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3. For such service rendered the Imperial Railways of North China shall pay the said employé monthly at the rate of two thousand pounds per annum, due in Tien-tsin at the rate of the exchange of the due date, to his credit with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
4. In addition to the salary, the railway shall furnish the said employé the house at Tongshan formerly occupied by Mr. Kinder, and the said house shall be cleaned, painted, and colour washed, and electric light installed at the railway's expense.
The employé is entitled to a horse allowance.
5. As the said employé receives his salary from the Imperial Railways of North China, he is a subordinate under the director-general, and shall obey his instructions previously issued and (or) issued in future.
6. If the said employé shall at any time neglect or refuse to perform or comply with all or any of the articles of this agreement, or any of the duties required of him, or all or any of the orders of the director-general in that behalf, or shall be guilty of any misconduct or negligence or of any breach or non-performance of the provisions of these presents, it shall be competent to the director-general to declare the employment of the said employé under this agreement at an end; in such case the director-general shall not be under obligation to provide the said employé with a passage to England. Should the said employé be temporarily incapacitated for duty owing to ill-health, his case shall be dealt with under the leave rules. If, however, the Imperial Railways of North China's medical officer certifies that the said employé is unfit for further services in China, and he forthwith and with all diligence (having regard to the condition of his health) proceed to England, the Imperial Railways of North China's medical officer shall be the sole judge of the said employé's fituess or unfitness to travel, and the director-general shall not recognise that any delay was occasioned by ill-health unless he so certifies.
7. The said employé shall respect the Chinese officials and work harmoniously with all those Chinese who come in contact with him. The said employé shall report everything concerning railway affairs to the directors and the director-general, and he is forbidden to give any information to outsiders or disclose anything regarding railway business to other people, except what is due to the bondholders.
S. The said employé shall exert the best of his ability and time as engineer-in- chief and general manager of the railway, and shall not engage himself in any other business and transact any business for other people. He is not allowed to interfere with the work of other railways in China unless he has been instructed by the director-general to do so, but this must not interfere with the working of the Imperial Railways of North China.
9. After the signing of this agreement, if there is anything the said employé wishes to deal with the local authorities, he shall report the case to the directors, who will communicate the same with the said authorities, and he shall not communicate with the local authorities direct.
10. After the expiration of this agreement, and if it is not renewed, the Imperial Railways of North China shall provide the said employé a first-class passage from Tien-tsin to Loudon, and, in addition thereto, the said employé will receive a sum of one hundred tacls (100 taels) Hongping Huao Pao to cover all hotel, the coolie hire for baggages, and other expenses.
11. The said employe's special duties are to control the permanent-way, the foreign and Chinese engineers and workmen, and to inspect various materials and the workshops, but the director-general has given the directors the power over the above- mentioned concerns; therefore when the employé has any matter relating to the said concerns he must consult the directors before it could be carried out.
The accountant and traffic departments shall continue their present routines, but if the said employé has any suggestions to make the latter shall inform the directors of the same, who shall give his decision upon the matter,
In witness whereof the contracting parties do hereby subscribe their seal and (or) signature on this third day of February, 1910.
For the Imperial Railways of North China:
Witness to the signature of Director-General Liang,
Loo E. TONG.
LIANG, Director-General.
D. POYNTZ RICKETTS,
Engineer-in-Chief,
Witness to the signature of the Engineer-in-Chief,
Y. F. Woo.
(Sir,
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Enclosure 2 in No. 1.
Mr. Mayers to Mr. Max Müller.
Peking, May 19, 1910. IT will be recalled that the agreement between the Chinese Railway Administration and Mr. D. P. Ricketts, engineer-in-chief and general manager of the Northern Railways, which was drawn up after the director-general had given assurances to His Majesty's Minister that it should comply with the Loan Agreement of 1895 and the Railway Protocol of 1902, was signed somewhat hurriedly at Tien-tsin on the 3rd February before its text had been examined by the corporation's agents.
When the document was scrutinised it was found that the new engineer-in-chief and general manager named in the first article was designated in subsequent articles of the agreement as the employé," and this term, which scarcely seemed appropriate, was translated in the Chinese version by the words "shou ku jen," which undeniably mean “employé," but rendered literally stand rather for the hired man." The expression appeared to have been intentionally selected in order to indicate the subordinate position of the person to whom it had reference. There were, in addition, one or two points where the Chinese version did not accord precisely with the English, but the variations did not affect the sense so much as the tone of the document.
No steps were taken respecting this matter prior to my arrival here towards the end of March, when I understood from Mr. E. G. Hillier that His Majesty's Legation considered, as indeed he did himself, that the attention of the director-general should be drawn to the use of these derogatory terins.
The result of my conversation with the director-general on the subject has already been communicated to you verbally, but it may be useful for future reference to record that, as soon as I had expressed surprise at the use of the expression "shou ku jen," Liang Ta-jen assured me with some amusement that it was not, as I evidently thought, a specially invented term intended to depreciate the engineer-in-chief. He said that, as Mr. Kinder, the late engineer-in-chief, had never been under an agreement, they had no direct precedent to work on, and the draft was made on Mr. Collinson's agreement as engineer-in-chief of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway. In this agreement Mr. Collinson had been designated an employé" and a "shou ku jen without any loss of dignity. It would, however, be well, the director-general admitted, to bear in mind for the future that the words "officer" and "yuan would be more appropriate. The wording taken from the Collinson agreement was, he explained, originally drafted by Sheng Hsuan-huai's interpreters in Shanghai several years ago.
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I felt, in face of this explanation, that I should gain nothing by pursuing the subject, and that I must first check the statement that the wording of the Collinson agreement had been followed.
I have written for a copy of this document, but have not yet received it. it reaches me I will not fail to inform you further on this subject.
I have, &c.
Sir,
Enclosure 3 in No. 1.
Mr. Mayers to Mr. Max Müller.
When
S. F. MAYERS.
Peking, June 29, 1910. WITH reference to my letter of the 19th May respecting the wording used in the Chinese version of the agreement signed in February last by Mr. D. P. "Ricketts, engineer-in-chief and general manager of the Northern Railways, I have the honour to inform you that I have been given an assurance by the Director-General of Railways, Mr. Liang Shib-yi, that in all future agreements the word "employe" shall be translated in Chinese by the words "kai yuan," which mean literally "the said officer." I find, on reference, that in the English text of these agreements, which have beeh drafted mostly in London, the word "employé " has been used invariably; but I have not been able to prove whether Mr. Liang was correct or not in stating that the Chinese wording of Mr. Ricketts' agreement was copied from that of Mr. Collinson, of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway, as it appears that Mr. Collinson's agreement was never actually signed, and that consequently neither he nor the agents of the British and Chinese Corporation ever saw the Chinese version,
I have, &c.
S. F. MAYERS.
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