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by the various labour hongs who feared that it would affect their business. Violent articles appeared in the Chinese press of Canton and Hongkong, and when their effect was to some extent discounted by the Viceroy's proclamations, these in their turn were nullified or counteracted by the want of co-operation and the concealed opposition of his subordinates and of other interested parties. The existence of the Convention, which made no reference to recruiting, was used to stop this means of getting labourers, though it is employed in connection with all other emigration, including that to the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States, and is indispensable in starting a new emigration scheme, which requires to have its advantages fully explained to people who cannot read proclamations.
The attempt to substitute official for private recruiting has hitherto failed, mainly, no doubt, on account of the Chinese suspecting their authorities in such a matter, and probably partly because some among the officials did not wish it to succeed. If it succeeded, there was a chance that the lucrative business of recruiting generally would pass out of the hands of those now engaged in it.
The haste with which Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, the Agents of the Transvaal Mining Companies, originally started the engagement of labourers, not, it must be remembered, by enrolling men who came to Hongkong to emigrate, but by sending recruiters into China to collect them, and the fact of their having continued the recruiting in Kwangtung while the experiment of official recruiting by the Chinese was being tried in Kwang si, have no doubt tended to enhance the opposition both of the labour traders and the officials. Originally in favour of the official Wuchow scheme, the Agents now point to