Currency reform is in China a matter hardly second in importance to the abolition of "squeeze." There is no national currency here; each province (or state, as we would say) issues its own money when it pleases, just as the different American states did two generations ago. I remember hearing an old man tell of going from the Carolinas to Alabama about 1840 and having to pay heavy exchange to get his Carolina money changed into Alabama money. So it is in China to-day. You must get your bills of one bank or province changed whenever you go into another bank or province, paying an outrageous discount, and a banking corporation will even discount a bill issued by another branch of the same corporation. Thus a friend of mine with a five-dollar Russia-Asiatic banknote from the Peking branch on taking it to the Russia-Asiatic's branch at Hankow gets only $4.80 for it.
Nor is this all: All kinds of money are in circulation, the values constantly fluctuating, and hundreds and thousands of men make a living by "changing money," getting a percentage on each transfer. Take the so-called 20-cent pieces in circulation; they lack a little of weighing one fifth as much as the 100-cent dollar; consequently it takes sometimes 110 and again 112 cents "small coin" to equal one dollar! The whole system is absurd, of course, and yet when the government proposes to establish a uniform national currency it is {98} said that the influence of these money-changers is so great as to make any reform exceedingly slow and difficult.
And yet let not my readers at home with this statement before them proceed too hastily to laugh or sneer at China for unprogressiveness. For my part, as I have thought of this matter of money transfer over here, the whole question has seemed to me to be on all-fours with our question of land title transfers at home, and the more I have thought of it the firmer has the conviction become. In fact, China's failure to adopt a modern currency system is perhaps even less a sinning against light than our failure to adopt the Torrens system of registering land titles. The man who makes a living by changing money and investigating its value is no more a parasite than the man who makes a living changing titles or investigating their value; the hindrance of trade and easy transfer of property is no more excusable in one case than the other; and the 90 per cent, that China might save by a better system of money transfers is paralleled by the 90 per cent, that we might save by a better system of title transfers.
Mr. Money-Changing Banker, fattening needlessly at the expense of the people, prevents currency reform in China--yes, that is true. But before we assume superior airs let us see if Mr. Title-Changing Lawyer, also fattening needlessly at the expense of the people, does not go to our next legislature and stifle any measure for reforming land-title registration. And in saying this I am not to be understood as making any wholesale condemnation of either Chinese bankers or our American lawyers. The ablest advocates of the Torrens system I know are lawyers, men who say that lawyers ought to be content with the really useful ways of earning money and not insist on keeping up utterly useless and indefensible means of getting fees out of the people. Such lawyers, indeed, deserve honor; my criticism is aimed only at those who realize the wisdom of a changed system but are led by selfishness to oppose it.
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After all, however, the most revolutionary and iconoclastic reform in the new China is the changed policy of the schools. For thousands of years the education has been exclusively literary. The aim has been to produce scholars. A thorough knowledge of the works of the sages and poets, and the ability to write learned essays or beautiful verses, this has been the test of merit. When Colonel Denby wrote his book on China five years ago he could say:
"The Chinese scholar knows nothing of ancient or modern history (outside of China), geography, astronomy, zoology or physics. He knows perfectly well the dynastic history of his own country and he composes beautiful poems, and these are his only accomplishments."
But now all this is changed. The ancient system of selecting public officials by examination as to classical scholarship was abolished the year after Colonel Denby's book was published, and the new ideal of the school is to train men and women for useful living, for practical things, and to combine culture with utility. Japanese education now has the same aim. There, in fact, even the study of the languages is made to subserve a practical end. Where the American boy studies Latin and soon forgets it, the Japanese boy studies English and continues to read English and speak it on occasion the rest of his life, increasing his efficiency and usefulness in no small measure as a result. In Japan, too, I found the keenest interest in the teaching of agriculture to boys and domestic science to girls; and in all these things China is also moving--blunderingly, perhaps, but yet making progress--toward the most modern educational ideas.
As a matter of fact, much as America has talked these last ten years of making the schools train for more useful living, China and Japan have actually moved relatively much farther away from old standards than we have done, and if they should continue the same rate of advance for the next thirty years we may find their schools doing more for the efficiency {100} of the people than our American schools are doing. And when I say this let not the cry go up that I am decrying culture. Already I anticipate the criticism from men who cling to old standards of education with even more tenacity than absurdly conservative China has done. I am not decrying culture, but I am among those who insist that culture may come from a study of useful things as well as from a study of useless things; that a knowledge of the chemistry of foods may develop a girl's mind as much as a knowledge of chemistry that is without practical use; and that a boy may get about as much cultural value from the knowledge of a language which does put him into touch with modern life as from the knowledge of a language which might put him into touch with ancient life but which he will probably forget as soon as he gets his diploma. Slow-moving and tradition-cursed China and Japan, as we thought them a generation ago, have already committed themselves to making education train for actual life. Has America given anything more than a half-hearted assent to the idea?
The practical value of this article, I am reminded just here, has to do almost entirely with legislation. You may wish to remind your member of the legislature of the parallel between the wasteful and antiquated money-transfer system in China and the equally wasteful and antiquated title-transfer system at home; you may wish to inform your member of the legislature and your school officials of the advance of practical education in the Orient; and you may wish to remind both your member of the legislature and your congressman of China's successful crusade against the opium evil as an incentive for more determined American effort against the drink evil. Let me conclude this letter, therefore, with two more facts with which you may prod your representatives in Washington. (Which reminds me to remark, parenthetically, that every reform the Chinese are getting to-day comes as a result of persistently bringing pressure on their officials; and this {101} parenthetical observation may be as full of suggestion as any idea I have elaborated at greater length.)