'I'ae present unfortunate situation of affairs, as regards the tension between the Municipal Council and the ratepayers, is due to a great extent to the change that has come over the course of business in Shanghai in late years, and very much to the very rapid development of Shanghai since the war. In the old days practically all the foreign goods brought to Shanghai came in sailing vessels, which discharged their cargoes leisurely in the stream. As the cargo came up out of the hold it was put into lighters, brought ashore to the most convenient jetty, and carried up by coolies to the merchant's godown. An attempt was made some thirty years ago or more to start a carting company, but it had a very brief existence, 'I'here were wharves, but they were chiefly used by the coasting and river steamers, though now and then a clipper ship, in a hurry to make an intermediate trip to a rice port before the tea season began, would discharge her cargo ata wharf, When with the opening of the Suez Canal steamers superseded clipper ships, they could not afford the time necessary to discharge in the stream, and. they went to wharves to discharge, their cargo being stored in the wharf godowns, the merchant giving the Chinese buyer delivery orders on the wharf, and constantly not bringing his cargo into his own godown at all. If it was brought up to his godown, it was reloaded into lighters at the wharf and then brought to a convenient jetty at Shanghai and: carried up by coolies as before, Gradually, with the inflex of wheelbarrow-men with their barrows from the north of the Yangtze, the improvement of the roads in Hongkew, and of the bridges across the Soochow Creek, it became a little cheaper to bring goods all the way by land, on barrows, from the wharves to the godowns in Shanghai, but it was not possible to widen the streets in Shanghai concurrently with this change in the system of carriage. It is understood that the difference between the cost of water carriage and of land carriage between the wharves and Shanghai is not very great, but it is slightly in favour of the latter, with the result that the gambling as to the congestion of the traffic from the enormous number of wheelbarrows plying has become louder and louder. It is this congestion, more than the actual damage done to the roads, that has moved the Council to increase the tax on wheelbarrows, Some speakers and writers have dwelt on the cruelty shown in this attempt to wring the last copper cask out of the poor hard-worked wheelbarrow coolie, But those who know tell us that the wheelbarrow coolie, while he is a very hardworking man, is better paid than any other man in his rank of life, and that after three or four years he is able to retire to his village on the north of the Yangtze with " comfortable little bag of savings. The increase to the tax that ought to have been collected on the first of this month was 200 cask, or something over 6 cash, a fraction of a farthing, a day, and what is quite certain is that this would been really paid by the employer of the wheelbarrow coolie in slightly increased charge for the carriage of goods. Gradually, the cost of land carriage would be made as high as that of water carriage, and the desired curtailment of the number of wheelbarrows licensed, which is now excessive, would be brought about without recourse to the expedient of fixing a limit to the number of licences issued, with the inevitable difficulty of deciding to whom to give and to whom to refuse these licences.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.