"The better class Chinese leave their wives in China. The transaction of purchase of these boys takes place at the home of the fathers of them in China. Seldom is it necessary to buy a son, as the usual custom when a wife has no son is to take another wife, not to buy a boy for a son,--hence such buying of boys is for servitude and for ransom, at Hong Kong." "Girls are not bought and sold in Hong Kong for domestic servitude under Chinese custom. They are bought and sold for the purpose of prostitution, here and elsewhere, and instead of being apprenticed to the domesticities, and of being brought up to be good wives and mothers, they are bought and sold,--brought up and trained for a life of prostitution, a life of the most abject and degrading slavery.... By the last census [this was written in 1880], there were in Hong Kong 24,387 Chinese women to 81,025 men. Of these 24,387 women the late Mr. May [Superintendent of Police] was of opinion that 20,000, or five-sixths, come under the denomination of prostitutes ... A Chinese doctor of large experience fixed the number of quasi-respectable women at one-fourth the whole number, or say 6,000, leaving 18,000 prostitutes. These opinions were taken and adopted by the Commission of 1877-1879 ... Who and what are these prostitutes who form by far the greater bulk of the Chinese female population of Hong Kong? The Report of the Commission answers the question: 'The great majority of them are owned by professional brothel-keepers or traders in women in Canton or Macao; they have been brought up for the profession, and trained in various accomplishments suited to their life ... They frequently know neither father nor mother, except what they call a pocket-mother,--that is, the woman who bought them from others ... They are owned in Macao and Canton. They are bought as infants. They come to Hong Kong at 13 or 14, and are deflowered at a special price which goes to the owners. The owner gets the whole of their earnings, and even gets presents 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