FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT, Ist May. provinot' has long "been distinguished This particular part of the Hupeh
for its variety of rates of exchange, A nominal 100 cash has for a long time been worth 97 in notual cash at Wu-such, 98 at Lungping ton miles away, 97 oF 98 in different classes of transac. tions at Hsingkuo ninety miles away, and 99 at Chichon the same distance away in another direction. To complicate matters, the only cash bills which are popular are issued by Wosueh and are current in all, those towns, but not at face value, At Wasuob " bill equals 1,000 cush, at Lungping one has to give ton cash and a bill for " thousand, at Obichou one must add twenty cash to the bill, When the copper ten-cash pieoss became current (and the only ourrenoy, for cash is not now to be had at the banks) the banks had to settle all these monetary problems afresh. At the mint the copper pieces are sold at 98, i.c., 100 copper pieces equal 1,000 cash, reckoned at 08 to the hundred, so that when paying 100 cash one pays ten pieces, but when paying 99 or 98 cash one also pays 10 pieces. At Chichou the banks decided to issue 100 copper picoos for a cash bill, thus saving money on the transaction as they bought the at Wuchang at 98 and paid them Out instead of 1,000 copper osah at 99. At Lungping they had to be content without gains. At Wusueh the banks pondered, for if they bought the copper pieces at 98 and then gave 100 for a bill in a place where the rate was 97 they would lose ten cash on each hundred. They therefore decided to take one coin out of sch packet they got from the mint. Had they stopped here all would have gone smoothly, for the shopkeepers would have deducted one cash from each ten copper pieces which they paid out, and no-one would have lost anything. But old time custom has allowed the banks to charge two cash for the piece of string on which the cash wore thresded, and the ban did not like to yield this squeeze, so they proceeded to take a second copper piece out of each packet from the mint and put eight cash back, thus getting the two cash for the string which they no longer provided. Of course the shopkeepers objected, for they could not divide up two cash among s hundred coins. "If they allowed this deduction, the loss of the two cash must inevitably
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.