“Babies For Sale!”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 188, 29 October 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

“Babies For Sale!”

A Strange Chinese Trade (Written for THE SUN by EVELYN WHIT ELL)

KMONG the many familiar street cries of China perhaps the most extraordinary is: “Babies for The over - population, many mouths to feed, the soaring price of rice, make some parents thankful to dispose of their responsibility—or exchange it for a few dollars.

“Buy my child from me,” a little wretched-looking Chinese woman said to me, on the streets of Shanghai, as she held up the little naked body of her girl baby. The Chinese chauffeur who stood by my side, and helped her by his translation of her language into English,

assured me that I would get an excellent bargain for 20 dollars, if I bought the child. “But what use would a Chinese baby be to me?” I asked. “She soon grow big. She work for Missie then,” the chauffeur explained. The childless woman in China is despised. Whatever the conditions—and in whatever way they have to be disposed of afterwards —children must

be brought into the world in China. The daughter ,is of little importance, but the son is needed to weep at his father’s deathbed. Looking on the woes of the country—the want, the poverty, the starvation, it would seem more fitting that the father should weep at the son’s birth.