CORRESP ONDENCE. 



843 



CORIIESPONDENCB. 



COLORED MEN IN CHINA. 



[We copy the following interesting cor- 

 respondence from the pages of the " South- 

 ern Workman." It contains various signifi- 

 cant facts admirably presented.] 



Singapore, May 10, 1831, 

 Messrs^ Editors. 



IN a previous letter I spoke about a ne- 

 gro, S. A. Butler, a resident of Shang- 

 hai, China. His career is quite remarkable. 

 His parents were Africans, or pure negroes ; 

 his father a preacher in Washington, D. C. 

 He was educated in Paris, and there learned 

 to speak French, Italian, German, and 

 Spanish. I think he has an aptitude for 

 languages. When Mr. Burlingame was ap- 

 pointed Minister to Peking some years ago, 

 he met Butler in Paris, made him his pri- 

 vate secretary, and took him to China, where 

 he became familiar with the spoken Chi- 

 nese. 



Mr. Burlingame always put him on a 

 footing of social equality. Wishing to go 

 into business, Butler left the American em- 

 bassy, and took a post in one of the great 

 American trading-houses. Subsequently he 

 went into the service of the Shanghai Navi- 

 gation Company. For some time past, the 

 Chinese officials and some of the rich Chi- 

 nese merchants have been watching care- 

 fully the operations of the Europeans in 

 steam navigation, supported by European 

 capital. These prudent, careful men de- 

 termined that, if there was any profit in the 

 trade, the Chinese should have it, and not 

 i\\Qfan qui (foreign devil). Therefore they 

 began to buy steamships themselves, and to 

 run them to and from their own ports. 

 They organized the China Merchants' Steam- 

 ship Company. They put their own, and 

 not foreign, money into it. They purchased 

 the Shanghai Company's steamers, and But- 

 ler went into their employment. Still, these 

 Chinese, careful and economical as they are, 

 did not understand the business of running 

 steamships, for it is a business which re- 

 quires special training. These men were 

 cheated by Europeans in the quality of the 

 vessels sold, and they were held in great 

 contempt by Europeans and Americans who 

 kept lines of steamships in the East, and 

 who believed that their dominion over the 

 sea would never be successfully disputed by 

 the " pig-tails." 



The Chinese concluded it would be well 

 to employ Europeans, at first, in the most 



responsible positions. But the trouble has 

 been, that the Europeans have generally 

 tried to rob the Chinese when employed by 

 them. The owners of this new Chinese 

 line, including some of the most influential 

 men in the Chinese Government, put Butler 

 in charge of one of the most important de- 

 partments of the business, and authorized 

 him to reorganize the service in his own 

 way. He is a natural organizer, one of 

 those men who know how to put things in 

 their proper place, how to put down confu- 

 sion. He systematized the business, brought 

 order out of chaos, introduced economy, 

 enforced discipline, and rivaled the Euro- 

 peans in their steamship service. The re- 

 sult is, that after two years' work this Chi- 

 nese steamship company, instead of run- 

 ning at a loss, has earned over a million 

 dollars net profit. The prospect now is, that 

 it will earn very large annual dividends. 



The Chinese official who is at the head 

 of the company told me that they considered 

 Butler not only a man of great ability, but 

 an honest man. He said that he was a very 

 safe adviser, and they regarded him as an 

 important agent in the future operations of 

 the company. Now this Chinese company 

 own already thirty-six steamers. They are 

 bidding for the trade of the Pacific Ocean. 

 One of their vessels lately went to San 

 Francisco, and reduced the price of freight 

 to China. The American and European 

 lines are by no means easy at the appear- 

 ance of this great steamship fleet ; no one 

 knows where its operations will stop. As 

 these people learn more thoroughly the 

 steamship business, they will become more 

 formidable rivals to the Europeans, and, as 

 they are content with much less profit than 

 the Europeans, and the business is conducted 

 at their own homes, and not with a distant 

 European basis, it is easy to see that the 

 time is soon coming when the vast trade of 

 the great Pacific Ocean will be in Chinese 

 hands. 



Coal is an expensive article in China. 

 Supplies for steamers are brought frorn 

 Austraha and Java. Now, there are im- 

 mense coal-fields in China. The Chinese 

 will not let the Europeans touch these coal- 

 fields under any circumstances, but they 

 can touch them themselves. Already they 

 have opened a vast colliery about eighty 

 miles from tide-water, at Tientsin ; a canal 

 from the mine to the ocean is about finished. 

 The coal is owned by the same people who 

 control the steamship company. This year 



