HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
173
of promotion to the notice of the Subordinate Staffs Board. Not only would promotion made on such a plan induce the right type of men to enter the Service, but they would also be an incentive to junior men to do better work. As time goes on I think that the local material available for such posts, and even for higher posts, will be both increased and improved on account of the increasing number of graduates from the University of Hong Kong. At present it is sad to see so many of the splendid products of our University unable to find employment justifying the standard of education they have received.
My friend the Hon. Mr. W. E. L. Shenton has expressed the view that money voted for the Society (for the Protection of Children, and for certain other associations, was money well spent, and that the grants should be still further increased. With this sentiment I am in entire agreement. Speaking as a past Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Society named, I ask that the vote which the Government has so generously increased from $3,000 to $5,000 per annum with effect from 1st January next year (page 89), may be further increased to $10,000. In this request I have the support of all my unofficial colleagues.
The work of the Society, which owes its existence as much to the Government as to the Chinese leaders of this Colony, has developed beyond all expectation. In its first full effective year it dealt with 333 cases, and in the first ten months of this, its second effective year, it has already rendered assistance to 702 new cases. Its work lies almost entirely among the children of the very poorest of the Colony's poor, and although by the nature of the Colony's population 95 per cent. of those receiving its help are Chinese, its policy is to aid all alike without distinction of race or nationality. In fact, some non-Chinese children have received benefits from the Society.
The Society's Inspectors give advice on hygiene and kindred matters to parents of sick and starving children, and the Society provides such children with medicine and food, and also maintains at its expense several children in certain charitable institutions. The cost of purchasing milk foods and medicines alone now amounts to $1,000 a month. In the first ten months of the Society's present financial year its total expenditure has been $16,680, and its receipts from various sources, including the Government grant of $3,000, amount to only $13,014.
Unless the Society's work is to be curtailed-and it cannot be curtailed without giving the Society a set-back-its expenditure is certain to exceed $24,000 in the coming year; and even this figure allows nothing for the expansion which one would reasonably expect with an institution only just about entering the third year
177