378
AMERICANS AT SHANGHAI.
(Daily Press, December 9th. The American Judge at Shanghai has left for Washington, and on the eve of his departure one of our English contempor- Bries at the northern port remarked : "Never has a public official holding office in Shanghai been more freely criticised, more fiercely assailed or more shamefully misrepresented and slandered than the departing Judge." The friends and admirers of Judge WILFLEX state that he goes to Washington to assist in an arrange- ment for making American law as it applies to China more definite and particular. His enemies say that he goes to answer impeachment of his conduct in office. It is quite feasible that both statements may have their foundation in fact. Those who have been paying any attention to Judge WILFLEY's efforts to establish the American Court in China on a creditable footing cannot have failed to note that he has encountered
difficulties other
numerous
an
than those deliberately put in his path by the forces of evil; and we hope that the result of his advice and assistance at head- quarters will be that he can return to his straightforward and worthy task with all those difficulties smoothed away. Concerning the impeachment of Judge WILFLEY which his enemies so gladly and glibly publish, we fancy it gives his Honour as little corcaro as it gives us. We know a little about it, aud had previously decided to take no notice of it; but now that there seems to be something like a conspiracy against one of the bonestest Americans that
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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he has ever said or done has given offence. In combatting the section of Shanghai's social evil which alone directly concerned To him, he insulted all his nationals. admit that there were one or two undesir. the Stars and Stripes. A Pickwickian able Americans in Shanghai was to tarnish
reference to the fact that in a manner of speaking foreigners were in China on sufferance was to impugn, to sundry guilty minds, the general honour of American merchants. He ought to have remembered that wool is not a safe topic of conversation at a sheepstealers' dianer party. To refer to the material " squeezes of the medieval church hundreds of rears ago to lacerate the pious feelings of twentieth century churchgoers, who thereupon, full of holy real and righteous wrath put in an impeachment that bore hetween every line of it the stigmata of ignorant malice and ancharitableness. Without any bias other than a leaning to fair play and truth we have watched Judge WILFLIY's career in Shanghai, and we wait with more than mere curiosity to see whether right or wrong is to win in this case, whether downright in'egrity or sidling snite is to gain the counterance and protection of Washington. Meanwhile, if we had to do business involving the giving of credit or trust to Shanghai Americans, our test question would be: Are you pro- Wilfley or anti-Wilfley? To fail to appre. ciate a public official who patently has only to see his duty to go at it harehanded seems to us a prima facie indication of moral Blackness.
Shanghai ever knew, we are constrained to THE EXCHANGE FLUCTUATIONS.
refer to it. The mischief of it is that the mud-throwing is being joined in by people whose only vice is ignorance. They have nothing against the man, but when they see him in the pillory, they conclude that he must be a deserving target, and so they add their mite to the vituperative chorus. Here is how one of them co-operates with the dishonest and ulterior-minded critics
His Honour did a good work, but he did it badly. His aim, the removal of a stain on the name of America, all his countrymen must sup port: but his indignant comments on certain institutions embraced not only the persons who carried on these institutions but all Judge Wilfiey's nationals. Again, it is not the busi. ness of a self-made judicial avenger of bis country's honour injudiciously to inform his countrymen that they are here only on suffer-
anos.
