PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.
Reference :→→→
882
5
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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COLONIAL CURRENCY COMMITTEE:
Ser Russell, which is simply a sort of port of exchange, a depot. The large houses of China all have their head offices 5 July 1893.
in Hong Kong, and the head offices of the banks are there. Hong Kong in itself, of course, does not con- sume a great deal. There are only about 220,000 people in the island.
220. It is a depôt ?—Yes. Of course it is a place where there is a great deal done in the shape of lock-work, and repairs to ships, fitting out and that sort of thing; sugar refining is among the important industries.
221. What effect will the heavy fall that has taken place in the price of silver have in Hong Kong, do you think? Well, it has had the effect of depreciat- ing very much the value of all capital that is there. The owners of capital wanting to remit would have to remit at a much lower rate of exchange. There has been a very great fall already since the Report of the Currency Committes come out and the stopping of the Mint in India. Exchanges did drop the other day; the dollar dropped to 23. 4d., but it has risen again, I see, this morning, to 24. 7d.
222. What was it before it dropped to 2r. 4ds?—It was 2i. 9d.❤
223. Then the net drop now is 2s. Od. to 2s. 7d. ? -2s. 9d. to 28. 7d., about.
224. That is a smaller drop than would be repre sented by the drop in silver, is is not, or is it about the same ?—I think that they went together; silver did drop, and then it recovered itself, and I think they follow very closely, because you cannot make the tollar itself more than the value of the bullion rate of silver in Hong Kong or China.
225. It is more, is it not, the Mexican dollar now. The nominal relation of the Mexican dollar is that it hould be about lid., should it not, below silver; and at present I see the Mexican dollar apparently is about the same as silver ?
226. (Mr. Fairfield.) The Mexican dollar passes for its exact bullion value in Hong Kong?—In speak. og of Hong Kong, one must always look upon it as a lice from China. In China and Hong Kong the Mexican dollar is always looked upon simply as a certain weight of fine silver.
227. (Chairman.) You mean that it would not be of any more value there than the same weight of silver in bars 7--No; I think that probably a per cent. of difference would prevent the use of a large amount of dollars.
228. Why is a higher price given in proportion for Mexican dollars than for bar silver ?--That I do not know.
229. It is said to be for export to the East 7-I do not know that.†
230. Are many transactions carried out then by payment of so-called bar silver ?—In China?
231. Yes? Oh, great numbers of them.
232. In Hong Kong?—No, not in Hong Kong so much; in fact, there is very little done there, unless in dollars and bank notes. What is really done in China is not in bar silver, but what called “sycee,"
• This should have been 9s. 8fd.-J.B.
+ This increased price was owing to a sudden demand for Mexican dollars for the Straits and short supply in London.- J. K.
fine silver made up in the resemblance of a Chinese shoe, and that has a weight generally from 50 to 55 taels weighed by the standard weight, in China ; a taei is an ounce and a fifth-and that is stamped.
233. Would thať pass, so to speak, in payment at exactly the same rate as the same weight in Mexican dollars ?--I take it that it in better even than the Mexican dollar, it is fine silver. At the different ports they have got an assay office, and these shoes- ingots are stamped by a recognised assayer, and the fineness of the silver is marked upon them. Its weight and its fineness is stamped upon the ingot. There is an office in Shanghai, and those other places, called the Kongkò; it really means the public appraise ment; the Chinese characters upon it represent public evidence of its value, that is what it is intended to be; it is recognised by the Chinese authorities, although this assayer-this officer-is really appointed by the silver guilds.
234. Do you know if there has been any rise in prices in China owing to this recent heavy fall in eilver ?-I do not,
235. During the fall that has been current for some years, do you know how prices have moved there at all? Prices have remained very much the same. I have just cut this from one of the Chinese papers, and I thought it might be of some use to the Com mittee. It is a small cutting showing for a number of years the purchasing power of silver and gold in China. It is done by a merchant there and it is worked out from the Maritime Customs Reports, showing the number of articles and giving the index numbers of the articles and their prices, and showing that the rates have been remaining pretty much the same for a number of years.
286. (Lord Farrer.) And wages ?-Wages I be. lieve remain almost exactly the same.
