A Mors business-like meeting than that which took place on Friday at the Manicipal Hall under the auspices of the Shanghai Genera! Chamber of Commerce it would be difficult to imagine. It was very well attended, so well that its. opening had to be delayed while the seating nccommodntion was augmented, and it was, of course, unanimous. We have the highest authority fur the conviction that with things as they now are the public health is in constant danger, and there is no consideration more important than the preservation of the public health.
Appropriately enough, the Municipal Council enabled us to publish on Saturday morning extracts from official reports by the Municipal B"gineer and the Health Officer on the sanitary condition of 21, which come in most aptly to reinforce the more general statements as to that condition ioade at the meeting. Mr. Alford, 2s Chairman of the Committes of the Clamber: of Commerca, was in the chair, and! proposed the first resolution, his speech ig an explanation of the reasons why the Chamber should come to} the assistance of the Municipal Council, The fact that the local negotiations have broken down—come up against a brick wall—decided the Chamber to do what it could to persuade Poking of the correctness of the principle of foreign Municipal control of our suburban districts, 'I'he resolution he proposed was seconded by Mr. Korff, the manager here of the German firm of Melchers & Ca., and waa supported by Mr. R. M. Campbell. The point of his speech was that the Settlement which wis big enough for us fifty years ago is very much too small now, and that in asking for the extension of its limits we are not seeking the benefit of foreigners alone, because "for every foreigner whom it would benefit, it would benefit 100, nay 500, natives, and therefore indirectly the Chinese Government,"
The second resolution, pointing out the danger to the public health and order from the present insanitary and Inwless condition of the outlying dietricts, was moved by Mr. Dudgeon, seconded by Mr. Worth, maunger of the Russo-Chinese Bank, and supported in a most interesting speech by De, Henderson. Dr. Henderson spoke with the experience of nearly twenty-nine years us health officer. He has had, as he told the meeting, exceptional opportunities of watching the conditions under which the growth of this Settle-taken place, and of making himself acquainted with the difficulties which as time goes wu ure likely to arise, and which, it is reasonable to suppose, might if not checked affect the prosperity of Shanghai. Lhe picture he drew, a horrible one enough bat not exaggerated, of the condition of the outlying districts, fully justified his warning that if as time goes on this cordon of dirt and disease is allowed to extend unchecked, a heavy reckoning will one day have to be made. he Ministers at Peking do not, we should hope, need to be reminded that the commercial prosperity of Shanghai is bound up in the healthofits inhabitants; but we trust that they will appreciate the force of Dr. Henderson's concluding words "The people of Hongkong in 1894, as in Bombay to-day, suffered from the same dire causes that we are suffering from, and unless atrong measures are adopted for properly controlling the districts immediately surrounding the Settlements, we shall without doubt lave to encounter an epidemic of the most serious description." Mr. Hewett also supported the resolution,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.