Two important items of financial news have been announced within the past few days. The Chinese Banking Group has paid over about Tls. 400,000 as the first instalment of the cost of machinery for the Shanghai Mint, while the Currency Bureau has submitted to the Cabinet the design of a new dollar, to bear a representation of the head of President Hsu, and to be a standard dollar for China. The general public is too well acquainted with currency depreciation here to be unduly elated at the prospect of anything "standard" in connexion with the money of China, but on the other hand the Chinese Banking Group is looking forward to such a blessed state of affair The members, or at least certain of them, have the rosiest faith in the Shanghai Mint as the great step in currency reform; and with this goes one other belief of extraordinary interest, that the Tuchun system is tottering to its fall. Of course they are under no illusions as to the diking of various of Tuchuns for a mint in their territory; that at Wuchang for instance is credited with yielding enormous profits: and so long as corrupt officialdom is allowed to tamper with currency no hope of reform n_be entertained. In the upturn at Wuchang, however, some of these hard-headed men of business believe they see the dawn of better things, and hence their high expectations from the mint' now in course construction here. It is diffieuie the onlooker to ism bern of mach the past, yet if any class of people might be expected to continue sceptical, it is these Chinese financiers who to-day are actually hopeful.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.