e from grains and fruits which
must be grown anyway, for purposes of food. It would not do to attempt to
prohibit liquor by stopping the cultivation of grains and fruits. The
poppy, on the other hand, produces nothing but opium and its alkaloids. In
stopping the growth of the poppy you are depriving man of no useful or
necessary article. The poppy must be grown in the open, along the
river-bottoms (where the roads run). It cannot be hidden. As government
regulating goes, nothing is easier than to find a field of poppies and
measure it. The plans of the Shansi farmers for the coming year should
throw some light on the sincerity of the opium reforms. Were they really
arranging to plant less opium? Yes, they were. Reports came to me from
every side, and all to the same effect. West and northwest of T'ai Yuan-fu
many of the farmers had announced that they were planting no poppies at
all. This, remember, was in April: planting time was near; it was a
practical proposition to those Shansi peasants. In other regions men were
planting either none at all, or "less than last year." The reason
generally given was that the closing of the dens in the cities had
lessened the demand for opium.

The officials were planning not only to make poppy-growing unprofitable to
the farmers, they were planning also to advise and assist them in the
substitution of some other crop for the poppy. But here they encountered
one of the peculiar difficulties in the way of opium reform, the
transportation problem. All transportation, off the railroads, is slow and
costly. No other product is so easy to transport as opium. A man can carry
several hundred dollars' worth on his person; a man with a mule can carry
several thousand dollars' worth. That is one of the reasons why opium is
a more profitable crop than potatoes or wheat. But the law descends
without waiting for solutions of all the problems involved. The closing of
the opium dens all over Shansi had the immediate effect of limiting the
crop. It also had the effect of driving out of business a great many firms
engaged in the manufacture of pipes and lamps. Sixty-two manufacturing
houses in one city, Taiku, either went out of business altogether during
the spring months, or turned to new enterprises. I add an interesting bit
of evidence as to the effectiveness of the enforcement. It is from a
missionary.

"I was calling on one of the foreigners in T'ai Yuan-fu and found a beggar
lying on one of th