The Chinese say there are Ten Cannots for those who smoke opium:-

1. "He cannot give it up.
2. He cannot enjoy sleep.
3. He cannot wait his turn while sharing his pipe with his friends.
4. He cannot rise early.
5. He cannot be cured when he becomes ill.
6. He cannot help relatives who are in need.
7. He cannot enjoy wealth.
8. He cannot plan anything.
9. He cannot get credit even when he has been an old customer.
10. He cannot walk any distance."

An analysis of these "Cannots" show the opium-sot to be selfish, slothful, weak, diseased, inefficient, untrustworthy, and emasculated. Better dead, he still lives on, till he becomes what the Chinese call "a ghost."

Ben Jonson in Volpone, gives the picture of a man in this condition who is on the verge of death from narcotic poisoning. One of the characters desires the death of the victim, as may be seen from his ejaculations.

There is a medical name for death from opium, but physicians tell us that dissolution is really caused by engorgement of the brain.

In opium poisoning, where a stomach pump is not immediately available, the emetic is a tablespoonful of mustard in a small tumblerful of warm water. After this is thrown off, the victim should be given great draughts of warm water to wash out the stomach. Sometimes, the stomach will not respond to the emetic as it sleeps as well as the victim.

In poisoning for laudanum—a simple tincture of opium, which strange to relate, is derived from the Latin word laudandum 'to be praised'—an overdose sometimes acts as an emetic itself. Awhile ago, an aged man was charged with attempting to commit suicide. He told me he drank a very considerable dose of laudanum, which only acted as an emetic. Then he tried to hang himself with a rope, which also proved unavailing. He is still alive and more happy than one could believe.

…Among the Chinese priests, we find this dictum:—Chih yen pu neng yang sen toi, which being interpreted means, "If you eat opium your sons will die out in the second generation."

What greater evil could befall a Chinese family than that it should leave no posterity for the worship of ancestors? Anyone who would by an act or omission contribute to so calamitous a happening must be considered worthy of that national punishment known as ling chih. This punishment while killing the evil can hardly be considered as a successful one, or even an economic measure, in that it killed the man also, the method being death by slicing. Still it has this advantage that there is no subsequent offence.

Under these circumstances, it is only natural that the Chinaman should prefer teaching the art of "hitting the pipe" to white "devils," like you and me who probably have no souls anyway, and certainly no ancestors. Besides, what is a fine in dollars when compared to the enormous indignity of death beneath a slicing machine?

Still, no nation in the world has endeavored to rid itself of the opium scourge like the Chinese people and, on one occasion, President Hsu-Shi-Ch'ang of China issued an order for the destruction of twelve hundred chests of opium, the value of which was fourteen million dollars. This opium belonged to the Shanghai Opium Combine and was purchased from them by the Government. This meant not only a loss in stock, but a loss of millions in revenue, at a time when China was in financial straits.

Following this, China exterminated the cult of the poppy—their "flower of dreams"—making its growth to be an offence against the law. An edict prohibiting tobacco and alcohol in America would be in nowise comparable, for this was an edict that meant death to hundreds of thousands—some say to millions—of the Chinese people. An American writing of this truly wonderful thing has said:—"This eradication of a century-old vice was not put in force through the issuing of edicts by the Government alone, but it was due to the imperceptible and immense pressure of public opinion—the opinion and belief of millions and hundreds of millions of inarticulate Chinese scattered throughout the vast distances of China, a force imbued with the simple and definite instinct of right."

There is no doubt that on this continent there are thousands of Chinese of like honesty and sturdiness of character, and that if these men were allowed to deal with their renegade countrymen, much could be done to stay the progress of the drug traffic.

As far as we know, nothing of an educative campaign has been tried among the trafficking Chinese except what is taught them through the rougher methods of the courts. Their education might be an experiment worth trying. Perhaps, if we explained, through interpreters, what our ideals are and how we expect them in accepting our hospitality to maintain these ideals, it might help. We might also tell them that if they are to remain here, we insist of their observing our laws, and on their being clean alike in body and mind. We must tell them this again and again till they get the ideal—or till they get out. Some would not be amenable, any more than white men under similar circumstances, but the majority would. If even a quarter of the amount of money expended on the detection of crime among the Chinese was applied to educating them, the results would be indubitably better.

If we through the health departments of the various cities allow the Chinaman to swarm in filthy hovels and to burrow like rats in cellars, what else can we expect but vice unspeakable?

We have made these men to be pariahs and perpetual aliens and, accordingly, they have become to us a body of death. These pariahs may only be reached through the upper class of their own compatriots with whom we should strive to co-operate for what has been called "preventive justice," in a patient, persistent and sympathetic manner.

It is hard to acquire the magnificent perspective of Emerson, but it worth while studying now and then. "The carrion in the sun," he says, "will convert itself to grass and flowers, and man though in brothels or gaols, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true."

But if you claim that the oriental pedlar, and opium sot are abandoned and irreclaimable—mere black-haired beasts in our human jungle—then, it is quite plain that we should insist on their exclusion from this continent. Any other course would only be a demonstration of broken-headed ineptitude.

When a Chinaman regularly attends the chandu place called the den or opium joint, for the purpose of smoking, he is said by his countrymen to be under the spell of the "black earth."

The more opium he takes, the more he requires or, as Virgil has expressed it, Aegrescitque medendo: "the disorder increases with the remedy." It is Kipling, in one of his stories, who makes an opium addict to tell how at the end of his third pipe, the dragons which were printed red and black on the cushions, used to move about and fight, but by degrees, it took a dozen pipes to make them stir.

This is a condition which gives rise to the true vicious circle. In pathology, a vicious circle has been defined as a morbid process in which two or more disorders are so correlated that they reciprocally aggravate and perpetuate each other.

Morally, opium bites a man to the heart and festers his very soul. "He is a devil-sick young man." said one Chinaman recently of another, "and soon his spirit be torn in the hereafter by the demons of opium."

The phantasmagoria conjured up by opium has been described by many writers. De Quincey speaks of them as "those trances and profoundest reveries which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human nature."

Coleridge, himself an addict, writes of trances and of spell-bound existence where one passes

"Through caverns measureless to man
  Down to a sunless sea."

All are agreed that in opium intoxication there are no sublime exaltations, or blowing of soap bubbles; no oracular voices out of inner shrines or waves of resplendent ether, but only a sleep or phantasm—a kind of dual existence—where all is alien and unreal.

One who is deeply under the thraldom has told me how, in each successive indulgence, she passes through strange transmutations and across wide lands that have no horizons. Sometimes, in the narcotic stupor, there comes to her a black sun that expands and contracts, and the rays of which cause her head to ache intolerably.

On her recovering, she suffers from an appalling introversion when the chain of her bondage ceases to be anything but golden.

This must, too, be true about her pain for, as she tells the story of it, her voice becomes thin like a fret saw and her face seems to shrink as though she were ill and very, very old.

This woman who was a nurse by profession is now a wanton by predilection—a pathetic piece of human jetsam. Speaking of the woman outcast, it was Lecky who described her as "the most mournful and awful figure in history." The statement leaves nothing further to be said.

Yet, it cannot be claimed that the opium joint was responsible for her downfall, or that she had been lured thither by the Mongolians. Having learned the habit in the pursuit of her profession, she naturally gravitated to the joint. Her case is only one demonstration of the poet's philosophy,

"In tragic life, God wot
No villain need be. Passions spin the plot."

Opium smoking is different from that of tobacco. Opium has to be carefully prepared, and numerous tools are required.

There is the shallow tray in which is set a small glass lamp filled with peanut or olive oil for "cooking the wax." This lamp is hooded, thus preventing the drafts which would make the flame flare up and smoke the opium.

Also the smoker requires a long steel yenkok, or toasting pin, with which to hold the gum or chandu over the flame. It is pointed at one end and flat at the other. There is also a kind of spoon-headed instrument for cleaning out the pipe.

Other instruments are a pair of scissors for trimming the wicks in the lamp, a sponge for cooling the pipe, and cans of "hop" and oil.

Lastly, we have the long, flute-like pipe which may be of bamboo, ebony or ivory, and one we have seen was studded with diamonds. This is the stem, smoking pistol, or yen siang through which the devotee of the drug takes long and deep inhalations, blowing the smoke through his nostrils.

The opium bowl which fits on to the pipe is an ellipsoid in shape.

Nearly every pipe has upon it a small wooden frog but Man Yick, an acquaintance of ours, assures us that "flog dead samee likee dool nail."

Opium ready for smoking is usually about the consistency of black molasses, or of tar. Pedlars call it "mud" but the Chinese name for the mixture is pen yang.

