Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, January 13, 1901, Page 18

Big' Opium Farm-- China (Copyrighted, 1900, by Frank G. Carpenter,) MACAO, Dec. 8, 1900.—(Special Corre= spondence of The Bee.)There is a great oplum farm at Macao, where about $10,000,- 000 worth of opium is made every year. There 18 a similar farm at Hong Kong, and there are others scattered over China. The Chinese consumption of oplum s steadily growing. Two hundred years ago it was practically nothing. Today it costs more than the liquor bill of the United States. It probably amounts to more than $400,000,000 annually, for the foreign doctors in some of the districts estimate that 70 per cent of the people are addicted to its use. In other places the percentage is less, falling among some classcs as low as 20 and 30 per cent, Say, for instance, that on an average it amounts to only 60 per cent and you have 200,000,000 people who are oplum eaters or oplum smokers. Some of these annually spend hundreds of dollars for the drug, others hundreds of cents, but at the low average of $2 a year the oplum consumed would cost $400,000,000, I visited the oplum farm here today. It is situated in the heart of the city. It is sur- rounded by great bulldings, and all told it does not cover an acre of space. Never- theless its produce Is worth $200,000 a week, or more than $10,000,000 a year. The Macao people call it a farm, but it is not that in our sense of the word. It i8 an oplum factory, a monopoly farmed out by the government. The rent of the farm is $130,000 a year, and the farmer pays this for the privilege of turning the crude julce of the poppy Into the little tin boxes of oplum ready for the pipe of the smoker, The most of the opium used comes from India. It is ralsed on the plains of Hin- doostan under the superintendence of the English government, shipped by it to Bom- bay and Calcutta and from there sent to Macao. of four pounds each. brown color. they look It comes in great boxes and balls The balls are of a They are as rough as sand- stone and as though they had S Ry THEATRICAL PEOPLE been dusted with oatmeal. Each ball is about us big as your head. It consists of the julce of the poppy as it was gathered from the pods by the Hindoos and made into these balls under the English. I asked the head of the factory to allow me to photograph one of these balls, but he re- fused to permit the camera to be used in the works. How Oplam is Refined, He permitted me, however, to go through the establishment and 1 spent several hours in the different rooms making notes. 1t I8 one of the busiest places I have scen in China. Take the melting rooms, where the opium is bolled and refined. It is more like a foundry than anything else. It Is 500 feet long and not more than twenty feet wide. It has an earthen floor and along each wall, running the full length of the room, are scores of little ovens, in each of which is a great flat brass basin, in which the opium is cooking. The stuff looks like a thick, black molasses. It seethes and bolls as the half-naked Chinese worker stirs It to and fro with a great ladle. Some of the basins are as big around as a washtub and all are sending forth opium fumes. The room is filled with white vapor from the hundreds of boiling pans. The fumes get into my nostrils, my head aches and for the time I have all the sensations of the opium drunkard. I sit and watch the Chinese devils at their helllsh work and as I do so it seems to me that I can see the pictures of the ruins which it is to create as it is scattered throughout the Chinese empire. I can see dens in which scores of haggard-eyed, yellow-faced mortals are lying and smoking away the wages which should go to the support of their families. There are women as well as men, and children as well as grown-ups. Here s a mother with her baby at her feet lying before the oplum lamp. The pipe has fallen from her mouth and the little one Is playing with it, suck- ing it. I can see the oplum parlors of the rich and the hells of vice which I have seen at Shanghal—a score of pictures which ’S Great Curse have been registered on my brain since 1 went through China. Kneading the Poppy Julce, I leave this room to go into another. Here the oplum, having been bolled to the consistency of taffy, is being kneaded, rubbed and stirred into a paste-like mass The men who do the work are coolies, bar: to the waist. They are perspiring and the white drops stand out upon their skin and roll down into the mass which they aro kneading. The stuff is boiled several times, It is mixed with water and strained. It is boiled again and strained again, until finally it has been gotten down to the right consistency and condition for sale It isnow put up in tin boxes and is ready for ship- ment to China, the United Stales and other countries where onium Js usod The Increase in the use of opium among the Chinese is enormous. Last year lotters were sent cut (0 100 forelgn do:tors station | in different parts of the empire. They were asked for statistics ae to orlum and its effects in their respoctive districts These reports were gathered together by Dr, Park, the surgeon of the imperial maritime customs, who has chaige of th: big hospltal at Soo Chow. 1 have the copy before me, and from it much of following information Many of the doctors estimate that from 30 to 80 per cent of the Chinese are oplum smokers. They say that the mandarins smoke the most and that thousands of wealthy people are Iimpoverishing them- selves by the use of the drug. They say that the laboring men smoke less because the act of smoking takes a great deal of time. It cannot be done while work Is go- ing on, and the smoker is almost