The recent annual investigation the International Anti-Opium Association of Peking, which embraces over a hundred personal reports from missionaries and other foreigners in every province in China, shows no. diminution in this season's cultivation, The Southern provinces are now collecting a bumper opium harvest, whose surplus hundreds of tons must find markets, Every opium province has its monopolies, some are straightforward and others—by far the majority—are morely excessive taxon imposed by local' militarats fon poppy land, opium shops and Smoking dens. The straightforward opium monopolies are wider in their scope, they are provincial and governed by published regulations and restrictions promulgated cly the military and civil provincial Governors. The stringency of these regulations is highly efficient for the raising of the largest funds, and for preventing promiscuous dealings.
Take the most recent monopoly, that of Kiangsi. Its regulations consist of 28 Articles completely controlling import, transport, sales bureaux and smuggling. Opium is not permitted to be grown in the province, but must be imported from Szechuan and other provinces in.order that the import tax may be secured. The whole provines is divided into 14 sections each under Yhe control of a sectional bureau whose duty will be to. raise monthly a tax of $15,000, $12,000 and $8,000 respectively according to their classification as Ist, 2nd or rd class, The four importing bureaux are supplied with stamps, coloured grey, yellow, white and red respectively, so as to avoid encroachment on each other's area of trade. The opium import tax heavy, the sectional bureaux tax is also heavy, and finally the dealers who pay heavily for their post are unrestricted in the price they ask from their purchasers, 'This monopoly is established by the Military Governor' of the province and from the number of the tabulated offices and officials a very large monthly income must be anticipated.
'A Clear Case.
Governor to start the poppy tecrudeseenco in 1917, and when Governor of Suiyuan made a fortune by supplying Peking with cheap opium, 'A reasonable defence might be made for provincial monopolies if control and taxation aimed even in the smallest degree at restriction but they do not. Money is the end and money only. No consideration for the people or the destructive effect of opium upon the life of the nation exists. The Kiangsi Govoonor knows he is breaking all law and treaty, for in the] preamble to his monopoly regulations he states "In order to avoid foreign interforénee a formal declaration of strict opium. pro hibition shall be made," and in the same preamble calls on officials of every grade military or make the monopoly a 'The only commendation due to Governor T'sai is that he is open and straight with his "destructive monopoly. Scores of others are doing more or less the same thing under the title of Suppression Bureaux, and that within a short distance' of the Chinese Capital.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.