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About The Wageworker. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1904-???? | View Entire Issue (Feb. 27, 1909)
N EW YORK. A national vice that does not pay Is in a bad way. It's like a brainless man who has become penniless it has no friends. Therefore, when, the statesmen of the earth reached the tardy conclusion that the encouragement of oplum amoklng really did not pay. the gaunt giant of the poppy fields was ready to be bowled over, writes Allan L. Ben son. At this propitious moment the United States government, which had never sought to fatten on the opium traffic, initiated a world-wide fight against it. That was two years ago. China, which for 700 years had alternately fought against and wrung revenue from its greatest national weakness, rallied for another attack. First an edict went forth that every Chinese official who smoked opium must forthwith cease to do so. Then the common people of China were notified that they, too, must soon stop. The common people, however, were given ten years in which to taper off the habit to the vanishing point. China also entered into an agree ment with Great Britain to decrease, year by year, the area devoted to poppy culture In China and in India. Of course one does not need to go far to And the reason for America's opposition to the opium-smoking habit. As a people, we do not burn the poppy's blood, and are not greedy enough to care to continue to collect the $6 a pound tax that we have levied on the opium that the Chinese and the white degenerates want to smoke. But how corner it . that England, which once fought for opium with her rrmies and her fleets is now openly against It? And how comes it that China, whose public officials have so long fattened on the taxes wrung from the traffic, is Bitting beside England? Back of these circumstances is a profound economic fact. This fact is that opium smoking does not pay. It never paid but shorter sighted governmental officials long thought it did. Yet the changed view has not its origin in the failure of tariffs and imposts of various sorts to wring enormous sums from those who smoke the Oriental pipe. Here is the real story in three sentences: Men, to pay taxes, must first be born. After birth they must have strength and industry. And they must not die until they are too old to work. Now see what opium does: In those families where the father smokes opium the average number of children Is 1.09. The few children who are born and who reach maturity are ' poor workers, and they die young. . Here is the world crying for ef ficiency and prodigious production. Here are the great nations scanning their budgets aud their industries in desperate desire to raise the enormous sums with which to maintain their armies, increase their navies and carry on their other great governmental ac tivities. And here is opium palsying the hands that could turn many a wheel. Is it any wonder that the poppy fields are giving way to rice, and that the American congress has passed a bill . excluding smoking-oplum? The statesmen of an older school, it is true, would have done otherwise. They would have clutched the penny-tax and lost the ultimate dollar. But even England is no longer so unwise. Eng land knows that her Dreadnoughts were not launched from poppy fields; that they were made possible only by the well-worked mines and mills and farms of England. And while she is aware that she could continue to reap a pittance from the poppies, she is now seeking bigger things. She wants to tax the greater products of vigor ous men. Yet what a fight it has been for China to see this happy day when the world's interest in this matter has be come like her own! It's a fight that began 700 years ago, and it illustrates. as nothing else can, the peculiar Btreugth and the peculiar weakness that are inherent in ihe Chinese char acter. It also affords one of the few illustrations of the superiority of au tocratic government over pouular rule. For while the people of the opium habit, always vigorously fought for it, even as they are now rioting against the curtailment of the poppy fields, the government has always opposed it, precisely as it opposes it to-day. Some times it has yielded to exterior force, and then it has shown its weakness by Impoverishing with taxes those whose bodies opium was impoverish' ing. Opium was unknown In China until the latter part of the twelfth century, Who brought it there perhaps does not make bo much difference, tlnce it is . there, but the British say the Arabs did. At any rate, the dried Juice of the poppy came from some of the astern Europeans or western Asiatic countries, where it had been known for a hundred years prior to the Chris tian era. And at first it was used only for medicinal purposes. Then, as now, many Chinese were afflicted with fevers, and opium helped them. Meantime the Turks had introduced opium into India, where the natives soon engaged in its cultivation on a large scale. The Chinese, after form ing the opium habit, then bought their supplies in India. At that time there was a considerable export trade from China to India, and the junks that car ried other merchandise from the Celes tial empire brought back the raw ma terial