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THE HONGKONG DAIL
ESS, WEDNESDAY, JULY 21st, 1909.
with him it is merely instinct, and calls for distresses trade in are direction must of TELEGRAMS. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PRATAS the fact that no official recognition had been
a
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"DAILY PRESE" EXCLUSIVE SERVICE,] JAPANESE MINISTER TO AMERICA RECALLED.
TOKYO, July 20th. Baron Takahira, the Japanese Min- ister at Washington, has been recalled, and is en route for Japan.
THE STRIKE IN HAWAIL.
Tokyo, July 20th. The strike situation in Hawaii is becoming worse,
The Japanese Consul, in attempting to reason with the strikers, was roughly handled.
FORCED MARCHES IN JAPAN.
A HEAVY CASUALTY LIST.
no mental exertion whatever. But if the necessity be a hindrance to wholesome com movey of account and the money of use be mercs he has not yet learned, nor does he thus different, the calculation is nothing so any necessity for such a conclusion. compared with the likewise differentstandard This is hardly to be wonderad at whom we of copper money, which to a greater extent I find so advanced an assembly as the Senate that the difference of dollar and tael affects of the United States pliberately doing all CO.hin daily life in a far more intimate manner it can to oripple the import trade of the States under the same erroneous view that than the other.
reasons of convenience no silver it is thereby promoting the best interests of. From coin much over 400 grains troy in, weight the country at large. Not the least curious has ever aucceeded in becoming ourrent to part of the modern financial system of the any large extent. Even the British Crown Great Republic is that more strenuously than weighing about 4964 grains never became any other of the Powers it has been pressing popular, the public always preferring the on China the so-called “reform of her cur-· The Dollar, rency; while its own financial measures xore nimble hall-crown. weighing from 492 to 417.707 grains troy, have a directly reactionary tendency, and is the largest and heaviest coin which has are directed, not to the advancement but ever been dominant in the currency of the to the hindrance of trade. Naturally China world. The Chinese Tael if converted into and Eastern Asia bave much to offer to the a coin would weigh at least 580 grains troy, United States, and in return are prepared or more at the proposed alloy of 900 fine, to take many of her productions and manu- and would certainly be unpopular with factures. Commerce, however, for its AMMONIA people who eagerly welcomed the old Carolus wholesome conduct requires some reciprocity, Dollar of 417.7 grains. The objections to sa otherwise the natural course of exchange FOR THE BATH, TOILET AND the tael coin proceeds, then, from very will bring its own revenges. Such has been roal and tangible grounds, such as the the case between America and East Aria, HOUSEHOLD.
Chinaman is especially from his daily ex- The States have deliberately hampered the Promotes a healthy action of the skin, counter.perience capable of judging correctly, and export of goods from Chins, and in return acte all effects of porspiration, and is as we see that his practical experience leads for this the import of American goode has refreshing and invigorating to the system him to the same conclusion as his equally fallen off; and exchange, to emphasise this, practical brother, the user of the coin in has dropped in sympathy. The manner in Europe. But equally from sentimental which the U. 3. Government line sought to ideas the tael is hardly likely to be adopted rectify this is peculiar. It has been seeking with avidity as a satisfactory standard by to remedy the loss to itself by inducing the any considerable section of the Chinese Chinese to adopt a gold standard; there is True, the weight itself has enjoyed a life nothing wrong in this, and we do not sug- seldom afforded in the annals of any country gest it as a grievance. But failing this, it is to a currency, and still remains as at first in now seeking recourse to something vary in three strengths, containing 5%: 10% and 20% the neighbourhood of 580 grains; and the much in the nature of compulsion. Our PRINCE AND PRINCESS KUNI, is due to the fact that the Government had new American financiers, utterly forgetting of pure carbolie seld.
never had rything to say to it. the disastrous results of the bimetallic English "pad" of silver, at one time the efforts of 1890-93, are seeking to fevive equivalent of the weight, bas, we all know, the ery; and again appealing to depreciated more than two-thirds to 1746 weak administration in England to join grains, and this is nothing to the old Frauch them in their insane policy of seeking by Ilvre, which, starting at the same standard, Act of Congress to place an artiácia? value now weighs only 77 grains. But the man silver. The result in the States was the genuity of the manipulators was equal to passing of the Bland Act, which bound the the occasion. Though they preserved the Government of the States every mouth to weight they surrounded it with so maar purchase some twelve million ounces of CARBOLIC ACID dificulties and restrictions that in the end silver. The end was that, after making the
there are nearlyne many distinct tools as there are trading centres, so that in the confusion
as a Turkish Bath.
