The first actual arrest of an alleged manipulator of the local rice market was made by the Shanghai Municipal Police yesterday afternoon at the Foochow Road market, and this man will be brought before the First Special District Court this morning, charged under Police Regulations. The police are now looking for two other Chinese who also are said to have influenced the market for their own benefit, All three men are rice brokers.
The brokers concerned, as was previously reported in the "North-China Daily News," were taken to Settlement Police Headquarters last Tuesday to be questioned about their activities in the rice market. Their trading licences were suspended pending a further investigation and they were released.
Yesterday the retail price of rice dropped $1 per picul. Thus the best grade, or "kan mee," was being sold [at $38 to $40 a picul while the ordinary "see mee" fetched $32-$33.
There was yet no indication in Shanghai that the cheap rice promised by the Japanese army on Decem. ber 12 was in the offing. The Japanese army spokesman on that date expressed the sympathy of the Japanese army for the hard-pressed Chinese population and announced that large consignments of rice owned by the army were at that moment "moving towards Shanghai" to be sold here at cheap prices for the benefit of residents.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.