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Posted by KwizKlub on January 23, 2008, 10:21 pm
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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," the "Protector of Chinese" at Singapore bei
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