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THE CHINESE SERVANT.
(Daily Press, 21st March.) Home papers of the frivolous, chatterboxy kind continue to discuss the somewhat stale
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suggestion that the servant question" at Home might be answered by the importa tion of Chinese servants. In England the Board School and the penny novelette have made the good domestic servant of two or three generations ago a rara avis.
Offices, factories, early (and unhappy) mar- riages-all these catch the "sweet sixteen " of the humbler orders; but for her, domestic service has no attractions. On the contrary, it repels. Governesses there are by hun- dreds also teachers of alleged music: but very few housemaids or cooks. Governesses and pretty teachers marry Earls-in the novelette; but there is no record of a house maid becoming a titled lady. This may have something to do with it. Whether the numbers of domestic servants who do exist are as bad as their mistresses make out, we do not know. Mistresses are human, and humanity is prone to little
a
prosperous
worries all the world over. Still, we have no doubt that Board Schools, and the novelette, have brought about a certain deterioration in the species. In talking of employing the Chinese boy," however, these good people know not what they do. They would leap from a merely uncomfor- table frying-pan into blazing torments of the most lurid description. It is our duty to state, once and for all, here and now, that the Chinese "boy" is a horror. As a Chancellor of the Exchequer, we could imagine him bettering Mr. AUSTEN CHAM- BERLAIN's best. As a financier in the City, we could conceive of him as making his mark in some sort. As a cashier in a big and busy store, he might do well, particu- larly for himself. As pirate, likely to let his victims know the worst at
once, his Success in life would seem to us to be assured; and he would, to a not too sthetic eye, make a becoming tassel to a fairly long and strong rope. As a house servant, or even as a hotel servant, he is out of place. He is never so much in the way, either, as when he is out of place; but that is, of course, a too facetious reference to his habit of quartering himself with some other hospit- able " boy "who is not yet out of a place. There are, we believe, human beings going about the world who say that the China boy" is a good servant. The most charitable construction seems to be the usual one of temporary insanity. He is not a good servant.
He is about the worst that could possibly be imagined. He is dis- honest, he is lazy, he is dirty, he is im- pudent, he is incredibly cunning. The best of his kind is the one to watch, and swear at, and dismiss, and mourn for, and invite back again, to make you pay, you may be sure, through the nose for your temporary attack of self-assertion. He is capable of the meanest and most maddening revenges. If he be prevented from squeezing on the table decorations, he
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will see to it that none but withered or damaged flowers appear on the table. It is: on record that, being prevented from ex- adting a commission on the kitchen veget. ables, he deliberately soiled and made unsavoury all that came to table. Save where an energetic mistress is in the habit of chevying him about his work, the removal of almost any light article of furniture will disclose the dust of ages behind it. He breaks things, sticks them together temporarily with soap and a bit of string, and when the damage is ultimately discovered, he has "no savvy," or concludes
65
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
that the boy who was there before him must have done it. To treat him with kindness, as a human being, is a confession of weakness which he is prompt to take advantage of. To treat him otherwise is to invite all sorts of reprisals, including the very awkward boycott, the organisation and working of which he thoroughly understands; while in Hongkong, to administer the corporal chastisement that he would assuredly get in Shanghai, is to incur the certainty of magisterial intervention and unpleasant notoriety. All those who boast possession of a good boy" speak truthfully, with reservations. They shut their eyes to much, and they pay very high rates indeed for his goodness." Others who speak highly of him, globetrotters and the like, know nothing about him; and especially are they ignorant of what he thinks and says of them, else would their chorus of praise cease with ludicrous rapidity. There may be other bad servants in the world. There doubtless are. But that there are any to equal the Chinese house-boy, for general depravity and allround worthlessness, at any rate as he exists in Hongkong, is too much to ask us to believe. He is one of those objectionable creatures in whom it is hopeless to look for reform, compulsory or voluntary. The only conceivable way to improve him would be, as MARK TWAIN might say, with a club-a big, hard, heavy club, with jagged spikes on the knobby end of it.
CHINESE MINING REGULATIONS.
(Daily Press 22nd March.)
