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SLAVE TRADE AT HONGKONG.
[January 22, 1906.
should bestir themselves by adopting measures which will make the infamous trafficking impossible and secure for each that personal freedom which the protection of Britain usually spells for all.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
conducted by interinediaries, and even when, the bargain is concluded it frequently hap- (Daily Press, 13th January). pens that the child is passed from one That human beings are daily bought and purchaser to another. Sometimes the "go- sold in Hongkong is a startling fact. To between" absconds with the purchase money, some it does not hring any sense of shock, and the aggrieved party reporting the hecause familiarity with the distressing cir-matter to the police finds that he has made cumstances have somewhat dulled their a mistake and is laid by the heels for ETHNOGRAPHIC SPECULATIONS. susceptibilities, but to others the statement kidnapping. may come as a painful surprise. Though it be difficult to realise that any form of slavery can exist under the British flag, it is nevertheless only too true that there is a fairly extensive trafficking in boys and girls, in addition to the usual buying and selling of wives and concubines in the Chinese community here. Occasionally the police are successful in running some of the delin. quents to earth, but those cases are only a slight indication of what is really a large business, conducted with method and ap- parently with profitable results to those engaged in it.
In Hongkong it is quite an everyday occurrence for a boy or girl to be reported to the police as missing. Ou the face of them, those reports would suggest little beyond some more or less temporary family loss, but to those with a knowledge of Chinese life and the many peculiar ways that are inexplicable to the Western mind, they speak with eloquence. They reveal the operations of the unholy trade which flourishes by snatching children from their parents and selling them to other Chinese who put them to a variety of uses,
To understand some of the causes under- lying this practice, one must remember the exceptional place which a son occup es in the affections of his father. As an ancestor wor- shipper, he anticipates posthumous atten- tions from his offspring, but more material perhaps is the wish to secure that support which all Chiuese suns reader to their parents or foster parents when overtaken by old age. Or, may be he regards it as a grossly commercial transaction buying the boy for a small sum, training mit his trade or occupation and then selling him at a greatly enhanced value which gives him a substantial profit. Even Chinamen with sons of their own buy other boys and adopt them with TALLYARD's definition of gratitude before them. With regard to girls, the case is somewhat different. As every- body knows, the female portion of society occupy a very inferior position among the Chinese. The girls are purchased with a view to making them servants in native fanilies or keeping, them to the age when they can be profitably disposed of as wives or concubines. There is another fate to which many are condemned, and that is too wel known to call for any particular referenc here.
As a rule, the children are seldom bought to be kept in Hongkong. The risks of discovery are too great for that. They are usually sold to persons in Siam or Singa. pore. The boys may be disposed of to contractors, and it is remarkable that they are passed like chattels from one to another without realising that they are being sold. Otherwise it seems difficult to account for youths of eighteen years an upwards not breaking their bonds and asserting them-single or selves as free agents. Even the immigra- tion laws are evaded by those responsible connected as for the sale. A man assumes the slave's name and marches past the immigration | officer with the requisite answers to the usual questions. Girls are treated differ- ently. They are sold into establishments either as adopted daughters or as servants, and knowing their economic position it is not surprising that they allow themselves to be bandied about from hand to hand as chattels without protest.
Several people have reduced this iniqui- tous business to something like a fine art, as is seen in the practice euphemistically described as "flying the white pigeon.' A boy or girl is brought down from Can- ton and sold, say, to people in Hongkong. The necessary formalities are completed, the money is paid, and the boy or girl becomes the property of the purchaser. But he or she only remains a day or two and disappears. With his or her vendors, the same routine is gone through next, it may be in Macao, and after that Canton is perhaps tried. In this way considerab sums can be made by the parties. This practice, it may be as well to add, obtains in the disposal of girls to houses of ill-fame,
(Daily Press, 15th January). In an article which appeared in the Novem. ber number of the Cosmopolitan Review Mr. DANIEL T. PIERCE asks the question, Did America people the Earth? The question involves many issues, and is by no means so simple as Mr. PIERCE, and with him probably the majority of our geologists and ethnographers, would fain believe. The first question is, of course, is man.
