Evening star., 1932-08-29
CHINA SHOWS SKILL
IN USING BOYCOTT
Practice Named for IriSman
in 1880 Is Older Than
Christian Era.
By the Associated Press.

By the Associated Press.
When American business men we're
facing q boycott in China quarter of
a century ago similar to that Japan is
struggling with today the Chinese used
to taunt American officials and mer-
chants by telling them they got the
idea from the treatment the American
Colonies gave Great Britain.
The statement probably was partly
true The story of the Boston tea
party is well known in China. But
the American colonistS merely supplied
China with some new ideas about an
institution which probably existed in
China before the Christian era
As boycotterS, the Chinese are past
masters. Even the small children or
ganize against institutions or customs
which displease them. The young
Chinese orphans in an institution main
tained by American missionaries cnce
declared boycott and dehantly told
the missionaries that without orphans
to take care of they would have no job.
Irishman Supplied Name.
It was an Irishman, Capt. Charles
Cunningham Boycott, who gave his
name in 1880 to the institution now
internationally known as the boycott.
He was agent for the estate of the Earl
of Erne, in County Mayo, ireland, and
brought down upon himself the wrath
of tenants by refusing to accept rents
at rates they fixed. His life was threat
ened. His food supplies were cut off
and his fences and buildings destroyed,
but the stubborn Ulster Orangemsn
stood out against the demonstrators,
and finally collected his crops with the
protection OF 900 soldiers.
Americas first great boycott was at
its height in 1765. It began eight or
nine years earlier in Boston and finally
extended to New York. Philadelphia
and the Southern Colonies. Fifty Bos-
ton business men started the movement
by agreeing not to buy any more Brit
ish cloth except at a price they fixed
themselves, to discourage elaborate fu-
nerals and to discard lace and ruff1es.
Samuel Adams and the Caucas Club,
in which he was influential, propagan-
died the on-importation movement,
and spread it throughout the Colonies.
People spied on their neighbors and
made the wearing of forbidden British
wares as unpopular as Gandhi made the
British label in India.
MoIasses Tax Unpopular.
This boycott was inspired by the
heavy tax Great Britain imposed on
molasses brought from the West Indies
to the United States for the manufac-
ture of rum. John Hancock and other
leading merchants dealt largely in rum,
and its manufacture was a very i'm
portant industry. The smuggling of
molasses became general and Great
Britain not only failed to collect the
tax, but suffered grieyous loss of trade
through the boycott, which quietly died
out in 1766 after Colonial merchants
had disposed of their accumulations Of
unsalabl goods and apparently decided
that it would be better business to stock
their shelves with British cloth and
finery which the public wanted.
The repercussions of this boycott in
England were terrible. Three artisans
out of every 10 in Manchester and Not
tingham, the cloth and lace centers,
were unemployed. Half the firms in
Bristol and Liverpool were threatened
with bankruptcy and the exchange of
London was in despair.