To the Editor of the "NortH-Curna Dany News"
Sm,—When I first came to this good city of Shanghai, some forty years ago, China had not yet any central financial organization. Provinces, administered by Governors and Viceroys, had to send to the Treasury of the Peking Imperial Palace an annual tribute. Further than thi they had to provide, by levying tax: for all their current administrative and other expenses, they "had also to provide funds in relief of famines caused by floods or lack of rains, for extraordinary works such as building new dykes or repairing old ones along "China's sorrow" or its com petitor for cataclysms, the Yangtze river.
This will explain why, at the time. I found tickets of at least a good half-dozen provincial lotteries selling concurrently at all the exchange shops. One of the most popular of these was the Hankow Lottery started by Viceroy Chang Chi-tung, if I am not mistaken, for relief of a large-scale famine caused by floods and for building up very necessary new dykes alóng some parts of the Yangtze.
Some years later at least part of the urgently needed funds for the Whengpoo Consefvancy Works were raised also by a lottery. These works actually solved the question of the silting up of the entrance of the river and saved the employment of thousands of coolies and working people.
At " still later date, after the 1911 revolution, the new republican Government, started, in relief of d: caused throughout the country by
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.