When "the black candle" is ready for lighting and the smoker has the ying upon him—that is to say the mad longing for indulgence—the procedure is like this:—

The smoker holds the needle in the flame of the lamp and when it becomes hot he dips it into the opium or wax, and taking up a portion, holds it over the lamp. When it makes a bubble, he inserts this into the small hole of the earthen bowl with the flat end of the needle and presses it down with the pointed end.

The flame of opium is blue, but the smoke black, and the smell thereof is both evil and insinuating.

An opium "pill" lasts for six or eight puffs. In the places attended by persons of leisure who have money at their disposal, attendants or "chefs" roll the pills and, sometimes, these fellows have been accused—I know not how justly—of even "rolling" the smokers to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

Generally speaking, the chefs are only paid sufficient to purchase the necessary hop for themselves, for even chefs are seized with the terrible ying and require "the solace" of the drug.

Among the public, the idea is held that the men who take to smoking opium are usually of the beachcomber type, scurvy, feckless fellows—a kind of devil's crew.

Once this may have been true, but of late, such is not the case.

An eminent American attorney writing recently of this matter said, "Opium smoking among so-called 'highbrows' in Boston, has been increasing by leaps and bounds of recent years, though the Chinese here still furnish a large percentage of the 'hoppies'.

"Society girls and boys have fallen prey to the opium pedlars, and the organizations for trapping unsuspecting youths were never so well supplied with the deadly poison and funds as they are to-day. They do not appeal to the poor man or woman because the cost of 'hitting the pipe' is prohibitive for them, but in the palatial residences of persons prominent in social circles, may be found complete outfits for opium smokers. Money is no object to them."

This attorney who has much to do with addicts and pedlars as a State prosecutor says further, "Curiosity leads many to accept an invitation to an opium party, but once they have taken their turn at the pipe, the appetite has been implanted and the road to degradation is fast."

This is only another way of saying that curiosity can kill more than cats, and that once a person has started on the trail of the poppy the sledding is very easy and downgrade all the way.

On June 30th, 1921, the Bureau of Internal Revenue at Washington printed for the fiscal year a full report of the sale of narcotic drugs in the United States. The Report is not only of immense interest, but of especial note, being the first official figures published on this matter in the country.

It is true that in 1918 the Secretary of the Treasury appointed a committee to investigate the traffic in drugs, and that a year later this committee submitted a report of its findings, but the Treasure Department did not vouch for the accuracy of the figures given, or assume finality for the conclusions arrived at.

In the United States the Narcotic Act is a Revenue Law, which is administered by the Internal Revenue Bureau through the Narcotic Division of the Prohibition Unit. The appropriation for the enforcement of the Narcotic Law for the current year is $750,000.

In Canada, while the revenue accruing from the traffic is collected by the Customs Department, the Opium and Drugs Act is administered by the Narcotic Division of the Department of Health.

But to return to the first official figures of the United States, upon examination, we find that for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1921, the amounts sold by the registered importers, manufacturers, producers and compounders were as follows (in ounces):

	Opium	508,723
	Morphine	164,203
	Codeine	77,345
	Dionin	3,170
	Other Alkaloids and derivatives	4,381
	Cocaine	52,827
	Coca leaves	1,016,613

It must be borne in mind that these figures refer only to taxes on the amounts sold. Not all the quantity imported may be manufactured and sold during the same year. On the other hand, the quantity sold during a certain year, may exceed that which is imported, the tax on products manufactured in the United States, being due when the goods are removed from the place of manufacture.

The revenue collected in taxes at one cent per ounce, totalled $137,279.98. Including this amount with the taxes collected from manufacturers, practitioners, and dealers, the receipts for the year totalled $1,170,291.32.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue which collects these taxes is not concerned with the value of any narcotic drug or preparation imported or manufactured, and makes no attempt to ascertain the value of the products on which the tax must be paid.

We have not the value of the narcotic drugs imported for the fiscal year 1921, but the number of ounces totalled 5,329,923.

Without particularising on all the drugs it will be interesting to note that the countries from which America gets her opium supply, and the quantities, were set forth and divided after this manner (in ounces):

	England	101,150
	Greece	107,375
	Switzerland	77
	Turkey in Europe	137,748
	Turkey in Asia	292,693

The export of opium from the United States was, however, comparatively negligible, amounting in all to 7,829 ounces. Over half of this amount went to two countries, Mexico receiving 1,520 and Peru 3,143 ounces.

These figures, here quoted, would not seem to include all the amounts exported, for writing in April, 1922, Lenna Lowe Yost, the National W.C.T.U. Legislative Representative at Washington has said, "There are evidences to-day, we are informed by missionaries, travellers and newspaper correspondents, that the situation as relates to drugs, especially in China is alarming. Statistics show that the deadly habit of drug-taking is on the increase, and that there is good reason for alarm is seen in customs reports in this country which shows that within the short period of five months enough morphine and opium were shipped from the one port of Seattle to give a dose to each of the 400,000,000 men, women and children in China."

Again, turning our attention for a moment to the Report of this special committee, we find that allowing one grain as the average dose of opium, the amount consumed in the Republic, per annum, was sufficient to furnish thirty-six doses for every man, woman and child.

In this consumption America leads the world. Compared with her, Austria uses less than one grain, Italy one, Germany two, Portugal two-and-a-half, France three, and Holland three-and-a-half.

Assuredly this was a startling discovery, but still more startling, when we consider that this computation only deals with the drugs that were legitimate importations. Although there are no exact means of computing the illicit importations, these are calculated by the committee as being about equal in quantity to those which pass through the Department of Internal Revenue. In other words, the amount consumed per annum should be actually doubled, thus allowing seventy-two doses for every man, woman and child. Now, the population of the United States is about 107,000,000 persons.

Only 10% of the drugs legitimately imported are used for medicinal purposes, the other 90% being consumed for the satisfaction of addiction.

From the information received, the committee concluded that the total number of addicts probably exceeded one million, although these have been computed by investigators to be as high as four millions.

But allowing one million to be the correct number, the committee calculated that this number represented 250,000 unemployed persons which, at a conservative estimate, would represent the loss of $150,000,000 annually in wages.

These figures do not include the cost of the drugs, nor the cost to the municipalities or states in the suppression and punishment of crime; the care of those who become a charge upon the community, nor the cost to individuals who suffer through theft and burglary.

It has been noted above that the numbers of addicts are not exactly known, chiefly for the reason that those in higher social classes cannot be counted. These have money to purchase drugs and consequently are not obliged to commit crime in order to obtain the requisite sums. As a general thing, these have not learned the habit from bad associations, but through doctors and nurses, and so are seldom known to the police.

In the state of California, the Board of Pharmacy, in one of their reports has this to say on the subject: "In many instances, these unfortunates are members of some of the best families in the State, but have become addicted to the use of narcotics, not through their own desire, but through the carelessness of their family physician in prescribing narcotics, for such a patient as might have been afflicted with some bronchial, rheumatic or neuralgic affection. The patient having received relief from the narcotic, unwittingly becomes addicted to its use."

Wishing to know whether the drug habit was spreading in the United States, Canada and England, we, personally, despatched some hundreds of letters to persons in high authority for information on this matter. With four exceptions, all were agreed that that traffic in opiates was growing. We shall quote only the reply of Mrs. Sarah Mulhall, First Deputy Commissioner, Department of Narcotic Drug Control, State of New York: "Drug addiction is a growing menace that can no longer be ignored. In New York State alone, there are 38,000 officially registered addicts, and many thousands who are not registered."

Several of the replies give credit to the excellent work done by Colonel L. G. Nutt, head of the Narcotic Forces at Washington, but claim that he is short-forced in agents.

To Dr. James Hamilton of New York, a splendid crusader against the drug traffic, we are indebted for the following quotation from Dr. Livingston S. Hinckley: "The extent to which drug addiction has spread over the land is beyond belief. The youth, curious as to its effects, is offered a pinch of heroin, morphine or cocaine and, with incredible rapidity, he finds himself in the clutches of a habit, and held as stubbornly as a devil-fish envelopes its victim with its tentacles."

The special committee, above referred to, also ascertained that drug addiction did not preponderate among the females, as was generally believed, but was about equally prevalent in both sexes. "Women," says a writer on the subject, "last longer at the Black Smoke," but he does not tell us the reason.

But, after all, however accurate the figures or illuminating the data, the writer or reader, to comprehend aright their meaning must stop awhile and look with the mind's eye upon the drug users themselves-the hundreds and hundreds of thousands, who pass before us in long flocking lines to which there seems no end.

Never will there be a like processing till the dead arise on Judgment Day.

These are they who die by what they live upon.

This might be the dragon of which Kipling wrote in The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows. This might be "the accursed crocodile" of De Quincey's narcotian dream with its abominate head and multitudinous leering eyes.

