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which succeeded the old
Oriental Bank Corporation has fallen, and that another banking
Chartered
Institution (the Mercantile Bank) has collapsed.
The real condition of affairs
and the causes
sustained by
of the losses -
some
of the non-
Chinese mercantile houses are
very fairly stated in the following letter which has
recently been published
in
the China Mail.
"THE MARINE LOT-HOLDERS'
MEMORIAL
To the Editor of the CHINA MAIL.'
Jan. 14 SIR,--Will you allow me, as an old resident and property-owner in this Colony, to enter my strongest protest against the deliberate and gross misrepresentations as to the position of the Colony made in the above memorial. Surely the very limited number of persons interested in the Praya Reclamation are not justified in representing their interests as being of public importance; nor are they justified while seeking relief by trying to force Government into making a loan for their special benefit. To class themselves as all merchants and traders is, to say the least, wide of the truth. The attempt to say that the present widespread ruin in the colony is due to the depressed condition of trade is utterly untrue and misleading.
The hon. member who
alluded to this memorial in Council
knows better than anyone else that
the true cause
of the present wretched condition of the colony is attributable almost solely to the detestable gambling mania that was created in the Boating of the Land Investment Co., the Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Co., the Buraco Companies, the Charbonnages du Tonquin, &c., &c.
I contend that the commercial prospects of this colony are thoroughly sound and that the future of Hongkong will be far brighter than the past, if only the recent lessons are remembered. Fortunes made in legitimate business have been sacrificed to the calamitous gambling mania that was so unscrupulously led by a gang of men who had little to lose so far as their own reputation was concerned, but who could, and did look on and see hundreds ruined with complacency.
Hongkong can and will right itself without resorting to such means as the memorialists demand. Judging from the past I am firmly convinced that there are other motives behind the memorial that will develop themselves if the money is found by the colony.
The soundest criterion of the condition of the colony is the position of the Hong-kong and Shanghai Bank and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, and both are reported to be able to employ their whole funds in sound and legitimate trade advances. Trade, instead of being monopolised by a few large firms as formerly, is now divided between a numerous body of merchants.
Yours,
A.B.C.
A dispassionate view of the actual position may also be gathered from the appended extra...