WHY DO PEOPLE PATRONISE CHINAMEN?

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 13921, 25 March 1909, Page 2

WHY DO PEOPLE PATRONISE CHINAMEN?

BECAUSE THEY ARE CHINAMEN. WELLINGTON^CONCLUSIONS. A white grocer, giving evidence at the Arbitration Court last week, said that there were • a hundred Chinese shops in Wellington, and at every one of them groceries were sold. Mr Grehfell (employers' representative) remarked that owing to the large number of small shopkeepers, - and the competi- ' tion of Asiatics, the trade wsts not ver^r lucrative at present. The average Chinese shop has three or four" strings to its long bow. The aliens rely on fruit and vegetables, groceries, tobacco and side lines (such as cropkery,, Chinese curios, silk and so on), to take much money orft of European pockets. The estimate of a hundred Chinese, shops dealing in groceries is probably far too generous, says the Post. The Labour Department, however, believes that Chinese shops which cqmbine groceries with fruit and other departments, now total at least forty-five in the city area, four or five at Petone, and one or two at Lower Hutt. The 45 celestial emporiums in the city compete with about 124 European establishments (of all sizes), and the Chin- ! ese, taking the district by* and large,* have rather the best of the strategic positions. Also the fact thai .the fruit and vegetable business serves as a "draw" helps them to place diy goods with their customers. It is a common belief that "other things being equal" a Briton will patronise a fellow-countryman in preference to a Chinaman, bujt facts do not support this theory. Britons got into the habit of dealing with Chinese years ago when the aliens cut the prices, and the habit remains evefa after the Chinese prices are not lower than those of European competitors, or may not even be as low. Anybody can prove, by a walk along Conrtenay Place", that the bargains offered by Chinese in fruit and greengroceries, for example, are not usually as advantageous to the buyer as those available in white folk's shops. And evidence gathered recently goes to show that in the case of grc^ ceries the Chinaman's charges are at least as high as the Europeans'; and yet people flock to the Chinese. They do not deliver the goods, they give no credit, but they flourish. It is believed by the puzzled observers of an mdia 1 putable fact that the Chinaman owes much of his good luck to the fatuous British belief that a Chinaman must necessarily be the cheaper proposition, merely because he is a Chinaman.