By the time an Occidental has had his breakfast, a Chinese market is nearly over. There are few more significant contrasts than are suggested by a stroll along the principal street in Shanghai, at the hour of half-past five on a summer's morning. The lordly European, who built those palaces which line the water-front, and who does his business therein, is conspicuous by his total absence, but the Asiatic is on hand in full force, and has been on hand for a long time. It will be hours before the Occidentals begin to jostle the Chinese from the sidewalks, and to enter with luxurious ease on their round of work, and by that time the native will have finished half his day's labour.
Sir John Davis was quite right in his comments on the cheerful labour of the Chinese, as a sign that their government has succeeded in securing them great content with their condition. This quality of their labour is one of its most striking characteristics, and to be comprehended must be long observed and well weighed.
It remains to say a word of the quality of intension in Chinese industry. The Chinese are Asiatics, and they work as such. It is in vain to attempt to make over this virile race on the model of our own. To us they certainly appear lacking in the heartiness which we esteem so highly. The Anglo-Saxon needs no scriptural hint to enable him to see the importance of doing with his might what his hand finds to do, but the Chinese cannot be made to change his pace, though the combined religions and philosophy of the ages were brought to bear upon him. He has profited by the accumulated experience of millenniums, and, like the gods of Homer, he is never in a hurry.
One cannot help forecasting a time when the white and the yellow races will come into a keener competition than any yet known. When that inevitable day shall have arrived, which of them will have to go to the wall?
Surely if Solomon was right in his economic maxim that
