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The Chairman. And it would only emphasise the superiority of their position as compared with the position of a private chair and ricksha coolie. What do you think about the present rates for public chair and rickshas ?
A.-Well, if you bring down the rents, I think you ought to bring down their fares proportionately.
Q.-If these people are making ten to fifteen dollars a month per head, don't you think there is room for diminishing the rate of public fares?
ago?
A.-I think they are paid too highly.
Q.-Can you tell us how the scale compares with what it did ten or twenty years
A.-Well, you will get it all in the Ordinance.
Q. What can you tell us from inemory?
A.-I am not sure as to the whole scale of fares, but it is just recently that the scale has been raised at the Peak; I could ride from my house to the Tram for fifteen cents; now it is twenty cents, and down town the scale has been raised too. This is not the first raising of the rates. There was a raising three or four years ago, and they have been raised three times during the last 25 years.
Mr. Wilcox.-Have you ever heard complaints made of chair coolies refusing pri- vate service unless they were guaranteed that they would only have to carry the wife or husband respectively?
A.-I know that chair coolies demand that they shall only carry the husband or the wife. Years ago a chair coolie in a merchant's family would not carry the amah
when taking the baby out.
Q.-That was years ago, but latterly?
A. Yes, I have heard that such is the case.
Q.-You say that as much as two dollars is paid for rent sometimes by coolies. That, of course, applies chiefly to chair coolies and ricksha men on the streets but pri- vate chair and ricksha coolies are provided with quarters?
A. They are provided with quarters, but they all belong to these coolie houses and if they are out of employ they go there to sleep, and when they go down town for a night or two they sleep in these houses.
Q.-Don't you think the fact of their being provided with quarters should induce them to retain their employment ?
A.—Yes, but they have such high remuneration otherwise that deducting rent and so on they are better off than the man in private employ.
Q.-Yes, I see their interests overlap in many ways. I don't see that the ques- tion of rent has such an important bearing on the question. Is it not more likely that the higher rate of wages made by an outside chair or ricksha coolie influences the pri vate chair coolies to leave their employment?
A.-Ob, I think it must.
The Chairman.-Doesn't the knowledge that their public confrères get so much. stimulate them to demand higher wages in private employ ?
A.-It must work in that way. That is one of the chief factors in it. I think the food is another important element in it. The coolies have to provide their own food.
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