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So at Shanghai the Chinese warfare on the “foreign smoke” was waged earnestly and effectively in the native city. The Chinese authorities closed the dens – permanently, it seems fair to believe. And the only result of their heroic action, – and it is an heroic action to suppress a prosperous and thoroughly established branch of commerce in any city, – the only result was that the opium business went over to the adjoining city of the foreigners, who gladly accepted it, and took the money which had formerly been spent in the native city. The foreigners live wholly outside of and above Chinese law. They have their own strips of land, their own courts, their own local government, all guaranteed to them by the treaties which China has, at one time or another, been forced to sign. When the Chinese first proposed to stamp out opium, these foreigners laughed, and talked about the chronic insincerity of the Chinese government. When the yellow men did stamp out opium in that native city a mile or so away, these foreigners said that it would not be fair to the holders of licenses to close down in the settlement. As I have had occasion to say before, the Chinese are not fools. They grasped the significance of the situation, and spoke out frankly. The local mandarins protested to the settlement council. The native newspapers called attention to it. And all this clear insight into an extraordinary situation and the frank comment on it were communicated, by the routes and the means which I have described earlier in this chapter, to the fifty or seventy-five million Chinese who are directly influenced by conditions at Shanghai. Now, in the light of these facts, in the light of what they see and know, it is time to ask, and to ask with feeling – How can you hope to make those fifty to seventy-five million Chinamen believe that our civilization, with its science, and its whisky, and its keen grasp on “revenue,” and its contradictory and confusing teachings of Christianity, is superior to their civilization? And if they do not believe that our civilization is superior, how long do you suppose they will endure the treatment they receive from us? As time rolls on, there will be more “Boxer” uprisings in China, more crazy and disastrous protests against foreign domination and exploitation. When these troubles come, it will be well to recall that Shanghai, – not the individual inhabitants, but the government of that little “settlement” of foreigners which lies upon the west bank of the Woosung River, – officially and for profit maintained its traffic in the drug that is China’s curse after the Chinese had stopped their own opium traffic. It will be well to recall it, because it is quite certain that the Chinese themselves will not have forgotten it.
I have gone thus at length into the deplorable example which Shanghai, the most important foreign settlement in China, exhibits to the struggling, opium-ridden yellow men, because it is typical of the whole course of the foreigner in China. In the next chapter we shall consider further evidence in looking into the conditions of life and of the opium problem at Hongkong and Tientsin. It is of course peculiarly unfortunate that Shanghai, when the great opportunity came to extend a helping hand to China in the opium fight, should have failed, utterly, ignominiously. But the slightest acquaintance with the place is enough to make it plain that Shanghai, as it has been and still is, is not likely to extend a helping hand to anybody. The helping hand is not exactly what Shanghai stands for. It really stands for the domination of the great Yangtse Valley, for the exploitation of China, and, incidentally, for a sort of snug harbour for criminals and degenerates. There can be no doubt that the fifty to seventy-five millions of Chinese who come directly within the radiating influence of Shanghai know this perfectly well. It is also quite likely that these and the few hundred other millions who make up “the Middle Kingdom” know perfectly well, that the complicated commercial establishments of all the various foreign nations in China stand for similar principles. And they doubtless know further that the very important and very cynical gentlemen who represent the great and prosperous foreign powers at Peking, are there for no other purpose than diplomatically to put on the pressure whenever China chances to block a move or gain a piece in this sordid and unholy game of chess. So perhaps we had better give up, once and for all, any serious consideration of the charges made by certain foreign powers that China is insincere in her warfare on opium. Such charges and insinuations, coming from such sources, hardly command respect.
