He was lord of the underground routes which ran to South Africa, America, Australia, Mexico, Canada and wherever Chinese laborers are not received free. He seldom dressed well; it did not do in those days to look opulent in China, and besides American inspectors might suspect a well-dressed dealer in contract slaves. His voice, unlike the usual pliable voice of his race, was deep in his raucous throat. He would not fear to take life if he had a chance in the lonely walks of his province, if his opponent was a strong obstacle to his worship of his two gods, money and power. He could not get in as many as he wanted by the direct route, so he determined to institute the first Chinese trans-Pacific steamship company, crossing the Pacific to Mexico. I told him that he never could get the money, as Queen’s Road, Hongkong, was a long way from Wall Street; that he would sink a million of the money of his beloved countrymen. He got the money from the Chinese, intensely conservative as they were, which proved the power of his persuasion, and he sank it all in two years. He could not be drawn into much expression by me, though he could speak English well. I heard him, however, speaking like a Rooseveltian tornado of storm and lightning unto his own, and once to two foreigners in whom he trusted, because they had obeyed him at their risk, and he owned them by the bribes they had accepted. His will was of iron, unyielding. His persistency was as tireless as Napoleon’s, and his swift victories were many. He could live without sleep when he planned his campaigns. He would go anywhere and to anybody to accomplish his aims. He loved whispering. He cast looks which wielded men. He swept like a vulture on lambs. He struck at his opponents like a tiger. He was not a Manchu, but he was Manchuized in his confidence that the Oriental was superior to the foreigner. I shall never forget the time when he told me that he had “a white man working for him.” That white man was descended in the third generation from a brother of a president of America.
Chuk was not uncomfortable when he thus wore the crown. He ruled over his subject races of the West with all the assurance which Xerxes or Kublai Khan did. He could plot; he could bribe; he could threat; he could spend with a lavish hand. One time he would travel in state at home and abroad, and on another occasion incognito like a spy. He felt he was abler than any white man because he added the easier conscience of the Orient, which he called wisdom, to an ability equal to the white man’s, and a will just as imperious. He despised all religions as he said “conscience makes faint-hearts of us all.” He had no pity for his dupes or victims. He was a Cantonese Tippo Tib. I never know, when I am speaking to an American or Cuban Chinese, if he is not a slave of Chuk’s, remitting to his old father in Kwangtung province, who will in turn remit to Chuk or Chuk’s heirs, to pay off that $1,000 and usurious interest added. Chuk is a Cantonese example of the power which may come to a money lord who has decapitalized labor, which will never catch up with the principal. His profits on the real cost were 1,500 per cent. Not even a surveillance of communications could probe Chuk’s underground methods. Three insurmountable barriers interposed, the extent of the territory, the Chinese language, and the changing codes which he used. It would be as difficult as ferreting out a criminal in the Trastevere section of Rome, if for one reason alone, because the Trasteverans will not turn informers. Neither will the Chinese. Therefore, with espionage of communications and informing for bribes eliminated, a secret service on Chinese law breakers, as far as we are concerned, is as yet in many respects ineffective.
IV
FINANCE AND BUDGET IN CHINA
With a reformed system of tax collection the following budget is quite feasible, and will, without any greater pressure on the individual than at present, lift China out of the slough of despond.
