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into the Colony and $25 for assaulting a girl under the
Offences against the Ferson Ordinance.
In all these cases careful arrangements for
the girls' well-being were made by the Secretary for
Chinese Affairs with the usual invaluable assistance
of the Po Leung Kuk Committee.
4. Vare is invariably taken by the visiting
inspectors to impress upon employers their obligation
to pay wages, and in the great majority of cases no
reminder is needed.
In the course of their visits, the
Inspectors have come across about twenty cases in
which the employer gives no actual wages to the girl,
but spends considerably more than the prescribed
amount of wages in sending the girl to a private school.
The fees at such schools, which are all under the
control and inspection of the Director of Education,
range from $2.00 a month upwards, to which has to be
added the cost of books and in some cases bus fares,
and a certain amount of pocket money is requisite.
In point of fact, the girls in all these cases have
the position of daughters in decent households of no
great wealth but of a good middle class type.
enquiries have elicited the fact that some of the
employers, at any rate, would not be prepared to send
the girls to school if they had to pay wages in
addition. The arrangement is evidence of good
treatment and as it appears to be in the girls' own
interests I have not interfered with it. I trust
that