Peking, Sept. 21.
Banditry in Manchuria, upon which the writer has commented on several occasions, is now increasing to such spectacular proportions that it is matter of general comment and has become the subject of resolutions passed by various foreign chambers of commerce. Local business men are receiving frequent letters from their correspondents in Manchuria dwelling at length upon the conditions in, the country which make business well nigh impossible in spite of the fact that soldiers are so numerous and that this year's crops are so splendid. Chinese here continue to draw the moral that Chang Tso-lin is losing his evil. Foreigners returned from ~Mukden still deny this as vigorously as usual. At all events conditions are bad and it 1s, as usual, easy to illustrate how bad they are from Chinese letters, without reference to the numerous accounts of desperate Hunghutze raids which fill the Manchurian papers.
'A Chinese merchant writing from Sanchaiho station on the 8th of this month says, among other things: "Now goods are very few, This chiefly owing to the bandits. We often hear that such and such a village was looted. The day before yesterday " village named Sancheatzu, not far from here, was raided by more than 40 bandits. Four men have been taken away. Last night a lot of bandits went to loot Hsiao Wuhu, about two miles from Sanchaiho station, but the farmers got word of their coming and banded themselves together in order to resist, being helped by people from other adjacent villages. There was a fight in which the bandits were forced to run. In this affair only three families were robbed and two men wounded. There are also robbers hiding in the kaoliang fields, waiting to rob travellers, so nobody dares to go into the country. The man I sent out to investigate conditions has not come back."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.