To the Editor of the "NorrH-Cuma Day News"
Sm,—Allow me to give a word of warning to the men who have stayed in Shanghai while the wife and children have been sent away. I don't think that any of us so far have attempted to put down on paper what exactly the "hostilities" cost each of us and I do not intend to do so because as yet it seems fruitless. But I do want to draw the attention of the men who pay the compradore books at the end of the month to the fact that if tomatoes suddenly appear at 28 cents and pears at 45 cents for one pound this has nothing to do with the difficulty to get fruit at the present time but that something is very much wrong with the compradore. My compradore who tirelessly tries to put these amounts into my book has his shop at the corner of Edinburgh and Great Western Rd. I go to the Seymour Rd, market twice a week. Tomatoes cost at the present time at the utmost 10 cents and the same pears that appeared on our table today at 45 cents cost actually not more. than 25. If you are willing to spend a dollar on fruit you get five pounds for it. These amounts seem very small and I am aware that I will probably be accused of narrow-mindedness but I find that I have been spending at the very least 20 dollars more on fruit and vegetables this month than I have ever spent before. I know perfectly well that if there is a shortage prices must become higher but if pears and tomatoes and such perishable things actually rot in the markets because they are too dear there seems to be no reason what: ever why the various compradores should make the big cut. I should like to say that these annoying conditions are largely due to a missing control either on the side of housewives or somewhere else.
The cook and the boy and the coolie all have their families on our premises whether we know it or not. We do not mind as long as they keep in the background and had to move from their homes for the time being but I think that this is no reason why we should provide our servants with the extra money it might cost them to keep their families by having to pay the compradore ridiculous prices for quite ordinary things so that the cook may get a higher interest on our purchases at the end of the month, Is there no way of keeping prices for market-things on a reasonable basis? Do these-ticalers also have to become rich at the same time because; we have to send away the wives who control them which costs us quite a bit of money? I find most of my friends complaining of the same experience. Cannot something be done about it?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.