In a recent issue the "News" remark: upon the "death" of the boycott in Shanghai. If so it is like a snake whose head is dead while the body moves. Here, one hundred miles from Shanghai, the agitation is in full blast. 'The body' of the serpent is wriggling and there is slime in its trail. Placards issued from Shanghai have been d through the cities and towns of this district, Some of these are moderate, pointing out that~ Americans among the people, connected with the Churches, are not in sympathy with the ill-treatment of the Chinese and they must be treated kindly. Other. placards are rabid and by their. indiscriminate charges of the ill-treatment by all Americans of all Chinese are calculated to, and-actually do, stir up much.anti-foreign feeling. For we all know that anti-foreign sentiment is too often a smothered flame that only needs a little fanning to make it into a blaze. And it has been fanned by this boycott agitation. Dire consequence are threatened against any shops that dare to purchase or sell American goods. Self-appointed inspectors go through all boats coming from Shanghai are smuggled through, Shanghai mi to see if by any chance American goods
chants have complained to interior tradesmen that they could got American goods through on the " bottoms" of the cargo boats but for the vigilance of these fellows. A book distributed free and purporting to give a fair account of the whole boycott movement and its caus: makes the statement that in the San wich Islands twenty thousand Chino: were deliberately burnt to death by the Americans, And this statement, reiterated in some of the printed placards, has gone out into seemingly every hamlet and country place. I can speak from actual observation, for I have been over a considerable territory in the past few days and it is the same everywhere. People who have never had the sh of an idea of the relations between China and America have it dinned into them as their first piece of information that the American people burned to death 20,000 innocent Chinese, and it is all painted in lurid colours by those who delight to deal in such stuff. This is the trail of the serpent. And itis the old story that what felt in the ports as only a little friction grows in the interior, where it is unrestrained, into positive anti-foreign hatred.
And nothing is more apparent than that the, Chinese Government connives at the whole business, American officials may swallow what the Chinese Government save about not being able to control what the people buy. But when a paternal government that tells the people how they shall plait their hair and sees that they eat only government monopoly salt, when a government such as this gravely informs Americans that they cannot interfere with this unharnessed boycott, why the Chinese understand it all right. It means to them what I saw on a placard to-day, "And we have informed our Government by telegraph (of our action)," And who cannot read between the lines? And'it is frooly said on all hands. "The government refuses to interfere and we can do what we please." Not that the boycott is all wrong. Your correspondent, as an American, admires the Chi their pluck and resourcefulnessin of retaliation. But it has gone as far as it has because it was understood that the Imperial Government put no: restraining hand upon it. And the Imperial edict issued late in the fray seems to have had little restraining. effect, at least in the interior here. With such rumours as I have. mentioned passing. unchecked, it will, be occasion for gratitude if no serious trouble arises,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.