Did Taels or Titles Cause the Strike It was an irate European who, held up by one of the Council's scarlet runners, remarked "You d—d—fool: why don't you get out of the way?"
And it was a scarlet runner who replied "My no belong dam' fo my belong garbage coolie."
No matter where it is, these democratic days call for the proper application of titles to men in their professions. For instance, quite a number of men who write for news-Papers strongly dislike being called reporters, having a distinct preference for the term "journalist."
We understand the Shanghai Municipal Council are "up against'? exactly the same sort of thing. Recently they issued an order, speaking of tue gentlemen who with assiduity devote their professional care to the effective maintenan: e of the various public gardens "labourers." It has been sugges¢- ed that they even had the temerity to speak of them as "common" and the men to whom these terms have been applied are righteously indignant. It places them on a level, they say, with the person who was the hero of the little incident quoted above—the common street coolie—and, keen on maintaining the dignity of their calling, they insist (that the term has something belittling, both in its meaning and sound. "Something like calling a dentist a "tooth carpenter" remarked one person of our acquaintance.
Tue Yeomen or CHtna-
The strikers, who went out on Wednesday, are reported to have claimed that they were farmers, honourable tillers of the soil, following the precedent set them for many centuries by the Son of Heaven, and to speak of them as "common labourers" is just the sort of insult of which an uncivilized European would be capable.
That is the romantic side of the matter. The real facts, from what we have been able to gather, up pear to be that whereas the men were formerly paid 320 cash per day, the authorities have raised the salaries to 32 cents. It was, indeed a rise when it was contemplated, but a cent is now worth ten coppers and the "farmers" are precisely where they were. Hence the plants in the Public Gardens were like Topsy on Wednesday—they just growed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.