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Containing:
ARNICA, CAMPHOR,
AND
The
A. S. WATSON & CO.. commerce has to bear the brunt of innumer
LIMITED,
THE HONGKONG DISPENSARY
AND KOWLOON DISPENSARY. Hongkong, 19th July, 1909.
able exchanges. A taal in Chias conveys no idea, in fact, of a fixed standard; and Axity of standard is just the one thing most needed. Now it is remarkable that one of
[29 the very first acts of the great administrator the First Emperor, Tein GBI HWANGTI, OD formally assuming the role of Emperor was to issue a proclamation calling for uniform- ity of weights and measures. This was in the year B.C. 221. Unfortunately within the next two years the Empire fell into con- fusion with bis approaching old age, and losa
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of energy, and though the edict was zonowed by his son and successor, bis murder in-207 B.C. put an end to the dynasty, and with it Orders for extra copies of DAILY PASS of most of Bar HWANGI's most cherished should be sent before 11 am on day of publication. After that hour the supply is schemes of amendment. Since that time limited. Only supply for Cash.
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The Daily Press.
HONGKONG, JULY 21st 1909.
no statesman has arisen till the present time with sufficient grasp of intellect to carry through the scheme planned out upwards of two thousand years ago by one of the master mitids of the world.
But, after all, these schemes for the reform of the currency do not go beyond China's internal wants, while, of course, her most pressing need at the moment is to accommo. date her currency with that of the rest of
His nation had
Treasury early bankrupt, silver fell lower than ever, and has never recovered the shock. More wise the British Government saved the situation by restricting the coinage of silver in India, and has succeeded in keeping exchange steady ever since. Thenew- old financiers who rule the Senate of to-day,
after just passing oneofthe most reactionary measures ever proposed in the Eques, would finish up by re-enacting the bungles of the bimetalists of 1890. History is easily sor gotten in the United States.
The latest Manila papers state that Manila is still free from cholers. The provincial reports are also hopeful.
The Council of the Society of Arts have awarded the Bociety's silver medal to Mr. Arthur John Barry, for his paper on "Bailway Development in China," which we reported at considerable length about six weeks ago.
The Hongkong Land Investment Co., Ltd, announce an Interim dividend of $3.50 per share for the past half year, and the West Point Building Co., Ltd., an interim dividend of $2 per share. These dividends are payable on the 3rd proximo.
Mr. J. 8. Dobic, Agent in Hongkong of The Chinese Engineering & Mining Company, Ltd,, informs us that the total output of the
July, 1909, amounted to 23,245.60 tons and the sales during the period to 27,069.45 tons.
AN INTERESTING STORY.
OFFERING TO SELL STOLEN GOODS TO TREIE OWNIE.
of the country.
A MISUNDERSTOOD QUESTION MADE CLEAR.
(Specially written for the Hongkong Daily Press),
Most persons yet remain in ignorance of the portents and intents of the Sino-Japanese wrangle over the atoll of Pratas, of whose now cherished existance both Governments wore, quite up to the very near present, most unsoem- ly ignorant.
Anyone reading the reports daily emanating from Chinose and Jamone newspaper scarves would imagine that the question of right and title to the atoll were of all-absorbing international importance; whorens when one comes to weigh and analyse the pros and cons of the matter, it resolvon itself into nothing less than an unsees ly commercial brawl-and, at that, one unt of the cleanest description.
To put together, as one who knows, and knows authoritatively, the piecemeal history of the dispute from its inception to its prosent acute stage, is not a hard task; and I give here,
therefore, a general digest of the facts which have led up to the appointment of the present Commission.
taken by Japan of that claimant's possession of the atoll, yet strangely enough the Talkoku corrig pondant of a Hongkong paper could scarcely kiavo maliciously invented the statement contained in aletter to his paper written in mid-July of 1908 to the effect that on the 13th of July, Mr. Nishizawa, accompanied by officials and experts (number specified) of the Formoss Government, loft Keelung for the Pratas on one of Mr. Nishizawa's steamers with the object of making an exhaustive survey of the place." This hardly roads liks official sbstention from interference in the "grab." Furthermore, for
some little time previous to this, the name of the atoll as it was printed in the Japanese press had, with some intent, appeared as Nishizawa- jima (Nishizawa's Island) in place of Pratas. Now Pratas is a small coral atoll, uns mile and a half in length and three-quarters of a mile wide, which lies at the month of a horse.
shoe-shaped and wreck-strown reef twelve miles in length and about ten miles across at the horns. It is only 40 feet high at its greatest altitude and of sparse vegetation, and two pins- trees of stanted and melancholy growth crown
its summit.
