!,
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they will undoubtedly do their best to make it
successful: but they will have nothing to do with registration and the risks of trying to act against their advice are that they may cease their actual co-operation and leave the Government to employ just the ordinary
official methods!
Social workers in the Colony perhaps make too little allowance for the necessity for sympathy and
co-operation. Non-Xtiana are apt to be throw
together as "heathens" and no custom with the alightest
"heathen" taint can be tolerated. The Chinese
recognise the attitude of mind, and allow for it:
they are broadminded enough to give Xtian effort full opportunity and even to subscribe funds for it. But
they have their own civilization and customs and akk for
the same treatment in respect of matters where their
conscience is free: and the muitsai question is one of
these, for the mere statement that the sale of a human
being is immoral does not in the circumstances carry any conviction to them. To cruelty they object
whether the human being has been bought or not: but
standards of cruelty vary, and it may even be doubted
whether there is more real ill treatment of children in
Hong Kong than there is in the East end of London. The question of child labour as on the Peak Road)
is a separate one. The children in these cases are probably natural children, for whom the parents have no place but at their side and they would hardly om mui tsai: they would more probably be sellers. Mui tsai are as a rule domestic servants. 1 understand a
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