(ii) The high cost of living and difficulty of obtaining steady regular employment, which impel, not merely one person from each poor family, but several of its members to go out to hawk in order to supplement the earnings of the head of the family, who may have regular employment of another kind.
(iii) The fact that hawking as an occupation suits the Chinese genius for retail trade; and though it may be a precarious it is not an arduous occupation for those who are not too energetically inclined and have a little capital.
(iv) The continued delay in the rehabilitation of local trade and industries, which might absorb as workers many who now resort to the easiest alternative for making a living-hawking.
13. The vast majority of those who are at present engaged in hawking are unlicensed, since figures show that only 10,524 current hawkers licences have been issued by the Urban Council.
14. On the evidence before us we have concluded that the concrete services rendered by the hawkers and the advantages in their existence at present may be enumerated as follows:-
(i) Cooked-food hawkers are useful for supplying workers with food conveniently near their place of work. Though this is undeniably an advantage at present, we must emphasise that it cannot be considered to merit any permanent place in the Colony's economy, and we shall indicate more fully later in this report what we consider to be the proper measures for the provision of workers' meals at their place of employment.
(ii) To some extent hawkers are useful, insofar as they may deliver at the door of the purchaser goods, which for reasons of bad weather, public holidays or household duties might otherwise be less conveniently obtained. Hawkers may also shorten or obviate a journey to the nearest shop where the goods they vend are procurable.
(iii) To a very limited extent hawkers serve outlying districts, where there are few shops. But the vast majority of hawkers prefer to congregate in the middle of the town and in the vicinity of markets.
(iv) A certain number of hawkers are at present useful to retail vegetables owing to the present inadequacy of markets in certain places, an inadequacy attributed partly to the destruction of two markets during the occupation, partly to the increase in population, and partly to the fact that certain markets are very thronged at certain hours of the day.
(v) Newspaper vendors are definitely necessary even in the crowded part of the town and at the most central points. They should, however, as we point out later, be subject to certain controls.
poor
(vi) Hawking constitutes to some extent an avenue by which
relief may be afforded, insofar as it reduces the charges on charitable agencies by providing an easy occupation for the aged and destitute. The system of hawking as a whole. cannot however be regarded as a scheme for poor relief,-it is as much a competitive trade as any other form of retail business. In this connexion and in parenthesis we venture to deprecate the habit of mind of some well-meaning and most charitably disposed persons, who think that the
Services rendered by hawkers.
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