To the Editor of the 34 conta-CuIsA Dairy News:
n,—While much' is written. of nah price of rice, the saan Chinese, and of requests for, the shipping companies to give reduc freights on this commodity, nothing is said of the Chinese Government's little squeezes' on this same tide.
all rice carried between one port in China and another, port in the same empire, the Chinese Maritime Customs levy a duty-equal to the Treaty tariff export duty. Speaking from memory, this equals one Haikuan mace per picul.
Rice cannot be exported abroad except under "hu chao," and on payment of the same duty. Therefore all the talk about illegal export of the people's food is so much bl The "huchoos? are on file, and it is easy to see who issued them or on whose authority they were issued and the amount of rice covered thereby.
The duty on coastwise borne rice should be at once and forever abolished, and both foreigners and Chinese alike would do well to bring pressure to bear on the Chinese Government to do this, Its abolition would simply lessen the amount of surplus Customs revenue that we sometimes read about as being handed over to the Chinese
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.