r, yet all is done with perfect organization and a proper division
of labor, so that any information required is furnished by the manager
or by a clerk, at a moment's notice. I have often been in these
places, and the calm, quiet, earnest way in which the employees
performed their tasks was beyond praise. It showed that the heads who
organized and were directing the institutions had a firm grasp of
multiplex details.

We Chinese have a reputation for being good business men. When in
business on our own account, or in partnership with a few friends, we
succeed marvelously well; but we have yet much to learn regarding large
concerns such as corporations or joint stock companies. This is not to
be wondered at, for joint stock companies and corporations as conducted
in the West were unknown in China before the advent of foreign
merchants in our midst. Since then a few joint stock companies have
been started in Hongkong, Shanghai, and other ports; these have been
carried on by Chinese exclusively, but the managers have not as yet
mastered the systematic Western methods of conducting such concerns.
Even unpractised and inexpert eyes can see great room for improvement
in the management of these businesses. Here, I must admit, the
Japanese are ahead of us. Take, for instance, the Yokohama Specie
Bank: it has a paid-up capital of Yen 30,000,000 and has branches and
agencies not only in all the important towns in Japan, but also in
different ports in China, London, New York, San Francisco, Honolulu,
Bombay, Calcutta and other places. It is conducted in the latest and
most approved scientific fashion; its reports and accounts, published
half-yearly, reveal the exact state of the concern's financial position
and incidentally show that it makes enormous profits. True, several
Chinese banks of a private or official nature have been established,
and some of them have been doing a fair business, but candor compels me
to say that they are not conducted as scientifically as is the Yokohama
Specie Bank, or most American banks. Corporations and joint stock
companies are still in their infancy in China; but Chinese merchants
and bankers, profiting by the mistakes of the past, will doubtless
gradually improve their systems, so that in the future there will be
less and less cause to find fault with them.

One system which has been in vogue within the last ten or twenty years
in America, and which has lately figured much in the lime