by Carl Crow
As the Chinese got acquainted and made friends they found that beneath the peculiar appearance, rough ways and barbarous customs of these people from across the sea a great many of them were, under the skin, much like themselves. With their greater tolerance as well as their superior ability to probe the character of others, the Chinese were the first to recognize this common human relationship. The white man was much slower about admitting the common brotherhood of man. It was unfortunate that the British came to China by way of India and the Malayan states, where for a number of reasons which did not exist in China the color line was very tightly drawn. To these Britons the Chinese were just another colored race who could be created as inferiors and so there was an unnecessarly amount of misunderstanding, bad feeling and bloodshed.
All the business men expected to follow the example of Marco Polo: make a fortune as soon as possible and then go back home. The only worry they had was about the length of time it would take them. Many remained until their clothing became threadbare but had no jewels to sew in the seams. Most of them missed a great many boats for few ever went home as soon, or did not arrive there as rich, as they expected. Those who did go home, whether to England, America, France, Germany or any one of a dozen other countries, usually found it a disappointing experience. China had got into their blood and only the sights and sounds of old Cathay were dear to them and those who were anxious to get away were soon anxious to return. Hundreds who went home to retire changed their minds and came back to be buried in the soil of the Flowery Kingdom.
II
The princely tradition
“If you have money, you can make spirit: turn the mill.”
Around tree-shaded spots in the hills of Manchuria and Korea there grows an indigenous wild plant with bifurcated roots which usually assume a rough semblance of the form of the human body. Because of this suggestive shape it has long been believed by the Chinese that the root has a medicinal value and would greatly prolong the virility as well as the life of a man. It is the most sought-for herb in China’s pharmacopoeia, where it is given the name of ginseng. Some large old roots which have a more than ordinarily striking resemblance to the body of a vigorous man sell for fabulous sums - hundreds of dollars an ounce. There is also a ready demand at good prices for inferior and broken roots from which an aromatic mucilaginous tea is made and consumed by old and middle-aged men who fancy that it gives them a return to the robust thrills of youth.
This is one of the oldest of Chinese medicines. It has been used for centuries and in spite of the fact that foreign doctors have declared it to be valueless, its use still continues. One can see the roots on display in the show window of any first-class medicine shop in China. At one time ginseng was dug up in such wholesale quantities in Manchuria that there was danger of its extinction, and it was protected by an Imperial mandate which threatened death to anyone who collected it except by Imperial license. The conservation measure came too late to be of any practical benefit, for it was already so rare in Manchuria that it was not worth while trying to export it and the few roots which were found were sold locally. This gave what was practically a monopoly to Korea, and the exports of the herb for more than a century balanced the negligible foreign trade of that hermit nation. Once a year the pack train, which carried tribute to the Emperor of China, set out from Seoul and was accompanied by traders carrying loads of ginseng which were sold in Peking for such good prices that the proceeds paid for the Chinese goods which Korea imported. The choicest roots formed part of the tribute to the Emperor.
There is a similar plant, of the same species but not the same variety, found in the hills of Massachusetts; and when the colonies, having gained their independence from England, started in to build their own foreign trade, the roots of this herb constituted the only salable commodity they had for export, and China was the only market where it could be sold. Thus the freakish geographical distribution of a curious and useless botanical product threw together two peoples who were about as widely separated geographically as it was possible to be.
Another herb which contributed to American interest in China was tea. The movement which led to that independence had been punctuated by the Boston Tea Party when chests of China tea were thrown into the harbor. Tea constituted one of the few luxuries enjoyed by the colonists; and it should have been very cheap, for they bought only the inferior grades that could not be sold in England. But the monopoly of the East India Company enabled it to demand high prices, and this was one of the standing grievances of the colonists. The ability to import their own tea became a kind of symbol of independence, and turned the attention of American traders toward China. Americans had no manufactured goods to sell. They had little in fact but a boundless energy occasioned by their own poverty and stimulated by their recently found independence. But the Chinese had tea and the Americans had ginseng, though they didn’t know what a very poor quality of ginseng it was.
Less than three months after General Washington had watched the evacuation of the last of the British troops from New York, the frigate, Empress of China, sailed from that port on the long journey to Canton. This first American venture in foreign trade was ambitious and theatrical. The sailing of the ship was delayed so that it would fall on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1784. The promoters were undoubtedly conscious of the fact that their ship would come under the critical eyes of the officers of the Fast India Company who were stationed at Canton.
That boat was of strikingly large size for an American merchantman. It measured no less than 360 tons and $210,000 was invested in the enterprise. The cost was divided between a number of partners, the principal one being Robert Morris, the Philadelphia financier who had raised the money to pay Washington’s troops. The only cargo carried consisted of a few tons of the Massachusetts ginseng.
