Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1909-03-06

become penniless-it has
no friends.
Therefore, when the statesmen of
the earth reached the tardy conclusion
that the encouragement of opium
smoking really did not pay, the gaunt
giant of the poppy fields was ready to
be bowled over, writes Allan L. Ben
son. At this propitious moment the
United States government, which had
never sought to fatten on the opium
traffic, initiated worldwide fight
against it.
That was two years ago. China,
which for 700 years had alternately
fought against and wrung revenue
from it's greatest national weakness,
rallied for another attack.
First an edict went forth that every
Chinese official who smoked opium
must forthwith cease to do so.
Then the common people of China
were notified that they, too. must soon
stop. The common people, however,
were given ten years in which to taper
of the habit to the vanishing point.
China also entered into an agree
ment with Great Britain to decrease
year by year, the area devoted to
poppy culture in China and in India
OF course one does not need to go
far to find the reason for Americas
opposition to the opium-smoking habit
As people, we do not burn the poppy's
blood, and are not greedy enough to
care to continue to collect the Sc a
pound tax that we have levied on the
opium that the Chinese and the white
degenerates want to smoke. But how
comes it that England, which once
fought for opium with her CRIMES and
her fleets is now openly against it?
And how comes it that China, whose
public officials have so long fattened
an the taxes wrung from the traffic is
sitAog beside England? Back of these
circumstances is a profound economic
fact.
This fact Is that opium smoking does
not pay. 1t never paid-but shorter
sighted governmental officials long
thought it did. Yet the changed view
has not it's origin in the failure of
tariffs and imposts of various sorts to
wiring enormous sums from those who
smoke the Oriental pipe. Here is the
real story in three sentences:
Men. to pay taxes, must first be
born.
After birth they must have strength
and industry.
And they must not die until they are
too old to work.
Now see what opium does:
! In those families where the father
smokes opium the average number of
children is LOO. The few children who
are born and who reach maturity are
POOR workers. and they die young.
Here is the world crying for eff
%@1
Here are the great nations scanning
their budgets and their industries in
desperate desire to raise the enormous
sums with which to maintain their
armies, increase their navies and carry
on their other great governmental &C
hVities. And here is opium palsying
the hands that could turn many a
wheel.
is 1t any wonder that the poppy
Fields are giving way to rice, and that
the American congress has passed
bill excluding smoking-opium? The
statesmen of an older school, it is true,
would have done otherwise They
would have clutched the penny-tax and
host the ultimate dollar. But even
England is no longer SO unwise. Eng
land knows that her Dreadnoughts
were not launched from poppy fields;
that they were made possible only by
the well-worked mines and mills and
farms of England. And while she is
aware that she could continue to reap
n pittance from the peoples, she is
now seeking bigger things. She wants
To tax the greater products of vigor-
Gus men.
Yet what a fight it has been for
China to see this happy day when the
worlds interest in this matter has be-
come like her own. It's fight that
began 700 years ago, and it illustrates,
as nothing else can, the peculiar
strength and the peculiar weakness
that are inherent in the Chinese char
acter. 1t also affords one of the few
illustrations of the superiority of au-
tDcratic government over popular rule
For while the people of the opium
habit, always vigorously fought for it,
even as they are now rioting again st
the curtailment of the poppy fields, the
government has always opposed it,
precisely as it opposes it to-day. Some
times it has yielded to exterior force,
and then it has shown its weakness
by impoverishing with taxes those
whose bodies opium was :mpoverish-
ing.
Opium was unknown in China until
the latter part of the twelfth century.
Who brought it there perhaps does not
make so much difference, since it is
there, but the British say the Arabs
did. At any rate. the dried juice of
the poppy came from some of the
eastern Europeans or western Asiatic