Political: economy in the Middle Kingdom has dealt with one great problem and that. is, how shall these countless millions. be fed? 'The country yields but " bare subsistence to -her teeming' population. The arable land that ig: withdrawn' from grain and devoted tothe-poppy lessens -the supply of breadstuffs in a country where suffering huma. nity calls for brand. The rate of wages is necessary for-economic living. If then the money intended for the purchase of rice goes for opium what is to fill the mouths Each of the twn million slaves consumes from $15 to $150 (or even more) per annum what an immense sum it aggregates This by men on wages from $3 to $5 per month. In what a molten stream does silver flow out of the country Opium consumers may br divided into three pretty equal classes. The first, those who can afford to use it.
The second, those who with opium, are barely able to purchase the necessities of life. The third, those who are reduced to abject poverty. There is nothing that draws on the sympathies of visitors from the prosperous Innds of the West more than to behold the wide-spread poverty in Asia, The little that China has, opium, like Pharoah's lean kino, eats up." The lazy, idle habits engendered, the inability to work, the unwillingness to make-any exertion, are characteristics of the habitual devotion to the pipe.. 3 The opium smoker borrows right and left, and seldom pays, and the pawn-broker flourishes on his misfortunes. The wife desires to visit her relatives and goes to her trunk for her nice cloak, when suddenly screams fill the house!' Her husband has pawned the garment! Stealing his wife's clothes" is the special _accomp! ment of the impecunious opium-smoker. Where the father consumes three-fourths of his gains in opium, the children have insufficient clothing in winter or they are in ra.x, and the mother toils all day at embroidery to earn x mouthful of food to hush the cries of her hungry children. There are hundreds of thousands of these cases, Opium is the ancestor of beggary. The smoker pawns his goods, disposes of his furniture and sells his house. Every resident in the interior can testify to scores of instances of well-to-do-people becoming vagabonds and outcasts from society. "There are whole bands of suppliants who bond the knee and beg for the opium ashes from the, pipes of form aaintan The last home of the s before he enters his coffin, is the watch-piece of matting over his lifeless body was once a happy boy in a comfortable home
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.