The ship made a good impression on the China Coast, as the Americans had hoped it would; and the British in Canton were more friendly than had been anticipated, but financially the venture was not a success. The ship was too large, the investment too heavy, and the cargo of ginseng did not command the price the owners thought it would bring. When the tea the ship brought home was sold and the balance sheet finally drawn up, there was not enough profit for an entirely satisfactory division between owners, officers, consignees, and crew.
The voyage called attention to the possibilities of the trade with China, and later American ventures were on a less spectacular but more practical basis. British traders at Canton may have laughed at the tiny size of the American ships which followed the Empress of China but most of them made money, and a few made profits which were almost unbelievable. Americans were good shipbuilders and good sailors, but there was no money for large enterprises nor did the buying power of the impoverished country justify bringing in large cargoes. There were many American ships of less than a hundred tons which made the voyage to Canton and returned with cargo which sold for many times the cost of the ship, the investment in the cargo, and all the expenses. Tyler Dennett* tells of the notable voyage of the Betsey of 93 tons sailing from New York, 1797. In a voyage of a little less than two years she went to the South Seas by way of Cape Horn, thence to Canton and back to New York by way of Good Hope. Of the crew of thirty, not one was more than twenty eight years old. The total cost of the vessel, outfit, insurance, and interest was $7,867 and the net proceeds came to more than $120,000.
With profits like these each successful voyage encouraged the building of more ships, and in their haste for profits the builders often did not give the timbers time to season; and many unseaworthy ships made the voyage successfully only because of luck and the skill and daring of their navigators. The ginseng business soon played out as a bonanza; and though some of the worthless roots are still exported to China, it was never the big business that had been anticipated. The wild roots found in Massachusetts and those later grown in ginseng farms had the same suggestive appearance as the Korean product, the Chinese herb dealers soon discovered the differen
ce and would not pay the high prices. Customers said the medicine brewed from them was not efficacious. While New England ginseng did not provide the fortunes Americans had expected to make, it did ruin the fortunes of others and played a part in changing the map of the world. It broke the Korean monopoly and upset its foreign trade and started that unfortunate country on the downward road which eventually led to annexation by Japan.
The American trade with China would not have flourished had it not been for the more or less accidental discovery of the fur resources of the Northwest. This was the first of a long series of incidents in which good fortune appeared to conspire with American energy and ingenuity to send the impoverished country on its way to prosperity. It would be difficult to imagine a combination of circumstances more opportune than that connected with the fur trade. There was a wealth of furs in the Northwest and a very profitable market for them in Canton. Americans were not only good shipbuilders and good sailors but most of them had at least an amateur experience in trapping and the curing of pelts.
Interest in foreign trade and foreign shipping was more widespread then than now. Ships designed for foreign trade were launched at Albany and at a surprisingly early date from Cincinnati. Capitalists of Boston, Salem or Providence scraped together enough money to buy or build a sloop, usually of less than a hundred tons. Provisions were secured for a voyage of six months or a year or two years and a crew engaged. Often the crew consisted of relatives of the captain or the owners. There was, in fact, no sharp dividing line between owners, officers and crew. The barbarous cruelties of the American sailing ship were to come later with the fierce competition of the fast clipper ships. Frequently there was no pay roll to meet for the members of the crew received a share of the profits of the voyage.
The ship often sailed with nothing but ballast in the hold. Arrived on the Northwest Coast the crew trapped and cured the pelts or secured them from the Indians in ways that were never inquired into too closely. When the ship was loaded, or the stock of provisions ran low, or the season of favorable winds approached, sail was set for Canton. Here the pelts were bartered for tea and silk and other produce of China. It was as profitable as working the gold mines of California became a half century later, or whaling after the fur business ceased to be a bonanza. Sometimes pelts which could be bought for less than twenty cents on the Northwest Coast sold for $100 in Canton. If there were empty spaces in the holds when the ship sailed for the China Coast the Americans anchored in the Sandwich Islands and cut down the odorous sandalwood trees for sale to the Chinese. One pious Salem hypocrite had a clear conscience about stealing the trees from the Hawaiians but worried about the trade because it provided the Chinese with materials for making incense “which might be used for idolatrous purposes.” But he kept on cutting down the trees. He might have spared himself that specialized qualm for the sandalwood was principally used in making the frames of fans and only the sawdust and splinters went into the making of incense.
Often the voyage was continued to Europe, where the China produce was sold for cash or traded for other merchandise. Calls at ports in India often made possible profitable deals in opium, and pepper and spices were picked up in Sumatra. Someone sold a Connecticut skipper the nuts of the wild nutmeg tree which have no more taste or flavor than a piece of wood, and so a state acquired its nickname and a generation of traders a reputation shared by posterity. Perhaps the reputation was deserved, though there were never any nutmegs actually manufactured from wood.
