red, and
the owner failed to report, his property was promptly confiscated. Here we
see successfully employed a method which we in this country have been
unable as yet to put into effect. The futility of punishing engineers and
switchmen for the sins of railroad corporations, of punishing clerks for
the offenses of bank directors, of punishing keepers of disorderly houses
in cases where we know that the real profit goes, in the form of a high
rental, to the respectable owner of the property, has long been recognized
among us. In China, while we see much that seems intolerable in the
enforcement of law, we must admit that it is refreshing to find laws
really enforced, and to see responsibility sometimes put where it belongs.
We of the United States are far ahead of the Chinese in all that goes to
make up what we call civilization. But we have, among others, a law
forbidding the sale of liquor on Sundays in New York City. We couldn't
enforce the law if we tried; and we haven't enough moral courage to strike
it off the books for the dead letter it is.

Yes, the Tientsin situation has its refreshing side. Yuan Shi K'ai--a
Chinaman,--set about it to close the opium dens that supplied this
swarming cityful of Chinamen, and succeeded. He solved that most difficult
problem which confronts human governments everywhere--in every climate,
under every sky--the problem of moral regulation. He drove the
manufacturers of opium and of opium accessories out of business. He cut
his way through a tangle of "interests," vested and otherwise, not so
different in their essence from the liquor interests of this country.
Thanks to his own character and resource, thanks to the cheerful
directness of Chinese methods of governing (when directness and not
indirectness is really wanted), he "got results." And not only in Tientsin
native city, but also in Peking, and Pao-ting-fu, and all Chili Province,
and throughout Shansi Province, and over large portions of Shantung,
Shansi, and Manchuria. It was not a case of Maine prohibition, or Kansas
prohibition, or New York excise regulation. He closed the dens!

While he was accomplishing this result, and while the native Chamber of
Commerce was appropriating a sum of money to found a hospital for the cure
of opium victims, the "Customs Taotai," obeying the viceroy's
instructions, courteously requested the consuls, as rulers of the foreign
city, to help along by closing the dens in their municipalities. I