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some cuttings for wolfram prospecting, and at Cha Kwo Ling a kaolin mine. Only the first two are worked on modern lines. The crushing mill at Lin Ma Hang is being registered as a factory. The total number of miners is about a thousand.

120. As female labour is cheaper than male labour, female labour prepon- derates in those trades where dexterity rather than physical strength is required. Chinese girls employed as packers in tobacco factories, etc., are quite up to European standards of proficiency. On the other hand male miners have not the necessary physique, and although their wages are lower than those in Europe or America, their output is proportionately less, so that they cannot be said to be really cheaper than European labour. Much the same may be said of Chinese riveters in shipyards where four men will be seen handling a machine that would be worked by one European. While in these instances the explanation of inadequate physique may be sufficient, yet in many forms of work it is frequently necessary to employ several men to do the work of one. The plumber's mate has proliferated into a gang of assistants whose service is often only to stand and wait. As a result, instead of one man drawing a reasonable wage we find several existing at subsist- ence level, which may avoid unemployment but debases the standard of living. This diffusion of work is obviated in many factories by the introduction of the piece work system. In the large industrial undertakings, such as the dockyards, one has no difficulty in distinguishing the departments in which piece work or time work prevails.

121. In the factories and workshops registered there is an estimated total of 28,170 male and 26,220 female workers, making in all a total of 54,690.

122. These figures of course only cover a portion of the labouring population. Apart from those engaged in fishing, agriculture, and domestic service, there are large numbers of casual workers, such as coal coolies and stevedores and street hawkers, licensed and unlicensed, and the innumerable fokis to be found in every shop who often work for little more than their board and lodging. The number of licensed hawkers was 16,087 in 1936, 13,211 in 1937, and 11,722 in 1938. An itinerant hawker's licence costs four dollars per annum. Many have been paid for from the poor box at the magistracies as a form of relief to the infirm and aged. The decrease does not represent a diminution in the number of hawkers, but merely in the number of those licensed. In 1938 as a result of the influx of refugees there were probably five unlicensed hawkers for every licensed one.

123. Most of the labour employed in factories other than shipyards is on a direct basis, skilled labour being frequently employed at monthly rates and unskilled on piece work. This is a rough generalization only as one can find skilled labour on piece work and unskilled on time work. Some factories pay a fixed wage with a bonus on production, Coolie labour in building construction and read making is paid by the day. The shipyards retain a certain number of skilled men on a permanent basis, but the major part of ship-building and repairing is let out to contractors. Although the Hong Kong Mines at Lin Ma Hang employ all labour direct, the Marsman Mine at Needle Hill engages its labour through a labour con- tractor. Coal bunkering and transporting coal and stevedoring in general are let out to contractors. Sub-contracting is rampant in building construction, reclamations, and any scheme which involves the employment of large numbers of coolie labour.

124. Within limits there are certain advantages in the system as in shipyards where there is no constant amount of work and the labour contractor may be able to switch his men from one job here to another there as occasion demands, and to tide them over periods of unemployment with free food and lodging, but it becomes vicious in building construction where it is not a question of splitting a contract among several sub-contractors but of subletting a whole contract through several intermediaries who all take their profit until the actual contractor who does the work may receive so little that he scamps his work or goes bankrupt and is unable to pay his labourers. The standard form of Public Works Department contract contains a clause forbidding the subletting or assignment of a contract or any portion of it without the consent of the engineer, but it is to be feared that in practice this is seldom adhered to.