The Mints which have been specially active are those at Nanking, Hangchow and Canton; the two former have been busy coining Yuan ollaee, saicly serisiostory regards weight an ess, this currency is largely displacing sycee in the Northern trade. Of the Mints at Tientsin, Wuchang, Yunnan, Chengtw and Anhui, we have heard very little during the year', they have probably been confining their operations to the manu. facture of copper coins of ever lessening value. The most interesting—one may say amusing—item of news was, however, that the Anhui Mint had produced large quantities of forgeries of the Canton Mint's 20-cent pieces. These were seized by the Maritime Customs, which is mow prohibiting the circula tion of debased coinage from one port to the other—a very salutary measure. All these Mints are run for profit by whoever happens to have secured control of them. The coinage is debased in fineness and reduced in weight as opportunities present themselves. profit is made in the period of the lag between the debasement of the coinage and the corresponding decrease in the market values. The only safeguard left is the sycee of Shanghai. The manufacture of this is under the supervision of the Native Guilds and has hitherto proved to be absolutely reliable. It is the touchstone of the various currencies that are manufactured by the Mints—their quoted prices in the market are always based on Shanghai sycee, and when debasement takes place these prices will ultimately reflect it. If Shanghai sycee were to disappear, chaos would come, each Mint would vie with the other in turning out debased dollars and we might in course of time see a coin that had in it more copper and foreign matter than silver. So, until there are seriously-administered mints in China, it is absolutely essential to hold on to honest Shanghai sycee.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.