If you look more closely, you may recognize those whom you have known for years as semi-invalids, or persons who had "moods," but you never connected their vagaries with the baleful influences of "the drug."

Some are men and women of rank and of high principle—proud persons, who would hide as closely as possible the secret of their grievous thralldom.

Others with an appetite for shame, are imbruted and vicious; lewd persons untaught in providence, patience or abstinence.

Some are young, hard and scrupleless. No, no, not young! Once an opium-eater said "we are all old; hundreds of years old."

Quite a few of these myriad are called "opium devils" by their own folk of the Orient who descry the evil. Look into their tawny eyes! Listen to their high sing-song voices! "Hi-yah! You my little stay-at-home. Hi-yah! You only gel for me. Plentee plesents."

Here are men of all colors and races; shuffle-gaited, foundered fellows, who have started on a downward course from which, to most of them there is no retreat. Here, too, are battalions of black men who, from likely lads, have become derelict in body and soul. These are the irredeemables—abandoned, dangerous men who are more than a match for justice.

If you look longer upon these scenes of ignominy and shame, it will be to marvel at the numbers who suffer and who are palpably insane. Here are women with pain-smirched faces and senile bodies full of festering sores. Others who are brain-sick, stare upon you with ape-like expression or glare, and gnash and gibber.

The talk? Where is the pen that could set it down, or dare to set it down—this babble-talk of incontinent tongues—these hideous cursings of guttural throats, the direful pleadings, the self recriminations, or worse than all, the hard, soul-blasting and horrific laughter.

Yes! let us say it over again—you and I—these are they who die by what they live upon. —Never will there by a like procession till the dead arise on Judgment Day.

A "child," under the federal statutes, means a boy or girl under sixteen years of age. Under certain provincial statutes for the protection of children, a child is defined as one actually or apparently under the age of eighteen.

Most people will say, "There is practically no addiction among children," meaning thereby 'children' under the 'teen age. Even the children's aid societies are profoundly ignorant on the subject until such a time as the police inaugurate a "clean up" campaign with its attendant education.

In this discussion, we shall not confine ourselves to any age, taking in both children and youths, and to begin with will ask ourselves whether addiction exists among those to any marked extent.

In consulting the authorities on the subject, one of the most reliable reports is that given of the New York State Clinic at which three thousand persons were treated.

These persons were divided into age groups as follows:—

	908 between 15 and 19 years,
	927 between 20 and 25 years,
	711 between 26 and 30 years,
	523 between 31 and 40 years,
	133 41 years, or over.

Commenting on these groups, Dr. R. S. Copeland, the Commissioner of the State, says, "To my mind, the most startling thing about these figures is that the large majority of the patients are under twenty-five years of age, and nearly one-third are not out of their 'teens. Our patients are just misguided and unfortunate boys and girls—mere children. That more persons past the age of forty do not appear means that the addict dies young."

In the same State, Cornelius F. Collins, Justice of the Court of Special Sessions, places the large number of addicts between seventeen and twenty-two. He says, "At least one-tenth of the whole business of the Court of Special Sessions of New York County is made up of drug addicts… This is such a horrible situation that it brought home to all of us the absolute necessity for the doing of something which meant business in the attempt to control this evil. We men throughout the State who daily see the processing of these pale youths, victims of the drug habit, may be said to be men who are not unduly worked up over anything. We are somewhat like an undertaker, inured to the corpse. The ordinary proceedings in a criminal court, while calling for some emotion, do not excite us, yet, nevertheless, this drug situation shocks us, trained and experienced as we are in the performance of our duty, and arouses all to the necessity for action of some kind."

Sarah Graham-Mulhall the Deputy Commissioner of New York speaks of "hundreds of addict babies born in the course of a year of addict mothers, and who rarely live but a few days." She also declares that the supplying of narcotic drugs is producing a crop of criminals, defectives, tubercular victims, immoral persons and incompetents. Out of every one thousand youths who were examined for enlistment in the American Navy, five hundred are rejected because of physical unfitness. This evil, she ways is spreading while the general public is in ignorance of the situation.

Dr. James Hamilton of New York says, "It is rare to come into contact with young men between sixteen and twenty-one years of age who are confirmed alcoholics. Compare this with narcotic addicts. The general rule is the addiction is present mainly in youths from sixteen to twenty-one. This is really the development age, and boys and girls are forever wrecked in this period."

In New York City, boys are being arrested for peddling morphine in the schools.

Word from Seattle says, "there are White Cross officials who are doing nothing else but watching high-schools for the dope pedlar."

A despatch from the same city says that there are between five and ten thousand users of opium in some form or another, or approximately one person in every fifty. Canon Bliss, the head of the White Cross Society there, states that "snow" (cocaine) parties are held regularly among the high school students. The Rev. M. R. Ely of Seattle says, "Let the people see the foul, slimy, poisonous thing that is laying its tentacles upon the youth of our land, sucking away their very life's blood. It must have the young boys and girls within its blood-sucking arms. It cannot thrive alone on the dried, shrivelled and cadaverous habitué, who is fast tottering to the grave."

A case which is typical of many homes in Seattle and other cities throughout the United States and Canada, is also related in a recent despatch. It tells of a case in the police court where the mother of a twenty-six year old son had caused his arrest. She was a widow and had been reduced to maintaining herself by scrubbing and washing. The previous night she, on her return home, found a twenty-pound sack of sugar she had purchase, had been sold for "a shot" of morphine.

She informed the court that everything of value, even to crockery had been taken by her son, and she feared he would call in a second-hand man and sell the remainder of her furniture. This young man is a university graduate, but his craving for drug content, born at a cabaret party, had reduced his mother to penury and himself to a moral and physical wreck.

The State Board of Pharmacy, California, reports that children are supplied with morphine and cocaine in quantities as small as ten cents' worth, by pedlars. In New York, drugs have been made into candy and sold to school children.

In Westfield, Massachusetts, it was found that among the Polish families which came from the coal-mining regions of Pennsylvania, that ether addiction was prevalent. We received the following information in a letter from an official in that place:—"These people evidently drink ether straight, as one of the children showed us recently by pouring water into a glass, how much ether she would drink, and how much her mother used. There have been three cases among the children in school in which the drinking of ether furnished a pleasurable sensation."

Jane Addams tells of a gang of boys in Chicago aged from thirteen to seventeen who practically lived a life of vagrancy. All had become addicted to the cocaine habit. A mother who became terrified over the condition of her thirteen-year old—one of the gang—brought him to Hull House, and as she rocked herself in a chair, holding the unconscious lad in her arms, she said despairingly, "I have seen them go with drink, and eat the hideous opium but I never knew anything like this." The boy was hideously emaciated and his mind was almost a blank.

The boys had learned the habit from a colored man who was the agent of a drug store and who gave them samples in order that they might acquire the craving. Presently, they were hopelessly addicted and "swiped" junk to supply themselves with the drug.

"The desire to dream dreams and see visions," continues Miss Addams, "plays an important part with boys who habitually use cocaine. I recall a small hut used by boys for this purpose. They washed dishes in a neighboring restaurant, and as soon as they had earned a few cents they invested in cocaine which they kept pinned beneath their suspenders. When they had accumulated enough for a real debauch they went to this hut and for several days were dead to the outside world. One boy told me that in his dreams he had seen large rooms paved with gold and silver money, the walls were papered with greenbacks, and that he took away in buckets all he could carry."

"Bert Ford in The Boston American, writing of drug-intoxication in Boston says, "The 'mules' and 'joy shots' are among the most vicious elements in the plague. Thousands of recruits to the great and growing army of drug addicts are won by the joy-shot route. It is by this means that our boys and girls in their 'teens, and many adults are initiated. Evil companions tempt them to try morphine or cocaine for the fun of it. Prompted by jest, ridicule or curiosity, they take their first 'jab' or 'sniff,' which the gentry have given the camouflaged title of 'joy shot' and before they realize it, they are slaves."

In Vancouver, drugs are being used in a wholesale manner by boys and girls from fifteen to eighteen years of age. Mr. H. H. Stevens, M.P., states that scores of these children are ruined annually.

Another citizen says, "Before I became a member of an investigation committee I would not believe the terrible stories of drug trafficking as told by the press. Since I have spoken to child addicts, and heard the dreadful stories from their own lips, I can only compare the sufferings they describe with the horrible tortures depicted by Gustave Doré, in his famous pictures of the torture of the damned."

Dr. Procter of British Columbia, in a speech delivered recently in that Province, said, "I know of one cabaret in this province where, only a short time ago, thirty couples were dancing on the floor and of those thirty couples only four were free from the drug habit. In that same cabaret, in the washroom, ten boys were at the same time seen taking dope."

