5th Aug.
We have more than once drawn attention in these coluitins to the hardships that the foreign members of the Customs staff are suffering from the fall in exchange, and these hardships are becoming more: acute every month, and with the decline in the value of the "Shanghai tael alniost to the classic half-n-crown, they have become really almost: intolerable, We remember Mr. Ezekiel of E. D. Sassoons' remarking some yents ego when apprehensions were growing stronger as to when exchange would touch bottom, that it was hopeless to expect bimetallism or anything else to drag silver up again, and that a readjustment of values was inevitable in Shanghai, There has been a good deal of readjustment of values in the interval, not altogether to the advantage of, those whose incomes are fixed in silver; though many of the leading firms have recognised the difficulties in which their employees wore involved by the fall in exchange, and have.given them compensation. But there is one very worthy and important class of the community to whom the wind has not been tempered at all. Shorn they are: all round; but their protection against the wind of want has not been increased all, We allude to the staff of the Imperial Maritime Customs, whose condition everywhere: is uow the more pitiable in that with the fall: in silver there has been a rise in, copper cash, and to whom it is a mere mockery to read of Mr. Wetmore assuring his fellow-bimetallists that silver will still buy just as much in China of Chinese products as it. ever would. Most pitiable is the condiliou of the Custims employees, in Shanghai, where the sudden growth "of the' community since the war with Japan has.caused an abnormal and most inconvenient rise in rents and in the prices of nearly all the necessaries of life. OF old the majority of people in Shanghai never did much more than make both ends meet; but when all their outgoings are increased and their income remains stationary, the hiatus becomes intolerable.
While there has been no increase in the rates of pay of the Customs staff, there has been, particularly in the smaller ports, an increase in their duties. It has fallen to their lot for instance to organise and work without any increased pay for it, the new Post Offices, and the Inspector-General is, properly enough, very car that every man, especially if he be a junior who is trying to win his spurs, does his best with whatever he is told todo. If it be true, as we are informed it is, that no extra pay is given to the members of the staff who have to carry on the new Post Office, we cannot but think that here the Inspector-General has made a mistake, and it is quite possible, human nature being what itis, that some of the friction which the peeration of the Imperial Chinese Post as devel ped is due to this cause.
To show. the hardships. which the decline in silver has brought on the Customs staff we will take a concrete instance, which will impress the mind much more than. paragraphs of general remarks. We.take the case of a man who joined the service thirteen yenrs or so-ago on a salary that was supposed to be equivalent.to £300 a year, though even at that time it only produced him about £250. Since 1884 the value of his services has been recognised by four promotions, each of which was supposed to add £100 a year to his pay, and he should now be getting about £700 a year, a fair enough income, seeing that the work is not particularly arduous nor particularly responsible in the lower grades, On the other hand, the Customs employee has the disadvantage of never knowing how soon he may be ordered to another port, and has nothing in the shape of pension to hope for when his work is over. But this supposed income of £700 has now come down to under £300; and at the end of seven years' faithful service, the recipient of this magnificent pay may hope to receive a bonus of the same amount, which he is officially told he is not to fritter away on useless luxuries, but is to lay aside a provision for his old age and the support of his family. Farther, the Custom employee is allowed two years' Teave on half-pay after five years' service, this half-pay amounting, after he has reached a good position in the service, to considerably less than nine shillings a day.
"The lowest pay in the indoor branch of the Service is that of the 4th Assistant B, who gets 'Ils. 75 a month, which is nominally £300 a' year and is really £126. The highest pay, which a Commissioner receives, is 'I'ls. 500 2 month, which is nominally £2,000 a year, and is really £840. It needs no argument to show that these rates are entirely insufficient, and they are unjust too; for a man who has been some time in the Service and has devoted himself to its technicalities and to the study of Chinese, and has got into the Customs groove, does not find it easy to better himself in some other line of life. The members of the Customs staff, a most heterogeneous body of men of all nationalities and with the most varied training, have, taken all round, done their work uncommonly well aad on the whole shown a clean front to the world, But the Inspector-General, who is doubtless himself a proportionate sufferer by the fall in silver, cannot hope to keep his staff thatit has been in the past unless there is a readjustment of salaries; and the-Service itself cannot but suffer from so many men in it being in an inevitable state of discontent, and feeling -that they would never have joined it had they had any idea that their fortunes would have to follow the course of silver to whintever depth that disappointing metal might touch. It is not a matter that concerns merely the Inspector-General and his staff. 'I'he loans that China has contracted and is contracting on the security of the Customs revenue interest thousands of people all over the civilised world in the honest administration of the Imperial Maritime Customs, and they cannot contentedly see the working of the Customs entrusted to a different class of men who, however able and estimable they may be, are not the class who have made the Service what it is. The resignations that have taken place within the last year are an indication of what the best men in the Service think of its position and prospects, and those who have resigned are not, and cannot be under the present circumstances, replaced by men equal to them in any way.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.