"I knew there was going to be a hot of fire-play," said a prominent merchant, "so I declined to attend 'Sunday's' meeting. The meet 1 understood, was to discuss Bt Ithe question of the boycott and (2) the question of relief for the strik-lers. As I knew that further consideration of these questions was useless, I decided not to attend. The!
posed boycott, in my opinion, is less and impossible. Only the ignorant wish to put it into Ipractice, us well as those who hope to gain by it. T'do not see how it be successful. We are asked mot to sell goods from Britain and apan, but how on earth is this possible when we have not got our lown goods to replace them? What about the goods already purchased and which are in the godown? We Ihave paid for these already. Are jwe to let them rot in the godowns ud lose our money, which amounts millions of dollars? Even if we Ihave got the goods on consignment, jwe will have to pay heavily for them just the same. We will at) least have to pay freightage, cus-items dues and godown cost. These alone will come to a huge amount. therefore, lodged against the proposal Jas against a suggestion that we should report to the General Labour [Union the amount of stocks we have Jon hand and give an undertaking not to purchase any more goods from these two nations. As soon las T, and many others, have an undertaking that we can'get the same goods at home—real Chinese goods Jand no others, not even those from other cou give this We 'A well-known shipping man said that he thought that there was no doubt that third parties were cireullating a lot of propaganda agains ithe two nations because it had a ieeudge against them or w get the business which Bri Japan would lose la case of a boy scott. He would mention no names.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.