Until the arrival of the Japanese there existed
When Western science taught Japanese "pon the atoll a small slirine erected with loving chemists educated abroad that there were other cars from wreckage and kept in repair by the and more valuable aids to the fertilization of toil-hardened hands of the Cantonese fanermon. There was in evidence, too, à reservoir-which their poor and overworked grain-fands than TOKTO, July 20th.
the heas-coke of North China, the fish refuse hald the sole water supply of the atoll-in the Twelve deaths have occurred, and from the cod and herring-oil industries of the shape of some ill-fated ship's tank which had product of their cities, towns and villages, It is a fact worthy of notice that neither shrine hundreds of soldiers have been invalid-Hokkaido, mid the more pestilential human been laborionaly dragged close to the summit ed, as the result of forced summer whose use still disgusts the visitor to Jepan, nor taik exist any longer. The Japanese and marches by regiments in various parts these rapatriated students naturally came Looohonans sent down from Formosa brought to recognise the atility of bird mauurs their water with them in sake tubs. Still it is gmann and the substrata of phosphate not impertinent to ask where is the shrine and rook, which, in islands... of true cural what has become of the Chinamen's water tank! Upon this bleak and storm-lashed forty-foot- formation, invariably nuderlie auch deposits. Until, I suggest, tan years ago, 1
adven high square mile or two of coral, successive Satsuma had sailed in their junks through the Canton had hunted the turtle in the summer, and turous Japanese fowlers from Kyushu and generations of fishermen from Hongkong and Louchons the Glatos, the Volcano Islands and hed at other times and seasons salted and dried those of the Bashi Group, baslly despoiling the the catches of fish which they made in the great various islots of their feathered inhabitants for lagoon. How many tens of generations have so the mke of their wings, which have a selling done one may not surmise, but under the wante of Tung Shan the stoll has been indelibly fusod value of about three or four cents a pair in southern Japan. The result naturally arrived in the fishing traditions of Kwantung. that these rough navigators gradually decimated those groups, if not exactly of the goose which lays the golden egg, then of the gaunet which
· [EZUTEE'S SERVICE TO THE "HONGKONG
DAILY PRESS,”] EARN
LONDON, July 19th.
Prince and Princess Kuni of Japan lunched with His Majesty the King at Buckingham Palace to-day.
T. R. H. the Prince and Princess of Wales and Prince Arthur Connaught were present.
THE LORDS AND THE. FINANCE BILL.
POSSIBLE RESIGNATION OF THE GOVERNMENT.
of
LONDON, July 20th. The Daily News" learns in "the that in the event highest quarters of the House of Lords persisting in amendments to the Finance Bill, the creation of new Peers will be recom- mended in order to secure the passage of the Bill. Only if the Crown re- fuses will Mr. Asquith, advise a dis-
solution or resign.
drops something equally valuable.
To such a place, then, came the Nishizawa expedition of July, 1908, with officials and experts, and with water, old Deauville light
rails and tracks, and with coolies, plokstes and shovels; and there ever since the Japanese have dug the phosphates, trawled the lagoon and slaughtered the birds, and according to the Chinese complaint completely onsted and driven off the island's real owners with harsimess and, it is alleged, with at least some show of brutality, and
Thus they wout further afield in their depreda tions, and only last Bummer, it will be remembered, a party of Japanese bird-hunters was resoned by Brazilian training-ship as far south as Wake's Island, just as their provisions and water had petered out, and were brought on to Hongkong, How much
The state of affairs set up by these conflicting further afield than that they have gone, and upon what nation's preserves they have not claims has necessitated the appointment of the yet poached remains to be discovered and present Sino-Japanese. Commission regarding announced to astonished Colonial governments, the Pratas.
The Pratas Shoal lying isolated, as it does, roughly 172 néntical miles from Hongkong in found upon the atoll, some experts bare s direct line to the northernmost point of the suggested them to be of greater commercial Island of Lazon, was, naturally, as the nesting value than those of Christmas Island, but place and pied-à-terre of an enormens number the writer la prepared to state from his of son fowl, sooner or later bannd to attract the own knowledge that these deposits hold attention of these Japanese "birders," so that it physicst combination which can bat add to came to pass that, in the Summer of 1996, the the manufacturer's difficulty of turning than by crew of an adventurous junk, after playing process into
With regard to the value of the phosphates
a useful commercial fertilizar, havoc among the feathered tribes of the atollit Boughly speaking they might in their nativo. In reported that they killed over 2,000 birds condition be worth six dollars a ton delivered Almost indubitably the latter step in three days-were blown off their happy at the Japanese nitric acid factories of Osaka
a typhoon, which carried and Tokyo. hunting ground by their craft before it up the Formosa That the Chinese are now keenly alive to the will be taken.
