Occasionally the question of the registration of Chinese servants is brought to the fore by a letter! to our correspondence columns, and the general verdict seems to have been that such a system would be impossible in Shanghai. It is interesting to note in an exchange that an act dealing with the registration of domestic servants has been in existence in Ceylon since 1871, providing for the registration of all monthly servants by a registrar under the supervision of the Inspector-General, Every person desiring to enter service has first to satisfy the registrar as to his fitness for such work and his respectability, upon which his name is entered in the register and he is given a pocket register containing a copy of the official record. In this record, which is kept by the servant himself, the employer writes the date when the man enters his service, the servant attending personally to have a similar entry made in the official books. On leaving the servant has again to produce his pocket register when the master enters the date of leaving, the cause of same and a statement as to the man's character. Should he feel unable to give the man a character, the law expects him to give his reasons in writing to the registrar. Every entry in the pocket register has to be reported by the servant to the autherities so that a complete record of the man is always available, while the production of the employee's own record when applying for a new situation enables a prospective employer to know what class of man e is engaging. The scheme, though it reads well, is probably "just a little too cumbersome, though the protection it affords to employers cannot be gain said.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.