6
sale after all the vapourings had cooled down. What happened was that month after month quite a handful of the dealers have been vieing with each other in the attempt to corner the stock at the Calcutta auctions, and this competition at "corner" has proved a boon to the revenue of the Indian Government, and incidentally to the poor Indian taxpayer. Their godowns were filled with a surfeit of opium chests; month after month passed by, opium surpassing in the meanwhile the price of gold, weight for weight, without
demand from the Chinese dealers. Now they are at the end of any their resources, and want the sales suspended. If the sale should continue, as it should every month, one of two alternatives are open to the dealers who attempted the corner ; either they should fill their already overflowing godowns with more opium, or they will have to let "outsiders" get in and buy the drug at the present low prices, which will only end in their being undersold in the Chinese market, resulting in, perhaps, losses of millions of taels for them.
The Government of If the merchants are losing heavily it is nobody else's fault India reduced the number of the chests at the auctions from 3,900 in 1908 to 3,600 in 1909, and 3,300 in 1910; this reduction was based on the calculation that a ten per cent. reduction per year will be consistent with the gradual reduction policy. Opium using in China has been reduced by more than 10 per cent. a year during the last two years, and if anybody ought to know that, it is the self-same merchants that are crying their eyes out to-day. They knew that the clearances were growing poorer day by day, and yet they have paid double the prices at the Calcutta auctions, simply hoping in the failure of the policy of opium suppression, of which the whole world has morally approved, though quite a large proportion of sincere men believe in the practical impossibility of eradicating the use of the drug to which the country has so long been addicted. The upward tendency in prices commenced in April 1909, and has continued up to April this year, when it received a setback.
The prices at the Government sales at Calcutta during the last fifteen months were as follows:
7
it at extravagant prices, do not deserve any sympathy; and the less said about the motives the better. The Indian Government is unconcerned either way.
At 900 rupees
chest it will still make a profit. It has already made provisions to cover the deficit per incident on the loss of the opium revenue. It is distinctly understood that it never invited the merchants to buy.
The word "merchants" that Reuter refers to in the telegram quoted above, How far their properly speaking, belongs to the dual and not the plural number. interests, when conflicting with the principles and promises of the Government, should At the same time, there be safeguarded it is for the Government of India to decide.
is not the least doubt that the provincial authorities in China, some honestly to curtail opium smoking and others in the hope of "making hay while the sun shines," are creating monopolies and placing every kind of obstacle in the way of the Indian opium trade-but all of them with the ostensible object of stopping the use of the deleterious drug in the kingdom. Chinese dealers, even those who have so sparingly bought of the Indian opium, declare that it is absolutely impossible to send the commodity into the interior, and it is reported that unless something is done they will have no more of the foreign opium. If the authorities have placed such indirect obstacles it is surely a violation of the terms of the convention; and unless they could prove that the use of the native drug is entirely stopped in the kingdom, have not an iota of justification. While we have always commended the Chinese Government for its praiseworthy efforts in this direction, we know for certain that the use of the drug is still common in quite a large portion of the Empire, and the Government, as we have already stated, has not given guarantees of its ability to completely stop the use of opium.
Unless there is more of straight dealing on its part the situation will by no means improved [sic]. While the Bombay merchants"-who are as much Bombay merchants as they are London or Shanghai merchants are not deserving of any sympathy for the losses they might possibly incur, the Chinese authorities deserve the severest condemnation for overtly repudiating the terms of the convention.
1909-
April
May
June
July
August
September
October .. November December
1910-
January February.
March
April May
::::::
Patna.
Benares.
At rupees.
At rupees.
1,105
1,166
1,352
1,380
1,350
1,355
1,200
1,215
1,292
1,286
1,365
1,815
1,435
1.440
1,755
1,845
1,755
1,805
2.109
1.979
2,305
2.490
2,849
2,308
3,657
3,996
3,100
3,065
2,207
2,150
June
The clearances, ever since the opium campaign, have been decreasing every fortnight, except on the few occasions when the Chinese were made to believe that there will be an abnormal increase in the price of opium, when even they bought on the future prospect of a gamble in the drug. Contrasting the clearances on the last five fortnights with the corresponding period in 1909 we find :-
Malwa. Bengal.
April 8. 1909
11
8. 1910
15
23, 1909
+4
22, 1910
May
7, 1909
6, 1910
21, 1909
20, 1910
June
4, 1909
6. 1910
T
Chests. Übeste.
308
345
356
240
317
546
78
106
376
413
#
102
398
420
76
108
315
355
87
147
64
More commentary is unnecessary, and the only conclusion that can be reasonably arrived at is that the merchants" who, without any appreciable demand for the article, and in the face of the movement to suppress the use of the drug, bought
489