Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/153

friendship. A recent writer, whose long and intimate acquaintance with commercial affairs in China lends great weight to his verdict, says: "The comprador was always consulted, and if the employer ventured to omit this formality the resulting transaction would almost invariably come to grief through inexplicable causes. Seldom, however, was his advice rejected, while many of the largest operations were of his initiation. Unlimited confidence was the rule on both sides, which often took the concrete form of considerable indebtedness, now on the one side, now on the other, and was regularly shown in the despatch of large amounts of specie into the far interior of the country for the purchase of tea and silk in the districts of their growth. For many years the old practice was followed of contracting for produce as soon as marketable, and sometimes even before. During three or four months, in the case of tea, large funds belonging to foreign merchants were in the hands of native agents far beyond the reach of the owners, who could exercise no sort of provision over the proceedings of their agents. The funds were in every case returned in the form of produce purchased, which was entered to the foreign merchant at a price arbitrarily fixed by the comprador to cover all expenses. Under such a régime it would have needed no great perspicacity, one would imagine, to foretell in which pocket the profits of trading would eventually lodge. As a matter of fact the