🚀 go-pugleaf

as this class of
    immigrant represents only 11 per cent of the total immigration,
    and more than one-third of the labor contracts last year were
    voluntarily signed by "paid passengers." It seems probable that if
    the "unpaid passenger" system were abolished, and the market thus
    thrown open to free competition, a much larger number of "paid
    passengers" would offer for contracts. But, even if this plan
    should appear to involve too great a risk of diminishing the flow
    of Chinese coolies to Singapore, it surely would not too severely
    tax the ingenuity of the Straits Government to devise a system of
    State-aided immigration, closely resembling that which has for
    many years been working in Canada, and more in accord with the
    dictates of ordinary humanity and English ideas of the liberty of
    the subject.

    Among the Chinese at Singapore the women number less than
    one-fifth of the population, and at Penang the proportion between
    males and females is practically the same. In the immigration
    returns the disparity is even more marked, for there is only
    one female immigrant to every eighteen men. This extraordinary
    preponderance of males in the Chinese population of these towns
    has given rise to, and is made the standing excuse for, a
    wholesale system of prostitution to which it would be difficult
    to find a parallel. Government registration and protection have
    favored the growth of this diabolical plague spot, for, strange to
    say, this gigantic system of debauchery is under the direction
    of the department which is euphemistically entitled "The Chinese
    Protectorate," th