6-Of the immense quantity of Cargo handled in this port in the course of a month fully three-fifths is Chinese-owned and is consigned to Chinese, and of this a very large proportion is rice. In the three months above mentioned the rice cargoes alone represented a tonnage of 115,812 registered tons, or, 3,464,260 piculs of rice.
7.---This Chinese-owned cargo arrives and departs from this port mainly in Chinese junks and to and from Coast ports within easy distances. It is mostly of a perishable nature, needing speedy transport and the business is of such a class and the profits so small that it cannot bear heavy charges for freight, storage, handling or insurance.
8.-All the work of shipping, loading and transhipping this cargo is done by Chinese: over 100,000 men, women and children are daily employed on daily wages, and the operation of the Ordinance in question will at once throw out of employment for the seventh part of the year, and deprive of their means of subsistence, this vast mass of people.
9.-This, Your Petitioners most respectfully submit, is not just or right. The Chinese people do not and have never in any shape recognized the necessity for a seventh day of rest. They do not contest the right of the European Officers and seamen to have this rest day if their laws and customs require it, but that could have been accomplished without throwing thousands of Chinese out of work and dislocating a trade valued at millions of dollars.
10-Your Petitioners are perfectly willing that an Ordinance should be passed to relieve European Officers and seamen employed on steamers and sailing vessels, whether chartered or owned, from all Sunday labour, but they most respectfully protest against a law that compels 100,000 Chinese to remain in idleness, when they are anxious and willing to work, for the sake of 1,000 Europeans, few of whom will really take the full advantage of the boon conferred on them.
Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray.
1. That the Ordinance to restrict the Working of Cargo on Sunday within
the waters of this Colony may be disallowed.
2. That, if it has unfortunately been sanctioned, it may be ordered to be
repealed.
3. That, before any similar legislation is again introduced, means may be taken to ascertain the probable effect of it on the extensive Chinese interests at risk in the Colony and to ascertain the views of the Chinese population.
And Your Petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray &c., &c.
Hongkong: 31st: July. 1891.
786
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