CO129-317 - Governor Sir Blake - 1903 [4-6] — Page 14

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12

Mar

unchanged, however greatly the decline in the value of silver may effect their respective purchasing power.

5. The continuous fall in exchange is accompanied by an exactly equivalent rise in the prices of all articles manufactured in Europe and exported for sale in this Colony. Some of such articles are not usually purchased by Your Petitioners, but others are among the necessaries of life and must be obtained by them, however high the price. The progress also of English education throughout the Colony causes the demand for numerous articles of European manufacture to become yearly more extensive, and the fact that the price of such articles rises exactly as the price of gold rises is felt as a hardship by your

Petitioners.

6. But the effects of the fall in the value of silver are not confined to articles manufactured in Europe or America; they can undoubtedly be traced in a rise in prices throughout the Colony, so great as to make it necessary for

your Petitioners to press the consideration of this question upon His Majesty's Government: For example, the first charge upon the salaries of your Petitioners naturally consists in the provision of feed and clothing for themselves and their families. The staple foods required by them consist of rice, pork, vegeta- bles and fish, to prepare which for consumption they require a certain quantity of firewood, while for clothing they must have cotton and silk. Upon making a careful comparison of the prices of these articles in the local market during the last five years Your Petitioners find that there has been a rise amounting on the average to about 60 per cent. Secondly, it is necessary for all Your Petitioners to find suitable accommodation, and in this matter of house rent they find themselves at least as hardly situated, as they are now required to pay sums often twice as great as would have been demauded a few years since. Morcover they are convinced that the continued influx of immigrants is likely to cause the rents of houses suited to Chinese use to rise still higher than at present.

7. Your Petitioners admit that they are not affected by the decline in the value of the dollar to a greater extent than the employees of the great mercantile firms, but they desire to point out that persons in the services of such firms are no longer paid on a scale originally settled some years ago, but on the contrary draw salaries fixed in accordance with the conditions of the market. Neverthe- less, various bodies employing numbers of Chinese clerks have recently granted special increases of salary in consequence of the low price of silver. Your Petitioners are informed that such a course has been adopted by the Imperial Maritime Customs, by His Majesty's Naval Yard, by the Commissariat Department, and by various business houses.