We mentioned some time ago that there was a movement in London to stop the practice of hurrying to Haukow to meet the new season's teas, and in favour of waiting their arrival at Shanghai. On another page will be found the circular which has been addressed to those interested in the trade, inviting their ce-operation and setting forth the arguments in favour of the change; and very few will deny that the writers huve logic on their side. Chaaszes are sent away from their own tea-rooms, where they "have their own light" and are in every respect in: the most favourable circumstances for exercising an unbiased judgment, "to a Settlement of which it is hardly an exaggeration to say that, for s time, almost the whole population acts and talks as if to secure an interest in tea were the one end of life." There is fleet of steamers waiting freight, and a crowd of people waiting and wanting to buy. What wonder that the "i fluences of competition and emulation hurry men into operations from which their calmer judgment would shrink, and that anxiety to have a share of the "fine" chops for which everyone is lying in wait, leads to competition, haste, and high rates—to the absurdity even of buying by candlelight lest the prize should escape? In the olden days, in Shanghai, if two houses were thinking of buying a similar tea, the Chaaszes often came to an understanding that one should put through the operation, and they should afterwards divide the produce. It is needless to say that this was a system under which there was a better chance of buying profitably, than the present one of sending people to compete against one another, at Hankow. As the circular says, what is the object of going to meet the leaf half-way between the place of growth and the port of export—except an anxiety to secure first choice, which cannot but defeat its own object by the competition and consequent appreciation of the tea which it engenders?—The practice which has grown up, of hurtying away the greater portion of the first crop within a fortnight after the opening of the market, is another natural consequence of the competition and excitement to which the present system gives rise. The Silk merchants in Shanghai do not think it necessary to buy up the whole of the first crop of silk within a fortnight after the first sample is shown, as though there were a famine in London, every recurring spring, in respect of Chinese produce. But, then, the Chu-sze Quais are not "herded half-a-dozen together in the houses of two or three agents," each and all with the avowed and special object of taking a share in the general gamble.
But though fully agreeing with the views advocated by those who desire to see Shanghai made the bead-quarters of the tea-trade, as it is of every other description of business in the North of China, we are not sanguine that they will carry their object. The chances are t as they argue, if the Chaaszes remained quiet'at Shanghai, the Chinese would place extreme limits on the teas offered in Hankow, and, failing to obtain these, would order it to Shanghai,—to the market where the' greater number of buyers and the greater buying power existed. But the chances also are that foreigners will be so afraid a few dissentients may persist in going to Hankow and so get the pick, that they will persist in a practice which every one condemns as prejudicial to the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.