PREFACE
The writer's part in making this book has been chiefly one of selection, compilation and arrangement. A work of this character could not be otherwise. China is a vast country; its people impoverished and stupefied; the writer who would attempt to analyze the economic condition of this wonderful and mysterious country first hand would be confronted by insurmountable obstacles—at best, after mastering the language, he in all probability, due to a woeful lack of governmental statistics, would be able to record but a small fraction of such a colossal undertaking after years of hard labor.
It therefore follows that far better results can be obtained by gathering the reliable data as it has come to us through recorded history, travelers, scientists, writers and government officials. True, very little contained in this book is new, but never to our knowledge has such a vast fund of information been gathered in so small a book upon the opium traffic and the commercialization of China, nor has any effort been made to give these historical events an economic interpretation.
In view of the fact that the Capitalist system has well nigh exploited every part of the earth into a sterile condition, it must and will seize the remaining spots and drain them to exhaustion. We as people who are fighting for our very lives under these conditions, must understand the economic result, not only upon the oppressed Chinaman, but upon the entire human race.
The great captains of industry and finance are now at work in the Celestial Empire; vast sums have been poured in to rend and destroy the Manchu dynasty; a supposed republic is now in process of organization, and in just a little while the nerveless Chinamen, under the scientific management of the best engineers and most skilled workmen from ail countries, will flood the earth with cheap commodities and lower the standard of living to that of the lowly Mongolian.