sure to lose his job. No one will employ an opium smoker if he can help it. He is, as a rule, unreliable, generally wcak and often a thief. The Chinese themselves denounce the habit. They class it among the three greatest of sins, and attempt to regulate it take the SMOKE OPIUM, ALL by law. They license the oplua -selling shops, collect taxes upon it and treat it much as we do drink in the United States. The people call oplum smokers « plum devils, and although nearly all use more or less opium, they despise the opium drunkard as much as we do the alcoholic drunkard. Some of the officials are attempting to put a stop to oplum smoking. One of these is Chang Chil Tung, who has denounced its use among the officlals, and who would like to see a stop put to opium ralsing in his province. Opilu The number of vpium suicides in China Is alarming the authorities. Soo Chow has not to exceed 500,000 people and Dr. Park states that there are a thousand attempts at suicide on the average there every year. This is one for every 6500 of the population, or two to the thousand, and, supposing there be 400,000,000 Chinese, if the same average exists elsewhere, it means 800,000 Suilcides, attempted oplum suicides annually., The percentage of sulcides is sald to have doubled since opium was introduced. The Chinese are an excitable people and the having of such a poisonous article as opium on hand is a temptation. They know that an overdose will cause death and use it for this purpose both in the raw and manu factured state and in opium ashes. Indeed there are charitable institutions in different parts of China that offer doctors at any time, day or night, to treat opium suicides free of charge. One such institu- tion at Soo Chow treated 111 cases of this nature in six months. I heard of many curious oplum suicides during a trip that I made through the country a hundred miles or so back of Shanghal. I stopped one night in the city of Kow Shing at the hospltal of the South- ern Presbyterian Medical mission. One of the doctors of this hospital is Mr, Venable, an American who has worked long in that fleld. He told me that he had last year treated something like 9,000 people and that the most of the cases before the hospital resulted from overdoses of oplum. Said he: “The Chinese often commit sulcide to THE OPIUM PARLOR OF A CHINESD avenge themselves upon an enemy. There I8 no greater disgrace here than to have a person kill himself on your account. You are then supposed to be his murderer. The people say you must have been a very bad man to have brought him to such a state of mind and are hence disgraced. Wives often commit suicide to avenge themselves on their husbands and I know of instances of fathers killing themselves to spite thelr sons. This is an awful calamity for the son, for it means his social ostracism. We had a case of this kind in connection with the mission. One of our native preachers, a very good fellow, had an ill-tempered father, who became angry and killed him- self in his son’s house. This caused such an outery among the man's congregation that he had to give up the ministry. “Another case of opium suicide was that cf a mother and daughter-in-law. They got into a quarrel over the breaking of a tea cup and each committed suicide to spite the other.” Men, Wo n and Children Use It Dr. Venable tells me that there is a vast deal of oplum used in the Yangtse valley. There are more opium dens than rice shops or tea shops, and men, women and children are to be found in them. The theatrical people and singing girls all use opium. It Is smoked by the army and almost every- where. Kow Shing is a walled town of 100,000 people, but it consumes opium to the value of a thousand dollars in gold every day. This would be an average of a cent a day per person, or $3.60 a year, for every man, woman and child in the town. At five to the family it would be $18.26 annually for pvery family in Kow Shing. Considering the fact that the poor make on an average from 6 to 10 cents a day this is enormous, Suppose an American laborer getting $2 a day should pay 50 cents daily for drink or opium, he would not pay as great a pro- portion. From one-fourth to one-half of each man's daily earnings goes for opium. The children of oplum smokers soon learn to use the drug. In some districts there are whole families who take their dally smoke. “In one rich family,"” says the report of Dr. Park, ‘‘every member smokes, and a 12-year-old boy had an al- lowance of $§1 a day for his opium. An- other doctor reported that he knew of a father and six sons, all of whom were opium smokers. The youngest son died at the age of 6, a little, withered old man. One of the sons married a girl of 16. She was pretty and healthy until married, when she became an opium fiend. Chi.dren Sold for Oplum,. The craze for the drug is beyond descrip- tion. I am tcld that Chinese mothers often sell {helr little girls to buy opium. Fathers séll their sons and husbands thelr wives. Dr. Beebe, who is in charge of the big hospital at Nanking, said that he had a neighbor who was an opium smoker. He spent all of his money in gratifying the taste, and when that was gone sold his three children, one after the other, and finally his wife, to satisfy his opium hunger. The Chinese lcok upon those who are the slaves of the habit much as we look upon confirmed drunkards. A beggar of Soo Chow, who sleeps next door to an opium den, was asked where he lived. He replied: “Next door to hell.” Many of the opium smokers desire to be cured, and for this purpose opium refuges have been established, They are more common than the Keeley cures, or gold cures, of the United States. They are well patronized. An