9. Confiscation of large and criminally-won estates; that is, retroactive laws and restitution, instead of “Go and sin no more, but keep what you got by former sins.”
The Boswell of Confucius in the Ta Hio (Great Study) writes: “If those who govern states only think of amassing riches for their personal use, they will infallibly attract toward them depraved men, and these depraved men will really govern the state. The administration of these unworthy ministers will call down the chastisements of heaven, and also excite the vengeance of the aggrieved people. The riches of those who have the honor to govern states should rather be justice and equity, and not only talk of justice and equity.” Is this not excellent statesmanship, even if written in China long before the Christian era?
China’s love of peace was inculcated brilliantly by Lao Tse (604 B. C.) in these words: “The least glorious peace is preferable to the most brilliant successes of war. The most splendid victory is but the light from a conflagration.” The Ancients said: “Render no funeral honors to conquerors; receive them with tears and cries in memory of the homicides they have committed, and let the monuments of their victories be surrounded with the tombs of those whose death they brought about.” Confucius, a practical statesman, fifty-three years later, ineffectually combated this philosophy with these words: “They who discuss by diplomacy should always have the support of a military backing”; that is, the mailed fist and the soft word! The feudal system began to totter in China in B. C. 250, under the reign of the emperor-builder of the Great Wall, Tsin Chih Hwang-Ti. The classical examinations gave it the death blow in A. D. 600. With its martial accessory, the feudal system continued in Japan, which tolerated no democratic examinations for office, until the very late date of 1869 A. D., thus lasting there the longest in the world, for it had died in England eight centuries earlier. Such was the beneficent effect of the famous classical examinations and civil service in old China.
The most brilliant maxim on sociology ever written is Chinese:
“Gold is tested by fire:
Man is tested by gold.”
On this subject of hardships, Mencius himself wrote, in 315 B. C.: “When Heaven (Tien) is about to confer a responsible office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his bravest undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his courage and increases his adaptability.” China was the first country to establish a Price Board, now recommended by all political parties in America for dealing with monopolies until real competition can be again set up. Salt production is a government monopoly. The dealer must buy from the government and sell a fixed quantity at a fixed price in a fixed district. The justice that the government regulates is that the dealer may not adulterate and may not charge an unreasonable profit. If the cost of production is high, the people profit, because the government will not need to collect high taxes in other ways. There is no chance for a crowd of drone-middlemen to get away with immense profits, or for private monopolists to lay a whole people under economic slavery. This is the Chinese theory. In many parts of Eastern Szechuen every farm has its little salt well with bamboo wheel and men treaders. The salt is sold to the government at a fixed price, about two and one-half cents a pound. The Chinese say: “Why do your trusts now want consolidation? The divisions of Europe, by the competition of various ambitions, have made Europe bright and progressive. America’s trusts, by making all things one, will produce decay of genius, invention, liberty and individualism.” A Chinese reformer had written to a rich bribe-taker and bribe-giver for work in one of the industries which he controlled, and he also endeavored to sell to the rich man a copy of one of his books. Chided in later years with seeking employment in his earlier years from a man whom he had later cause to criticize, the reformer said: “The devil is king and has usurped the seats of employment; yet, although he is devil, he owes me employment. A man’s right to work and to retain free opinion are inalienable, and a government, in granting a monopoly, can not sell such rights of the individual; they are a perpetual lien on the monopoly.” Intelligent municipal philanthropy has not been unknown of late years. I will instance an occurrence at Lanchow, a city on the Yellow River (Hoang-Ho) in far western Kansu province. In the fall of 1911 large numbers of people had become a charge upon the city on account of summer floods and consequent famine. By the end of August the moat of the city had become dry. The authorities roofed and partitioned this trench into many houses so as to shelter hundreds of vagrant families.
China has specialized in localization, or home rule. Even in charities this operates. No province, district or city encourages any other district’s imposing its public charges upon it. To illustrate, we shall say that your Chinese interpreter and his wife have accompanied you from Amoy to Chingtu City. The interpreter dies. If you do not send the woman back to Amoy, she will report to the Amoy Guild in Chingtu. That guild will subscribe and send her on her way as far as Chungking, where the Amoy Guild will subscribe and send her in care of the Amoy Guild at Hankau. Eventually, to her great pleasure no doubt, she will reach her people in Amoy. A widow is not molested on her travels; her persistence in widowhood and desire not to sell herself, either as a second wife, slave or strumpet, are highly respected. She would not be encouraged, however, nor would she desire to remain in Chingtu, where, being a stranger, she would be unable to secure employment. The same system would operate inversely if a Chingtu woman were, through misfortune, stranded in far-away Amoy. The Chingtu Guilds in Amoy, Fuchau, Shanghai, Hankau, etc., would relay her onward to her home, where she would be more likely to secure work, remarriage, or properly be a charge upon her own community. A criminal is treated in the same way. He is driven on toward his own community, which can elect whether they desire to board him in jail at public expense or make life so uncomfortable for him by corporal punishment that he will select a virtuous existence in preference to crime.