It is plain that this greedy exploitation, going so far as even to snatch a profit out of the opium struggle, is not a healthy basis of intercourse between great nations. If the Chinese were a Congo tribe, or a race of American Indians, this policy might pay commercially; for in that case it would be a matter for the Christian nations of simply killing off the Chinese or driving them off the land, and then of fighting among themselves over the division of the spoils. But this policy, which succeeds against weak and numerically small nations, will hardly succeed in China. Driving four hundred million Chinese off the land would be a large order, a very different thing, indeed, from wiping out a tribe of “Fuzzy Wuzzys” with machine guns. All of the military observers with whom I have talked in China show a tendency to grow thoughtful over the subject of China’s potential military strength. From the days of the T’ai Ping Rebellion and “Chinese” Gordon’s “ever victorious” army, down to the review of 30,000 of Yuan Shi K’ai’s troops, with modern weapons and modern drill, in Honan Province in the summer of 1906, it has been plain that the Chinese make splendid soldiers when properly led. And yet it seems to have occurred to few white statesmen that the deepest interests of trade itself, sordid trade, demand that China be treated fairly and that the relations between China and the powers be established on a basis that makes for mutual respect and for peace, rather than on a basis that makes for exploitation, outrage, massacre, warfare, “indemnity,” and smouldering hate. John Hay saw over the balance-sheet, when he established the “open door” policy. Elihu Root has seen over the balance-sheet in arranging to waive the future claims of this country for indemnity money. And Lord Elgin, for England, saw over the balance-sheet when he outlined that sound policy which he was afterwards one of the first to violate – “Never to make an unjust demand of China, and never to recede from a demand once made.” To-day it seems apparent that the great nations cannot be brought together to agree on any really enlightened policy in China. Even had such a thing been possible a few years ago, the untrustworthy methods of Russia and the growing ambitions of Japan would make it impossible to-day. Nations which, when brought together in a “Peace Conference,” cannot even agree upon the rules of war, will hardly forego the chance of seizing some special advantage in the colossal grab-bag which is China. And so it seems likely that the genial commercial adventurers and gamblers and vice promoters of Shanghai will go on sowing the wind in China – and that the sullen hate of those silent, observing millions of yellow men will deepen and smoulder until the final day of reckoning, the day of reaping, shall come.
There is one ray of light which, to-day, illuminates the China Coast. It is a small ray, when we consider the number of dark corners to be illuminated, and yet there is the bare possibility that it may prove the beginning of better conditions. Somewhat less than two years ago the United States government established a wholly new institution, the United States Court for China. L. R. Wilfley, one of the legal officers whom Judge Taft had trained in Manila during his governorship of the Philippines, was appointed the first judge of this court, and was sent out, with a district attorney, a marshal, and a clerk, to administer justice to Americans up and down the China Coast and along the Yangtse River. By treaty, all American citizens are exempt from judgment under the Chinese law, that peculiar jumble of tradition, superstition, common sense, and Oriental severity. Formerly, justice had been dealt out in courts presided over by the consul-generals and the consuls in their respective districts.
Now it should be obvious to the most casual observer that the peculiar conditions and the peculiar industries which thrive in the treaty ports give rise to a considerable number of legal entanglements. There is, of course, a large volume of legitimate business transacted on the Coast, which gives legitimate employment to a few lawyers; but there is a volume of illegitimate and semi-legitimate business which would also naturally give employment to other lawyers. At the time of Judge Wilfley’s appointment one thing was clear to the enlightened heads of our Department of State at Washington; the consular courts, thanks to the skill and resource of the American lawyer on the Coast, were in a constant tangle of perplexed inefficiency, and the American name was sinking steadily lower in China.
It is likely that no American judge ever faced so peculiar and difficult a task as that assigned to Judge Wilfley. It was his duty to take the place of a lacking public opinion, and to raise the drooping prestige of his country. He had behind him no settled code of laws, but merely a few treaties and a few orders from the Department of State. He had not only to judge cases between Americans, but also cases between Americans and citizens of other nationalities, including the Chinese themselves. He had to establish rulings on the most complicated matters of coastwise commerce, in a land where coastwise commerce is involved with perplexing local customs and superstitions. Above all, he had, from the start, to fight a well-organized, well-entrenched band of shady characters who had run their course for so long without anything in the nature of a public opinion to hold them in check that they resented his advent as an encroachment on their vested right to do as they chose. The last and most perplexing of his problems was that in rooting out these evils he was in danger at every turn of arraying against him the citizens of other nationalities and even of arousing the active enmity of the courts and the officials of other nations, most of whom had been content to let Shanghai jog along in its easy-going, sordid way.
