China eBook

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Long before the Boxer war and the con sequent native yearning for better things in their political administration, it had been evident that the German merchants were taking more pains and bestowing more intelligent thought in the conduct of their business than the conserva tive and unimaginative British trader of the old school. All over the Far East they enjoyedcom plete freedom of the seas, and in our colonies and settlements, where they were much esteemed as solid and orderly guests, they shared absolute equality of right and privilege; but they never at any time showed any particular inclination to rough it either in the commercial or the missionary line, and it was only when the French railway to Yun Nan and the steamer facilities to Sz Ch''wan and Hu Nan Opened up Central and West China, in a way never seen before, that the careful Germans, finding they could operate safely and comfortably, hastened to take full advantage of British, French, and Japanese pioneering. The result has been that they have Opened up, chiey in Central China, entirely new export trades in native produce, besides securing almost a monopoly of electrical, mining, and other engineering in provinces scarcely even visited, except by missionaries, twenty years ago. More over, in doing all this they have received from unsuspecting British banks facilities greater than any German bank would risk. There may have been good-natured professional envy, Often mixed with admiration, on the part of the less active British trader of muddied oaf tendency.