Sept. 3.
Cases recently: recorded in our columns, whether brought to court or not, have amply illustrated the difficulty which foreign firms have in doing business in China at the present time. They do not display 'a happy state of affairs, and worse still, a great deal more evidence could be adduced if necessary to show how'very bad the situation can be. There has, unfortunately, been a series of grave misfortunes attending foreign houses, some of which have had to go into liquidation while others, rather less unfortunate, have been able to weather the storm through adopting a policy of the severest retrenchment and the cutting down of activities. The general opinion is that the whole tale has not by any means been told yet, and that the effects of the past two years' depression will not be liquidated for some time to come. That being so, there is an almost inevitable tendency to attempt an estimate of the Chinese merchant to-day in contrast. with his predecessors, but that would be fatal.. The conditions are changed, and his greater intercourse with foreigners of all sorts has changed the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.