from which opium is made. In 1368 the habit had become so widespread that the emperor, noting its ill effects, issued an imperial de cree against the use of and the traffic in opium. In the original decree he prescribed only moderate penalties for its violation, but as his subjects did not obey him, he increased the sever ity of the penalties until death or trans portation became the lot of every one who persisted in the use of the baneful pipe. And, as the Chinese had then been smoking opium less than 50 years, they broke oft the habit just as an American youth who has smoked tobacco only a year or two can give up the use of tobacco. But, like the American boy who "swears off" and then in two months goes back to his tobacco, the Chinese in a few years resumed the use of opium and again a stern emperor stopped it. Nor was opium again smoked in China until the latter part of the eighteenth century. British rule having been imposed upon India, the government in 1757 granted to the East India Company a monopoly of the trade in opium. The East India Company at once cast its eyes Chinaward. There it saw an em peror who had forbidden the importa tion or use of opium ; there it also saw laws fixing the opium smoker's penalty at death. But there it also saw Chi nese gold, and plans were at once laid to provide the Chinese with opium whether their emperor would have it or not. The scheme devised was for Brit ish ships to lie off Chinese ports and deliver opium to such Chinese mer chants as might come out to buy; And the plan worked so well that in 1790 600,000 pounds of the forbidden pro duct were sold in China. Of course the Chinese government did not sit idly by. It cut off a few heads ' and sent many persons out of the country for the count'-y's good; but the smoking' of opium went on. What s the threat of death to a man who wants to do something? Around the world in England at that very mo ment men were stealing five-shilling purses and being hanged (or it. And the Chinese continued to smoke their opium. In 1830 the East India Com pany sold to them and thtjy smoked 2,500,000 pounds. The East India Company was becoming rich and the British government took toll from its trade. History records the fact that in the year 1837 the Chinese emperor screwed up his courage and talked fight. The sale of opium to bis subjects must stop. The supply ships that were lying outside his harbors must clear out. If they didn't there would be trouble. So he said in his proclamation. The British East India Company treated him as if he were a chattering child. Not a ship moved. Not a Chinaman came after opium who did not get it. Everything went on as be fore. But the emperor was no chattering child. He was a raging, roaring old man. He felt precisely as the Boston ers did when the tea-laden British ships came in after their tax. And he did precisely what the citizens of Boston did boarded the ships, by proxy of course, and dumped the opium into the ocaan 3,000,000 pounds of it! Of course this act was construed by the British to constitute a cause for war, and hostilities were opened as soon as the aggrieved persons could get their guns into action. This was in 1840. The Chinese, even in that day, were as poor fighters as they are now. In a little while a British fleet had captured Chusan. The next year the Bogue forts fell, and then Canton, Amoy, Shanghai, Chapoo, and a lot of other places gave up the ghost. By 1842 the Chinese emperor was very glad to buy peace by ceding Hong kong, paying an indemnity of $21,000,- 000, and throwing open four ports to foreign trade. He even humiliated himself by degrading Commissioner Lin who had carried ut the emperor's orders. Nor did he get even the thanks of his own subjects for his efforts in their behalf. The whole empire was torn with rebellion. Rebel armies robbed, murdered and plundered al most as they pleased. If they had had an intelligent leader who could have welded them together ana directed them with spirit, they might have done away with old Taou-kwans, but in 1850 he saved them the trouble by dying. From that day until two years ago no Chinese emperor dared say any thing against smoking. The Chinese raised poppies in nine of the eighteen provinces of their country, and would have raised more if the climate and the soil had been suitable. From an importer of the drug China has be come an exporter. Almost all of the opium that is brought into the United States comes from the Flowery king dom. No longer does it pay tribute to Britain for its supplies. Britain can tax the trade in her own India, but that's a good deal like trying to lift herself by her own bootstraps. And as was said at the beginning, when a national vice does not pay it is in a bad way. The Chinese' consul in New York was sought to throw light on the ef forts of his government, after 70 years of silent resignation, to free its sub jects from the opium habit. He was educated at George Washington and Columbia universities and speaks Eng lish well. "Will the Chinese," he was asked, "be able to break off the opium habit in the ten years in which they have been given to do it?" "I think so," he replied. "The gov ernment has already taken extraordi nary measures to curtail the sale of the drug, and