It is to Judge Wilfley’s everlasting credit that, with a full knowledge of the difficulties and dangers before him, he went straight to the heart of the problem. Seeing that certain American lawyers had long stood between the old consular courts and anything which could be called justice, he set to work first to solve the problem of the lawyers. His campaign for a higher standard on the Coast has not been without its humorous moments. Mr. Bassett, his shrewd young district attorney, preceded him to Shanghai to “look the ground over.” The little group of American lawyers at Shanghai made haste to get acquainted with him. One of the ablest among them invited him, casually and informally, to dinner. When Bassett arrived at the dinner he found himself, to his astonishment, confronted with thirty or forty “leading citizens,” including all the American lawyers and several men of questionable business character whom he rather expected to be prosecuting a little later on.
After the coffee and cigars, the host rose, and in a neat little speech called on Bassett to tell the company something about Judge Wilfley and what work he meant to do in Shanghai. It was a difficult situation. A slow-witted man might have found himself in a fix. But Bassett, if I may credit the account which reached me, was equal to the situation. He rose, and looked around the table from face to face.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “as I have come unprepared for this pleasure, I shall have to fall back on story-telling. In the small hours, one morning, two men who had been having rather too good a time were navigating from street corner to street corner. Said Smith, ‘Jonesh, shtime to go home. Shgetting broad daylight. Theresh sun shining up there.’
“‘No, Shmith,’ replied Jones, ‘you’re mistaken. Tha’sh moon up there, and it’s night.’ They staggered down the street, Smith insisting that it was day, Jones insisting that it was night, until they met a fellow inebriate clinging to a fire plug. To him they appealed their dispute. He heard them out, and then looked thoughtfully up at the moon. For a long time he puzzled over the problem, and finally, giving it up, turned to them and said politely, ‘Gentlemen, you’ll have to ’scuse me. I’m a stranger in town.’
“And, gentlemen,” said Bassett, again looking about from face to face, “you’ll have to excuse me. I’m a stranger in town.”
Judge Wilfley began by calling upon every American lawyer who was practicing in Shanghai to bring a certificate of good moral character and to pass an examination before he could be admitted to practice in the new court. The examination was given, and only two of the lawyers passed. At once there was a hubbub. The judge was attacked hotly. One of the lawyers who failed to pass hurried over to this country, making a speech at Honolulu, on the way, in which he insinuated charges of corruption against Judge Wilfley. Shortly after his arrival at San Francisco, he prevailed upon the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, on the Pacific Coast, to reverse one of Judge Wilfley’s decisions without having the facts of the whole case in hand and without a hearing from the China court. He went on to Washington, and within a month or two last winter actually got a bill through the United States Senate reinstating all the disqualified lawyers. The bill is before the House at this present session. He has conducted a newspaper campaign against Judge Wilfley in this country since his return last year. It seems only fair to call attention to these facts on a fearless and able man, because Judge Wilfley is too hard at work in a distant country to be able to defend himself. In the course of my travels from port to port last year, it became clear to me that this new court was the one uplifting factor in a distressing general condition.
Judge Wilfley, like his district attorney, seems to hold no visionary theories, in spite of the high standard he has set. Before leaving China, I made it a point to call on him and talk with him about the work he is doing in the interest of the American name. He seemed to recognize clearly enough that vice and depravity can no more be put down out of hand in Shanghai than they can be put down out of hand in New York or Chicago or Boston. But he maintained that the disreputably open flaunting of vice can be stopped. In fining the “American girls” $500 (gold) each, and driving a number of them off the Coast, his attack has been directed mainly against the dishonourable use of an honourable phrase. In imprisoning or driving away the American gamblers, he has been trying to put gambling down more nearly to the place it occupies, in this country, as a minor rather than as a major branch of industry. Judge Wilfley has undertaken an Herculean task. It seems to be the hope of all that patient minority, the better class of Americans on the China Coast, that he will be permitted to continue his fight unhampered by political machinery “back home.”
