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without receiving payment for their passage, and if the
labourers accept this passage they at once become Sinkhehs and
are ipso facto deprived of their freedom of contract, since a
refusal to enter into a contract to labour on their arrival at
Singapore renders them liable to imprisonment.
3.
To call the Sinkheh who is recruited in
China as a speculation and disposed of on arrival at his
destination to the highest bidder, a free emigrant is a mis-
-nomer. The Sinkheh (his legal designation in Hongkong is "an
assisted emigrant") is in fact in many ways in a less advantag-
-eous position than a labourer who emigrates under a contract.
The Sinkheh emigrates under a verbal agreement that he will
repay his passage money by entering into a contract on his
arrival at Singapore. If he refuses to enter into a contract he
must prove that he accepted his passage under a misapprehension
and he is not permitted to argue that the terms of the contract
are unreasonable or at least such as he had no reason to expect:
these have already been settled without consulting him by the
Government of the Straits Settlements which in its turn has no
means of checking his complaint as to misrepresentation or his
statements as to the conditions of labour in China. In his
endeavours to protect the Sinkheh, the Examining Officer at
Hongkong