given to the girls, who
are allowed three or four dollars a month pocket-money. When some
of the girls are sent away on account of age, new ones are got
from Canton. If these girls are not slaves in every sense of the
word, there is no such thing as slavery in existence. If this
buying and selling for the purpose of training female children up
for this life is not slave-dealing, then never was such a thing
as slave-dealing in this world. There are 18,000 to 20,000
prostitutes in Hong Kong to 4,000 or 5,000 respectable Chinese
women.... Once in five years the stock has to be renewed. It is
for this purpose, and not for the legitimate or quasi-legitimate
purposes of Chinese adoption and Chinese family life, that
children and women are kidnaped and bought and sold ... Until
this slave-holding and slave-dealing are entirely suppressed, the
grosser abuses arising out of it and incidental to it (kidnaping
of women and children) can never be put an end to."

It was on May 20th, 1880, that the Secretary of State asked for the
first statement of Sir John Smale's views as to kidnaping and domestic
slavery. His reply is dated August 26th, and in it he refers to
reasons for hi