The immense Taikoo Company (Butterfield & Swire), operating docks, shipyards, sugar refineries, steamship lines, etc.; China Sugar Refinery; Bank of Australia; Eastern and Australia Cable Company, etc., are owned mainly by British capitalists, who operate an extensive apprentice system or school in maintaining their personnel in the Far East. The Banque l’Indo-China is, of course, mainly French, as is the Anglo-French Syndicate. The Russo-Asiatique Banque is French and Russian. The Cathay Trust Company is British and Chinese. The Shell Transport (oil and shipping) is Dutch, largely. Humphreys’ Land Company is British, mainly. There are scores of rubber companies whose plantations are in Malaysia, but whose shares are actively dealt in by the Chinese and foreigners of Shanghai, Hongkong and Tientsin. Large department stores of Hongkong and Shanghai are incorporated, and their shares are actively dealt in. I refer to Lane-Crawford, Watson, Central Stores, Weeks, Moultrie, Hall & Holtz, etc.

The largest foreign commission houses, banks and agencies, with offices in the various treaty ports, are the following:

The Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, opened a branch in Hongkong in 1903, but it was closed in 1904, insurance companies preferring, as a rule, to act through general commission houses at present.

Foreign firms advertise in Chinese almanacs, which circulate in immense numbers throughout the land. An example is Hallock’s Miscellany, printed in a scholarly manner by the American Presbyterian Mission Press, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai. The Chinese editions of the Hongkong and Shanghai papers are excellent mediums, if one is not on the ground. Chinese travelers arrive at a station hours before the departure of a train, and foreign firms find it advantageous to display their cartoons and advertising in Chinese at railway stations. Even if some of the Chinese can not read, they become familiar with the “chop” or cartoon, which accordingly is more important than in any land, and should therefore be registered with the foreign consul and the Chinese taotai. The Asiatic Petroleum Company, of London, (Dutch-British), uses a cartoon of three square oil tins, with a tin lamp flaming on the top. The Standard Oil Company uses a picture of the hand lamp and some paraffin candles. Scott’s Emulsion Company shows the familiar codfish on the back of the man. Green Island Cement Company shows the famous mountain island of Macao’s inner harbor, with the cement chimneys at its foot. Barnard & Leas Company, of Moline, Illinois, use a picture of their grain sifter. Mousin et Cie, of Frankfort on Main, use a picture of a rose spray and a Chinese man and woman. The New Home Sewing-Machines use a picture of the machine and a greyhound. The Victor Talking Machines show the well-known fox-terrier listening to “His Master’s Voice”. Many of the firms draw attention by quoting an epigrammatic gem of Chinese wisdom. The Singer Sewing-Machine insists that the Chinese shall become familiar with the English letters and not the Chinese letters in the bridge of their machine, and they have had wide success. The Wheeler & Wilson Sewing-Machine Company shows Gabriel blowing his horn, or the spirit of reform telling China to wake up! The Longines Watch Company, of Paris, uses a Chinese lily in a vase and a winged hour-glass. The Chinese are becoming large buyers of time-keepers, and these trade-marks are most important. Several suits over trade-marks on watches have appeared in the courts of Hongkong. The Taussig Soap Company, of Vienna, uses a man-headed bird, which appeals to the humorous Chinese, whose hobgoblins are legion.

The get-equipped-quick advertising correspondence schools are teaching advertising pupils in America to change their advertisements constantly. This will not do in China. Nothing pays like a known “chop”, rigidly adhered to for decades. The Chinese will have nothing else than their favorite cartoon, or “chop” on cotton bolt, flour bag and everything else. “Once a customer always a customer” is truer in China than anywhere else in the world, but it is harder there than anywhere else to get that customer the necessary “once”, as he has probably linked up with a “chop” that preceded yours. The Harrison Knitting Machine Company, of Manchester, England, merely show cuts of their machines, and a competitor could do the same, and thus confuse the Chinese. Staedtler, the pencil manufacturer of Nuremberg, shows the man in the moon and a cock. J. H. Birch, of Library Street, Burlington, New Jersey, shows merely cuts of his rickshaws, which compete with the Japanese vehicle. The whisky houses of Britain cease neither day nor night in the attempt to give China something Occidental to take the place of the debarred opium. They try to adopt different shaped bottles to distinguish their goods, and some double bottles are now blown almost in the shape of the whisky’s “W”. The Burnese Alps Milk Company, of Stalden, has adopted a mother Teddy bear, giving a baby bear forced lactary injections. Nestle’s Milk Company, of Vevay, shows the “cow that jumped over the moon”. Aquarius Water Company shows a Chinese boy bearing a tray with the aerated water. Pathe’s French Films show the crowing cock. The United States Steel Products Export Company use the crouching tiger. Swift’s Hams show “S” in a diamond. Clarke’s Manila Coffee uses a volcano of coffee beans in imitation of Mayon volcano in the Philippines. The Chee Hsin Cement Company, of Tangshan, Pechili province, has a pony whose fiery breath has set the sun on fire. This is the weird mythological style of “chop” with which the poetical Chinese are familiar and which they like.