| REVENUE | GOLD DOLLARS |
| Land tax, 400,000,000 acres cultivated, at 50c a year | $200,000,000 |
| Salt monopoly | 10,000,000 |
| Maritime customs | 50,000,000 |
| Railway surplus, nationalized trunk lines | 10,000,000 |
| Fisheries, tobacco, samshu, mining, steamship, bank, incorporation, telegraph and other fees | 50,000,000 |
| Income tax | 10,000,000 |
| $330,000,000 | |
| EXPENDITURE | |
| Interest on foreign loans,—past, $200,000,000; and in prospect, $200,000,000; total, $400,000,000, at 4 per cent. | $16,000,000 |
| Civil service salaries, etc. | 30,000,000 |
| Army, a full division for each province, 100,000 men at $100 a year | 10,000,000 |
| Conservation, public works, repairing national architecture, famine relief, etc | 50,000,000 |
| Navy for revenue purposes mainly, with one dreadnought a year added | 24,000,000 |
| Education and crafts schools | 100,000,000 |
| Canals, railways, steamships, telegraph, telephone, etc., extensions | 100,000,000 |
| $330,000,000 |
This proposes $330,000,000 a year for 400,000,000 people, against Japan’s $350,000,000 a year for only 55,000,000 population. This plan wipes out the obnoxious opium and likin taxes. The taxes proposed are less than half per capita what poorer India is paying, and one-tenth of what Japan is paying, and so China would remain the lowest taxed nation on the earth. The outstanding government debt of China, even including the proposed four-nation loans of $50,000,000 gold for currency reform, and $50,000,000 for new Szechuen and Hunan province railways, is, as I have detailed elsewhere in this article, only £113,000,000, whereas the present government debt of Japan, with infinitely less resources and population, is £300,000,000, not to speak of Japan’s private industrial loans abroad, which would add another £60,000,000. India’s debt is £170,000,000. The tax proposed in China is so small that room is left for each province to charge a door and head tax of 25c each a year, bringing in an additional $100,000,000 gold for provincial revenues to take care of justice, provincial public works, etc. Municipalities could then raise their ordinary taxes in the usual way. All that is wanted in China is an honest audit, the end of nepotism, and a cessation of “shaking the pagoda tree” by peculating officials. The whole central and provincial tax would not amount to much over $1 a head a year, and the municipal taxes would not be any larger than $1 per capita. This would not be a burden to cause complaint or revolution. With the immense sum collected China would almost at once take her place as one of the mightiest of nations. Her credit would be enormous, and her opportunity for good the greatest in the world because of her wider ethnic connections. She would not need to raise her customs much above the present five per cent. ad valorem, and thus oppressive monopolies could not grow up in the land. Free trade would flow to her with its riches, as it flowed to Britain, and every man would have enough, and no man too much; certainly an ideal condition. This budget would provide a splendid army of well-paid men ($8 gold per man per month is abundant); 100,000 strong, able to throw back any invasion at once, and always ready to keep down piracy. Riot and strikes are not unpatriotic piracy; they are the localized suppuration of an economic distress that can be cured or forestalled in a democracy by other means than a soldiery, which we have found a failure in America and Britain. The new Chinese navy could add a new dreadnought battleship each year, and provide crews, yards, and a full revenue marine. Above all, education and transportation would be taken care of lavishly, and China would not need to beg at any one’s door for a loan. She would be a land of peace, because a total tax of $2 gold a year per capita can raise not the slightest discontent in any land.
The debt of the Chinese government, contracted before October 13, 1911, which debt the republicans recognize, is as follows:
| Loans | Amount in £ | Amount Interest in £ | Due |
| 7% silver loan, ’94 | £490,500 | 1924 | |
| 6% gold loan, ’95 | 800,000 | 1924 | |
| 6% gold loan, ’95 | 333,400 | 1915 | |
| 5% gold loan, ’96, from France and Russia for Chinese-Eastern Railway | 12,397,425 | 1933 | |
| 4½% gold, ’98, Britain and Germany for railways | 14,022,625 | 1933 | |
| 5% gold railway loan | 1,955,000 | 1933 | |
| 5% gold (Boxer indemnities, etc.) | 52,500,000 | 1940 | |
| 5% Shanghai-Nanking railway | 2,900,000 | 1915 | |
| 5% Canton-Kowloon railway | 1,500,000 | 1920 | |
| 5% Tientsin-Pukow railway (British) | 1,850,000 | 1918 | |
| 5% Tientsin-Pukow railway (German) | 1,100,000 | 1918 | |
| 5% Shanghai-Ningpo railway | 1,500,000 | 1918 | |
| 5% Hukuang railways | 1,500,000 | 1921 | |
| Total gov’t debts— | |||
| China | £92,848,950 | £4,642,000 | |
| Japan | 300,000,000 | 12,000,000 | |
| India | 170,000,000 | ||
| Italy | 1,000,000,000 | ||
| France | 1,200,000,000 | ||
| Britain | 1,000,000,000 | ||
| United States | 200,000,000 |
If Japan returned to China the £35,000,000 indemnity coerced from her by the Shimonoseki treaty, the Chinese debt would be greatly reduced. This is Japan’s moral duty, especially if she is allowed by the nations to retain Formosa, Korea, and possibly part of Manchuria, all of which she plans to retain. Several of the European nations should follow America’s example and return the excess in the Boxer indemnities. The banking nations, as long as America and Britain retain their present high standard of altruism, will never again permit any power to wheedle an indemnity out of China.