7th Fobs In the days when Shanghai had a very much smaller population than it has now, and when that population, ie, the foreign population, consisted almost entirely of the members of business firms and their immediate dependents, the servant question was not an acute one. In every firm the servants were members of one family of which the compradore was the responsible head. If a boy were wanted by any member of the firm, the compradore introduced a son or a nephew or a cousin-brother's son or nephew; he had the same surname as all the other boys in the firm and the compradore was responsible for him; in fact, all the boys were jointly responsible for each other. Even the and the cook's mate and the coolies were guaranteed by the compradore; and so it came about that in one firm all the servants were Tangs, in another all Wangs, in another all Changs, and so on. No one had any occasion to investigate the antecedents of his boy, or to worry himself with apprehensions as to his honesty; and if a member of the firm coming from a distant port or under other exceptional circumstances brought in an outside boy, means were soon found to make his berth a bed of thorns, and he found it convenient to resign. Old residents still bemoan this old regime, and a very convenient and comfortable one it was.
Even as much as a quarter ofa century ago there were symptoms that a change was coming over the spirit of our dreams, and a Servants' Registry was started, but its blossoming' was premature and it soon perished for lack of support. 'The old class of servant had not died out, and people would not take the trouble to ave their servants photographed and identified, and to sce that a proper character' verified by a photograph inseparably attached was brought to them by a new servant when they engaged him. The change, however, that was threatening twenty-five years ago has now come on us in full force. The servant question is becoming an intolerable nuisance. Not one servant in ten can find a really responsible man to guarantee him. Boys come no man knows whence recommended by characters of hoary antiquity borrowed or hired for the occasion; they stay as long as they like, and go no-one knows whither, generally with some of the portable property of their employers. Service 1s no longer, except in some instances, honourable as it was in the days when a boy who made his first appearance as a lam-pidgin, with a Pidgin-English Dictionary in his hand dating from the old Factory times at Canton, might rise to be head godown-man or even compradore himself, and end his career in the bought rank'ofa
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.