Channel, and landed the party in safety value of their possessions in these latitudes somewhere north of Amoy. Later in the same which the bruises and grievance of a fow typhoon season the members of a similar fishermen have served to make clear to them is fowling expedition had their vessel mashed up very certain, and anti-Japanese Kwantang has during a syclons, and being marooned upon needed no guiding hand to show her how to the Pratas, were, I think, upon news of their niske a theatrical diplomatic use of an anti- fate becoming known, brought off the island by climax to the boycott troubles arising from the an Osaka Shosen Kaisha steamer, officially Tuter Maru incident.
RUSSIAN INTERESTS IN THE YANGTSE REGION,
Russian financiers, represented by the **Russo-Chinese Bank, shall participate
in the Hankow railway loans..
ADMIRAL CURZON HOWE,
LONDON, July 20th, At the Magistracy yesterday before Mr. J. B. Wood two Chinese named Leung Hok and Lai
The operation performed on Ad- Ou were charged with receiving four pieces of white serge which they knew had been felomiral Curzon Howe has proved vienaly stolen from the Tak Cheong arm.
M. H. L. Donnye, sen, sppeared for the complainant, Tak Cheong, and At Crowther successful and he hopes to rejoin his
The evidence of Ho Smith appeared for the defendant, Lai On.
Wing a partner in the ship in a fortnight. Tak Cheong firm, was that on May 20th
Ir can hardly be said that as yet there is the world. This is, however, a problem Company's three mines for the week ending 3rd Yangtze district, Russia requests that them to a consideration of their claims. much sign of China spontaneously adopting which the most advanced financier in Chin an imperial standard gold currency. China has not as yet even ventured to discuss probably has much to learn beforehand and With the accumulated experience of some first of all has to be convinced that there twenty-five centuries, during which silver, would be any advantage accruing to, ker in so far as he had the opportunity of commer changing the standard from silver to gold. cial intercourse, has continued the sole Accepting an nfact this dislike of the country currency of the world; he had in fact little at large to altering its conceptions of what temptation to do so. actually constitutes money, we can begin to opened up in the early centuries to comprehend the very decided preferecios Chinese commerce the whole of Asia shown by many statesmen who have, so far to the basins of the Tigris, so that it as their lights went, carefully studied the could hardly have been accused of want monetary question, for what is practically of enterprise; and though they had met the dollar over the tael. Though for matters with gold coins, nowhere bad they found of current account for thousands of year the gold currency. Even the celebrated gold tael has been the accepted standard, for Daric of old Persia was little better than a matters of actual currency and general token, and its value was regulated, not by
its intrinsic value but by its exchangeability into the godown as received. Witness on the went into the Hop Wa shop and was
A YOUNG MAN'S WAR.
INTERESTING STATISTICS OF THE AMERICAS CIVIL WAR,
LONDON, July 20th. The Peking correspondent of "The Times" reports that the Russian
Kishizawa's claim for compensation for loss. Minister has informed the Waiwupu sent to effect their resem
Thus, neither of the ill-fated expeditions pnt of his trade has been roughly estimated at Tselu. that in view of Russian interests at in evidence of lengthy residence in, or 500,000, whilst the Chinese official counter- The decision as to which claim shall be Hankow and in the tea trade of the proprietorship of the atoll, sufficient to entitie claim was originally stated to be 3,00,000 yen.
When they were sent back to Formosa, successful lios in the hands of the Sino-Japanese which island they had Commission now proceeding to the Naboth's however, from originally set out, the richness of the stoll Vineyard in dispute.
In conclusion, I have it upon the best became noised abroad through the medium of the Japanese press in South Formos, the various authority that Hongkong sasayers have not newspapers of which having heard the seaman's for yeare kept their noses more assiduously, it yarns, combined in an earnest exhortation to all not exactly to their grindstones, then to their and sundry to emigrate southwards and partake pestles and mortars, than they are doing at of the fortunes which awaited them upon present, under the necessity of analysing the super-scrapings of desert islands from all Pratia Island.
Not then, however, and not till considerably points of the China Sea. In this direction later did the personality of Mr. Nishizawa, the thure is a suitable rush for the spoil.
loom up. Long before the potential wealth of the Japanese claimant in the present case, begin to island finally roused the commercial desires of Mr. Nishizawa, a scheme for its exploitation had been
Many persons wonder that there are almost CHAMBER-id, by the first Englishnian to visit it (cutside LAIN.
of its original naval surveyors and shipwrecked half a million surviving soldiers of the Amart- sailors), before one or two influential houses in can Civil War, considering that it is forty-eight this Colony of Hongkong, who pooh-poohed the years it began and forty-four since it ended. LONDON, July 20th.
