Hongkong, May 12.
The present state of unsettledness and drift in the affairs of the Colony seems likely to continue. Negotiations with Canton have broken down on the financial issue, the suggestions of Canton being lunaceeptable to Hongkong.
Tt now remains to be geon which ide will make the next move.
'Though the boycott has been dragging on for 10 months the local} [public is used to it, and business outwardly gves on much as usual. Judged by company reports, how: lever, the general trade outlook has been' adversely affected.
Property owners in fai and capitalists in general greatest gufferers as @® result of the strike. The value of land in the city has depreciated 30 per cent. and in Kowloon and the suburbs to 40 per cent. The gay} night restaurants at West Point, known as the Chinese Montmartre! of the East, are facing tremendous losses. The Chinese have not the! money to spend on dinners and banquets that they had previou§ to the strike, Inquiry at solicitors' offices shows that very dor this month in the way of assignments, sales and mortgages. In many case§ mortgagees are finding their mortgage security 0 heavily depreciated as to be insufficient to cover the amount of the mortgage loan. When that happens and the debtor is unable to pay the principal sum with the interest his only way out is to leave the Colony: it is then for the creditor to*foreclose the mortgage, a business which takes six months to complete.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.