Rice has taken a decided trend upwards recently. The causes have een the snmggling of rice out of the province into Hupeh. Some have said that the amount! of money vested and lost amounted to $200,-
000, One man had made a secret treaty or arrangement with a high military than at Yochow to get rice out of Hunan, which is against the Jaw, A large shipment was made and it got by Yochow satisfactorily Dut when it arrived in Hupeh the military confiscated the rice and captured the man who was thrown into gaol and had to pay" several thousand dollars to get released, bedes lo-ing his large shipment of great amount of been confi ited and rice merchants] have been implicated so that there is great stringency in the money market here. The exchange banks at Changsha are unwilling to send money to Siangtan because of the condition of the market here. It is said that there is no hope of the rice merchants paying up all ther Stamp Tax and Squeeze , Tho stamp tax also causes much petty lawbreaking and difficulties. The stamp taxes are farmed out every few months and there is no telling when a new man may come along and declare that the stamps now in use are no longer good. Sllustration of the working of this system came to the writer's notice at a small town near Siangtan a few days ago.
'A small shop doing a very small business on a very small margin was told that two of its account books were stamped with old stamps. The shopkeeper had not known that new stamps were required. The small official pointed to a proclamation but the shopkeeper said "I did not see and besides there are no new stamps for sale." The official admitted that he had not brought any along for sale but also told the shop-Keeper that he would have to pay some "grass shoes" money to him, meaning some road money. The account books having been taker; away the shopkeeper said that when the books were returned he would pay him three dollars. The head office of the stamp collectors not] being there, the shopkeeper did not hear any thing further, so wrote letter asking the reason. Not long After soldiers were sent to tell him that he would have to appear before the Official and be fined. OF course he did not know how much, 20 sent a friend to act as middle man and try to get at the amount required. The friend was unable to obtain any information and the case which started with eight cents will cost the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.