The reason, says the Philadelphia Inquirer, lies idea of its valus. The same individual also in the fact that it was a young man's war, as the convenience for the couple of hundred years for silver. That is then, not unnaturally, asked to purchase four rolls of aerige. As the
King Edward visited Mr. Cham-approached the British Foreign Office with following official statistics as to the age of men → since it was first introduced, the dollar has always been the coin best known to the the manner in which the `native financier serge was a kind which he believed was only berlain at his London residence request for the annexation of the atoll to the so they culisted will show; Chinese; and is intimately associated in considers the variations of exchange. It is imported by the Tak Cheong every Chinaman's mind, from the Great not, in his purview, that liver has been it had been stoleno his godowa to see if Wall to the frontier of Tongking, with his depreciating in value, but that gold has case had gone. Then he went back to idea of money as a tangible form of cur risen to a most unexpected and unexampled ript from the owner. The defendant Lai On rency. Although the Chinese have been height. From bis point of view there may came and produced a receipt chopped with the be even advantages in this. It acts, he defendant Loang Hok's Chop, He was then for some thousands of years accustomed to
Cross-examined by Mr. Crowther Smith, over and above the net profits from the railways. recognises, adversely on importe into Chins; redace everything to a decimal system, but from his standpoint, this, which carries witness said he did not know how the case conld whether land, weights and measures, or distress to Europe and America, is not of here been taken out as the godown had not been broken inte, and the key was hung in the money, the Chinese have curiously never
Evidence was also given by one of the com- displayed in so-marked a degree as the itself an evil calling loudly for redress. On manager's room.— purists of Europe what may be called the the other hand he sees that many articles plainant's shop coolies, and by a Chinese youth. superstition of decimalism. To the seas. exported from China are exchangeable in living at the Hop WA shop. The latter deposed pan using hinese the multiplication or Europe and America for as much gold that Lai On brought two of the rolls to the shop division by
nty-two constitutes no hagas before, and for which he can obtain in and Leung Hok brought the other two a little The higher Prisoners were remanded until Wednesday bear: be han tices the operation, which exchange far more silver,
principle of political economy that what afternoon, the 29th inst. Le perfortos perpaa thousand times a day;
he took delivery of a case invoiced as con! KING VISITS MR. taining fire rolls of white serge, four bearing the same numbers as the roll produced in Court. The case was not spened at the time, but pat
15th
inst
them off" and
firm he "put
found that the
the Hop Wa ahop and said he should want a
Arrested.
later.
yesterday,
The President of the Board of Poats and Communications has, in conversation with a member of the Government, remarked that to develop the railways would require the sum of Tis. 15,000,000 daring the next three years
Crown dominions, but was met with a refusal, the explanation of the Foreign Office being that, "after searching investigation, that department had concluded that the island undoubtedly belonged to China, and that, therefore, no
question of ile annexation could be entertained." In the meantime it is practically certain
25
·1,523
844,801 1,151,438
At the age of 10 and under At the age of 12 and under At the age of 14 and under At the age of 16 and under At the age of 18 and under- At the age of 21 and under 22 years of age and over These figures include re-enlistments, of which there were almost 2,000,000, but it can easily bo
2,169,798
618,516
The most important and largest item is that for from files of the Japanese vormular press seen that this was practically boys war, since the milling of the four branch lines, of the of Formoss, which may still be referred to, that only e smell percentage were 22 years of age Peking-Hankow Hailway (from Tingchaw to this Government of that island had lent a and over, and these must, to a large extent, have enlisted previously. It is estimated that if the Tanghaien, the North bank of the Huanghe to Mahan, Yencheng to Chou Chis Row and willing ear to the stories which had been year 1868 be taken as a starting-point since it Matanghen to Wangkintien); and the con- circulated concerning the Fratas and its wealth, the middle of the war, the average age of
make him 68 at the present. That is w fair a struction of the lino from Hwo Hsiang Chen to
but not old by any means, and it ought to The argument of the Japanese central remembered that those who served through a Yachow will cost 4,600,000 taels, besides the and was more or less encouraging its exploita the soldier was about 22 years, which would and stations, and for acquiring and working money required for the new carriages, hotels tion. coal mines His Excellency Hea concludes Government in its reply to China's official pro campaign and came out fit showed virility which tant if the above things are to be done a foreign test to Nishizawa's occupation, laid stress upon indicated a promise of living beyond the normal. loan is absolutely necessary.
be