H. Bedford-Jones

“ Let them starve, for all I care! Put your workmen in their places, and you will have much better results.”
At this, another low hum passed through the serried mass of squatting men. It was not speech. It was as though each man squatting there, at hearing those words, had uttered a low moan in his throat—or a low growl.
“As for my soldiers,” said the mandarin placidly, “you had better give each of them a hundred lashes, and, if they survive, hang them. They are worse than the robbers.”
JIM HANECY felt frankly afraid, and he is about as impervious to fear as a rhinoceros. ”

“ You are alone, helpless and impotent. We shall take over the place and run it for our own benefit. For years we have been your slaves; now we shall change all this and become our own masters.”
“I see,” said Sung Li, quite unruffled, unmoved by the half concealed threats.
The mandarin laid, down his pipe and rose.
“Be pleased to wait,” he said calmly, “until I shall have procured my books and the private memoranda concerning the business. Be seated, and I will have you served with wine and tea.” ”

“ Jim Hanecy was not sure which to admire most—the effrontery of these demands, or the effrontery of Sung Li. The mandarin paid a wage-scale according to old Chinese customs, and it was about the lowest scale left in China. He owned the whole works himself, skinned the workmen by means of his own shops, ran the temple himself and put the profits of that enterprise in his own pocket, and paid himself enormous dividends. ”

“ That is the Chinese way.
Jim got a Pekin cart, which is a box on wheels, and later got a mule, and finally climbed into Chian Fu along the hill trail. He found an extensive and rather old-fashioned iron works, a lot of workmen’s cottages, a fine market place where country folk brought in produce, and the mandarin’s house flanking the little old temple.
Sung Li welcomed him like a long-lost brother and made him at home. Jim was a bit surprised to see that all the workmen seemed to be idling about the village, and that the works appeared lifeless, but he made no comment on these things. ”

“ Immediately after dinner that evening, however, Sung Li had to come to the point.
“My regret,” he said, “is intense and deep that so honored a guest and so valued a friend must be spoken to upon matters of unworthy business—matters of so small import that merely to mention them is an insult!”
“On the contrary,” said Jim gravely, “they would be of great interest to me, Sung Li! I see that the works are shut down.”
“They are,” agreed the mandarin. “The workmen have been educated of late. They have received ambassadors from other lands. They have made great demands upon me. ”

“ The canal workers would refuse to handle your barges; the mafus would refuse to load their mules with your iron; the workmen of your customers would strike also until their masters dealt no longer with you. You’d be ruled by a secret terror night and day, never knowing what demands would next be made upon you—”
“Ah, but that is not business!” said Sung Li positively. “That is highway robbery. Please tell me if you think my position correct: Since I own the land, the works, the iron, the machines, I alone have the right to manage my business. ”

“ The old dowager empress has been long dead, and yet, like a presence invisible, her spirit seems to linger in the mists of the Chinese hills. Men say that she returns nightly from the dead to seek her familiar god, the famous pearl Buddha which was lost when the Summer Palace was sacked. Hanecy knew, however, that her spirit still lingered in the land—lingered by intangible paths and in such inaccessible places as the hearts of men. ”

“ Again that low hum swept through the squatting mass of men. He itched to look around, to see if the hundreds were rising and hurling themselves forward in a frenzied mass—but the cool complacency of Sung Li shamed him into stalking ahead impassively. ”

“ It’s when the dealers sell again to the millionaires that the prices get fabulous.
Jim was a ruthless sort of person. He believed in efficiency, and he practiced it very religiously. He had to. Ask the buyers how easy it is to buy objects of art in China—without getting stung—and how easy it is to get them into America!
One day Jim heard that there was a wonderful vase up in the hills at Chian Fu. He believed it. There was nothing at Chian Fu except a small iron works, owned and managed by an old mandarin named Sung Li, who was the only man of prominence in the place. ”

“ Sung Li nodded, and a smile crept to his lips, which were regaining their color.
“I think so myself,” he said calmly. “I shall have it suitably packed for you, and you shall take it away as a gift. When you get to your own country, show it to those who rule industry, and tell them how the ironmaster of Chian Fu deals with robbers. Perhaps they will be glad to have the prescription.”
JIM HANECY looked at me over his pipe.
“That’s how I got the vase,” he said. “You know why he gave it? Because I had happened to fall in with his little scheme, in what I said out there in the moonlight. ”

“ They so believed, and affirmed the fact.
“I do not agree with you,” he said placidly. “But, if I refused your demands, you would either remain away from work, or you would take over my iron plant and run it in spite of me, I suppose?”
“Certainly,” said one of the two educated yellow men. “You are the law here, but we are the majority. ”

“ The mandarin laughed, and the laugh was very silky, very terrible in its scorn.
“They are not workmen, my friend! They are robbers and thieves. If you do buy the place, I would suggest that your foreign soldiers shoot one in every ten of these robbers, and turn the others out into the hills. ”