The Chinese are a race who have nearly as much imagination as the Greeks. The Hupeh Cement Works, of Tayeh, use a seventeen-storied pagoda, which is supposed to represent a very fine product, as pagodas tower only thirteen stories at the highest. The Indo-China Cement Company uses the well-known dragon of the Manchus, which tosses three medals in the air. The British-American Tobacco Company advertises a nautch girl pulling portiéres apart, a “chop” which is a little more luxuriously Mohammedan than staid China cares for. Veluvine Protective Paint has adopted a crouching bulldog. Isuan Aerated Waters, of the Philippines, use a hand pouring a bottle that fills a glass. The Toyo Kisen Kaisha uses a red circle in a white fan on a blue flag. Flags are becoming popular chops. Shields are also used by the British and the Spanish, but they are rather intricate for the Chinese to understand. There is not much competition yet, and most of the foreign firms, in their desire to educate the Chinese, are merely using photographs of their machinery and product, but as soon as John Chinaman has to choose between two dynamos, two gas engines, two pumps, etc., each of them must use a “chop” or trade-mark, just as the oil, the flour, the ham, the cement bag, the bolt of cotton, etc., have now to be chopped to maintain their position on the slogan popular throughout Canada and Britain of “what we have we hold.”

The treaty ports of China, such as Shanghai, Tientsin, Hongkong, etc., show that almost every form of business is incorporated. Doctors and dentists form companies, and bring out juniors under indenture. The share list shows active trading in the following companies among others: railway, steamship, rubber, banks; marine, life and fire insurance; oil, refineries, sugar, mining, engineering and contracting, ship-building, car building; docks, wharves and warehouse (godown); lands, hotels, clubs, buildings, cotton mills and plantations, cement, power, light, water, trams, millinery, telephone, telegraph, cable, tailors, dairy farm, abattoir, soda water, distilleries, flour mills, iron mills, gas, electricity, druggist, newspaper, booksellers, conservancy, athletic clubs, race course, import and export firms, jewelers, silk filatures, tea farms, matting factories and plantations, furniture factories, etc. I know of no place where the craze of men to get rich faster than savings will accumulate is indicated more than at Shanghai, Hongkong and Singapore. The bund of Shanghai is as speculatively feverous as Wall Street.

British Hongkong, like China, holds that all land is crown or state land, and therefore leases are granted instead of fee-simple deeds, American style. The British government has gone extensively into the land business at Hongkong, leveling many terraces, filling many valleys in the mountains, and reclaiming from the sea vast areas at West Point and East Point, Hongkong, and at Yaumati, Kowloon and Hunghom on the mainland section of the hilly colony. Leases for these valuable sites are then put up at auction, bringing about twice the rental that obtains in Brooklyn or Jersey City, or the outlying districts of London. In the same way the foreign concession municipalities of Shanghai, Tientsin, Fuchau, Amoy, Hankau, Newchwang, Harbin, etc., prepare land for long leases. These will in time all be strenuous questions with the new republican government of China. When the foreigner gave up the extraterritorial right in Japan, the Japanese never again permitted him to own land, unless he became a Japanese citizen. Many land companies, subletting long leaseholds, have been formed in all the treaty ports where there are foreign concessions. I do not believe that republican China desires to acquire these leaseholds for many years, and if she did she would purchase them. The foreign navies would see to that.