In the hearing of charges against juveniles, in the police courts, for breaches of Opium and Drugs Act, magistrates have suspended sentences, so that the children could be taken away from their bad companions and removed to places for healing and for a new chance in life.

We think much of the poet who said,

In Windsor, Ontario, the ages of young addicts are given as between seventeen and twenty.

Saskatoon, Calgary, Montreal, and other Canadian cities, have their ever-growing quota of 'teen age drug-slaves, forever "maimed for virtue."

One Canadian girl boasted that she gets $25.00 commission for every boy and girl she initiated into the drug habit. It is a commission soon repaid, for the victims always find the money for the daily dope. They cannot do without it.

In one bank, four young bank clerks were found to be cocaine-fiends and, doubtless, similar conditions exist in other financial institutions.

Personally, I have found that a number of the younger girls who are arrested for vagrancy are also addicts. They do not always tell this—indeed, they do not if they can adequately restrain their craving—but when they are incarcerated for any length of time, they tell the other girls about it, and advise these to make a start also.

One girl addict of sixteen who was taken into custody as a neglected child, told in court that she had inherited fourteen hundred dollars in cash, all of which she spent in three days, chiefly on clothes and shoddy jewelry. Presently, even her fine clothes vanished away and she was in a state of penury when apprehended.

One of the appalling things which has developed lately is the discovery that the growing youths in the small sized villages and towns are not free from the machinations of the drug ring, pedlars—or birds' nesters, so to say—going out from the large centres to introduce their nefarious wares. Besides, it has been shown that ninety-two per cent. of the boys and girls come to the cities to earn their livelihood, at some time or another, and have to face the conditions caused by the activities of the drug traffickers. Speaking of this, Charles E. Royal said lately, "Living in the country will not save the boys and girls. Breeding and education is no insurance. We have found as we get further and further into this matter that the evil is even more wide-spread in British Columbia, and all over the Dominion than we had feared, and it will take the combined efforts of us all, the city and the country, to stamp it out."

That was a wise writer who said, "Meet is it that the old help the young, even as they in their day were holpen."

In dealing with the traffic in its relation to children, it seems hardly necessary to say that prevention should be our chief care. This statement, while plainly trite is, nevertheless, terribly unheeded. Parents seldom suspect their own children, or have it hidden somewhere in the back of their heads, that the children are able to take care of themselves, just as if an unsophisticated child had any chance whatever against the machinations of the rascally drug booster with his specious and amiable manners—well, about as much chance as a school of minnows would have against a shark. Young folk, or for that matter, many adults do not even know the slang or jargon used by addicts and may have acquired the vicious appetite for drugs before they realize it.

Under the caption, "The Ring of Death" a writer in the Toronto World says, "For your very life, never accept 'medicine' from anyone, particularly in a powder form which can be used by snuffing up the nose, unless you have first assured yourself of its harmless nature, its uses, and whether it is of a habit-forming propensity. It is better to go to the nearest drug-store and buy some recognized proprietary medicine, than to run the risk of ruining your life through carelessness. Remember that to experiment with drugs is infinitely worse than to flirt with any other social vice; there is no half-way stop in the drug game."

Speaking of the necessity of advising young people how to meet the advances of the drug booster, Dr. Underhill, a medical Health officer in Canada said in a public address, "There is no doubt that young men who formerly carried a flask to dances and parties are now carrying morphine, heroin, or cocaine and inducing girls to take it from them. They do it in a spirit of bravado, if you like, but some I am sorry to say, do it for far worse motives. I have told my girls to slap anyone in the face who offers them drugs, and then to telephone for me. I have told my boys to knock them down no matter where it is. If it is in a drawing-room in the best circles, or anywhere in public or private, create a scandal so that the thing will be brought into the open."

There is no doubt that altogether too much leisure is allowed to our young people, and that they feel aggrieved unless all of their evenings and many of their days are filled by pleasures, which are often only disguised vices. Those were fine ringing words uttered by Thomas A. Edison recently, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday; "I have never had time, not even five minutes, to be tempted to do anything against the moral law, the civil law, or any law whatever. If I were to hazard a guess as to what young people should do to avoid temptation, it would be to get a job and work at it so hard that temptation would not exist for them."

Besides, very many young people know nothing of religion or ethics, and are as frankly pagan as the Saxon youth whom Augustine saw in the forum at Rome so many centuries ago. They know little or nothing of restraint, or of their duty to others. Generally speaking, I have found in my work as a police magistrate and as a judge of the juvenile court, that Catholic children are better instructed in spiritual matters and show more resistance under the stress of temptation. Being a Protestant, my statement should be received without bias. This is probably owing to religion being taught in their schools.

One cannot leave this subject without pointing out to parents, that one of the primary causes for the downfall of girls is their lack of chaperonage. Girls should not be allowed away from home, at places of entertainment without the company of a responsible person—yes, "a duenna," if you wish to call her such. Neither should parents, under any circumstances, be satisfied with the statement that their daughter is spending the night with "a girl friend." They should be absolutely satisfied, not only to the correctness of this but as to the character of the friend. If Messrs. the Publishers would not delete it as mere redundancy, we would set this statement down a second time for some pithless, lazy-minded mothers who are not even half-way wise.

And while on the subject we venture to point out to parents the advisability of keeping the young miss who has a penchant for "joy riding," under lock and key, if need be.

Every city, and most towns, are cursed with taxi-drivers or with dissolute youths in motor cars who drive up to the pavements and offer free rides to girls and women. The majority of these men are pedlars of drugs, to say nothing of being lascivious lechers. The Registry of vital statistics in the Province of Alberta shows the profession of the fathers of the great majority of illegitimate children as that of taxi-driver. It is not unlikely that this is the case in other of the Provinces of Canada, and in the States of the Union.

A speaker at a meeting of the Trades and Labor Council in one of our Canadian cities said recently, "When I am returning from my work in the early morning hours, it is not uncommon to see young girls from fourteen years of age and upward, under the influence of liquor and drugs. They ride around in automobiles and we know they haven't the price. Why does the city council and the police allow this sort of thing to go on? If I were a police commissioner, and there was another on the board of the same mind, this condition would not exist for a minute."

Unfortunately, in Canada anyway, the police have not the authority for searching motor cars, a motor vehicle not constituting "a public place" within the meaning of the Criminal Code. Action, however, is being taken to this end, and it is plainly obvious that it is long overdue.

Awhile ago we said that America led the world in the narcotic drug traffic. This is quite true, but only during the past two years, for in 1919, before the Canadian Government recognized the necessity of taking immediate and drastic steps to remedy the condition. Canada held that direful distinction, if we will compute the population of this Dominion as thirteen times less than that of the United States.

The legitimate importations in narcotics for 1920 were reduced, in some instances, from 75% to 25% as against the previous year. This was due in a large measure to the establishing of the licensing system.

But, in spite of their bold and determined effort to grapple with the illicit or unlicensed traffic, and in spite of their large seizures of contraband narcotics, the Government have acknowledged that it is actually on the increase. The Department of Health says it would astound the people in this country, and the authorities in many towns and cities if the conditions as they exist were brought to light.

Indeed the unlicensed traffic has gained such a foothold in Canada that it has become most alarming. In one Western inland city with about thirty thousand of a population, the federal police found upon investigation that there were hundreds of young men and women, many of them not out of their teens, who were addicted to the drug habit.

This prairie town, which is typical of many others in the Dominion, would have indignantly denied this charge and there is no doubt the police, clergy, teachers and parents, not looking for addicting and not knowing the symptoms, would have said "Impossible! We do not know of any drug users, or not more than three or four."

Yet, before the federal police left this town they laid evidence before the local authorities which led to the conviction of nearly fifty persons, most of them pedlars.

The trouble in most cities appears to be that the police are untrained in the work, and, in some few instances, actually in league with the traffickers, thereby affording them a certain amount of indirect protection.

It is the opinion of the Government officials that this underground traffic continues to flourish in spite of the efforts which are being made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and by the provincial and municipal police by reason of the fact that there are enormous quantities of these drugs available in European countries.

In these countries, the price of narcotics, at the present time, in the open market, for legitimate purposes, is lower than before the war. The reason for this is not plainly apparent, but it is believed to be due, in some extent, to the measures which have been taken by the various countries, who are signatories to the Opium Convention, in confirming the use of narcotics to medicinal purposes.

It is also of startling significance that most of these shipments of drugs, which are finding their way into Canada through illicit channels, either originate in Germany or Japan.

For the twelve months ending March 31st, 1922, the Federal Government prosecuted, under the provisions of the Opium and Drugs Act, twenty-three doctors, eleven druggists, four veterinary surgeons, one hundred and sixty-five illicit dealers, and six hundred and thirty-four Chinamen, making a total of eight hundred and thirty-five convictions. The fines imposed amounted to $127,947.00. These figures do not include provincial and municipal convictions.

