-agent, on the Shansi Railroad, who frankly said that he was led to
speak to me, a foreigner, by the fact that he was a "foreigner" too. With
his blue gown and his black pigtail, he looked to me no different from the
other natives; but he told me that he found the language and customs of
Shansi "difficult," and that he sometimes grew homesick for his native
city in the South.

That the Chinese of different provinces really regard one another as
foreigners may be illustrated by the fact that, during the Boxer troubles
about Tientsin, it was a common occurrence for the northern soldiers to
shoot down indiscriminately with the white men any Cantonese who appeared
within rifle-shot.

This diversity, probably a result of the cost and difficulty of travel, is
a factor in the immense inertia which hinders all progress in China.
People who differ in coinage, language, and customs, who have never been
taught to "think imperially" or in terms other than those of the village
or city, cannot easily be led into cooeperation on a large scale. It is
difficult enough, Heaven knows, to effect any real change in the
government of an American city or state, or of the nation, let alone
effecting any real changes in the habits of men. Witness our own struggle
against graft. Witness also the vast struggle against the liquor traffic
now going on in a score of our states. Even in this land of ours, which is
so new that there has hardly been time to form traditions; which is alert
to the value of changes and quick to leap in the direction of progress;
which is essentially homogeneous in structure, with but one language,
innumerable daily newspapers, and a close network of fast, comfortable
railway trains to keep the various communities in touch with the
prevailing idea of the moment, how easy do we find it to wipe out
race-track gambling, say, or to make our insurance laws really effective,
or to check the corrupt practices of corporations, or to establish the
principle of local municipal ownership? To put it in still another light,
how easy do we find it to bring about a change which the great majority of
us agree would be for the better, such as making over the costly,
cumbersome express business into a government parcels post?

But there are large money interests which would suffer by such reforms,
you say? True; and there are large money interests suffering by the opium
reforms in China, relatively as large as any money interests we have i