CHINESE SLAVE GIRLS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2679, 5 January 1924, Page 4

CHINESE SLAVE GIRLS.

SOLD BY THE POUND

"One 1 if tie Chinese girl of five was just, recently sold at so much a lb. She was weighed on the scales and (he cost was worked out.” This statement was made recently hy Miss L. R. Page, who ms returned to Sydney from China. She is the only Australian hi an enthusiastic little hand of women in Shanghai saving- Chinese girls front slavery and worse, Tt is called the Door of Hope. Tt is not hound to any church or social society hut it is helped by most of them: and this is what it hits done: Tt hits rescued 4,000 Chinese girls from a minops life, has trained them and taught them Christianity in a picturesque little home just out of Shanghai: and has finally married them to good Chinese citizens. “Though I’ll be glad to he among all my friends. I’ll be even more pleased about next November, when I’ll he going hack to China for another six years,” said Miss Page. “It’s work that you cannot help liking. It’s worth while.” The trade in girls in China, she said, was amazing. Every day, fine, well-reared girls were being sold by their parents. There were many reasons' Sometimes it was to pay off debts, sometimes in a famine, to buy food, so that at least some of the family might live. They were

sold often for a few shillings. A few attractive girls were sometimes worth £SO or more to their parents. “Oh, it’s a terrible business. They are bought and sold, just like cattle; and sometimes, when they are very young—wee girls of live. Only just- recently there was a good deal of bartering over a live-year-old child and finally it was agreed that she should be sold by the pound. She was 7>ut on the scales and the cost was worked out.

“No foreigner is quite safe travelling in China now,” Miss Page said. “You never know when your chair hearers are going to take you to bandit headquarters for ransom.”