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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
stables. The police were alarmed and Police Sergeant Baker turned all the men out of the station. The three injured men were found in the stables and they were at once taken in ambulances to the hospital, where one of the men, Chiu Sui Shan, died on Sunday morning, while the other two were by that time sufficiently well to be sent home. Wong Chan Shun was arrested by the police in the Causeway Bay stables and the first prisoner was arrested in Mr. Kennedy's Garden Road establishment. He went straight there ofter the murder and told Mr. Kennedy's assistant, a man named Bailey, what had happened. Bailey at once took measures to detain the man, who was afterwards given into the custody of a policeman who had been telephoned for. At the police station the first prisoner freely admitted that he was one of the murderers, but the second man said he had nothing to with it. After taking a portion of the evidence the prisoners were remanded.
HONGKONG GENERAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
PROTEST AGAINST THE INCREASE IN TELEGRAPH RATËS.
On Saturday, the 19th September, 1896, & special meeting of the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce was held in their Rooms, at the City Hall, for the purpose of protesting against the recent increase in telegraph rates, and also for the purpose of nominating a member for appointment to the Legislative Council. Mr. A. McConachie, Chairman of the Chamber, presided, and there were also present -Hen. T. H. Whitehead Hon. J. J. Bell- Irving, Mr. T. Jackson, Mr. N. A. Siebs, Mr. G. B. Dodwell, Mr. N. J. Ede. Mr. St. C. Michaelsen (members of the Committee), Mr. R. C. Wilcox (Secretary), Hon. E. R. Belilios, C.M.G. Hon. C. P. Chater, Messrs. G. H. Potts, P. C. Sethna, G. L. Tomlin, A. J. David, T. Arnold, Hart Buck, O. Wegener, F. Maitland, G. de Champeaux, M. Lacaze, J. H. Garrels, H. N. Mody, Geo. W. F. Playfair, D. R. Sassoon, M. D. Ezekiel, Wm. Whiley, H. Stolterfoht,
rivets our fetter term of the C into the instrumen from the ports for Europe overland lines under your Excellency à copy of a tion presented by this Chr Majesty the Queen on this subj ply, in which we are promised that no vention shall be ratifiedThe mer dies our whole case, and we
it, and to oppose with all your power fication of this Convention, which is also in ju to China herself." Clause 3 of the memorial question reads
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"The Foreign Trade of China and Japan with
Ma your Majesty's dominions and with jesty's subjects is carried, on under and is re- gulated by the provisions of certain Treaties made between Your Most Gracious Majesty and the Emperors of China and Japan respectively, and by these Tresties certain well-defined rights t are secured to the subjects of your Majesty trading in and to China and Japan.” Clause 4 - reads:
Therefore I say that instead of raising the homeward rates the Telegraph Companies might have met their constituents with a reasonable reduction of the outward rates, corresponding with the sterling value of the amount home ward. (Applause). The next question that arises is-Can they afford to do it? I say, Yes, emphatically. The Chinese Administration, I believe, returned something like twenty-four per cent. to their shareholders. At a recent meeting of the Great Northern Company held in Copenhagen they reported a reserve fund of nearly a million sterling; and as for the Eastern Extension Company I should say happy are the shareholders in that concern. They have gone on increasing their lines, and, as their position is a splendid one, they can afford to be just to their shareholders and generous to the public. There is another matter which no doubt some of the subsequent speakers may refer to, and that is the convention with the Chinese Administration. In connection with that it has come out that Chinese messages go over the lines at half-price. Well, the oircular sent round by the Joint Tele- graph Companies was to my mind wholly
"Of these rights the most valuable are those unsatisfactory. It seems to me as if they were
which secure to your Majesty's subjects all the handicapping us, and we are not receiving that benefits and advantages of any privilege or bone.. consideration that we ought to under the most- cession which may be at any time, granted by favoured-nation clause. People like ourselves China or Japan to the subjects of any other who contribute very considerably to the exist-nation, and those which forbid the creation by3- ence of the Telegraph Companies should be China or Japan of any monopoly or exclusive placed on the very best footing. I hope our privilege in favour either of their own subjects- very good friends the Joint Telegraph Com-
or of any foreign nation to the prejudice of panies, with whom our relations in the past the rights and privileges granted to your have been of a most friendly and favourable Majesty's subjects." Clause 14 reads:-- description, will reconsider, their action. Now I have formally to move the first resolution:- "That this Chamber is of opinion that the action of the Eastern Extension and Great Northern Telegraph Companies in having, after only one day's notice, on the 1st August last, raised their rates 37 per cent. and 43.26 per cent. for telegrams to Europe and America respectively, and 100 per cent. for telegrams between Hongkong and Shanghai, is utterly unjustifiable and that their reasons for so doing are inadmissible and wholly insufficient."
Hon. J. J. BELL-IRVING said—Gentlemen, I
..