287. (Mr. Meade.) For how many years?-Well, I have not heard of any change whatever for many years; in Hong Kong the wages remain very much the same.
238. Not in the last 20 years ?—Not anything for the last 20 years.
239. (Mr. Fairfield.) The price of rice, I believe, has not been affected ?—No, very little,
during the last three years has been exactly the same 240. (Chairman.) The price of rice apparently as it was in 1874, but then it has been very much lower in many years ?-Well, sometimes there is a failure of crop, and they import a great deal of rice from Saigon and Bangkok in Siam, but the price of rice has been pretty steady in silver.
241. (Mr. Fairfield.) The Chinese Government itself does not allow the export of rice, does it ?—Rice is not allowed to be exported from China, but they do export it from one part of China to another.
The purchasing power of Silver and Gold in China.
Mr. W. S. Wetmore, of Shanghai, has prepared the following table of index numbers for 20 staple com- modities, from the returns of the trade of the Imperial Maritime Customs, showing the silver prices of the articles mentioned for 20 years; also the silver value of gold :-
Aluni, Whito
Beans.
Cotton, Raw
Rice +
Safflower-
•
001
K8
73
100
103
85
00
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE,
a
94
90
88
9
1973 1974. 1575. 1876, 1877. 1878 1879 1880. | 1491.; 1889. | 1898. 1884, 1993. 1980.1887. 1886. 1880, 1800, 1891 1899.
109 04
139 120 118
B
81 $1
1040 183
112 117
121 118 111 110
00 77
90
111 107
119 118 119 121 DI 13
99❘ 103 103 105
Sir J. Russell.
= 3. ૐ હૈં કુશ્ન
04 21
09 120
40
བྷྲ ཐྭ ཚོ ཐྭ - 3 ༔,
41
100
91
108 140 118
ཤྲཱ སྠཽ ༔ ༔ རྞྞ ཝཿ ཎྜ སྒྲི
91 138
100 100 101 110
00 13 125 118 103 101 101 30%
ཎྜ ། བཿ ཎྜ ཛ ༅ ཎྜ སྠཽ ཋཱ སྠཽ
༈ ཌ ༤ ལྷ སྐྱུ ༄ རྨ བྷྲ ཟྭ ཎྜ ཝཿ ལྤ འ རྞྞ ཋ ཚོ རྫ སྐ ཏྲ
140
70 70
2 8 8 8 2 8
87
70
M
$7
05
5 July 1893.
106 101 04
04
105 12: 107 100 123
190 120 110
100 113
89
$7
81
69
83
GS
74
38
90
140
121
67
118 136
70
101
100
86 24 63
75
24
95
81
61 40
90 110 109
78 63 76
127 107 116 110 150*130*180 i 150
100
10%
105 119 120 110 21 110 119 119
100
101 104
65
Bt 56
63
64
61
87
BY 82
60
81
79
63
73
51 58
73
BL
67 77
88
T 74 101
61
28
66
13
51
91 70
65
134
101
81.
74
76
181 113
118
113 143 157
113 140 140 1:30
157 148 157
158
40
01
47
72 82
43
020 67 60 67 08
+ 100
100
Cuttlefish, Dried
Hemp
Liquorice
100
100
101
100
40
OL Wood-
100
88
17 100
l'aper
quality,
Second
100
118
90 108
100
110
86
91
100
00
109
100 00
37 67 07
66
59 68
00
[
Tallow, Vegetablo
100
83
80
87
116 107 87
By 29
DO
Toa, Black
100
111 90 09 84 85
91
81
67
70
09
Ten, Brick
100 123
112 102 99
96
79 120
87
78 86
Tea, Green
Tobacco, Leat
Wax, White
Wheat.