The municipal drug convictions for Vancouver totalled 858 for the year 1921, having jumped from 293 in 1918. It is expected the convictions for 1922 will pass the one thousand mark.

By comparing these figures with those of the American cities on the Pacific Coast, it will be seen that in spite of their greater population, Vancouver leads San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles. Indeed with the exception of New York, and possibly Chicago, Vancouver leads all of the way.

Commenting on these convictions, a western editor says, "Some with the aid of purchased legal skill went scot free on pettifogging technicalities. A few of them went to jail, for the most part for pitifully insufficient periods. The vast majority of them were levied for a contribution to the city treasury in the form of a fine. All of them, in due course, became free to commit the same sin against society."

While undoubtedly seaport cities, like Vancouver and Montreal, have a greater incidence than the cities like Toronto and Winnipeg, still the difference is not as much as one might expect.

The Kiwanis Club of Vancouver, in the report of its medical sub-committee, has this to say about the matter: "It is the general belief of observers that the habit of drug addiction has been steadily on the increase in most civilized countries, especially during the last ten years. Vancouver and British Columbia have been no exception and the drug habit has undoubtedly been on the increase here as in other places. There are no reliable statistics available to indicate the actual increase, but the opinions of police authorities and other reliable observers is that the number of drug addicts is gradually increasing in Vancouver.

"In 1918, the late Chief of Police McLennan, who was brutally murdered by a drug-fiend, called attention to the prevalence of the drug habit in this city which he stated was then becoming alarming. The police authorities claim that although the drug habit has been growing here, it has certainly not been growing any more rapidly than in other cities proportionately to population, but that greater prominence has been given to Vancouver on account of the publicity given to the subject in the daily press, and also on account of the great activity and success of the police department in prosecuting drug traffickers and seizing drugs."

In this contention, Vancouver is probably correct, especially when one considers the report of the federal officers concerning the prairie town to which reference has already been made.

It is generally held that breaches of the opium and liquor laws are proportionately more frequent in the cities than in the country. It is on this assumption that the special American Committee compute the numbers of their addicts, although they state that in the rural districts or smaller cities little or no attention has been given to this subject, and where decreases are reported, it is quite possible that the opinions expressed by the officials are at variance with the conditions as they actually exist.

If it could be shown that physicians, druggists, veterinarians and dentists who are responsible for a vast amount of the traffic were more honorable and less avaricious in the country districts than in the city, we might assume that New York was more deeply narcotised, proportionately, than the smaller places in Texas or Idaho, but such is not the case. The functioning of the Liquor Act in which prescriptions are freely distributed shows—in Canada anyway—that exactly the opposite condition prevails. In the Province of Ontario, which is thickly populated, for the year 1920, only 5% of the physicians wrote out their full quota of fifty prescriptions, while in Alberta where the population is less than one person to the square mile, 75% of the physicians wrote over 75 prescriptions per month.

It is well known by those who study the subject that drug runners are pushing out into the rural districts where there is comparatively little police supervision and where they can sell out their whole stock of contraband drugs to coal-miners, lumbermen, railway navvies, and even to the threshermen. It was also found that among those who took advantage of the harvest excursions from East and West to the Prairie Provinces were a number of addicts and pedlars.

In the cities too, the methods are changing, the illicit traffic being carried on in the highways by pedlars and taxi-drivers rather than in opium joints. In Vancouver, in the year 1916, there were 59 persons convicted of keeping joints; while in 1920, only 19 were so convicted, although the breaches of the Drug Act had nearly doubled.

At a meeting in March of this year, the following figures were presented to the Trades' and Labor Council of Vancouver showing the magnitude of the traffic:—"The amount of narcotic drugs legitimately sold in Canada in 1921 was valued at $182,484, including 2,416 ounces of cocaine, 5,286 ounces of morphine and 1,440 pounds of opium. Drug addicts known to Vancouver police are estimated at three thousand. The amount of drugs used per addict per day is from one to fifteen dollars' worth. If each addict used only one dollars' worth per day, then in Vancouver alone the traffic would about to $912,516 a year. The total amount sold in the Dominion per year legitimately being $182,484, the balance of drugs used by addicts in Vancouver alone would be valued at $730,032. The estimated number of addicts in Canada and the United States is two million, on the basis of one dollar per day per addict, the traffic represents on the continent about $672,000,000 annually."

As the minimum for a drug user has been set at $3 per day and in some instances run up to a maximum of $30, it can be seen that this estimate presented at Vancouver may at least be trebled, and still only represent the lowest possible figures.

Because they are more keenly awake to the menace, the city of Vancouver, in 1921 circularized one hundred cities and towns in Canada asking these to join with them in a drug war against the drug traffic, and proposing that the Dominion Government be requested to amend the penalty clause in the Opium and Drugs Act, so that a person guilty of an offence under the Act might be liable, on indictment, to imprisonment for seven years, or if convicted upon a summary proceeding, to a fine of from $200.00 to $1,000.00, or to imprisonment for eighteen months, or to both fine and imprisonment.

As a result of this campaign, a very distinct tightening was made in the Act, although much better results would have been accomplished had it not been for the opposition of some few of the medical doctors who were members of the legislature.

Apart from this opposition, one of the greatest difficulties arises from the profits that accrue from the traffic. In Canada, many persons prominent in "the learned professions," in social and business circles, police officials, chemists and even newspaper men are engaged in this nefarious trade, the profits ranging all the way from one hundred to ten thousand per cent.

These are like the persons of whom Paulding tells us, in that they have learned professions which they do not practise, and practise many things which they have not learned from their professions.

One does not go far in fighting this traffic until one meets with determined opposition, treachery, threats, defamation and even with serious menace from these tar-blood parasites who live basely upon the proceeds of crime, who grow fat upon the wages of roguery. In Mohammedan countries, they call such men "God's adversaries."

Because they fear lest the populace learn of their villainous enormities, these men stop at nothing to prevent publicity. One of their methods has been described by the committee on narcotic drugs of the American Medical Association in the following lines:—

"Public opinion regarding the vice of drug addiction has been deliberately and consistently corrupted through propaganda in both the medical and lay press. Cleverly devised appeals to that universal human instinct whereby the emotions are stirred by abhorrence of human suffering in any form, or by whatever may appear like persecution of helpless human beings, lurid portrayals of 'horrible sufferings inflicted' on addicts through being deprived of the drugs; adroit misrepresentation of fact; plausible reiteration of certain pseudo-scientific fallacies designed to confuse the unscientific mind are brought to bear on an unsuspecting public to encourage it to feel pity for the miserable 'victims of persecution' by the authorities, who would deprive the wretches of even the drug they crave.

"The 'righteous' narcotic practitioner claiming that he alone understands their plight and can relieve them, standing ready as a ministering angel of mercy to prescribe for their infirmity, begs the right and privilege of placing in their hands for self-administration the drug that has debased them and brought them in his power—for as much money as he can squeeze out of them."

Sometimes the propaganda takes the form of an editorial in defence of "public morals." People should not hear of these things at all, they argue, leaving us to deduce that the community is not shocked by the evil itself but only when someone tells of it.

Frank Crane writing of such people defines them as those "whose morality consists in crying 'naughty! naughty!' when someone uncovers the septic germs of a national sewer," and declares they clamor that the lid be clapped on again, for to them typhus is preferable to a bad smell.

Continuing he says, "Pull down the dirty curtain there in front of the opium den. Tear down the heavy door that shuts out the daylight, throw open the dark blinds, and what is there to see? Dirt, disorder, dismal loneliness pretending to be gay. Elderly women trying to look young, miserable young women trying to look happy, sodden men trying to look sober.

"The lure of vice? Why, it isn't vice that allures! It is the mystery we make of it that does the mischief."

One is also amazed to find opposition from persons whom one would never suspect of fostering the trade. This opposition is usually under cover, and arises from the fact that they are endeavoring to induce the public to believe that the spread of deleterious drugs is the result of prohibitory liquor laws, thereby gaining public support for a return to the old system.

During the year 1920, the Federal Government in an effort to stamp out the illicit traffic in narcotics, seized, through their Police and Customs' authorities, drugs to the value of approximately half a million dollars.

Large shipments of habit-forming drugs have been intercepted in the post offices. Parcels sent through the mails from England to Canada were found to contain morphine or cocaine, although the declarations on the outside wrappers gave the contents of the packages as clothing, pudding or confectionery.

These drugs are also commonly mailed in magazines, the pages of which have been cut out and envelopes containing morphine and cocaine inserted in the spaces.

The Government authorities have also taken large shipments of narcotics from coal bunkers, state-rooms, and even the water-tanks of incoming vessels. In some instances, they have been concealed with the connivance of the ship's crew, and it was only through the fact that the police have foreign connections that the Government was able to know of these shipments in advance and to, therefore, be on the look out for them.

