DRUGGING A NATION
[Illustration: H. E. TONG SHAO-I One of the Leaders of the Opium Reform Movement in China]
Drugging a Nation
The Story of China and the Opium Curse
A Personal Investigation, during an Extended Tour, of the Present Conditions of the Opium Trade in China and Its Effects upon the Nation
By SAMUEL MERWIN
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1908, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
Copyright, 1907-1908, by SUCCESS COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
NOTE
These chapters were originally published during 1907 and 1908 in _Success Magazine_. Though frankly journalistic in tone, the book presents something more than the hasty conclusions of a journalist. During its preparation the author travelled around the world, inquiring into the problem at first hand in China and in England, reading all available printed matter which seemed to bear in any way on the subject, and interviewing several hundred gentlemen who have had special opportunities to study the problem from various standpoints. The writing was not begun until this preliminary work was completed and the natural conclusions had become convictions in the author's mind.
CONTENTS
I. CHINA'S PREDICAMENT 9
II. THE GOLDEN OPIUM DAYS 20
III. A GLIMPSE INTO AN OPIUM PROVINCE 53
IV. CHINA'S SINCERITY 70
V. SOWING THE WIND IN CHINA--SHANGHAI 101
VI. SOWING THE WIND IN CHINA--TIENTSIN AND HONGKONG 129
VII. HOW BRITISH CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST 154
VIII. THE POSITION OF GREAT BRITAIN 178
APPENDIX 204
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Facing page_
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: Drugging a Nation by Samuel Merwin
- 2: The commercial attache to the British legation at Peking
- 3: The local Anti opium League had 750 members
- 4: The opium smoker cannot work hard
- 5: IITHE GOLDEN OPIUM DAYS In the splendid
- 6: Balfour say for his opinion on the opium question
- 7: The chests of 'provision' opium
- 8: That the colonial governments of Hongkong and Singapore
- 9: They steadily resisted the inroads of opium
- 10: Seeing little but good in opium
- 11: 000 chests of opium stored in these hulks
- 12: Commissioner Lin set about carrying out his orders
- 13: The Tientsin Treaty legalized Christianity and opium
- 14: Indian opium has not been expelled
- 15: And children in Shansi smoke opium
- 16: Many of the foreign merchants abuse the missionaries
- 17: President of the Anti opium League
- 18: In Taiku there is a large fair held each year
- 19: Like that wealthy official at Shau ying
- 20: But Shansi Province is full of ruins
- 21: The Shansi peasant can be at one time simple
- 22: The neighbourhoods for the family
- 23: The putting down of the opium evil is
- 24: Opium is produced everywhere in China
- 25: Opium will not build railroads
- 26: It was a practical proposition to those Shansi peasants
- 27: There are now fewer refuges than formerly in Shansi Province
- 28: The author of Fire and Sword in Shansi
- 29: Sowerby by clasping his hands before his breast and bowing
- 30: And the uppermost ports of the Yangtse
- 31: This settlement of fifteen thousand Europeans
- 32: The beach comber is easily the most picturesque
- 33: In the foreign settlement of Shanghai
- 34: It will be well to recall that Shanghai
- 35: It is of course peculiarly unfortunate that Shanghai
- 36: The United States Court for China
- 37: Preceded him to Shanghai to look the ground over
- 38: Judge Wilfley has undertaken an Herculean task
- 39: These Chinese districts demand their opium
- 40: Yuan Shi K'ai is a remarkable man
- 41: The viceroy took a personal hand in the Tientsin situation
- 42: And throughout Shansi Province
- 43: But the worst of the concessions
- 44: Eighty or ninety miles inland from Hongkong
- 45: China is confronted with Shanghai
- 46: Healthy source of revenue to supplant opium
- 47: It was morally indefensible officially so
- 48: Lord Brassey and his majority were pro opium
- 49: Here is what the Philippine Opium Commission
- 50: That is what Japan thinks about opium
- 51: Perhaps opium was good for children
- 52: 'that the Chinese Labour Importation Ordinance
- 53: Are notoriously addicted to opium
- 54: They make dollar bills in Honan Province
- 55: As Yuan Shi K'ai and Tong Shao i have done
- 56: The enforcements in the adjoining province
- 57: The viceroy of the upper Yangtse provinces
- 58: Is still clinging doggedly to its opium revenues
- 59: China cannot refuse to admit Indian opium
- 60: The opium programme saps India as it saps China
- 61: Were stacked the furnishings of the Opium Palace
- 62: Was the largest in Shanghai and
- 63: If indeed they have a programme
- 64: It is well for Shanghai to be allied with Soochow
- 65: Hannington was himself a picturesque writer