DAVIS. — CERTAIN OLD CHINESE NOTES. 283 



and the characters designating the emperor or the period, enable us 

 to determine within a few years the date of the emission. There is a 

 year character, a month character and a day character on each note, 

 and when the note was issued the blanks connected with these char- 

 acters were filled in with a brush, so that until the brush marks 

 wore off in use, the actual day of the emission of the note could be 

 ascertained. 



The circulation of the notes was primarily determined by the area 

 under control of the dynasty at the time of the emission. There were, 

 however, other factors than the limits of the power of the dynasty, 

 which operated to restrict the circulation of some of the emissions. 

 They were sometimes emitted for a particular purpose and for use 

 only within a restricted area. Such restrictions were found embar- 

 rassing and naturally gave rise to complaints. 



There were times during the depreciation of the notes when efforts 

 were made to redeem the outstanding notes with new notes, the latter 

 being emitted perhaps on a par with metallic currency, thus tempo- 

 rarily furnishing two concurrent paper currencies, the one of which 

 was worth three, four, five, or whatever the proportionate value might 

 be, times the other. To a certain extent, such discrepant values 

 could be maintained through provision for the reception of the notes 

 by government officials on this basis. As a rule, however, experiments 

 of this sort did not relieve the situation. 



Two things have operated to reduce the value of this Chinese 

 experience as a lesson to other peoples. One is the sluggishness .of 

 the Chinese temperament, its inflexibility under ordinary pressure, 

 its resistance through inertia to change of any sort. The other is the 

 subordination of the people to authority, their readiness to accept and 

 obey the orders of their constituted government, and the difficulty 

 of organizing opposition except on the basis of war. Yet in spite of 

 the passive endurance of the people and notwithstanding the arbitrary 

 efforts of the government to check depreciation, the law of supply and 

 demand overrode edicts and orders and when inflation prevailed prices 

 went up. The total abandonment of paper money, at the end of this 

 protracted experience was thoroughly unscientific, but in this case 

 quite natural. China had no contact with the outer world and but 

 few industries other than agriculture. There being no field for the 

 development of industrial enterprise there was no special occasion to 

 make use of the agency of credit to multiply the resources of the empire. 

 Had the conditions been different, had there been commercial and 

 industrial activity, Chinese intellect would probably have found some 



