By 1902 the export price of ginseng was $5.25 
cents per pound dry, the cultivated being so much 
larger and more vigerous the exporters paid 20% 
more for it but the users said no and soon after 
the cultivated brought 20% less than the forced, 
pampered, over grown and usually immature, so 
called cultivated. 
Both Encyclopedia Americana (Vol. 9) and 
Penny Encyclopedia (Vol. 11 printed in 1835) are 
accountable for the statements that ginseng is used 
in China for almost every ill, and that man shaped 
roots frequently command their weight in gold. 
Practically every crop of ginseng before it 
reaches the consumer is sorted into a dozen or more 
grades, depending on age, size, outside color, inside 
color, wrinkles lengthwise or around, texture, spaci- 
fic gravity, taste, etc. and nearly every city or local- 
ity prefer or demand some particular one of these 
grades, all of which makes it difficult to sell except 
thru the regular trade channels. 
Nearly every dealer in raw furs, wool and hides 
in the United States are dealers in ginseng and 
many New York dealers will send a buyer hun- 
dreds of miles to bid on two or three barrels full. 
There is no record of any American or Euro- 
pean scientific investigation to determine whether 
or not 400,000,000 Chinese have or have not been 
all wrong in their faith in ginseng for several cen- 
turies but the fact remains that Chinese scientists, 
Doctors, etc., that have been educated in America 
and Europe, have never said or done anything that 
has injured the ginseng business. 
What must the Chinese think of the millions 
ecidentials who repeatedly try to rub liniment thru 
the cuticle in the belief it can really be done and 
somehow neutralize or relieve their rheumatism 
or neuritis, etc., something both impossible and un- 
scientific and yet so often tried. 
It is no more difficult to raise a garden size 
patch of ginseng than it is to raise a vegetable 
garden, not nearly so much work because ginseng 
must be raised under the shade of trees, vines or 
artificial shade made of cull lath, lumber edgings, 
brush or reeds or even hay thatch as is practiced in 
Manchuria, it grows best under some sort of vege- 
table mulch like decayed sawdust, leaves, chaff, 
straw, or perhaps best of all is marsh hay because 
free of weed seeds. With any crop grown under 