There are two other points, besides Shanghai, at which the two kinds of civilization, Western and Eastern, come into contact – Hongkong and Tientsin. Each is different from the other as well as from Shanghai; and each plays a curious part in the opium drama. We shall take them up in the next chapter.
VI
SOWING THE WIND IN CHINA – TIENTSIN AND HONGKONG
If you could avoid the suburbs of mud huts and walled compounds, and step directly down from an airship on the broad piazza of the Astor House at Tientsin (no treaty port is complete without its Astor House), you might also imagine yourself in a thriving English town. Set about this piazza are round tables, in bowers of potted plants, where sit Britishers, Germans, and Americans, with a gay sprinkling of soldiery. Across the street there is a green little park, where plump British babies are wheeled about and children romp among the shrubbery, and where the Sikh band plays on Sundays. There is nothing, unless it be the group of rickshaw coolies at the curb, or the fat Chinese policeman in the roadway, to recall China to the mind.
Yet Tientsin dominates all Northern China much as Shanghai dominates the mighty valley of the Yangtse. The railways and waterways (including the Grand Canal) all lead to Tientsin. It is Peking’s seaport. The viceroy of the Northern Provinces makes it his seat of government. The chief point of contact between these Northern Provinces and Western civilization, it is through Tientsin that the new ideas which are stirring the sluggish Chinese mind to new desires and to a new purpose filter into one hundred million Mongoloid heads.
The foreign settlement is simply a polyglot cluster of nationalities, each with its “concession” or allotment of land wrung from a browbeaten empire, each with its separate municipal government ruled by its own consul-general, and the whole combined, for purposes of defense and aggression, into a loosely knit city of seven or eight thousand whites under the general direction of a dozen consulates. The British have their polo, golf, and racing grounds; the French have their wealthy church orders and their Parisian moving pictures; the Germans have their beer halls and delicatessen shops. The Japanese, the Russians, the Italians, the Austrians, all the powers, in fact, excepting the United States – which holds no land in China – contribute their lesser shares to the colour and the activity of this extraordinary place. And only a mile or two away, further up the crooked river, lies the huge, sprawling Chinese city, where nine hundred and fifty thousand blue-clad celestials – nearly a round million of them – ceaselessly watch the squabbling groups of foreigners, and by means of newspapers, travelling merchants, and the thousand and one other instruments for the spreading of gossip, tell all Northern China what they see.
Tientsin, then, like Shanghai, is a potent, an electric, force in its influence on China. Whatever the Chinese are to become in their struggle towards the light of day will be in some measure due to the example set by these two cities, the only samples of Western civilization which the Chinaman can scrutinize at close range. The missionary tells him of the God of the Western peoples, and of how His Spirit regenerates humankind; the Chinaman listens stolidly, and then turns to look at the samples of regenerated peoples that fringe his Coast. What he actually sees will stick in his mind long after what he merely hears shall have passed out at the other ear. And these impressions that stick in the Chinaman’s mind are precisely the highly charged forces that are revolutionizing China to-day.
While still at Peking, I had picked up more or less gossip which seemed to indicate that the Tientsin foreign concessions were setting an unfortunate example in the matter of opium. In several of the concessions there are thousands of Chinese traders who have crowded in the white man’s territory, in order to make a living. These Chinese districts demand their opium, and they have always been allowed to have it. The opium shops and dens are licensed, as are our saloons, and the resulting revenue is cheerfully accepted by the various municipalities. When the Chinese officials set out to fight opium last winter and spring, they asked the foreign consuls to cooperate with them. This could be no more than a friendly request, for the concessions are foreign soil, that have passed wholly out of China’s control; but it was obviously of no use to close the dens of the native city if smokers could continue to gratify their desire by simply walking down the road.
