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Hongkong? Are their objects economical or political? Is it an organization to keep up wages? Is that one of its objects ?
A.--I don't understand you.
Q.-Do they try to keep men out of the Colony? Providing newcomers were willing to enter the Society, would they welcome as many as ever liked to come, or do they try to keep the coolies away, to keep the numbers down and keep the prices up?
A.-I don't know. They say, when a newcomer arrives in Hongkong, that he must enter the Society or he will be beaten.
-And do the coolies who come to Hongkong enter, as a rule?
A. Yes, as a rule.
Q.-Have you known of any cases of Chinese being beaten?
A.-Some of my fokis have been beaten over ten times.
Q. What do you mean by your fokis?
A.-Coolies engaged by me from Chu-chau.
Q.-They have been beaten by other coolies because they are not Triads?
A. Yes, because they are not Triads.
Q.-You pay your men in the Kowloon Godowns eight, nine and ten dollars according to class?
A.--Yes.
Q. How do you classify them? Do they begin at eight dollars and then get promoted to nine dollars and then to ten, or is it according as they work?
A. According to the amount of work they are capable of. If he is lazy, he only gets eight dollars. If he works hard, he will get nine and ten.
Q. You send half their wages home to their parents?
A. Yes.
Q.-Well, if a man was getting eight dollars and you send four of this to his family in the country, you only pay him four dollars?
A. Yes.
Q-But then he has only four dollars to live on, whereas you told us it cost him five or six dollars for food. How does he live ? Is it on minus a dollar a month?
extra.
A. They work in the night time.
Q.-They do extra work?
A. Yes.
Q.-Then they can earn extra wages?
A. -If they work from seven to twelve o'clock of a night, they get twenty cents
Q.-Do most of them work this overtime ?
A. Yes, twenty days out of the thirty each month.
Q-You say you get them under contract. Are they bound to serve you a certain number of years?
A. Yes. The elders in the village agree to let them come down to me for so many years.
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