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international communities, the smaller treaty ports had come to depend for their foreign population on the few large companies which maintained organisations throughout the country. These included the British American Tobacco Company, the Asiatic Petroleum (Shell) Company, amongst the distributing companies, and Messrs. Jardine Matheson and Company generally known as Ewo, and Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, amongst the shipping companies. Imperial Chemical Industries as a rule only had offices in the larger ports. China at one time offered the largest market in the world for cheap quality cigarettes, and for kerosene (paraffin as we call it). The motorist in Britain and America paid less for petrol because of the kerosene offtake in China. It is self-evident that amongst the cuts distilled from the crude oil petrol, kerosene, lubricating oil, diesel oil, wax and asphalt the cost of production is recovered in proportion on each finished product and, if the market for one of those products is limited, then the price proportionately increases on the others.
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But let not our Chinese friends claim that the distribution of kerosene in China was a form of oppressive dumping. It was not. A very real demand for illumination was met, where other satisfactory illuminants were missing, and at a price below that at which the locally produced and less efficient vegetable oils could be marketed. And this despite the heavy duty which was collected on the imported product for revenue purposes, so that it could be said of kerosene that in China it not only provided almost the sole source of illumination, but also a substantial contribution towards the cost of government.
The urgency of war was more evident in Kiu Kiang, though the Japanese had refrained from bombing the former Concession area. My old Chinese friends all wanted to know what was going to happen. How could I tell them?
The Club had moved from the Customs godown to our former flat, the interior of which had been reconstructed to meet the new purpose. The bar was in our former bedroom, and from behind it the same ancient retainer dispensed the drinks; even the dice boxes looked the same with their heavy yellow ivory dice. But I could not loiter to rattle these for long. There was a decrepit railway to Nanchang, the provincial capital, a hundred miles to the south, and with some difficulty I procured a seat for myself on the train, which as always in China was overcrowded.