Feb.
The issue of the Massey Report just before the holidays has perhaps delayed expression Jot public opinion, apart from the comments of the Press, The [Council's administrative experts have the report under consideration. The Council itself will no doubt be moved to give early indications of the line which it poses to take. As the Committee responsible for the report had permanent officials at hand during the discussions which produced it, it is reasonable to expect no strong official objection to the general principles embodied in the recommendations. Differences of opinion may emerge in weighing up the leourse of action to be pursued but they must not be allowed to prevent substantial support of the main proposals. The Council will be fortified' greatly by public interest in the conditions which Mr, Massey and his colleagues have so lucidly and courageously exposed. It must be confessed, however, that there ground for doubting whether public opinion is yet sufficiently active in this regard, Absence of comment, either in praise or blame, might be taken to indicate indifference which would belie the assiduity of public concern as shown in the correspondence columns of this journal few weeks ago.
The rickshaw subject of might, however, not be unfair to say that most of the letters seemed mainly exercised on points which the Massey Report clearly and rightly, treats a8 The delinquencies the rickshaw man, the inconvenience suffered "by the disrepair of his vehicle and public from the dirtiness and the danger which he: and it present to the superior traffic the streets have been vigorously canvassed. Only a very few letters—conspicuous among them that signed by number of Ohinese and Foreign residents in the early stay the Massey Committee's—have shown the faintes preciation of the wickedness of the system by which the unhappy ickshawman is now known to be exploited. It is on that aspect of the Report that the Counci) should have the most uncompromising mandate for remedial action, promptly and effectively.
The chief points to which the Council's attention should be Arawn are the traffic in Ticenc land the monopoly of the hongs. The measures. proposed for creating a properly controlled rickshaw service and for institut. ing a licensing system.free of vealed should receive the urgent notice of the Council. There ig also. a- general administrative consideration on which emphasis should be laid. The Report showed that the traffic in licen= ces which had led directly to the enhancement of the prices paid beyond all reason and to the actual gambling in licences by persons who never owned and Inever intended to own a ricksha was known to the Council' officials, but, for reasons which can hardly be defended, was ridly ignored. Faced' with this exposure; the Council will not be doing its duty if it does not instantly set on foot strict inquiry to make sure that, its licensing operations in other departments of municipal activity are free of euch reproach, What could be done with the rickshaw licences might perhaps be done by perverted ingenuity with other forms of Council licences to the impairment of the Administration's reputation and efficiency. It is right that the Council should be asked to set its mind at rest on that, point. Tt will necessarily desire to assure itself that applicants for ences in whatever department can have direct access to the officials in whose hands the issue of the licences rests and need not, have recourse to any inter-me diary, No one supposes that the process of reform can be in. stituted by magic. Time obviously required; caution, as this journal has already pointed out, is essential when dealing with an industry, however disreputable, employing 40,000 workers on whom there are 100,000 dependents. The Committee's project for progressive, ly establishing the controlled rickshaw company on the basis of 2,000 licences a year until industry are best calculate. poly without injustice should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental importance of keeping the eventual abolition lof the rickshaw as a° goal to which progress directs. This is not advocated in endorsement of the view that man-haulage has about it any intrinsically derogatory taint. The Committee seems have gone slightly astray there. The charge against the lckahaw Industry is not that puller's occupation is of the un~ worthy kind but that the conditions enforced by grossly unfair exploitation reduce the puller to a state of abject flavory and" misery and thus bring disgrace on a munity which acquiesces in them. The old gentleman who, ¢arns an honest sixpence by pulling a bath-chair on the Brighton front or the nursemaid who pushes a pram in Kensington Gardens does not feel in any way' placed below the ranks of honourable employment. Man-haulage which throws on the physique of the labourer an undue strain, as in overweighted ricksha barrows, handcarts, is certainly condemnabl: Otherwise the exercise of man's physical strength for transport work is just as respectable his load is a human being, is when it is a consignment of molasses. The abolition of the rickshaw ahoula we eet fguite apart from the immediately rely as a. traffic problem ani
urgent issue of extricating this Settlement from the shame of the disgraceful. profiteering at ithe expense of unhappy peasants whom economic necessity has driven from the fields into the streets of Shanghai, where they eke out a desperately wretched existence on which—wealthy middlemen wax unpleasantly fat the Labour Party is intensely in the learnest in preparing for the next General Election. The swiftly hostile reaction within the Party to the inept implica tions of Sir Stafford Cripps's references to. the Crown and to dictatorships, showed that Labour is content to rely Parliamentarianism for its Political resurrection, It has been helped. by palpable errors on the part of Mr. MacDonald' Conservative allies, although Mr. Stanley Baldwin has shown considerable adroitness in keeping the scandalous abuses now re- and prosperous.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.