100
100
97 76 72 64
75 74 70 00
66 69
84
75 70 76
$1 83 72 77
7
100 105 101
100 109 104 112 121 127 121
110
100 EX
114 143 171
371
Wool, Camels'
Wool, Sheep's
Silk, Raw
29
180 144 198 114 128
100 J7 103 113 106 133 161 103 158 166
100
93 *87 80
06
ཎྞཾ།༡རྔུš ཀྟི ཐཐ ལྷ ཕྲè g a Ë
5
བྲཱ སྠཽ ཧི ཋཱ ཌྷ རྞ ཀྲྀ ཋ ཋ ཋི ཎྜ ༈ | སྦྱ
བྲཱ ཙཤྩ༅པྤ༤ཎྷཱ་ྲཏྟཱ
137 143
100 136
Acgregate values 2,000 1,814 1,787 1,950 2,031 2109 2,083 1,925 1,9401,988 1,916 1,889 1,8541,858 1,7741,7811,803 1,808 1,748 1,761
of commodition in silver.
Silver value of 2,000 2,020 1,078 2,160 2,150 2,915 2,001 1,375 1,322 2,307 1,356 (8,876 |3,625 |2,371 2.648|9,730 (2,740 2,500 2,631 1930
The four numbers indicated by au asterisk (*) are assumed, returns of the articles referred to not having been msle for those years. Shanghai, 11th May 1898,
242 (Mr. Meade.) Have you had an opportunity of talking to any of the merchants and people who are specially interested in the China trade-the Hong Kong trade? Recently?
243. Yes, Yes, I have.
244. And do they make any complaint, or do they wish for any change, and if so, what ?—I think the idea is to leave things alone.
245. (Chairman.) Do they express much ap- prubeusion? Well, of course the great feeling is that if there is nothing done-they expect that the repeal of the Sherman Act will of course make silver lower- unless there is something done by the United States Government or some other Government, to make silver more useful, there will be a great loss in invested cupital.
248. Well, one thing done apparently has been the shutting up of silver mines ?-Well, they suppose that there is a limit; that the dollar may be about value for 70 cents; they think that is about the lowest it can go to because of the closing up of the mines; but the, general feeling I have gathered from men I have been speaking to connected with the China trade is that they cannot do anything now but leave things alone. What has happened within this last week shows the unsettled and jumpy condition of the market. All orders from China I know were stopped by telegram for all piece goods. Everything was stopped and the silk trade was stopped too, waiting for lower exchanges. They thought perhaps they would get lower exchanges.
247. That of course would be continned for a time ?-The market is quite unsettled at present; it will take some little time to settle things.
248. But there is no desire to make any monetary clunge?—I do not think that anybody thinks it is possible to do anything in our part of the world.
249. Your standard in Hong Kong must sub- stantially be the same as the Chinese ?-It must be; we are so fixed by trade in Hong Kong that we must have the same currency an at the open ports in China. Whatever change, if any, might be made in Hong
0
77331.
Kong they could do nothing. The ports are Chinese, and silver is the Chinese standard, and they will keep it as such, there is no doubt, and the merchants living at the open ports must conform to their ways if they want to do trade.
250. Is there much trade of the nature you have described, Hong Kong being the depôt between Hong Kong and Japan ?-There is a good deal of trade goes on between Hong Kong and Japan, because Hong Kong is such a distributing place; goods are sent there to be re-shipped to all parts of the world; steamers can discharge quickly, leaving or taking in cargo on their way.
251. (Lord Furrer.) Is there any mint at Hong Kong? There was one but in 1868 it was closed; in fact it was only in existence for a very short time.
252. Hong Kong is entirely supplied with Mexican dollars; is it ?-Entirely.
253. Japanese yens at all ?-No. There are a few Japanese yens, but they are not legal tender. You see an odd Japanese yen now and again, but it is not in bulk in any way.
254. (Chairman.) Is English gold seen there at coming there; banks pick up a little now and again, all?-None, unless what is brought by passengers but you never seo it otherwise,
253. (Mr. Fairfield.) Is there any paper money?— A great deal of paper money.
256. Bank paper money ?—The banks issue notes, 257. Do you know about how many people and every day at Hong Kong from the mainland of China? Well, there are, I think, about 1,600,000 Chinese in the course of the year; nearly 1,000,000 people pass backwards and forwards by the native boats between the Canton River and all round.
258. They have all got enin with them -Yes. I have got here--I do not know whether the Com mittee would like to see it-the Chineso Statistical Secretary's Report on the trade of China for the very last year. There is a very short summary given in it of the full details of all the trade; every article
B