minority reports. In an
earlier article we examined into the beginnings of opium. We saw how it is
grown and manufactured; how it passes out of the hands of the British
government into the currents of trade; how it is carried along on these
currents--small quantities of it washing up in passing the Straits and the
Malay Archipelago--to China; how it blends at the Chinese ports in the
flood of the new native-grown opium and divides among the trade currents
of that great empire until every province receives its supply of the
"foreign dirt." Now let us follow it farther; for it does not stop there.

The Chinese are great traders and great travellers. The weight of the
national misery presses them out into whatever new regions promise a
reward for industry. They swarmed over the Pacific to America in a yellow
cloud until America, in sheer self-defense, barred them out. They swarmed
southward to Australia until Australia closed the doors on them. They
swarm to-day into the Philippines and into Malaysia. In the Straits
Settlement, in a total population of a little over half a million, more
than half (282,000) are Chinese. When America would build the Panama
Canal, her first impulse is to import the cheap Chinese labourer, who is
always so eager to come. When Britain took over the Transvaal she imported
70,000 Chinese labourers. And where the Chinese travel, opium travels too.

The real answer to the Royal Commission on opium should be found in the
attitude of these countries which have had to face the opium problem along
with the Chinese problem. Let us include in the list Japan, a country
which has had a remarkable opportunity to view the opium menace at short
range. What Japan thinks about opium, what Australia and the Transvaal and
the United States think, what the Philippines think, is more to the point
than any first-hand statements of a magazine reporter. We will take Japan
first. Does Japan think that opium is invaluable as a general household
remedy? Does Japan think that opium is good for children?

Here is what the Philippine Opium Commission, whose report is accepted
to-day as the most authoritative survey of the opium situation, has to say
about opium in Japan:

"Japan, which is a non-Christian country, is the only country visited by
the committee where the opium question is dealt with in the purely moral
and social aspect.... Legislation is enacted without the distraction of
commercial motives and interest....