institution of this kind was recently opened in Foo Chow. It had applications from 500 oplum smokers the first year. There are quacks in the differ- ent cities who make a specialty of treating opium cases. There are also charitable families who keep emetic powders on hand to glve to any one who asks for them. These emetics are for use in cases of at- tempted sulcides. The doctors say that few oplum smokers are ever cured. They usually increase their allowance from year to year until death. When they endeavor to break off the habit they suffer the agonles of the damned, the contrast of their condition while smoking ILLUSTRATED BEE MILLIONAIRE and stopping being well expressed in the following, which was written on the walls of the opium refuge at Soo Chow by one of the inmates: “While smoking opium we are trans- pcrted to Paradise; while breaking the habit we are tortured in hell,” The tortures are usually too much for the patient. Some of them pretend to be per- manently cured, but upon investigation it is usually found that they have changed from opium to morphine. A vast amount of mcrphine pills are consumcd by the Chinese. They are for sale at all the drug January 13, 1001 EVERY VISITOR IS INVITED TO HIT THE PIPE. Ol!d Alaskan Graveyard Alagka has some of the weirdest most curious cemeteries in existence. The columns shown in the illustration are monuments to dead Shimans, or medicine and men, of the Huida Indians. The main figure of the column in the foreground is an eagle, that bird having been the token of the Mead Shiman. Shimans are always buried in remote localities, usually on a heavily wooded hillside. Many of their monuments are centuries old. The Alaskan Indian of today has not the same respect AN OLD ALASKAN GRAVEYARD. stores, and in some places the pill-takers are as many as the opium smokers. In some cities along the Yangtse the hypodermic method of injecting morphine has become common. There are professional morphine peddlers who go about with hypodermic syringes up their sleeves and given Injections at the rate of 1 cent apiece. They visit the tea houses and are ready to give you a jab in the arm upon asking. In some places the customers stand up in a row and hold out their arms with the sleeves rolled up to the shoulders. The usual place for the injection is the biceps, but many arms are tattooed from shoulder to wrist with injection scars, and some per- sons have such marks extending over the greater part of their chests and shoulders. The morphine injectors make their own solutions. They carry the stuff along with them, and when the solution glves out they take the dirty water from the shop and mix morphine with it in a dirty cup for a fresh supply. They nevef cleanse their syringes, and the danger of disease com- munication must be great. Such men are to be seen also in the native city of Shanghal. While at Kow Shing I took a look into some of the opium dens. They may be found In every block in the city and at every few steps., The ones I saw were full and I am told they are busy all day long. Some of the dens were of the roughest de- scription, merely long low roofs with wide beds or benches extending out from the wall with a central aisle between them. On each bed lay two men facing an opium lamp. From time to time one would take a little ball of brown oplum, put it into his pipe, and, leaning on his elbow, would suck at it while he held the bowl over the flame of the lamp. Some of the men were chat- ting and some sleeping. Some were In a stupor and others seemed exceptionally bright. On the outside of the city I saw beggars smoking opium in the open air and everywhere the horrid smell got into my nostrils. One of the wickedest citles of China is (Continued on Eighth Page.) off pro- for the Shiman's power of warding disease as his father had and the fesslon of medicine man is dying out. What Happenedto Jim “‘Just to show what a little thing will turn the tide,’”" said an up-the-state politician to a New York Sun man, “I'll tell you a lit- tle yarn about a friend of mine who ran for sheriff of St. Lawrence county last year an’ got licked out cf his boots. “Jim is a big fellow and ordinarily he has a voice like a bull, but when he gets ex cited that voice just narrows down and runs away into a sickenin' squeak. “Well, Jim stopped one night to addres the voters at Ogdensburg, our biggest town, about eleven miles from Canton, the county seat, an’ to make a good showin' a lot of the boys from Canton came over with a brass band. When the local democrats heard that we would have a brass band they got up one, too, but they kept it hid in a barn until Jim should get well under way, when they intended to bring it out an’ stop our meetin’, “We knew somethin in the wind but we couldn't make out what it was until Jim had got well under way. He was bel- lerin' out the iniquities of the democrats, dwellin’ particularly on the mean things they'd done to him in the past, when some thin' happened in the barn an' Jim's speech was punctuated by a big “‘boo> boooo!"’ from the bass horn. “Well, sir, Jim he went to pleces an just in the middle of a grand threat he was going to perpetrate on the democrats on election day his volce giv' clean out an’ left his jaws a-fannin' the air without givin' forth a sound. To see Jim workin' to resur- rect that voice would have melted the hoart of a stole, for it was pathetie. Every muscle in his face writhed till the tears ran down his cheeks. An’ one old feller in the crowd sung out: ““‘We know they did treat ye pow'ful bad, Jim, but I wouldn't cry about it!" “‘That done it. Jim never held his head An' he got was up again that campaign ten votes in Ogdensburg." only 'i -~