enerations
ago. I remember hearing an old man tell of going from the Carolinas to
Alabama about 1840 and having to pay heavy exchange to get his
Carolina money changed into Alabama money. So it is in China to-day.
You must get your bills of one bank or province changed whenever you
go into another bank or province, paying an outrageous discount, and a
banking corporation will even discount a bill issued by another branch
of the same corporation. Thus a friend of mine with a five-dollar
Russia-Asiatic banknote from the Peking branch on taking it to the
Russia-Asiatic's branch at Hankow gets only $4.80 for it.

Nor is this all: All kinds of money are in circulation, the values
constantly fluctuating, and hundreds and thousands of men make a
living by "changing money," getting a percentage on each transfer.
Take the so-called 20-cent pieces in circulation; they lack a little
of weighing one fifth as much as the 100-cent dollar; consequently it
takes sometimes 110 and again 112 cents "small coin" to equal one
dollar! The whole system is absurd, of course, and yet when the
government proposes to establish a uniform national currency it is {98}
said that the influence of these money-changers is so great as to make
any reform exceedingly slow and difficult.

And yet let not my readers at home with this statement before them
proceed too hastily to laugh or sneer at China for unprogressiveness.
For my part, as I have thought of this matter of money transfer over
here, the whole question has seemed to me to be on all-fours with our
question of land title transfers at home, and the more I have thought
of it the firmer has the conviction become. In fact, China's failure
to adopt a modern currency system is perhaps even less a sinning
against light than our failure to adopt the Torrens system of
registering land titles. The man who makes a living by changing money
and investigating its value is no more a parasite than the man who
makes a living changing titles or investigating their value; the
hindrance of trade and easy transfer of property is no more excusable
in one case than the other; and the 90 per cent, that China might save
by a better system of money transfers is paralleled by the 90 per
cent, that we might save by a better system of title transfers.

Mr. Money-Changing Banker, fattening needlessly at the expense of the
people, prevents currency reform in China--yes, that is true. But
before we assume superior airs let u