Publisher's Synopsis
These chapters were originally published during 1907 and 1908 in Success Magazine. Though frankly journalistic in tone, the book presents something more than the hasty conclusions of a journalist. During its preparation the author travelled around the world, inquiring into the problem at first hand in China and in England, reading all available printed matter which seemed to bear in any way on the subject, and interviewing several hundred gentlemen who have had special opportunities to study the problem from various standpoints. The writing was not begun until this preliminary work was completed and the natural conclusions had become convictions in the author's mind.
In September, 1906, an edict was issued from the Imperial Court at Peking which states China's predicament with vigour.
"The cultivation of the poppy," runs the edict, in the authorized translation, "is the greatest iniquity in agriculture, and the provinces of Szechuen, Shensi, Kansu, Yunnan, Kweichow, Shansi, and Kanghuai abound in its product, which, in fact, is found everywhere. Now that it is decided to abandon opium smoking within ten years, the limiting of this cultivation should be taken as a fundamental step ... opium has been in use so long by the people that nearly three-tenths or four-tenths of them are smokers."
"Three-tenths or four-tenths" of the Chinese people, --one hundred and fifty million opium-smokers--mean three or four times the population of Great Britain, a good many more than the population of the United States!