The Americans, whether they came from Connecticut or some other state, were sharp traders and efficient smugglers. A great deal of the opium brought to China by the British was smuggled up and down the coast by the Americans who with their smaller and faster boats were better equipped for the business. They could slip into the small harbors used by Chinese fishermen and get away quickly if danger threatened. They sold the smuggled opium for silver or anything else of value that was offered. Many a piece of mediocre Chinese porcelain now treasured as heirlooms in old New England families was picked up in exchange for a ball of smuggled opium. If the Yankee smugglers gave more than a very small ball of opium they got the worst of the deal for most of the heirlooms are worth intrinsically only a few cents. Sometimes the ship was absent three or four years but by the time it had returned to the home port the cargo had been turned over several times and always at a profit. By these methods the Yankee traders amassed some capital and abandoned the slow process of trapping and curing their own furs. They traded cheap trinkets to the Indians, or worn-out muskets or handfuls of powder. One resourceful skipper set up his forge on the deck and put his blacksmith to work making iron rings which the Indians wore as collars, establishing a style vogue which was very profitable.
The principal competition which the Americans met in China came from the Honorable East India Company whose tea had been thrown into Boston Harbor. The Americans and the British represented the extremes between penury and opulence; between individual efforts and initiative as compared with what was at the time the world’s greatest trading organization, backed by the most powerful country. The Honorable East India Company was in fact an integral part of the British government itself. While the Americans found it difficult to raise enough money to build a ship of a hundred tons, the company was equipped with the largest and finest of merchant ships. They were so much superior to all others that they had a nautical classification of their own and were known as “Indiamen.” But in the tea trade, which was the most important, the two did not come into such direct competition with each other as might be supposed. Americans bought the cheaper grades because those were the grades which found a ready market not only in America itself but in the European markets which the American traders supplied. In fact, a very large part of the American tea consisted of cargo which the company refused to accept as too poor for the London market.
The opulent British company and the poor individual American traders suffered from the same handicap. Neither country produced any goods that had the least interest to the Chinese customer. It was a one-sided business for both. China was the great storehouse of things the world wanted: tea, silk, licorice, and the hand-woven cotton which was so much superior to the hand-woven fabrics of other countries. Its hand looms and spinning wheels were the most numerous and its workers the most skillful. Every fashionably dressed gentleman of England and America had his knee breeches made of China cotton. The chinaware and porcelain manufactured in England and France were copies of Chinese products and inferior to the original. The age of steam had not yet begun to change manufacturing methods and China was far in advance of other countries in the production of merchandise. So far as America was concerned, it was very largely a cash and carry business. When furs and sandal-wood were not available, kegs of Spanish or Mexican silver dollars were carried on the ships and traded to the Chinese dealers.
The British balanced their trade in the only way possible, by selling opium, which was imported from India and Persia just as America sold furs from the Indian country and sandalwood from Hawaii. But there were no national lines in the opium business and Americans engaged in it as freely as the British. The only reason the British trade was the more important was because of the greater opportunities for securing supplies. Opium was such a generally accepted article of commerce in the Far East that when Americans negotiated the first treaty with Siam in 1833 it was taken as a matter of course that an attempt should be made to secure permission to import opium into that country.
Lack of cargo which the Chinese would buy was not the only handicap to trade. Business was conducted according to a procedure as topsy-turvy as China itself appeared to be in Western eyes. The Chinese government had shown a celestial disdain for anything so base as trade and had set apart a little corner of crowded Canton as the one place where the foreign devils could purchase the priceless products of the empire. The British and American traders who were the only permanent residents of this strange community lived a ghetto-like existence simil
ar to that of the Dutch on the Japanese island of Deshima. It was much like carrying on business inside the walls of a jail, mitigated by the fact that the Chinese jailers were not very strict disciplinarians and no one took the regulations too seriously. The Son of Heaven declined to deal directly either with the foreign devils themselves or with the diplomatic emissaries of such remote barbarian countries. A small group of Cantonese merchants was given the monopoly of foreign trade and the responsibility of taking care of foreign relations and the Son of Heaven then washed his hands of the entire business. Foreign merchants and officials could deal with the Cantonese group and no one else.
On paper it was the most impractical arrangement that could be imagined. The trader was entirely at the mercy of the Cantonese monopoly for he could neither sell to nor buy from any one else. Sailing ships were slow, there were no cables and every transaction was a gamble. If the Chinese offered a ridiculously low price for the foreigners’ cargo or demanded an absurdly high price for theirs, he could either take it or leave it. There was no alternative. But the Chinese were not arbitrary, and in actual practice the system worked out very satisfactorily. With a reasonableness which is characteristic of the race, the Chinese conceded that each party to a transaction must make a profit. They haggled and bargained but in the end almost everyone made money. In fact relations between the foreigners and the Chinese were remarkably friendly and pleasant as soon as they grew to know and trust each other. Each extended credit to the other in reckless fashion and often huge debts were wiped out so as to give some unfortunate traders of either nationality a fresh start. Business was done in a big, expansive way with plenty of give and take on either side and small regard for petty details. It was a business in which great fortunes were made and lost, but those who lost returned home and as only the successful remained, there was always an air of opulence and prosperity.