Your Petitioners most humbly thank your Majesty for having refused your assent to the Convention and to any modification of it, and for your Majesty's most gracious assurance. through your Ministers in the Commons House of Parliament, that no content will be given to the Convention without full consideration of all the interests involved and without consultation with the representatives of British commerce and Clanse 16 reads:
"Your Petitioners beg further most respect- fully to represent that the continued existence of the Convention, the subject of this Petitio and of the negotiations for its approval or
W. H. Ray, W. Ponte, J. H. Cox, A. Coxon, have listened with much interest to Mr. Jack | modification, is an impediment to all improve
M. S. Sassoon, H. J. Holmes, W. Danby, H. L. Dennys, E. H. Joseph, W. R. Loxley, Granville Sharp, G. Stewart, H. Wicking. D. R. Crawford, E. Jones Hughes, H. R. Kinnear, R. L. Richardson, J. W. R. Taylor, H. Jessen, T. F. Hough, and M. M. Mehta.
The SECRETARY read the notice calling the meeting.
The CHAIRMAN-I think I need hardly detain you by going at length into the question before us. We have met today to protest against the sudden and very heavy increase in their rates which the Joint Telegraph Com- panies, having first concluded a convention with the Chinese Telegraph Administration, thus paving the way by securing & monopoly, saw fit on the 1st ult. to spring upon us after only a single day's notice. Well, gentlemen, I can only hope that our protest will be emphatic and that it may prove effective. You have all of you no doubt read the correspondence, and can readily form your own judgment on the case. I will now call upon Mr. Jackson to more the
first resolution.
Mr. T. JACKSON-I preface my remarks by stating that the Telegraph Companies have ever done their work well, and that a more obliging and more painstaking set of public servants I have never met. That is the rose colour of the affair. Now, I come to the sub- ject of the meeting of to-day, and I must say that it came upon me as a very great surprise indeed to find them raising their rates the way they did. I have read their side of the case very carefully. Their contention is that they are only putting the rates homewards on the same basis as the rates outwards. That would be all very well if the rates outwards were at a reasonable figure; but surely at this period, at the end of the nineteenth century, 78. & word from London to Hongkong is an excessive rate. (Hear, hear.) Every person must admit that. (Applause.) I thoroughly believe that in the course of a very few years people will say, "I remember when in Hongkong the tele- graph rate from London to Hongkong was 78. per word.”
son's remarks, with which I entirely concur. mercial interests of the colony, is called upon This Chamber, representing as it does the com-
to strongly protest against any circumstance which may arise tending to hamper our trade. The recent action of the Telegraph Companies will hamper, commercial intercourse, and the increase of the telegraph charges is not war- ranted, as Mr. Jackson has pointed out, by the handsome results which the published reports of the Eastern Extension and the Great Northern Telegraph Companies have shown during recent years. I think the mercantile community here, who have supported these companies for so many years, have good reason to now feel aggrieved. I am sure you will all heartily concur with the resolution proposed by Mr. Jackson, which I have much pleasure in seconding. (Applause).
The resolution was carried.
Hon. T. H. WHITEHEAD-Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I rise to move" That this Chamber views with the greatest anxiety and concern the action of Her Majesty's Govern ment in sanctioning, without reference to the Chambers of Commerce in the Far East, a con- vention which gives an absolute monopoly to the Eastern Extension and Great Northern Telegraph Companies." In an interview which Her Majesty's Minister in China, Sir Nicholas O'Conor, granted this Chamber in November, 1892, their mouthpiece said :--
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ment in telegraphie communication between the Chinese Government from completing its the East and Europo, and in particular preventa telegraphic system and connecting it with the general network of telegraphic communication throughout the world via Kiachta."
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That the British Government under the circumstances should have ratified in July this year, without consulting those whose inter ests are keenly and vitally affected thereby, Convention between the Telegraph Companies and the Chinese Telegraph Administration, which gives the Companies an absolute monopoly, is incomprehensible, and it is im-
sufficient reason for such action. In common possible to conceive of the existence of any fairness to those who have to pay
"for grams, and to whom the Companies are very largely indebted for their financial success hitherto, they were entitled to be heard before any monopoly was conceded, but, doubtless fearing the consequences which might arise from our being heard, Lord Salisbury's sanction would appear to have been previously and stealth- ily obtained. Positively no political purpose whatever would appear to have been subserved; the Imperial Government has received no quid pro quo so far as can be ascertained; while there is reason to believe that other Govern. ments receive privileges from the Companies. Our interests have been sacrificed for the benefit of the shareholders in the two Telegraph Com panies-one a Danish Company, in which cer- tain exalted personages are supposed to be pecuniarily interested, and the other an English Company. If the Telegraph Companies in late years had been unable to earn reason terest on the capital employed, their seeking to increase the tariff would have been intelligible and an increase would have been agreed to, but very contrary results have been obtained. The English Company has paida dividend of 7 per cent. per annum for 1893 1894, and 1895 the gross receipts in 1895 were £50,259 more than those in 1894 and it carried forward at 31st I amber. ts reserve and bals last £129,329, thus increasin
cluding insurance:
"On the subject of the Telegraphic Conven- tion recently signed by the Russian Minister and Sheng Taotai, the Director-General of Chinese Telegraphs, we would like to say a few words to your Excellency. The mercantile community, long saddled with a $2 per word rate between China and Europe, a rate imposed and kept up by an agreement between the Great Northern and the Eastern Extension Telegraph Companies, have been waiting impatiently for the day when the Chinese, connecting their lines with the Russian land lines, would be able to give us much cheaper word rate. They could do it It is a monstrous charge. I easily and profitably. The new Conventionance after last dividend, and
a
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