In one instance, a man stepped off the boat at the port of entry with $50,000 worth of drugs in two suitcases, and was promptly relieved of the same by a Government official.

One another occasion last year, opium valued at more than $3,000 was seized and five Oriental members of the crew of the steamer Empress of Russia were arrested through the activity of the federal customs' officers.

These officers also instituted a vigorous campaign to locate the "higher ups" who are being held responsible for laxity in allowing drugs to be brought ashore from the Empress of Asia, and who, accordingly, were given an opportunity to tender their resignation.

In order to prevent apparently harmless fishing crafts from picking up drugs thrown overboard in water-tight packages from the Empress Steamship line, seaplanes have accompanied the vessels from Victoria to Vancouver, a customs officer accompanying the pilot.

One of these water-tight packages which had been dropped by confederates from a vessel, drifted upon the beach recently.

Another shipment of drugs labelled under the innocent name of quinine sulphate, was intercepted by the customs authorities and found to be morphine. The shipment was invoiced at approximately $15,000, but would have netted the importer a profit of $100,000 to $150,000, had he been successful in getting the drugs into Canada.

The Government officials also found that a shipment of statuettes which arrived at the Port of Quebec, were filled with morphine. These statuettes had been sawed in two, filled with drugs, cemented up, and covered over with color so as to make it almost impossible to detect the opening.

Lest it should be thought that travellers are wholly responsible for this illicit traffic, it is well to state here that the major portion of smuggled drugs are brought to Canada in vessels which carry freight.

Recently, there was arrested on the Pacific Coast a prominent Chinese business man who is alleged to have declared to the police that his business in drugs last year exceeded half a million dollars.

Fifty thousand dollars worth of opium, morphine and cocaine were found secreted under the verandah of an unoccupied dwelling in Vancouver. Drugs of the value of $50,000 were seized in the same city in a store, these drugs being hid in a chair and behind a false baseboard in the counter in Tom Sing's store on Pender Street.

When the police raided a tenement house on Madison Street, New York, a few months ago, "dope shiners" operating on the Canadian borders lost $200,000 worth of habit-forming drugs. Travellers' cheques to the extent of $2,000 were also found on the premises. Indeed, companies have been formed with a capitalization of a quarter of a million dollars for the purpose of carrying on this nefarious traffic between Canada and the United States. These companies have at their disposal motor cars and aeroplanes for transporting liquor and drugs.

At Vancouver, opium smugglers have steam cars which will make sixty-five miles an hour. This kind of smuggling is called "the big transfer." These cars carry 600 pounds of pressure, but most of the engines are tested up to 900 pounds. It is impossible for the police officers to either overtake or stop them.

A gentleman "close-in" on the traffic, writing recently from Vancouver says, "It is the easiest thing in the world to bring drugs into Canada across the boundary during the night, as, after midnight, the customs close down, say at Blaine and Huntingdon, fifteen miles from here, and there is nobody to check you up. The cars return before the customs open in the morning at six.

"Then there are lots of gas boats, boats travelling between here and Seattle and other points. The same applies to whiskey as well as drugs, loads of the former leaving Vancouver daily. This will give you some idea of the loopholes that exist."

Speaking of the smuggling of drugs by sea, this gentleman says further: "You will remember that we have a lot of fog in Vancouver, in fact it is so thick at times it could be cut by the proverbial knife, and some of us have reason to believe that when the Oriental liners are at dock, the drug is lowered during the night to the small boats that come alongside. No patrol boat could keep check on smuggling under these conditions, especially when there are eight or nine boats at a time in dock from the East.

"You are aware that an ounce of cocaine goes a very long way, but only occupies a small space, and careful as the Customs' searchers are, it is hard to locate it on the boats."

Mr. F. W. Cowan, who has charge of the Narcotic Division of the Health Department at Ottawa, in writing of smuggling operations says, "It is one of the most difficult tasks imaginable to apprehend the persons responsible for the distribution of these drugs throughout Canada, and it is only owing to the fact that the federal police have facilities for dealing with this matter simultaneously in many parts of the Dominion that the department is able to get at the real offenders in many cases."

A short while ago a negro in a Western Canadian city, with the typical expansive spirit of the prairies, purchased 350 suitcases in one day. The next day, a porter carried one of these on his train and left it in an empty compartment. This was found by a detective to be empty till, approaching the Border, it took on weight. When opened by the officers, morphine to the value of $3,500, with a large number of hypodermic needles, was found therein. The porter denied all knowledge of the suitcase and its contents.

Eighteen gen'lemen of color, who work no harder than the lilies of the field, were also interrogated concerning the suitcase, but without any pertinent facts being elicited.

While the Assyrians, Negroes and Greeks in Canada have become allies of the Chinese in carrying on the traffic, it is well known to the police and Government authorities that many Anglo-Saxons, men prominent in social and business circles, as well as lawyers, physicians and druggists have also become engaged in the illicit sale, because of the enormous profits accruing therefrom. These profits range all the way from one hundred to ten thousand per cent. Carlyle seems to have been accurate when he said, "Civilization is only a crust beneath which the savage nature of man burns with an infernal fire."

It is the habit of these pedlars to playfully shake some "snow"—that is to say a combination of cocaine and powdered borax—on the back of the hand of their friends and suggest that they sniff it up the nostrils. The friend is immediately stimulated, and if tired, loses his weariness and becomes mentally and physically alert. This is why the powder is sometimes described as "happy dust." The interest and curiosity of the recipients are aroused and if they enquire where they can get it, they are offered a package for a dollar. Presently, the new addicts pass on the discovery to their particular friends, with the information as to where the drug can be obtained.

It was found in a New York clinic last year that, out of the 3,000 persons who were treated for the habit, 429 attributed their addiction to illness; 351 to curiosity, pleasure or trouble; and 2,482 from association with friends as above described.

That similar conditions prevail in Canada is shown by the following quotation from a pamphlet issued by the Children's Aid Society of the City of Montreal: "The cocaine habit must be stamped out in Canada. It is under-mining our boyhood, and cutting away the moral fibre of our girls. It is turning our young people into criminals and imbeciles. Older people falling victim to it, neglect all that life has held sweet to them in order that they may follow the trail of the scintillating powder. Fiends in human guise buy cocaine from certain quarters; it is then split into small quantities, wrapped in brown paper, each little package being sold for twenty-five cents.

"A dollar's worth of cocaine makes over one hundred such packages. The profit is therefore over two hundred and forty per cent. The sales are certain. The first samples are distributed to children free. The sample creates a demand and the children come again. It is refused unless they bind themselves to absolute secrecy. A few doses and the habit has grown. The children must have their dope. All moral sense is lost and in a few months our boys and girls are ruined."

A probation officer of the Children's Aid Society in one of our large cities has this to say of the subject: "So great has this evil become that one constable has on his book one hundred and forty cases in one district. I, personally, know at least fifty cases, all children, between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Little boys of eleven and fourteen have been caught peddling cocaine in houses of ill-fame.

"The physical aspect I can but liken to consumption. The deadly work of the drug is done before either the victim or the relatives perceive it. It is usually taken in powdered form and snuffed up the nostrils. The result, particularly in young people, is that the bones of the nose decay and they are subject to hemorrhages. It is the most diabolical of all drugs on this account, and for this reason, I am told by a physician, it directly attacks the lining of the nose and brain. The victim becomes emaciated, extremely irritable, nervous, suspicious, fearful of noise and darkness, depressed, without ambition and bad tempered to the extent of viciousness. Boys and girls lose all sense of moral responsibility, affection and respect for their parents, their one thought being to get the dope and be with their friends.

"So degenerate do they become that the public parks, roadside or shed, is the same to them as a home. I know boys and girls, none of them over fifteen, all brought up of respectable parents and in good homes, who spent nights in sheds scarcely fit for a dog, and without food or change of clothing."

In both the Police and Juvenile Courts many young persons under eighteen are found to be suffering from the drug habit, and one, known to myself became violently insane. Many of these juveniles are brought for crime of some kind or other, and are found to be habituated to the use of deleterious drugs. Some of these have belonged to prominent families, but in all the cases their names are kept out of the papers in order that the children may have a chance to be restored to normality without the handicap of a bad reputation.

If these are well-advanced in addiction, we have no option but to send them to jail, there being no other place of detention where they may be kept away from the drug.

The Department of Health at Ottawa claim to have absolute control of the legitimate trade in narcotic drugs but state that if the illicit traffic is to be stamped out, the system of inspection of incoming steamers will have to be considerably improved, and the staff detailed to do the work very considerably increased.