the increasing difficulty with which it may be obtained will as sist victims of the smoking habit in breaking off. It used to be, for -instance, so that any coolie in a city need not go more than half the length of one of your city blocks to find a place where he could buy all the opium he wanted or could pay for. more than that, there were in all Chi nese cities places where anybody could go to smoke the pipes and other appliances' being furnished by the proprietors. These places were for the accommodation of the poorer class of Chinese who could not afford to own pipes. It was the custom of Chi nese laborers to drop into these re sorts two or three times a day and smoke, just as an American laborer may take a glass of beer at noon and another at night. "All this is now changed. The Chi nese government has imposed the same sort of regulations upon the sale of smoking opium that many American municipalities have imposed upon the sale of liquor. If the public officials of America were suddenly ordered to stop smoking cigars I imagine the command would be obeyed only with the greatest difficulty by some of the "Yet the health of such is these in variably soon gives way. First they become ghastly thin sometimes al most approaching the skeleton stage then they lose strength, ambition and lastly life itself. "In the country it Is different. Many farmers who raise poppies do not smoke opium. As a result they have good health and live long. It is not unusual for a Chinese farmer to reach the age of 70 or 80 and occasionally one hangs on until he is 100." Those who have believed that opium smoking is a natural vice in China will perhaps be surprised at the consul's statement to the contrary. Yet this statement is verified by the fact that China's birth rate remains moderately high, notwithstanding the lew rate in the cities, where opium iB used. But, if the consul's statement be sur prising, what must be said of that of Dr. Hamilton Wright. Dr. Wright says the Chinese who ere resident in America are rapidly giving up the use of the drug. The better class of Ori ental exiles not only do not smoke, but regard with scorn any of their countrymen who do. Why, then, are the importations of smoking opium into the United States increasing? And who smoked the million and a quarter dollars' worth that was imported in the first 11 months of last year? In the answer to these questions lies the interest of the United States in ex cluding opium from this country and stopping its use everywhere. The fact is that American women, or at least white women, used a large part of the smoking opium that was brought into the country last year, and therefore supplied much of the great sum that went to pay for it. Even the lowest white men are not likely to develop a hankering for opium, but degraded white women yield to it as readily as any Chinese ever did. Possibly they want to forget perhaps opium helps them to blot out for a time that which they would not remember. In any event, every great city contains places where women may go to smoke opium, and in New York in particular, one need not go far down the hall of many a cheap lodging house to catch the fumes of the drug with which China has wres tled for 700 years. If whte women used even half of the smoking opium that was brought to the United States last year, and each woman during the year bought $20 worth there are 30,000 such women in this country. It doesn't seem pos sible! But the opium was brought A COMMON SCENE IN CHINA YEARS AGO. men who have been using tobacco 20 i 30 or 40 years. They have the habit. That's the difference public officials in China have not the opium habit, "It is unfortunately tru-s that the lower classes in the cities are slaves of the pipe. Wheii a poor man lives on a farm, he seems ' to get i along easily without using opium, but when he comes to the city he picks up the habit within a year. If he smokes in moderation, no great harm seems to come to him for a while, though ulti mately it undermines his health. But the trouble is that few Chinese in the cities use opium moderately. They soon smoke as many times as they can during the day, and go at it again at night, continuing until sleep over powers them. In this way they econo mize on food, for one who smokes immoderately cannot eat much and they are also able to do a great amount of work for a while without feeling the usual fatigue. here, sold, paid for, and smoked, and tLose who are most familiar with the facts say that white women used much of it. Such despondency as they never knew will be ahead of these women after the bill to exclude smoking opium becomes a law. To be caught smoking or merely to be found with the drug in one's possession will then make the offender liable to two years imprisonment. Yet precisely as there were Chinese 600 years ago who lost their heads because they could not forego their pipes, doubtless there are American woman who will go prison if they can get the forbidden drug with which to violate the law. For it Is as difficult to break a bad habit as it is to form a good one. A whole lot of women would like their husbands better if they didn' always have to- pick up after them. Detroit Free Press. 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