"It is in the exploitation of her mineral resources that one might look for a great improvement in China's material condition." These were the words opening a particularly interesting part of Mr. BYRON BRENAN's recent lecture to the Society of Arts, a part
which we do not remember to have seen
The native method has been
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[March 25, 1905. enterprise in this direction. They provide that Chinese must retain a controlling interest in any company formed, and licences are issued for only thirty years, applicable to areas of not more than ten square miles, while the royalty of five per cent. on all coal extracted is almost prohibi- tive to those contemplating the development of a new mine which may, or may not, prove to be a profitable one. Mr. BRENAN has already confirmed our impression that the Chinese official regard for the welfare of the people is a negligible quantity; and while the promised revised regulations are still to come, it is small wonder if prospective enterprisers estimate them on the basis of those already quoted, and refuse to invest either capital or labour under such shadowy conditions and unpromising auguries. Meanwhile, while this obstructive spirit at headquarters continues, the Chinese pro. vincial authorities are continuing a course of action which must inevitably embarrass all future movements to make China more prosperous. Actuated as much by political as financial ambition, various concessionaires are reported to have obtained exclusive mining rights over huge areas which they
will never be able adequately to develop. These huge slices, embracing both fat and lean mining land, if their grant be con- firmed, will not be developed in the way that China herself, if wise, would wish them, while their non-availability would be a further discouragement to the bona-fide enterprisers who may confidently be ex- pected to come forward whenever the terms of the new commercial treaty are honestly fulfilled. Mr. BRENAN suggests that the attention of the Chinese Government should be at once drawn to the proceedings of the provincial governors; and while it may do no good, some such action is certainly desirable on the part of the British repre- sentative at Peking.
ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN VIEWS OF CONTRABAND.
Daily Press, 23rd March.
Echoes of
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quoted or commented upon by the Home papers coming under our notice. The fact that many people in England have lately been expressing alarm at the approaching exhaustion of the British coalfields lends▾
a controversy that Lord additional importance to the statement that | LANSDOWNE described as
protracted and- in China there lies, practically untouched, anxious" reach us with the White Book sufficient coal to supply the whole world for that was presented to Parliament when it three thousand years.
Practically un-opened in February last. It contains the touched, we have said; and should add that correspondence, respecting contraband of only lately have a few foreigners been per- war, which passed between Great Britain mitted to make proper excavations, chiefly and the two Powers at war, the bulk of it in territories described as their spheres of being with Russia. It all hinged, of course, on the famous St. Petersburg proclamation influence.
of 14th February, 1904, which the TSAR was graciously pleased to endorse "let it be so." In May, the addition of raw cotton to the Russian list of contrabands was explained on the ground that it was the impossible to distinguish between cotton imported for innocent purposes and cotton to be used in the manufacture of our representative was explosives; but, assured, "there was no intention of introduc- ing a new doctrine of contraband of war." A letter received by Lord LANSDOWNE on June 13th shows how Count LAMSDORFF entertain- ed the opinion that "in the absence of any
simply to scrape away the more obvious outcrops, and the annual import of coal into China is put at 1,400,000 tons, costing about £1,000,000. In coal mining, then, Mr. BRENAN sees greater attractions for the employment of British capital. He has also a careful eye for the improvement in the condition of the people that would result from the opening of coal mines on a large and profitable scale. Unfortunately, before British capital can be so invested, there will have to be another of the big fights with Chinese official obtuseness, for the adequate revision of the mining regula- tions, promised by China in the new Com- mercial Treaty following the events of 1900, was not, contraband of war, it appeared to has not been effected. China then under- be within the power of a belligerent to took, "with all expedition and earnestness,'
̧" | arbitrarily decide what articles were to be to study the mining regulations in force in so considered." By August 10th, after the Great Britain, India, and elsewhere, with a view to adopting such as would "offer no impediment to the attraction of foreign capital," and promote at the same time the interests of Chinese subjects. The only sets of mining regulations published during the two years following that treaty are distinctly discouraging to the chances of foreign
international decision as to what was, or
incidents in the Red Sea, Lord LANSDOWNE was writing in accordance with the “ utmost gravity" of the situation, and suggesting that unless the Russian naval authorities were restrained, Russia's liability (to com- 'enormous dimen- pensation) might assume sions," and that it would soon be impossible for Great Britain "to rest content with the
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