They also claim that the officers so detailed should receive special training in this work, as contrabandists are adepts in devising ways and means of securing entry for their goods. "While it is true," writes the officer in charge of the Opium and Drug Branch, "that enormous quantities of these drugs have been seized during the past year, there is no doubt that large supplies manage to find their way into the country without being intercepted by the authorities. At the present time, there is available in Europe a very large stock of narcotics, and the North American continent in particular is being flooded with large shipments."

Drugs smuggled into Canada are seized by the Department of Customs and Inland Revenue and where the actual importer is found, he is prosecuted. The maximum penalty, however, is only two hundred dollars.

Mr. A. C. Jensen, Superintendent of Police for the City of Minneapolis points out to us that as the legitimate traffic in narcotics is curtailed there will be a greater inducement to smuggle—that the law of demand and supply becomes operative—and that the burden falls upon the American and Canadian Governments in excluding these narcotics from this continent.

Governments, however, declare that they are unable to exclude them, and there is no reason to question either their efficiency of their bona fides. If therefore drugs cannot be excluded, the traffic can only be dealt with when apprehensions are made for selling or having in possession. This being the case, the courts should be empowered to take very drastic action in dealing with offenders, and Governments should strictly see to it that no judge, magistrate or police officer slacks or becomes "easy" on his job.

That the effect of smuggled narcotics has a bad effect on other countries than America is shown by an article in the public press stating that the inhabitants of the Northern Provinces of China had become discouraged in their attempt to prohibit the growing of the poppy because of the tremendous amount of opium and morphine which was being smuggled in. For this reason they were again openly encouraging the people to grow the poppy, the revenue from which could be used for the upkeep of their armies.

If this report be correct, it means that still larger supplies of opium will be available and will ultimately find its way to all corners of the globe.

For the maintenance of smuggling, secrecy is the first consideration. When, therefore, the customs official or the police officer, called a "'tec," comes to match his wits against the contrabandist, he thinks so hard that he almost bursts a blood vessel. In return for his pains, the public call him a "spotter" and other ugly names.

Ah well! someone has defined the gentleman as a person who give more to society than he gets from it.

The smuggler brings liquor and drugs across the border line, between Canada and the United States in milk cans which have false bottoms, doubtless humming to himself, "If I had a cow and she gave sweet milk."

Others bring in cocaine fastened to their bodies while apparently resting quietly in their Pullman berth.

Or opium may be imported illegally in sacks of rice, those containing the tins being especially marked for the purchaser.

Steel rods which appear to be solid are found to have been made hollow and filled with drugs. Even a tinned pineapple has been found to contain a bottle of cocaine in its cored centre, the cork of the bottle being carefully waxed and the top of the core being re-inserted.

But it is over the sides and gangways of ships that this confederacy of villains, the smugglers, do their cleverest work. To follow their devices, the drug squad need to be skilled in the stalker's art, and no loiterers at their labor.

It is claimed that every liner docking in Pacific ports carries as high as fifty thousand dollars worth of dope much of which is thrown overboard in cans attached to lighted buoys.

One man we know of personally was offered fifty thousand dollars to build and operate a sea-going gasoline launch to pick up this opium flotsam.

It is stated that fast launches, with the acme of audacity, steal up to the seaward side of a liner and get a cargo of contraband drugs before the patrolmen in the row boats can stop them. This would seem to be a good place for the patrolmen to take from their hips that rotary clump of steel barrel which has been defined by Victor Hugo as an instrument which comprises in itself not only a question and an answer, but the rejoinder too. Nevertheless, thousands of dollars worth of drugs escape the secret service men and are landed across the gangplank every time a ship from the Orient is in dock.

The co-operation of the air board in supplying aeroplanes to trail the route of the Pacific steamers in entering port is being arranged for. These, however, will probably be required as air patrols for it is asserted that seaplanes have been operating between Victoria and Seattle carrying both narcotics and intoxicating liquors.

When the ocean liner arrives in port from the Orient, men of erect and watchful mind are stationed at every gangplank, and surveillance is kept over every ship at night. Suspicious characters are searched. Members of the crew making frequent trips ashore, or seen in conversation with strangers are classed among these characters.

Coasting vessels are also used for rum-running and smuggling narcotics. It is said many of these anchor just outside the limits of customs jurisdiction and send the cargo ashore in small boats. Government officials have a proposal under discussion for declaring rum-running vessels to be pirates, through negotiations with foreign nations, looking to the cancellation of the registry of such ships.

When the smuggler gets his stuff ashore, he may sell it to the ring, the pedlars, or to addicts. The problem is "to connect" with his patrons without being observed, for the members of the Drug Squad are so illogical, besides they hold their job by their long noses and thin shoulders that can get through a six-inch opening in any door.

Then, sometimes, their slippery souled acquaintances steal from the smugglers. One man brought in thirty-six tins of Hong Kong opium worth seventy-two dollars a tin. He was arrested with one can in his possession and while in jail his friend "lifted" the other thirty-five. The friend got frightened though, and ultimately word was sent to me that on the payment of one hundred dollars, the câche would be handed over to the court. The deal was not made—not even a "bonus" being offered—but shortly afterwards eleven cans of Hong Kong opium, believed to be part of this consignment, were taken by the police from behind the pictures in a Chinese joint.

Sometimes, the smuggler, especially if he be a white man, swindles the Chinese pedlars knowing the latter cannot get redress. Such a case is told as having occurred in Calgary. The police were tipped off that thirty thousand dollars' worth of opium was scheduled to arrive on a certain train and would be found in two trunks. These trunks were billed to some local Chinamen.

When the trunks were opened, the police found opium in the top tins and cement in the others. Some British Columbia Chinamen who had been deceived by the same ruse and who apparently were not lacking in finesse, gave the tip in order that the police might catch the shippers. This seems a good place to point out the strange physical peculiarity of dealers in illicit drugs—that is to say, each and all have two heads and no heart.

Pedlars are much more easily caught with "the stuff" than smugglers, being generally exposed to the police by the addicts. For this reason pedlars, of late, have been demanding a big cut in the profits from the higher-ups.

Such a case occurred recently in New York, where a mutinous mob of addicts surrounded the motor car of a pedlar on his itinerating tour and struck on his impossibly high prices. They succeeded effectually in putting the pedlar's pot off the boil, and in bringing him within the notice of the peace officers. It is always serious when an addict strips himself of scruples and refuses to be a good fellow.

One girl told me how she got an ounce of cocaine from a Russian pedlar to sell on commission; used it all herself and paid him nothing.

"Was he angry, Junita?" I asked.

"Magistrate," she replied, "Russians are always angry."

Most pedlars are peripatetic. They have no fixed place of abode but are of themselves walking opium joints, although comparatively few are addicts. If a Chinese coolie wishes to become a millionaire, he never so much as samples his noxious wares. Indeed, in making up "decks" of cocaine for the trade, he takes care to stuff his nostrils with cotton-batting so that he may not inhale a particle of the drug.

He may carry the decks in the hem of his overcoat; in a specially constructed denim vest with little pockets; in a cigarette case, or just in his hand. When, however, a well-trained detective nabs a pedlar or addict, he grasps the man by the wrist and makes him open his hands to show what is in them. Then the detective puts on handcuffs. Unless he does this, the pedlar or addict swallows "the evidence," in which event there is no exhibit "A" to place before the magistrate.

Where a pedlar has worked up a trade, on his rounds, he may stand on a corner and exchange the "M" or "C" for cash, but, usually, he takes the money on the out-trail and delivers the goods on the back-trail, or he may tell the customers where their supply is câched or planted. Sometimes, a child will make delivery for the pedlars, thus evading the police. The pedlar's route is not unlike the trap-line of the fur-hunter in our northern hinterlands, and yields an equally sure return in pelts and profits.

If an addict on the route, becomes "a dead pigeon"—that is to say, if he has no money—and presumes to beg drugs on credit, the pedlar will declare he hasn't any. When an addict is persistent, a pedlar has been known to "plant" a deck on him and then "squeal" to the police. In this way, the dead pigeon ceases to be a nuisance. To coax a wary pedlar, the addict has only to "flash a roll" for a supply of "M" or "C".

On the other hand, an addict scorned, may perform a like "squeal" on the pedlar to his own satisfaction as well as to that of the police squad.

If an addict changes dealers, he may also bring the wrath of his pedlar on him and be the victim of "a plant."

"Now, magistrate," quoth an irritated addict one day, "it is a beautiful state of affairs when a Chinaman can lower a white man to the gutter and then use the police force to put him in jail."

Of course, in pinching at the misdemeanor of the pedlar and the misapprehension of the police, he entirely overlooks his own responsibility in the affair, but drug slaves who must raise from three to thirty dollars a day, without a job or bank account, have neither the time nor concern to probe questions over-deeply.

