Court of the splendid Swatow guild house at Canton. These are their chambers of commerce and clubs combined, and are a power in the new commercial China, almost equal to the new assemblies. The heir of a tea magnate rides the statue of a griffin.
China is suspicious regarding foreign loans, and many of the new China party which precipitated the October, 1911, revolution are opposed to even railway loans. Objection has been made to one American loan that it included, besides proper interest, a bonus of millions to take up bonds of a previous American syndicate which never performed railway work in China for those bonds; that is, they were organization paper, not property paper. Objection is also made that our loans name as security the perpetuation of the odious likin system which disjoints the trade, politics and transportation of the provinces. The Chinese of the south have constructed many short railroads, which are run at a profit without foreign loans, and it is this system which the “states’ rights” people wish to spread. Political and economical education in the provincial assemblies will in time teach them the wisdom of the nationalization of trunk railways at least. There is the same conflict in China between the states, or provinces, and the federal power, as there is in other countries. In the matter of foreign loans, the provincial papers complain that the central government has sold the nation by paying bonuses and heavy interest. The trouble with provincial loans for railways will be the mixed security offered, one province providing for the continuation of the objectionable likin, and another province withstanding it. It is a perfect curse along the magnificent Shanghai-Nanking railway built by British contractors. The strong desire of the provinces, in the first ebullition of patriotism, is to build and operate their railways without foreign aid or federal intervention.
In times of political trouble, the Chinese place vast sums in the trust, not only of foreign banks at Tientsin, Shanghai and Hongkong, but valuables and money are placed implicitly in the care of missionaries, whose fiduciary honesty is esteemed by the Chinese, who, if they do not understand the text, understand the living example! The missionary is not only a tower of “doctrine”, to use the Chinese idiom; he is a tower of finance also. It is a remarkable thing that when the white man’s honesty at home in certain scandals exposed by government prosecutions, is rocking like a wooden steeple in the grasp of a tornado, the white man’s honesty in China is standing steadfast as a rock, and unmoved in the typhoon of local and international distress, and political, religious and educational change. It seems that it is a wholesome time to send some of our monopolists to China, and bring some of our missionaries back to reform things at home!
The licensed pawnshops are called Tang Po Tien and Chi Tien. The “Yah” pawnshop corresponds to our “fence” shop, to which thieves bring their plunder. The regular pawnshops are an embryo trust company. They loan on land, crops, jewels, rent, bills receivable, possessions, houses. They change money and sell notes of credit. The pawnshops of Mukden and the north loan on crops, such as beans, millet, etc. The visible grain, and not a warehouse receipt, is the security, and therefore the pawnshops of the north have yards and sheds in connection with the plant. The towering square pawnshops of Kwangtung province in the south are higher than in the other provinces, showing that capital circulates more among the active Cantonese merchants. The Chinese of America are mainly Cantonese, or Kwangtungese; that is, if they are not of the provincial capital, they are from the province.
Trained carrier pigeons are still used by the Shansi Bankers’ Guilds in carrying secret code messages stating the exchange prices of silver. This is quicker than the post, and more secret than the telegraph.
Regarding salaries that will be paid in China’s reconstruction, the following may give some indication. The salary of advisers to the privy council has been $90 per month in a nation of 400,000,000, compared to the salary of an American attorney-general of $1,500 a month.
It is often said that the Chinese are absolutely honest, but when an exception occurs it is as startling as a bolt from a clear sky. As an aftermath of the rubber speculation at Shanghai, the taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded in August, 1911, owing several million dollars to the government, which sum had been loaned him to assist the local banks.
Some of their proverbs hung up as texts in their guild houses are:
“Don’t wait till you are thirsty to dig your well.”
“Don’t wait for the battle before you sharpen your sword.”