681595-1881-Legislative-Council — Page 4

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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 11TH JUNE, 1881.

61,000. The increase in the value of this trade from $1,706,913 in 1877 to $5,251,246 in 1880, has been coincident with an increase in our imports of raw cotton from Bengal and Rangoon

from 33,000 bales in 1877 to 86,000 in 1880. Our opium trade shows no such tendency to increase. In 1880, we imported 87,747 chests, Mr. F. D. SASSOON as against 88,428 in 1877.

tells me that the value of our total trade with India last year was $67,772,937, the value of the opium being $58,248,235. Though the trade in other goods than opium is but one-sixth of the total Indian trade, yet it is so rapidly developing, that I look forward with confidence to the time when it will outstrip, and, perhaps, enable the Indian Government to curtail, the trade in opium. Tea merchants have increased from 26 to 51, rice dealers from 95 to 128, coal dealers from 16 to 20, firearms dealers fron 15 to 20, timber dealers from 15 to 107, drapers from 101 to 156, and foreign goods dealers from 167 to 191. -Com- pradores have increased from 77 to 95, ship compradores from 67 to 113, and ship charterers from 7 to 41. Looking to the increase I have pointed out in the ordinary machinery for com- mercial movement in the harbour, to this remark- able increase of the mercantile community, and to the well-known magnitude of the mercantile transactions of our Chinese merchants, it seems clear that this large expenditure, since January 1880, of $1,710,000 by Chinese for commercial property was a necessary expenditure.

There is another question that we may fairly ask. It has often been said, and there is hardly a directory or guide relating to Hongkong in which you do not see it recorded, that Hongkong has no local manufactures whatever. Is that

true? Well, on turning to the census returns, I find many local Chinese manufactures in this Colony. Bamboo workers have increased from 93 in 1876 to 121 in 1881; Boat builders, from 48 to 110; Carvers, from 59 to 70; Cigar makers, from 21 to 31; Engineers from 10 to 121, and Gold beaters from 41 to 60. Glass manufacturers appear for the first time; there are now 16 in the Colony, and I believe at this moment the glass manufactory to the west of the town is capable of turning out such glass as some of the European storekeepers here are themselves prepared to sell ; and when a service of glass may get injured, they can now send to our local glass manufactory and get tumblers to replace those broken in the set. I find image makers have increased from 10 to 15, lantern makers from 50 to 63, leather box makers from 39 to 53, lemonade and soda-water

makers from 28 to 30. Match manufacturers did not appear in the former census; they now number 13. Oar makers have increased from 30 `to 43. Opium dealers have declined from 108 to 103, but that is not coincident with decline

any in the revenue the Government of Hongkong derives from the monopoly of prepared opium, which was $132,000 in 1877, but was sold in 1879 for $205,000 a year. Paper box makers

have declined from 21 to 10, and rattan workers from 596 to 448. Of rifle makers we have five

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