multible origin? Can we, for instance, class paleolithic man, intimately he certainly is with the Palearctic and Neoarctic regions, with the Negro peoples, as intimately associated with the Oriental and Ethiopian regions, and both tropical? Or again, can we with any approach to certainty define in what geological age man first became a denizen of our world, and in what form did he first appear? Finally, and the question has a most important bearing on the issue, what was the distribution. then of land and ocean and was there either an America or a Europe to form his first place of residence? Ethnographers, and, we may add, geologists, are apt to leave out of consideration the last question in discussing the origin of human races, yet it is probably the most important of all before laying even the preliminary foundation of an argument on the subjećt.
We know a little about paleolithic man; that is to say, he was intimately associated with the period when glaciation was much more widely spread in North-Western We know that Europe than it is to-day. from Vancouver's Island to New York during what we call the same reological epoch North America underwent a similar period of cold; but we do not know that the periods were historically contemporaneous. We do not yet know whether man was an eye-witness of any portion of this glaciated time in North America. We know absolutely nothing of the contemporary history of the Negro and Negroid races, even throughout historic time, much less in the later geologic ages. We know that paleolithic weapons have been found in the Lybian deserts, and on the eastern frontiers of Egypt, but we are as yet quite ignorant of what race of man made use of them.
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Nearly half a century ago Lyall drew attention to the evident association of the different races of men with the great Provinces; his successors zoological have unfortunately not followed up the idea. Yet since his day the evidence has been
In attempting to suppress this evil the polic: are coufronted with great difficulties. When a case is reported to them, the facts are so distorted and exaggerated that it is difficult to appraise the statements made to them. Many people report the loss of a child to save face," and when investiga. tions are made it not infrequently happens that the police find the man they want is the one making the report. The stolen children themselves add to the difficulties, because they are schooled to call the parties uncle or father and tell the tales they are ordered to tell, thus protecting the people from whom they should wish to be pro- Bearing these facts in mind, it will be tected. Then, strange to say, the law easy to see the comm reial possibilities affords protection to the purchaser. It wuch the natives realize who engage in acknowledges the proprietary rights of the kidnapping. Of course, the risk is great, individual who has bought an, adopted son at least in Hongkong, but in nizhbouring or daughter, or who has acquired an ap- ports the nefarious trade cui: be conducted prentice or servant. The girl bought for in comparative safety. The method is very the house of ill-fame is, of course, described simple. A man or woman-both sexes as a servant or something different to what are identified with the practice-by appeal. she is. Thus, though it be perfectly well ing to childish feelings may induce a boy known that a young person has been stolen, or girl to follow him or her, perhaps to see and the party buying him or her makes a procession, as was the inducement men- himself criminally liable if the transaction tioned in one case at the Magistracy this were in other than flesh and blood, the week. The child is got on board a steamer law cannot touch him, an immunity which is and taken to Hongkong. Most children, not calculated to further the ends of justice by the way, are stolen in this way from or to enable those engaged in the work of Pakhoi and Canton. Arrived at Hongkong, suppression to strike at the root of this the unfortunate child is harloured in some crying evil. Certainly, it seems that we have house, and negotiations are opened for his something to do vet before we can square disposal. As usual in most Chinese trans- practice with precept. Our authorities purchaser rarely meet. The business ising this reproach from our midst and tinents must have been so unlike the pre-
accumulating that as with the higher mammals, so with the various man, they must have been races of differentiated before Ocean and Con- tinent assumed their present shapes and conditions. The modern geologist has grown namby-pamby, and is afraid to speak of such changes except with bated breath. LYALL was not so squeamish; he speaks of North Wales having since the co umance- ment of its glacial period been elevated and depressed some 2,400 feet: half as much again in the latitude of Iceland would have joined Europe and North America with a wid plain, and the distribution of the main mammalian forms shows that during the Pleiocene they must have been so connected.
-actions, the vendor and the prospective are faced with the bounden duty of remov-The geographical distribution of the con-
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