“The company’s object was to get a large strip of the Java sea under its control.”
“Oho!” exclaimed Grenits and van Rheijn in a breath—A light was beginning to dawn upon them.
“Do you fellows now begin to understand?” asked August with a broad smile. “That’s a good job.
“You must know that the Residence Bengawan is bounded on the north by these two districts. The consequences of this acquisition soon began to show themselves. The coast of the Java sea lay open to the company Hok Bie, and smugglers soon began to ply diligently between that coast and Singapore. The contraband very soon found its way through the two districts to the interior, so that presently Bengawan was literally flooded with smuggled opium. To such an extent was this contraband trade carried on, that the drug was readily sold for about one half-penny, a price at which the farmer could not possibly afford to sell it.
“Then Tio Siong Mo attempted to brazen it out. He began by punctually meeting his obligations, and every month paid the contract money into the treasury. He did this, poor fellow, in the hope that the European authorities would assist him and protect him against this illicit trade which was robbing the revenue as well as himself. And what were the effects of all his representations to the Government—‘Schwamm darüber’—Even where he did obtain some kind of co-operation from some chief official, he got no support whatever from the subordinates. They all, to a single man, sided with the much more powerful company Hok Bie, which never left any service unrewarded.
“These punctual payments were all very well so long as Tio Siong Mo could find the money. But, however well lined his chest might be, it was with him—as it always must be where much is going out and little or nothing coming in—a mere question of time.
“In the latter half of the second year of the contract, Tio Siong Mo was declared a bankrupt. He could not possibly cover his expenses, and by that time had fallen in arrears and owed a colossal sum to the treasury, a debt of which little or nothing was ever recovered, because, at the critical moment, his sureties had absconded to Singapore. So cleverly did these worthies dispose of their property, that they left nothing but debts behind them.
“ ‘The Dutch Government wields a sword without mercy,’ said the financial secretary; and that same Government which, by taking proper measures in its own interest as well as in the interest of their farmer, might have put a stop to smuggling on anything like a large scale, but had neglected to do so—that same Government now clapped poor Tio Siong Mo into prison. There he lingered for several years, and quite lately he has been released, it being evident that nothing was to be got out of him. We sometimes say, with regard to horses, that they who earn the corn do not always get it; and this episode I think shows that they who are punished are not always the real culprits.”
“But what ultimately became of the Bengawan contract after the farmer’s bankruptcy?” asked van Rheijn, curiously.
“Of course,” resumed van Beneden, “the district had to be put up again after Tio Siong Mo’s failure. Who were the new farmers the papers do not tell me; but, from a whining lamentation uttered by the financial secretary, in which he exhorts the judges to the utmost rigour against the luckless bankrupt, it appears that the whole thing only produced forty-one thousand guilders. Thus the State, in addition to the large sum owing by Tio Siong Mo, lost a clear sum of forty thousand guilders a month.”