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Enclosure 1.
To the Right Honourable
The Secretary of State for the Colonies.
RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH :--
The Humble Petition of the Undersigned. Subordinate Members of the Civil Service of Hongkong,
That your Petitioners are all Subordinate Members of the Civil Service of Hongkong, and have been in the service of the Government of Hongkong for periods varying from 3 to 39 years.
2. During this period the salaries attached to the offices held by them respectively
unable to maintain themselves in a manner suitable to their respective positions under the conditions recently prevailing and which have been brought about by circumstances hereinafter more expressly explained.
3. The principal reason, among others, for this change in the circumstances of your Petitioners is, of course, to be found in the steady deterioration in the value of the currency of the Colony in which their salaries have been and are calculated.
4. This deterioration has been continuous for many years past and its influence has been most acutely felt by your Petitioners and all other recipients of salaries in the Colony on a fixed silver standard irrespective of its relation to gold.
5. Your Petitioners have from time to time endeavoured to bring the existence of this grievance, which they felt could not reasonably be disputed, to the notice of the Colonial Government, but their successive representations have received no favourable consideration.
6. The fall of the dollar has been steady and continuous, its average rate for the current month being only 1/64d, as compared with a monthly average rate of 2/14. in 1894 when Exchange Compensation began to be granted to certain officers in Hongkong.
7. Your Petitioners are most seriously affected by this steady decline in value of the Colonial currency, since each successive fall is followed by a general and proportionate rise in the cost of living, so that they will, unless some substan- tial measure of relief is granted, presently find that they are unable to support themselves in the service of the Government to which they have devoted the best years of their lives.
8. The recent increase in house rents throughout the Colony, amounting in some cases to 80 or 90 per cent., is matter of common knowledge, and the cost of clothing, materials, groceries, books and medical comforts, with which your Petitioners must be provided, has also risen considerably, so that articles necessary to the comfort and even to the health of your Petitioners can now be procured only at prices almost prohibitive to the means of your Petitioners.
9. Your Petitioners desire to point out that the principal mercantile firms, the Insurance Companies, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, and the Naval Authorities have all recognised the hardships sustained by their employees, in similar positions to your Petitioners, by reason of the diminished purchasing power of their earnings, and have granted increased salaries, in some cases up to 50 per cent., and in the case of the Imperial Maritime Customis, up to 100 per cent.
10. After a lapse of nine years, from the date of the previous general increase of salaries, your Petitioners were, with all the other officers, granted an increase from the 1st January, 1901, averaging only about 15 per cent, on their aggregate salaries. Your Petitioners desire respectfully to point out that such an increase is wholly inadequate, inasmuch as the cost of living had admittedly risen about 70 per cent. above what it was only a few years back, whilst the increase granted covered only about of the increase in the cost of living. The question of exchange was apparently not taken into consideration in granting the increase above referred to.
11. In the departments of the Civil Goverument of Hongkong, officers, other than your Petitioners and the Chinese members of the Service, have, under the title of Exchange Compensation, been receiving increments to their nominal salaries in
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