72 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vSmall and equally numerous, and, with the sunlight as the active 

 force, each green cell may contribute to the world's gain in 

 the food substances that enable all creatures to live and move 

 and enjoy a fairly comfortable existence. 



TRADE CORPOEATIONS IN" CHINA. 



By M. MAURICE COURANT. 



^I^IIE remarkable longevity of a large number of business houses 

 -*- in China is not due solely to the general conditions of society 

 or to those which are peculiar to the commercial class, but their 

 stability and their fame rest upon a special organization, under 

 which they are united in groups. It is customary for all the houses 

 possessing the same specialty to form an association which I shall 

 call a corporation, reserving to myself the privilege of pointing 

 out a few exceptions to the rule. These corporations, which seem 

 to date from at least three centuries back, are difficult subjects to 

 study.' Various in type, formed by the individuals interested, 

 without the state having had anything to do with their regulations 

 or even perhaps authorized them, they exist by force of custom 

 and live conformably to their traditions, while some, I have been 

 told, have written regulations and even, perhaps, archives — which 

 they have not thought fit to communicate to the public. What 

 is to be learned of them has, therefore, to be deduced from their 

 visible transactions. 



The corporation fixes the minimum price of articles of sale, 

 and has secret agents to watch that no house takes less, thereby 

 setting bounds to competition and preventing the injurious depre- 

 ciation of goods. Only the public suffers from the existence of the 

 minimum, but it does not seem to perceive it, and the Government 

 never interferes except in respect to the price of grain, for which it 

 fixes a maximum, and in times of great stress sells from its own 

 granaries. The corporation, too, as represented in the banks and 

 loan offices, fixes the rates of interest to be paid or received, and 

 the kinds of securities and moneys that shall be accepted. In 

 short, it adjusts the general regulations of business transactions, 

 and defends the common interests of all those associated in it. If 

 one of them is implicated in a judicial proceeding of general inter- 

 est the corporation sustains him with its credit and its funds. It 

 further takes in hand injuries to the interests of its associates. 

 In 1883 the tea merchants' corporation of Hankow suspecting 

 frauds by the agents of certain foreign houses, asked those houses 



