done in the way of progress or reform, so as keep the Service abreast of the times.
The same old methods that prevailed in the fifties are the rule of to-day, the same old uni- form, the same old regulations, in fact the Ser- vice is jogging on in the same old way, despite the fact that, octapus like, it has spread its tentacles to some of the remotest parts of China. I am not now making an attack upon Sir
Robert Hart.
The I.M.C. is a public Service and should not be above criticism. No man in the world can hope to escape having his actions subjected to criticism when it is done in the public interest and is decorous and free from personal motive.
Sir Robert Hart has played a great game in China and played it well, but like all other mortals, he has made mistakes and committed errors, some of which might be magnified into grand faults. It is not my purpose to attack or defend a particular individual, but simply to draw attention to the Inspector General of Customs' (anti-progressive attitude upon certain questions, and to draw attention to certain great anomalies, which should not be permitted to exist.
With your permission I will reserve this for a future letter.-with the usual apologies. I remain, yours truly,
Hongkong, 6th October, 1899,
No. 2.
带着
F.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY PRESS.”
SIE-In my last letter I promised to show that the Inspector-General of Customs took up an anti-progressive attitude upon certain questions, and permitted and even encouraged certain gross anomalies. To begin with, let us turn to the question of promotions and transfers. With
Far too much power is placed in the hands of Commissioners. No mere man, no matter how exalted he may be, should be able to make a oovert attack on the reputation or ability of a subordinate. If it is impossible to do away with confidential reports, they should be so suri ouuded by safeguards as to be absolutely reliable. This is very far from being the case at present.
With regard to transfers, they are for the most part anomalous. It is not unusual, for in- stance, to see one man in the course of a few years jogging from port to port at great expense and immense trouble, while another will be found staying in Shanghai for twenty years or more amid the greatest comforts and con- veniences. The opinion very largely prevails in the Service that many promotions are marked by an utter want of excuse and are unjust to those passed over, and that transfers are con.. ducted by rule of thumb.
A glance at the Service list will shew how ohaotic the Service has become the A's and B's, the classes, the men who belong to one rank and are doing duty in another, in some cases over their seniors, in short a state of things anomalous and bewildering beyond up an extra division on their own account, thus Some Commissioners have even set making confusion worse confounded.
measure.
BYS-
should take the place of the present want of
Some simple and more easily definable system tem. Promotion and transfers should be gov- erned by common sense, and all erratic jump- ing" carefully avoided. Until this is done dis- content will continue to prevail and grow. (To be continued)
Hongkong, 7th October, 1899.
No. 3.
B.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "DAILY PRESS.”
SIR,-Having dealt with the question of promotions and transfers in the I. M. Customs, I will now proceed to dissect the much vexed question of privileges. Obviously a matter so surrounded with difficulties needs approaching with considerable circumspection. It is not my wish or intention to give offence to any person, in drawing attention to the enormous difference between the Indoor and the Outdoor Staff, I will deal with this division further on.. I am not actuated by any malicious motive. It is simply my desire to make plain that it is not polite now-a-days to draw class distinctions too fine, nor to confer great privileges upon one division and give practically none to the other. A policy of this kind makes the one branch of the Service selfish and the other discontented. I will first take the question of
home leave.
The Indoor Staff man is entitled to two years' leave at the end of seven years' service; the Outdoor man to one year at the end of ten years. Let any body who runs read this and say is it either fair or just.
The Indoor staff serve seven years for one year's pay. The Outdoor ten years.
Quarters-The Indoor mess is always com. fortably furnished at the Government expense and is a good a building as the place can afford; the Outdoor gets nothing but a small house allowance; sometimes the same will not even cover the house rent. To any body de sirous of fuller information on this point there are districts not a thousand miles from Hong
A claim, of course, may be made that socially and educationally the Indoor members are supe erior to the members of the Outdoor Staff. I am not going to contest this point, which may or may not be true. What I will say is this that after an officer has proved himself capable and efficient, he should not be carefully thrust be- tween the latest jumior 4th Asst. B. It is alto gether a pernicions policy and gives the Indoor man a false and exaggerated notion of his own importance. Instances have not been wanting where young cads of a few years' service have created quite a lot of unpleasantness, becausé the Chief Examiner, perhaps a man practically of twenty or more years' service, did not salute them, it being held that as the Out- door Staff is an inferior branch of the Service they must salute all members of the Indoor. Nor is this unfair and ludicrous separation due to superior conduct on the part of the Indoor Staff as compared with the Outdoor Staff. It is notorious that during the agitation prior to the increase of pay being granted, the 1. G. was being attacked upon various points in the newspapers by the members of the Indoor. Then we have had the abortive attempt at rebellion, the agent of which found his way to Hongkong. Various cases of dishonesty and misconduct have also had to be desit with. . In.... point of fact, the Outdoor are certainly not in it in many things with certain members of the In- door. In spite of this the Indoor Staff had their pay doubled. The moral of this is so obvious as to make further comment quite un- necessary and I won't go any further; but simply conclude this article by saying that the... policy of dividing the Service by privileging one class and separating it by a very wide chasm from mixing with the other, giving it a spurious hall mark as it were, is both bad in practice and principle, and should be discontinued.-(To be continued.)
B.
Hongkong, 9th October, 1899.
No. 4.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ** DAILY PRESS.' I will endeavour to make this letter cover both SIE,-In order to bring this series to a close Lighthouse and Coast Departments. I must premise what I am about to say by stating that I am comparatively ignorant of the feeling in both these branches of the Service, having been rarely brought into contact with them. I have, however, frequently heard that the lighthouse. keepers bitterly complain about the long years of confinement they are called upon to endure at comparatively low pay. Every twelve years. they are entitled to one year's leave. So frightfully isolate and dull is this life that a certain kind of unmarried union is not only tolerated but countenanced. This is not as it should be in a public service. It would be a thousand times better to have a staff sufficiently large to relieve the men at proper intervals, as is done in every other properly conducted Service. To encourage a state of things such as described is false economy and tends to scandal. They should, as in other places, spend so much time at their lighthouse sad so much time at work on shore. In my opinion the British system could very easily be adopted
The Coast Service is much better in social standing and they get good pay and a certain amount of liberty, yet here again erratic pro- motions are, or rather were, more or less the rule, and not only is no inducement held out to men to settle down and marry, but marriage is con. sidered a bar.
I believe many of the grievances set forth in these letters are due to the fact that the ad- ministration is in the hands of one man, who, however able he may be in the abstract, has not the ability to cope almost alone with so vast an establishment as the I.M.C. has become.
When the Russian Minister was agitating to remove Britishers from the Imperial Service a golden opportunity was lost. The IM.C. should then have been put into the hands of an International commission. This would have sthengthened it and would have obtained for It the suppart of all the Powers instead of the