Reports have been current throughout the past few days a3 to] gambling in dollars by Chinese! speculators on the strength of the war news from central China, The reason for such a gamble in the past has invariably been that an army! in the field requires minted silver Yor the payment of its troops and those purchases which it cann requisition, and accordingly some people apparently thought that on! this occasion it was a good time to do a little side speculation. At one time a report that dollars had gone up to 74 was current, but if such ere the ease it must have been an Jsolated one, for the official rate, at which banks were buying lakhs, hover approximated to this' figure, Asa matter of fact the official rates during these past critical days have shown an alteration of much ess than one per cent. 'The major Aiuetuation recurred on Friday last, when a strong rumour was current in Shanghai that Wuchang hod) fallen, and_on that day the dollar ore from 71.9 to 72.35, but as the banks considered the Latter figure' too high to buy at, the m promptly receded. From all this "t jay be concluded that the gamble between dollars and taels, in former times a favourite one when warlike ramours were about, is no longer! worth while. The reason for this is that there are too many minted dollars in the country to cause scarcity to be at all a likely event Tu Shanghai alone there are over {$65,000,000 in the hands of the banks, and even when the toll upon the merchants of Wuchang" comes: to $2,000,000, it is merely a fleabite compared with the whole stocks in the country. 3
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.