One foreign firm here had to pay tone cent per sack of flour unloaded by the gang when this cost would have been obviated had the gang allowed the trucking coolies to do the work. A. better mark for the gang was a Chinese firm which pald {twenty cents per picul of rice in similar circumstances, The only power of the gang is gained by in-Uimidating other coolies who would work for" less, The frm that week to the SMC, has paid three, four, and five times standard prices for the working of cargo at S.M.C. Pontoons. A representative of the firm told a "North-China Daily News representative, as a small example, of a parcel to be brought from the Tighter to the office in the Settlement, IW cost ten cents to have it taken all the way from the wharf to the office but the gang charged six cents just to take It off the lighter on to the dock, Tt is not the coolies who actually' work the cargoes that gain from the Facket but the unseen' powers who control them, The Shanghai Municipal Police have small patience with shipping. interests who allow themselves to be. squeezed "by paying the racketeers and then erying out there is racketeer~ ing on the waterfront. It is the weak-ress of the shippers that encourages racketeering. If a shipper, fearful for his cargo, is a soft mark, he becomes the prey of racketeers, of November 11, 1918, fore, celebrates her own armistice day each year on November 4.
The oficial commemorations of the day yesterday opened with a short ceremony at 8 am. in the allan Club, when in the presence of a large section of the italian community now in Shanghai a wreath was laid on the memorial there to Yocal Italians who died during the Great War.
'This was followed by a further brief ceremony at the Cenotaph on the Bund, where another wreath was Inia. At' 11 o'clock, a special mass was held on board the Italian cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoll, at which time the Ttalian flag at' all mast= heads was lowered to half-mast in honour of the dead.
No further celebrations of the day were held, but "Battleship Row," along the Bund, was a mass of bright and vari-coloured bunting all day, fas the cruisers and smaller craft there dressed in honour of the day. Among the ships to be dressed was HILIMS. Idzumo, which carried the Mahan national flag at the main
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.