Drugging a Nation

s wide, say about one-third the area of the United States; and they support, after a fashion, a population of about 160,000,000. There had been plenty of evidence obtainable at Shanghai, Hankow

hés, merchants, missionaries. Dr. Piell, of the London Mission hospital at Peking, estimated that ninety per cent. of the men, women, and children in Shansi smoke opium. He called in one of his native medical assistants, who happened to be a Shansi man, and the assistant observed, with a smile, th

E LITTLE MORE TH

are Occupied by Formerly

UT ON THE HIGHWAY,

A FEW COPPER CASH

several days by cart and mule-litter. While this sort of travelling is not the most comfortable in the world, it has the advan

of the ruined buildings were comparatively new-certainly, too new to fall to pieces. At the second village John made another guess at the cause of such complete disaster. "Poor-too poor," he said, and then traced it back to the last famine, about which, he found, the peasants were still talking. "Whole lot o' mens die," he explained. It was later on that I got at the main contributing cause of the wre

coast one hears a good deal of talk about the "missionary question." Many of the foreign merchants abuse the missionaries. I will confess that the "anti-missionary" side had been so often and so forcibly presented to me that before I got away from the c

on their work at all, they must be continually studying the traditions, customs, and prejudices of their neighbours. In almost every instance the missionaries who supplied me with information were more conservative than the British and American diplomatic, consular, military, and medical observers who have travelled in the opium provinces. I have since come to the conclusion that the missionaries are over-conservative on the opium question, probably because, being constantly under fire as "fanatics" and "enthusiasts," they unconsciously lean too far towards the side of under-statement. The published estimates of Dr. Du Bose, of Soochow, president of the Anti-opium League, are much more conservative than those of Mr. Alex Hosie, the British

e richer soil, which in such densely-populated regions, is absolutely needed for the production of food, is given over to the poppy; that the manufacture of opium, of pipes, of lamps, and of the various other accessories, has become a dominating industry; that families are wrecked, that merchan

s the dialect as well as he speaks English, and who travels widely through the remoter regions in search of rare birds and animals, puts the proportion of smokers as low as seventy-five per cent. of the total population. I had some talks with this man at T'ai Yuan-fu, and later at Tientsin, and I found his information so precise and so interesting that I asked him one day to dictate to a stenographer some rando

vers, where they can get plenty of water. The seeds are sown about the beginning of May, and they have to be transplanted. It takes until about the middle of July before the opium ripens. Just before it is ripe men are employed to cut the seed pods, when a white sap exudes, and this dries upon the pod

gh it is very easily broken. The full-grown poppy plant is from th

less ruined by opium. I have heard of a family, a man and

ing down, simply from the fact that the heads of the family have become opium-smokers. In Taiku there is a large fair held each year, and all the old bronzes, po

e fine trees and shrubs, but during the last seven years he has taken to opium and has been steadily going down. He has been selling out this re

one form or another. I was speaking to a number of them who had come into an inn at which I was stopping. I asked them if they wanted to give up t

rouble himself to plan

ruin owing to the excessive smoking of opium, and wherever one goes the ruins are seen on every side. On the roads

they were to be ground down into a meal of which dumplings were made, and these were steamed. That was their only diet, and had been for the past month. They had no money at all. What money they had possessed had been spent on opium, and they could not expect anything to make up the crop of potatoes the following autumn. I noticed in a basin a few dried sticks, and I

e in the morning until about five in the evening, stopping twice during that time for meals. When they leave off in the evening, after a hasty meal they start

was for the cure of a pain of some sort-for relieving the suffering. The women oft

s room has first been filled with the fumes of opium. Some one has to go into the roo

all day filling his pipes. The slave girls and brides very often try to c

dy and a languid gait. Opium gets such a powerful grip on a confirmed smoker that it is usually unsafe for him to give up the habit without medical aid. His appetite is taken away, his digestion is impaired, there is congestion of the various internal organs, and congestion of the lungs. Constipation and diarrh?a result, with pain all over the body. By the time he has reached this stage, the smoker has become both physically and mentally weak and inactive. With his intellect deade

m fifteen minutes to half an hour to prepare a pipe to his satisfaction, smoke it, and rouse himself to begin the operation again. If he smokes ten or twenty pipes a day, which is common, and then sleeps off the effects, it is not hard to figure out the number of hours left for business each day. When he has slept, and the day is well started, his body at once begins to clamour for more opium.

His moral sense is destroyed. A diseased, decrepit, insane being, he forgets even his family. He sells his bric-a-brac, his pictures, his furniture. He sells his daughters, even his wife, if she has attractions, as slaves to rich men. He tears his house to pieces, sells the tiles of his roof, the bricks of his walls, the

gy and capital that should go into legitimate industry. The government of the province and the government of the empire have become so dependent on the immense revenue from the taxation of this "vicious article of luxury" that they dare not give it up. In the body politic an unhealthy condition not only exists, but also controls. Drifting into it half-consciously, the province has been sapped by a vicious economic habit. That is what is the matter with Shansi. That is what is the matter with China. All the

ND RUIN

Owners, the Woodwork and Bricks Sold,