“There are many things which can be given as current reasons for retarding American trade in the Orient. The advent of a class of Americans, like those who came from Manila after a brief experience there, and those who tried their fortunes in connection with the events of the Russo-Japanese War, has done a great deal to injure the American name and reputation with the Chinese. This class, usually indigent, has, by reason of imposition upon the Chinese, destroyed to some extent a confidence which has existed for many years and which had borne good fruit. There are good reasons for saying that every American firm which contemplates sending a representative to China should be very certain of his character, and, other things being equal, should choose the quiet, orderly person rather than the reverse type, in spite of the current opinion that such are indicated for the Orient.”
If Shanghai is the sort of a place that it would here appear to be, if it sets a vicious example in its government, in its business practice, and in the character of many of its inhabitants, the fact would seem to indicate that it is most decidedly misrepresenting out there the sort of civilization that we, Europeans as well as Americans, have always supposed that we stood for. It would appear that the Chinese, at the point of contact with our civilization, are getting a false impression of us. It would be easy to dismiss as remote and unimportant the vicious example set by a group of adventurers and promoters on the China Coast; but unfortunately this little group is the most important single contributing factor in the exceedingly delicate matter of the rapidly developing relations between China and the great Christian nations.
The influence of the Shanghai example on China is real and positive. Geographically, Shanghai commands the trade of the middle coast, the immense Yangtse Valley, and the Grand Canal. Every night a big river steamer leaves for Hankow and the intermediate river ports. Every day a big river steamer comes in from the same cities. Trading junks and small steamers innumerable ply between the river and coast ports and Shanghai. Chinese merchants come from hundreds of miles around to trade with the foreigners or with the native “compradores” attached to foreign houses. On their return to their various interior cities or villages these traders spread tales of the foreign devils who inhabit the great city near the sea. Foreign merchants, travelling salesmen, engineers, and insurance agents travel up and down the great river, up and down the coast; they penetrate, by steamer, railroad, mule-litter, or cart, into the interior cities of the great provinces, leaving everywhere on plastic minds distinct and ineffaceable impressions of their manners, business methods, and morals.
In the foreign settlement of Shanghai, and apart from the population of the native city which adjoins it, there are, roughly, 450,000 Chinese who have chosen to dwell in the territory and under the laws of the white men. This population is not fixed, but fluctuates as the floating element comes and goes; and everywhere that this floating element travels when out of the city it leaves an impression—a story, a bit of gossip, an example of the sharp dealing learned from the foreigner—of the manners, business methods, and morals of Shanghai. The native newspapers comment frankly on life and conditions in the great seaport, and their comments are reprinted in the papers of the interior. Shanghai exerts a direct and result-breeding influence on fifty to seventy-five million native minds, and an indirect influence on all China. How many scores of fair-minded, straightforward merchants, how many thousands of scattered missionaries and teachers will it take, think you, to counteract that influence?
China, grappling with the problem of decay, fighting desperately against an evil which the most nearly Christian of the Christian nations has fastened on her, looks westward for enlightenment, and sees—Shanghai. And Shanghai—well Shanghai plays the races and the roulette wheel, and drinks, and forgets the sacred significance of marriage and the economic importance of the home, and goes to the club, and except in casting up profits gives never a thought to that vast, muttering populace that waits—waits—for the day of the under-dog to come.
Such was the condition of things when the Chinese war on opium began to assume effective proportions during the spring of 1906. Now, Shanghai—the “settlement,” that is—was in a peculiar, an unfortunate, condition as regarded the anti-opium crusade. I have already given, in an earlier chapter, the estimate of Robert E. Lewis, general secretary of the Y. M. C. A., at Shanghai, that there were, in 1906, nearly 22,000 places in the international settlement, little and big, where opium could be purchased, more than 19,000 of which kept pipes, lamps, and divans on the premises for smokers. All of the dens which were openly conducted were paying a regular license fee to the municipal government, amounting last year to 98,000 Shanghai taels, or about $70,000 in gold. It is against the law to permit women or children to enter the smoking-dens, and a clause to this effect is printed on the license as a condition in granting it; yet when Captain Borisragon, the chief of police, was asked how many regular women inmates were in the dens, he replied, in writing, that there were at least 3,200 women so kept, and doubtless a great many more who did not appear on his records. When the tax and license department was asked why this clause was not enforced, the reply was made, without the slightest attempt at excuse or explanation, that when a license was issued to the keeper of an “opium brothel” the clause prohibiting women inmates was erased.
These curious facts combine to present an appearance familiar to one who has studied the municipal protection of vice in this country. It is asking too much of human credulity to expect one to believe that this clause was regularly erased for nothing. But apart from what individual graft there may have been in it, that $70,000 in revenue was an item not to be lightly given up by the hard-headed municipal council. And the amount of money put into circulation by the patrons of these dens was also an attractive item, as Shanghai sees things. The prevailing opinion among the foreigners of “the settlement” was simply and flatly that the settlement could not afford to close the dens. The leading English newspaper hastened to defend the sordid attitude of the council by explaining that, as the licenses were issued for a year, they had no right to close the places, at least before the spring of 1908.
The interesting and significant fact is that while this miserable condition of affairs was allowed to drag along in the international settlement, where the white men rule, the Chinese native city, immediately adjoining, was strictly enforcing the anti-opium edicts. The Chinese authorities went about the enforcement in a thoroughly effective manner. The date set for the closing of the dens was May 22, 1907. There was some fear that the closing down might precipitate a riot, and, accordingly, the authorities took measures to keep the populace in hand. Chinese soldiers were placed on guard at the places where crowds would be most likely to gather, the dens were quietly closed, padlocked, and the shutters put up; and red signs, calling attention to the imperial edict prohibiting opium, were pasted up on doors or shutters. It was quite evident that the proprietors of these dens took the enforcement most seriously. Some of them went immediately into other lines of business; others made their places over into tea-houses.
IN AN OPIUM DEN, SHANGHAI