This request bothered the consuls. The Chinese had adroitly placed them in a difficult position. A failure to cooperate would look bad; but revenue is revenue, on the Chinese Coast as elsewhere. More, if they could play for time, the enforcement in the native city, by driving the smokers over into the concessions, would actually increase the revenue. So the consuls played for time. They spread the impression “back home” that they were going to close the dens. When? Oh, soon – very soon. There were matters of detail to attend to. The licenses must run out. Then, too, perhaps the Chinese proposals were “insincere” – a little time would show.
The British concession boasted proudly that it had no opium dens. This was true. The concession is wholly taken up with British shops and British homes, and there is no room for Chinese residents. The German concession had so few natives that it closed some of its dens and took what credit it could. The Japanese quietly put on the lid. But all the other concessions remained “wide open.”
So ran the Peking gossip. It seemed to me worth while to follow it up; for if it should prove true that the concessions were actually profiting, like Shanghai, by the native prohibition, that fact would be significant. It would leave little to say for the representatives of foreign civilization in China.
There was a particular reason why the prohibition should be made effective in and about Tientsin. The one official who stood before his country and the world as the anti-opium leader, who personified, in fact, the reform spirit which is leavening the Chinese mass, was Yuan Shi K’ai, the Northern viceroy. Tientsin was his viceregal capital. Before he could hope to convince the cynical observers of Britain and Europe that the anti-opium crusade was really on, he had to make good in his own city.
Yuan Shi K’ai is a remarkable man. Unlike some of his colleagues who have travelled and studied abroad, he has never, I believe, been over the sea; yet no Chinese official shows a firmer grasp on his biggest and most bewildering of the world’s governmental problems. Practically a self-made man (his father was a soldier), he worked up from rank to rank, himself a part and a product of the antiquated absolutism of his country, until he emerged at the top, a red-button mandarin, a viceroy, with a personality towering above the superstitious, tradition-ridden court, and yet sufficiently able and skillful to work with and through that court. We have seen, in an earlier chapter, how Yuan, then a governor, kept Shantung Province quiet during the Boxer outbreak. It is he who is building up the “new army” with the aid of German and Japanese drill-masters. It is he who succeeded in introducing the study of modern science into the education of the official classes. He is committed to the abolition of the palace eunuch system. He has, during the past year, made great headway with his bold plan to remodel this land of fossilized ideas into a constitutional monarchy, with a representative parliament. But first, and above all else, he places the opium reforms. Unless this curse can be checked, and at least partially removed, there is no hope of progress.
Throughout this magnificent struggle for a new China, Viceroy Yuan has radically opposed the very spirit and genius of his race; but far from ostracizing himself or splitting the government, he has grown steadily in power and influence, until now, as a sort of prime minister, he appears to hold the substance of imperial authority in his hands. Try to imagine a self-made, reform politician outwitting and beating down the traditions of Tammany Hall in New York City, multiply his difficulties by a thousand or two, and you will perhaps have some notion of the sheer ability of this great man, who has risen above the traditions, even above the age-old prejudices of his own people. There are many Europeans in his retinue – physicians, military men, engineers, educators – all of whom apparently look up to him as a genuine superior. An attaché summed up for me this feeling which Yuan inspires in those who know him: “You forget to think of him as a Chinaman,” said this attaché, “as in any way different from the rest of us.”
The viceroy took a personal hand in the Tientsin situation. On December 2, 1906, he issues the following document to the North and South Police Commissioners of Tientsin native city. Rather than altar the quaint wording, I quote just as it was translated for me:
“I have just received instructions from the cabinet ministers enjoining me to act according to the regulations which they presented to the throne, and which received their Majesties’ consent. The evil effects of opium are known to all. It is the duty of us all to act according to the regulations, and do our utmost to get rid of them.
