Apr. 16.
By far the most interesting of the Council's annual publications are its financial report on the bygone, and budget for the coming years. For through these, all the activities and life of the Settlement may be surveyed in one bird's-eye glance. Municipal servants are not encouraged to be eloquent; and when they launch out in dithyrambics someone is sure to say something acid. Yet from these reports an imaginative writer might weave a story which even a Home newspaper would publish and cause its readers to ask, Where is Shanghai? Even the sedate Commissioner of Revenue has very nearly allowed the emotions stirred by Shanghai's growth to get the better of him. For instance Shanghai at the present time can hardly be termed a place apart for the residence of foreigners. The past few years have witnessed the increasing popularity of the area within Settlement limits as a! i place of residence for influential Ohinese. The result is naturally to drive foreign residences further afield as instanced by the number of houses being built in the Western suburb, beyond the ~actual boundary of the Settlement. Some alleviation of the shortage of houses has resulted, but the rentals show no signs of diminution. Landlords have taken full advantage of the shortage of houses and rentals are continually on the increase.
The last remark, especially, sounds as if it came straight from the heart.
Last year as every landlord, and doubtless his tenant too, knows, there was @ fresh assessment of land values and the comparative tables here given are full of meaning. In 1903 the average value of land in the central district was Tls. 13,549 per mow}
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.