American traders have proved as straightforward business men and as honest and honourable a class as any in China; when he states they are here "on sufferance" Judge Wildey betrays ignorance It is regrettable that his iconoclastic methods will now resa tia in a set back to the good work he has accom. plished; and that his foolish comment on the
sonditions under which foreigners live in China will give to ignorant agitators another weapon with which to attempt to sever the good rela tions between foreigners and Chinese. Another Judge as honourable and clean-minded but less brutally downright would be a greater suocess,
No one who knows in what a sink of iniquity American justice wallowed at Shanghai prior to Julge WILPLEY'S ad- vent will wonder that he has not escaped villification, It is a pathetic admission of the nature of his task that is revealed
in that reference to his "honourable and clean-minded" character, and in the com. plaint that in grasping his nettle he has been too brutally downright. The matter with this admittedly upright Judge is that his methods have been too downright. He bas not, when denouncing lies, called them
terminolog cal inexactitudes. In purifying his temple, he has used a scourge, instead of a feather duster. Therefore everything
(Daily Press, December 10th.) The present 'demand for gold in the Unite States has apparently brought about some not easily explained complications. Amongst other things it has led to a close understanding between the Banks of England and France. Some time ago such an arrangement as likely to render we spoke of the probable coming about of easier in England the effects of such a monetary crisis as the present, when a sud- den demand for gold from without required precautions to be taken against a drain. Times have been that, while the course of business in England was being seriously disturbed owing to a sudden demand for gold from the United States, trade in France was actually stagnating owing to the superfluity of gold causing a plethora. Lately a more generous feeling of the advisability of mutual help between the two has sprung up, with manifest advantage to the two countries. The genius of the instance of divergences mutually supple- two peoples in this respect affords a curious
menting one another. Unlike the English, the French have a habit of preserving their bullion intact, while the English as per sistently seek to economise it by keeping it liqui. The result has been that of late years many able financiers have viewed with apprehension the small reserves habitually kept by the Bank of England; which, notwithstanding the enormous crease in the volume of trade which has marked the last half century, have scarcely increased in am unt; and many schemes have been suggested for increasing our liquid assets. Notwithstanding these efforts the amounts, though they have considerably increased lately in their totals, have by no means grown in proportion with the in crement of the trade, so that when a sudden effort has to be made, as in the present case, to guard the interests of the trade at
|December 14, 1907
some locality abroad, the whole home trade is momentarily disordered, and the ordinary facilities can only be obtained at füindus rates of discount.
in
If. however, it have become customary minimum of actual coin, so much so as in England to carry on vast operations on a
come within dangerous occasionally to limits of reaching the hottom, the system of huge corporations working on each other's presumed condition of financial stability. and by such measures striving to economise
carried to A actual capital, has been still greater extent: and this on account of the prevailing custom of concentrating the business of the country; even matters of retail, in the hands of large "trusts "~many with nominal capitals greater than that of most European states, has been carried to an extreme. If it could be assured that behind the nominal capital of many of these vast undertakings there were any available liquid assots, the evil would be minimised: but many recent ex- poses have shown that frequently, if not invariably, such is not the case, and that the "trusts" have, too often, been like a pack of cards resting on one another for support, and as soon as one was displaced the rest finding nothing solid to rest on bave severally collapsed. As is but nätural under such conditions, gold, being the only article on which any edifice of stability could be founded, has appreciated in value proportionably with the necessity of obtaiu- ing it, and this, of course, means a shrink- age in the present value of all other commodities which may come into com- petition with it, such as stocks and shares clearly separate cause and effect, as for and metals generally. It is here difficult to
instance in the case of copper, the fall in the artificially enhanced value of which had much to do with the starting of the financial panic. It is none the less true that the later fall in value of the metal is largely the effect of the enhanced demand for more gold. Tin has followed on the same lines, and so has silver: and this latter has where silver continues to be the arbiter of grievously affected the markets in China,
tely the effect of the enhanced demand for gold is curiously exemplified in the one case where silver is of value independent of its use in the arts. The exchange price of gold as a metal in comparison with the price of silver, merely as bullion, has been steadily rising, but the same result has not
trade. That this fall in silver is immedia-
come about with regard to silver in the shape of Mexican dollars, the form in which it enters mainly into trade in north and middle China, clean Mexican dollars being quoted at five per cent over their equivalent weight in bullion, although of actually America the want is not of metal, but of inferior fineness. Here as in Europe and currency. Indeed the scarcity of actual money, and the excess of ordinarily current promises to pay, which commonly piss as currency, is beginning to be almost as pressing in China as in Europe and America. But these dollars are in number becoming scarcer, since the Mexican Government has withdrawn them from in-currency, so that there seems some prospect of their following the example of the once precious" Pillar" dollar, which rose to premium of over thirty per cent over its in- trinsic value as metal before being absorbed in the tael of to-day. Apparently in a quite capricious manner food stuffs, which might be expected to follow the example of metals generally, and become exchangeable for less quautities of gold, are actually quoted higher, so that the money market may be said to be unsettled in more than one
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