The community, closely related in cousinship, makes the family clan responsible for the misfortunes and crimes of its members. If a criminal breaks the law, the law does not bother itself long with the criminal. By one fell swoop it makes the clan take the criminal’s course in hand for the rest of his life. There is much talk of revising China’s code, the slogan being the American maxim: “Crime is personal.” China’s code in this particular does not need revision. It saves the state much expense; it is more effective also in real permanent reform. It is the most scientific system of reform ever invented, and beats all farming out of criminals, parole, coals of kindness, pellets of advice, pardons, abolishing of stripes, preachings, coddlings, threats, music-treatment, trepannings, religious advice, hypnotic treatment, flowers, sentiment, visits of the jail angel, etc.! Don’t whip the criminal alone; whip the criminal’s six elder brothers and cousins because they must have been lax in instruction and watch. They will see that never again will they suffer for the scamp’s dereliction! The Chinese say, “Don’t whip your trusts; whip your electorate! They will forever after see that the trusts do not break bounds; they will watch the charters.” Guilt then is not personal; it is communal. We are our brother’s keeper, and if we allow him to meet with misfortune or do wrong, we must suffer with him. How quickly would the Chinese scientific system of localization and communism correct and limit crime, poverty and misfortune.
British vessels trading in China are manned entirely with Chinese crews. During the dock strike in Britain, in August, 1911, the dockers refused to handle the cargoes of vessels which employed Chinese. China then entered a claim for damages, because her citizens were ill-treated, and the Chinese guilds threatened to embarrass the British vessels when they returned to load in the East. The writer has had some experience with such a situation in Hongkong, where the British government exercises a strong hand in preventing the spread of stevedore strikes. The use of the boycott in China calls for special study. In no land is it more in use. It is a powerful weapon for securing justice when laws and diplomacy fail either because of weakness or venalty. China, of course, has no navy to support her diplomacy. Recent boycotts in China have been the following: In 1904 the merchant guilds of Canton and Hongkong desired to support, among other things, China’s protest against the American Exclusion Act. A boycott of American goods and American ships was ordered, and the loss to American trade ran into the millions. In 1908 the Japanese landed arms for pirates in Macao, South China, and with the powerful Japanese navy compelled the Chinese officials who had seized the smuggling steamer Tatsu Maru to give her up. The Chinese guilds of Hongkong and Canton then boycotted Japanese ships, causing the Toyo Kisen Kaisha a loss of millions in earnings and a deficit of $300,000 for the year’s operation. Japan probably would have again declared war on China with this excuse if she had not feared America’s naval support of China’s general cause under the Hay “non-partition of China” policy. The loss to Japan ran into many millions. In 1910 the same body of Chinese guilds boycotted American trade as a reply to the long and costly detainment of Chinese on Angel Island, San Francisco.
We shall hear more and more of international boycotts by the Chinese, and should study the question. They hover on the borderland of justice, and are recommended by many of the women’s clubs of America in dealing with monopolies. They will be misunderstood. They will produce much annoyance and trouble. They are mighty weapons in the hands of the clannish Chinese. Many fortunes of millionaires were really produced by boycotts. For instance, Mr. B controls the X railway, which latter has used the Y railway as a connection for freight. Mr. B wants to buy the Y railway for a song. He diverts all the freight he can to the Z railway, and when the Y railway fails, he buys its stock for a song. Then he restores the freight of the X railway to the Y railway, whose earnings rise and make his fortune, which is immediately entrenched under nonretroactive and nonrestitution laws. In China the boycott is only used by the guilds for patriotic purposes. Of course, we traders in America and Britain object because we suffer, but looking with Chinese eyes and with a world-economical vision at the matter, we must admit that the Chinese guilds are not ignoble or selfish and that their use of the boycott is a mighty diplomatic weapon. It has humbled Japan without the use of a soldier or a thirteen-inch broadside. By threatening a boycott, Wu Ting Fang and the Shanghai Assembly at the darkest hour of the republican revolution, prevented certain nations from making a loan to the imperialists, which was the most brilliant and potential move of the revolution. It really won for the southern cause, the military capture of Nanking following as a matter of course. Let Japan, Russia and others beware how they take advantage of China, whether in Manchuria, the Yangtze provinces, Shangtung, Yunnan, Szechuen or other provinces, or territories like Tibet, Mongolia and Turkestan; the Chinese guilds with their boycott are a sure refuge in time of trouble, back of any failing walls of arms, finance or diplomacy.