The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., August 01, 1925, Page 6, Image 6

Page Six
THE UNITED
as a narcotic drug. The great source whence China has always
derived its opium has been India, where, since 1793 the drug
has been a government monopoly, the cultivators, in Behar,
Benares and Malwa being paid-at a fixed rate for their crops
for exportation to China. The trade which was conducted in
clippers, was contraband, the Chinese government having in
1796 prohibited the importation of opium, and issùed various
subsequent proclamations on the subject, of the same tenor
as the first. Nevertheless, by the connivance of the Chinese
local officers, the importation about trebbled in the twenty
years betveen 1816-1617 and 1836-1837, in the two latter
years being 20,049 chests, valued at more than $10,000,000.
In March 1839 the Chinese authorities, without warning given,
enforced the law, forbade all foreigners to quit Canton and
ordered them to deliver up the opium in their posession, which
was burnt. War with Great Britain resulted, which ended in
the defeat of the Chinese, who were obliged to pay indemnity
for the opium. They (China) have since beeh compelled to
admit it, and the Indian revenue derivable from its (opium)
growth has risen to about $45,000,000 annually.
Thus “endeth the epistle” of the encyclopédie
chronicler who evidently has been very careful in
editing facts so that there should be as little sting in it
as possible for the perpetrators of this international
outrage.
The effects of this monster drug is described as
follows :
In pharmacy, in small doses it produces brief excitement,
and then acts as a soporific. In large doses the sleep becomes
coma and death ensues. It is given to allay pain and spasm.
And China has been getting opium in large doses,
producing a sleeping nation, always in a state of coma,
dying by inches. Perhaps it was given in Christian
charity to “allay pain and spasm.” But China has had
more spasms because of opium than it had before doctor
John Bull, or rather his shrewd statescraft artists,
prescribed the vicious dried and pulverized juice from
the “papaver somniferum” weed for the unsophisti­
cated Chinaman.
Constant dulling of the senses produces truculency,
a sagaveness that possesses all the attributes credited
to the barbarian of every known age.
The reeling giant of China is beginning to sense
his infamy, but he is justly concerned in finding out
who has been administering the dopé that has kept
him in chains for the last two centuries while the rest
of the world moved forward and left him behind, a
senile old fossil of no account.
To the Chinamen, weak and addicted, partly
conscious of his disgrace, every occident is “allasame.”
It was the white man of the West who became his
despoiler, who stripped him of his commensurate
human value and usefulness in the world. He has been
made synical and suspicious. He has never been
treated as a being of par value in the human world,
because of the white man’s ability to keep him chained
to his weaknesses.
CHRISTIANITY—the white man’s soul saving
creed !
What a mockery it must represent to the millions
of China who have learned to associate the white man
with commercialized vice of the worst form.
All that China is asking and praying for is to be left
alone. Is that an unfair prayer ?
Even official representatives of America’s com­
mercial bodies have had the temerity to cry out in
anguish, upon their return from China during the last
AUGUST 1925
AMERICAN
year: “In God’s name let us quit interfering and
meddling in China’s internal affairs!”
That advice is sound. It would do more than any­
thing else could possibly do to straighten up the do­
mestic complications in that country.
Let us back up the practical religion of human
brotherhood, which the Chinaman thoroughly under­
stands and so readily appreciates. But we can’t do it so
long as we protect and uphold special interests and
nations who are holding a tight grip on some com­
mercial advantage in China!
The white man’s religion of a Savior might strike
a more responsive chord in China if we paved the way
with JUSTICE, the kind that compels us “to do unto
others as we want others to do unto us.”
WHY LINCOLN WAS A GREAT MAN
From the Teacher’s Helper
I N THE EARLY pioneer days, when Abraham Lin­
coln was a young lawyer and “rode the circuit,” he,
was one day traveling on horseback from one town to
another with a party of friends who were lawyers like
himself. The road which they traveled led across
prairies and through woods. As they passed by a
grove where the birds were singing merrily they
noticed a young bird which had fallen from the nest
and lay fluttering by the roadside.
After they had gone a short distance Mr. Lincoln
stopped, turned and said: “Wait for me a moment; 1
will soon rejoin you.” As his friends halted and
watched him they saw Mr. Lincoln return to the place
where the helpless bird lay on the ground, and tenderly
take it up and set it on a limb near the nest.
When he joined'his companions, one of them laugh­
ingly asked: “Why did you bother yourself and delay
us with such a trifle as that?” Abraham Lincoln’s
reply deserves to be remembered. “My friend,” said
he, “I can only say this—that I feel better for it. I
could not have slept tonight if I had left that helpless
little creature to perish on the ground.”
THE CENTENARY OF BENZINE
From the Washington Post
The one hundredth anniversary of the discovery of benzine,
which recently occurred, amply merited the international
attention which was given to it in London, and far more
recognition than it received from the general public. To
the majority of people benzine means merely an ill-smelling
and highly inflammable fluid which was used years ago for
removing greese spots from clothing but has latterly been
replaced for that purpose' with other fluids which are safer
to use. The fact is that the discovery of benzine was one of
the most important achievements of one of the leading
scientists of the last century, Michael Faraday, and virtually
marked an epoch in organic and synthetic chemistry.
The importance of benzine is not so much in the fluid itself
as in the almost innumerable derivities of it. It was from it
that Sir William H. Perkin, three-quarters of a century ago,
made his invention of aniline dyes, and it is from it that all
the indispensable “coal tar” dyes today are made. Benzine
is,- indeed, the source of many thousands of chemical sub­
stances and preparations, many of them of the greatest
importance in the industrial arts, and in medicine. It merits
the tribute paid to it by one of the foremost chemists of our
own day, that it is “the hub of the universe of organic
chemistry?’
It is good to see in the misfortunes of others what we
should avoid.
—Syrus.
SS®'