A.
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young man that eventually he decided to throw in his hand
if he could find a suitable appointment elsewhere. He
joined the staff of our Refinery as assistant chemist.
The finances of the Colony as you are aware were
seriously depleted after the strike and during the boycott.
Notwithstanding this from time to time proposals for new and
expensive roads, for which no real need existed, have been
promoted and it has only been thanks to the active opposition
of the unofficial members of the Legislative Council, that these have been dropped.
Sir Henry May was the pioneer of roads both in
the Colony and new territory when money expended thereon was
thoroughly justifiable. The Colony then had large cash
surpluses and the opening up of both the island and the new
territory was a very desirable object. There is however
no need to go on spending money on new roads, as quite apart from the initial cost of building them, the maintenance of those in existence is already a heavy drain on the resources of the
Colony.
Another illustration of the prodigal waste of money in
Hong Kong is in the matter of housing.
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The senior
members of the Government and all subordinates
Legal, Public
Works, Secretariat, Harbour, Medical, Sanitary, Education,
Police in fact members of every department of the Government service are housed. Each one of these employees is provided with a house, in most cases so large and costly to run that on their pay they find it exceedingly difficult to maintain them.
There have been cases of officials, who, when their wives went home, immediately gave up their houses, secured from the Government a house allowance which, to a large extent, if not