"Thirdly, we propose to consolidate taxes, so that throughout Nationalist territory and that, we hope, will soon mean throughout China, one tax will be paid on goods and those goods will be able to travel everywhere without being taxed again. Now, business men have al-says denounced likin and Chinese and foreigners alike have always insisted that although likin is a detriment to trade, it cannot be abolished because "the provinces needed the likin revenue for thomselves. But it is a fact, gentlemen, that the provinces receive only small share of what is collected at the likin stations. Most of the money disappears en route. To give our mandarin friends. the benefit of the doubt, we might say, the overhead on the collection is too high.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.