NBWTA Report 1904-053
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aaa Se ae ee En a i, he we Cafe 102 103 the Oppenheimer treatment. All information as to the treatment can be obtained at the Nursing Home, 135, Bow Road, E., or at the doctor’s consulting rooms (Dr. Shaffer), 40, Upper Bedford Place, Bloomsbury, W.C., and I shall be very glad at any time to give informa- tion or particulars. ? ANTI-OPIUM DEPARTMENT. In reporting upon this department, I may briefly say that since 1896, when it was established, there has been great difficulty in arousing any interest, owing to the fact that a Royal Commission had then just reported in favour of continuing our opium trade with China. Not- withstanding this, the work was taken up and has been kept going by the Durham and Northumberland County Union and by several of the Branches of the Scottish Union. Some work has also from time to time been reported in the following Branches :—Longtown, Maiden- head, New Barnet, New Brighton, Penarth, St. Ives, and Wallasey. I much hope that to-day we, as a Council, shall so realize the sin of our nation in continuing to force this opium poison upon the Chinese, that we shall ask all the Branches to arrange for at least one meeting on the subject to be held during the year. Here in England opium is well known to be a poison, but our Government in India grows and manufactures this same poisonous drug for export to China. In Bengal a strict monopoly is maintained by Government ; the poppy may not be grown and opium may not be prepared, except for the Government. The crude opium thus obtained is carefully prepared at the Government factories, sent to Calcutta, and sold there by auction to the highest bidders for export to China. In the past it was forbidden to the people of China by their Emperor on pain of death. Small quantities, however, were smuggled in from India, where the poppy plant was grown, and some of the Chinese acquired a taste for it. Then followed through many years a determined effort on the part of the Chinese Government to stop the smuggling, and, to the lasting shame of England it must be acknow- ledged that, not only under the East India Company until 1834, but afterwards, under our own Trade Superintendent, we continued to carry on this smuggling trade. Twice the Chinese waged war with us on account of it, and were defeated. At last they felt compelled to legalize it. Since 1869 they have been growing the poppy for themselves in the hope of cutting off our trade from India. But the more the supply is increased the more the demand for it grows, and we find that the vice of opium smoking is spreading widely in the great Chinese Empire. It is a significant fact that in the native Christian Church no opium smoker is received into membership, and they also exclude all those who have to do with growing the poppy or preparing or selling the deadly drug. We often hear of the sad physical effects which opium produces, but the worst results are those upon the moral nature. Dr. R. H. Graves, M.D., 42 years in China, says:—‘“ There is no doubt of the fact that the word of a man addicted to opium can never be trusted. He 1s never straightforward and open. The insidiousness of the drug is greater than that of alcoholic stimulants. It stealthily and gradually fastens its chains around a man until there is no hope of release. Nothing but the almighty grace of God can save him.” _ Rev. J. S. Collins, B.A., of the Church Missionary Society, writing from Ku-cheng, China, said : ‘“‘ The habit of opium smoking is universal. They pass us day by day—rich and poor—now a mandarin, now a beggar, now tradesmen skilled and unskilled, able to command excellent wages, if only they could leave the fatal pipe, and shake themselves free from the encircling coils of the fell serpent that is ever tightening its grip, and soon will still their struggles for ever in death— a dishonourable, shameless death—death by the roadside, in some wretched hovel. For you can see them lying there often. The very dogs avoid the corner where the thing lies, and the tottering chair coolies, themselves well on the same road, to the same sad end, only able to carry their fare from stage to stage by the help of the fatal dose, will nod at it as they rest, tell you that they knew the man well, and tell you a little about him, and then ask you quietly whether. you do not often see the same sight ‘in your honourable country,’ seeing that the opium all comes, they hear, from there. And you are dumb with very shame! And so it goes on day by day and year by year, and the terrible total of hapless victims is ever swelling larger and larger, and the number of the missionaries increase, and the Bibles and opium balls come along in the same ships, under the much vaunted flag of freedom.” “I do not know what your personal opinion or interest in the matter may be, but my own experience is that of the many terrible descriptions that I have read in home papers and magazines which have described the misery in China arising from opium, not one was overdrawn.” During the ten years from 1891-2 to 1901-02, the area under poppy cultivation in India has increased by 112,000 acres. _The number of chests manufactured in the Bengal opium factories has increased by 10,576. Payments by the Indian Government to cultivators in Bengal have increased by 762,727 tens of rupees, and the Net Revenue which at the beginning of the ten years was £4,097,178, and six years later had fallen to £1,855,841, rose in rgo1-2 to BIZ AG13 32 At the present time we have no loud voice of protest from China for several reasons. t. Because of the rebuffs they have received in the past. i 2, Because they are now growing the poppy and deriving a revenue rom it, 3- Because many of the official class in China have themselves fallen victims to the power of the drug. This silence of China does not diminish, but greatly increases, our |