“The North and South police commissioners are authorized to close the opium dens, which have been the refuge of idle hands and young people who are not allowed to smoke at home. The said dens are to be closed at the end of the Tenth Moon (December 14th), at the same time notifying the keepers of restaurants and wine shops not to have opium-smoking instruments or opium prepared for their customers, nor are their customers allowed to take opium and smoke there.
“As to the concessions, the Customs Taotai is authorized to open conference with the different consuls, asking them to close the opium dens within a limited time.”
The two police commissioners at once made the proclamation public; and, as is evident from the following “Reply to a petition,” met with difficulties in enforcing it:
“It is impossible to change the date of closing dens. What is said in the petition, that the keepers cannot square their accounts with their customers, may be true, but the viceroy’s order must be obeyed. The dens shall be closed at the specified time.”
These orders were carried out. It is one of the advantages of a patriarchal form of government that orders can be carried out. There were no injunctions, no writs to show cause, no technical appeals. The few den keepers who dared to violate the prohibition were mildly punished on the first offense – most of them receiving two full weeks at hard labour. The real responsibility was placed upon the owners of the property rented out to the den keepers. It was recognized that these owners were the ones who really profited by the vice. They were given an opportunity to report any violations occurring on their property; but if a violation occurred, and the owner failed to report, his property was promptly confiscated. Here we see successfully employed a method which we in this country have been unable as yet to put into effect. The futility of punishing engineers and switchmen for the sins of railroad corporations, of punishing clerks for the offenses of bank directors, of punishing keepers of disorderly houses in cases where we know that the real profit goes, in the form of a high rental, to the respectable owner of the property, has long been recognized among us. In China, while we see much that seems intolerable in the enforcement of law, we must admit that it is refreshing to find laws really enforced, and to see responsibility sometimes put where it belongs. We of the United States are far ahead of the Chinese in all that goes to make up what we call civilization. But we have, among others, a law forbidding the sale of liquor on Sundays in New York City. We couldn’t enforce the law if we tried; and we haven’t enough moral courage to strike it off the books for the dead letter it is.
Yes, the Tientsin situation has its refreshing side. Yuan Shi K’ai – a Chinaman, – set about it to close the opium dens that supplied this swarming cityful of Chinamen, and succeeded. He solved that most difficult problem which confronts human governments everywhere – in every climate, under every sky – the problem of moral regulation. He drove the manufacturers of opium and of opium accessories out of business. He cut his way through a tangle of “interests,” vested and otherwise, not so different in their essence from the liquor interests of this country. Thanks to his own character and resource, thanks to the cheerful directness of Chinese methods of governing (when directness and not indirectness is really wanted), he “got results.” And not only in Tientsin native city, but also in Peking, and Pao-ting-fu, and all Chili Province, and throughout Shansi Province, and over large portions of Shantung, Shansi, and Manchuria. It was not a case of Maine prohibition, or Kansas prohibition, or New York excise regulation. He closed the dens!
While he was accomplishing this result, and while the native Chamber of Commerce was appropriating a sum of money to found a hospital for the cure of opium victims, the “Customs Taotai,” obeying the viceroy’s instructions, courteously requested the consuls, as rulers of the foreign city, to help along by closing the dens in their municipalities. It was mainly to see whether or not the consuls were “helping” that I went down to Tientsin. There was no need to ask questions or to burrow among statistics. The opium dens of the concessions were either or they were not. Accordingly, I set out from the Astor House at nine o’clock one evening, by rickshaw. For interpreter I had Mr. Sung, the secretary of the Native Young Men’s Christian Association, and with us went a young Englishman who spoke the language. This test seemed a fair one to apply, for it was April 23d, nearly five months after Viceroy Yuan’s proclamation, and several weeks after the closing of the last dens in the native city.
We began with the French concession; and our first glimpses of the thriving opium business of the little municipality astonished us. The Taiku Road, the main street, where one finds churches, mission compounds, offices, and shops, displayed a row of red lights. Our three rickshaws pulled up at the first and we went in.