In one city, it was learned that a certain pedlar—a kind of double serpent—thinking to make himself solid with the plain-clothes men, had planted cocaine on a victim by placing it inside the sweatband of the man's hat while he sat at dinner, but with rare exception in Canada, the peace officer's work is protective, as well as preventive, or punitive, so that this evil act not only failed but recoiled on its promoter. The old idea that the police are a menace waiting to spring upon the innocent and unwary and hale them off to prison is dying out. The officer is no longer merely a symbol of authority, but stands for a symbol of human service.

It is true, alas! that some police officers have been known to tolerate a pedlar who informs on other runners for protection, or maybe he informs on the addicts who patronize his rivals instead of himself. In this way, the pedlar becomes a master-criminal.

This renegade first teaches men the use of habit-forming drugs, and then lives on them. Finally, he betrays them. This leprosy of soul would be only paralleled by the undertaker who might kill a man to bury him.

Once, I discussed this with an addict who had, himself been a peace officer, and who was now making a desperate effort to lift himself out of the drug pit.

"I do not feel so badly about this protection of the traffic," he remarked, "as I do about the tolerance of the traffic—the awful acquiesance in it by the police.

"They conclude the addict is beyond redemption and say, 'What is the use of putting one fellow in jail for selling when the addict will get it some place else?'

"They forget that the addict is a criminal. Sell him one grain of morphine, and to get another grain he will knock a man down. Dope pedlars are the active agents of the devil. Worse than that, the devil tempts a man by something born in him, but the pedlar creates the thing."

It is alleged that one such pedlar had nineteen convictions against him without having served a term in jail. Then, one fine day, a magistrate who had been fighting overseas came home and surprised this person by awarding him a penalty of six months. Just so! Just so! Blessed accidents happen sometimes.

Be it said, however, that this tolerance of a pedlar by the police for the use he affords them, is exceptional and must not be considered as at all general. Here is the trouble: the police, instead of being backed by the public in the enforcement of the law, are more frequently criticized or opposed in the same.

On my files is a letter from the Department of Health at Ottawa speaking of this very thing. Please give me leave to quote it, in order that we may lay it to the heart.

"Unless the people of every municipality are prepared to demand strict enforcement of these laws and see to it that the police officers who are charged with this very difficult task are backed up at all times, we cannot hope to stamp out this very great evil in Canada, no matter how ready or willing the police of our various towns and cities may be to accomplish these ends."

Many volumes might be written on the devious ways of smugglers and pedlars, but one cannot leave the subject without expressing the opinion that an extra heavy penalty should be awarded for the administration of drugs by a drug addict—that is to the fellow who starts another fellow.

A drug fiend starts an amateur to get money to buy his own drugs, or because he has a supply to sell the amateur. "The man who started me" said one woman, awhile ago, "started fifty others."

A pedlar in this Dominion boasts that he came here thirty years ago and has taught two thousand people how to smoke opium. In his reckonings, a thousand here or there, probably does not matter, for drug fiends love to tell lies, but it is known for a certainty that he has taught a vast number, and that he boasts how his graduates are the best "cooks" of opium in the Dominion.

There are international, national and municipal rings, and rings within rings.

A drug ring does not differ materially from an insurance company, except that it is not incorporated. It has its headquarters, president, director, and agents. It gives to its agents commissions, bonuses, as well as protection against accidents such as bail and fines in the courts.

It has "prospects," and deliveries, but the policies it issues are for death, and not on the endowment plan. There are no beneficiaries except the Ring itself.

Rings started in a small way some years ago but have been steadily increasing their business, until the profits now accruing are the most prodigious ever earned by any commercial enterprise.

The Rings are looking for new worlds to conquer, and for this reason "the underworld" has gradually encroached upon and laid siege to the upper classes, until these are threatened with dissolution.

The Drug Ring looks with covetous eyes upon the wealth of society and instead of stealing a lady's diamonds has only to invite her to a "snow party," give her a few sniffs of cocaine, and before a great while the Ring has her jewels in its coffers. The same process is applied to suit "the prospect" with both sexes and in all classes.

The Ring has its boosters, and recruiters who are paid either by salary or on commission—sometimes by both. A girl or young man of the laboring class can hardly serve in a café without being approached as a possible agent for the traffic although they may not recognize the contract as such. In banks, stores, offices, universities, high schools, military barracks, hospitals, and musical colleges the utterly evil traffic is being plied by the Ring through some of its salesmen.

The profits of the Ring are becoming larger and ever larger. In one bon-fire in New York in February of this year, fifteen policemen destroyed $3,500,000 of illicit drugs and pipes, and probably then without seeming to have had any effect upon the business.

The Ring or syndicate has wide ramifications and is no longer content with the prospects afforded by the dance-halls, cabarets, theatres, and other places of public assemblage but is directly attacking the homes—"hand-picking" their people, so to say. Narcotics are delivered daily to the west-end residences of almost every town and city like milk or bread. In some districts it is delivered by white persons, or again, it is carried in a laundry bag by a Chinaman who steps in and cooks the opium for Madam, the mistress, if she feels indisposed to prepare it herself.

Of course, the Chinaman or the white man who delivers is only the servant of the Ring, the officials of which are usually designated as "the higher-ups."

Any one who starts out to seriously enforce the law against the Ring finds he is combating large financial interests and that these are in the hands of dangerous and unscrupulous persons.

It means if you are getting anywhere with law enforcement, that your character is assailed and even your life threatened. The fighter needs to bind upon his arm the motto of a celebrated Frenchman, "To dare, again to dare, and always to dare."

Resolutions, however well framed, mean nothing in this fight which is going to be a fight to the finish. Unless the forces of civilization strangle the Rings—choke them to death, the Rings are going to choke civilization.

Does this sound hysterical or immoderate? Then listen to the words of Dr. Erwin C. Ruth, head of the Narcotic Division of the International Revenue Department of Boston who has during the present year made an amazing exposure of the illicit drug traffic which he says is costing the people of America many million dollars a year and wrecking hundreds of thousands of human lives.

In an interview given to the Montreal Star, Dr. Ruth made many startling allegations and gave figures showing that the people of this continent are being drugged to death.

Speaking of the United States, he said, "During the last fiscal year, the bureau of Internal Revenue collected $1,170,921 in taxes from the legalized trade in narcotic drugs. The tax on narcotics is very small, the stamp tax being only one cent an ounce."

Dr. Ruth declares that "more than ten times the licensed imports are smuggled in for illicit sale. … Foreign countries are finding us an easy prey for their drug traffic. War conditions left many foreign firms ruined financially and they are recuperating their losses in the narcotic drug traffic. … This country is able to pay high prices, while the illicit trade with China is not so lucrative as it used to be."

In discussing the drug Ring of Toronto, Ontario, Frank Mack said recently, "Somewhere in Chinatown, there is a group which controls the drug traffic in this city. Just who these men are, and where they live is a secret carefully guarded. Their names are never mentioned; not even in the byways of Chinatown itself. One and all, they are know by the cryptic title of 'The Ring.'

"The operations of the Ring are as much of a mystery as are the identities of the men who control it. No one knows where its headquarters are, no one knows when it meets, nor how often … This Ring not only controls virtually the drug traffic of the city, but has established certain retail centres, whereby morphine cocaine, and heroin are sold to pedlars for distribution to addicts, and that when one of the Ring's agents is caught by the police and heavily fined in court for selling drugs, the Ring invariably comes to his aid and pays the fine out of its own coffers … Not alone are men the agents of the Ring but women also are in its employ. A month or so ago, the police claim that they secured a woman agent. She was arrested on a charge of illegally selling drugs, and although she most vigorously declared her innocence, a fine of $1,000 and costs was imposed—and promptly and unconcernedly paid … In every city of any size there invariably is a ring of this nature; for there is the inevitable collection of unscrupulous men who have both the daring and brains to make huge profits out of the sale of drugs to unfortunate addicts. That they should wreck hundreds of lives in their nefarious traffic and condemn scores of victims to years to torment and poverty means nothing to them, so long as they can fatten upon the misery which they created. Wherever men value money above every human ill, there will be found the nuclei of drug rings."

The Vancouver World of January, 1922 has this to say about their particular Ring:— "Investigations made by the authorities have led them to the conclusions that the most powerful and wealthy criminal organization on the American continent has its headquarters here. Its object is the handling of drugs. Its ramifications extend as far east as Montreal and Chicago. It will undertake to sell $100,000 worth of 'dope,' or it will sell it by the 'deck,' the small package sold by the street vendor for from one to five dollars.

"It has its headquarters in Chinatown, but its army consists of men working on the docks, porters on the railroad, dining-car employees, waiters in cafés, dance halls and cabaret habitués, and other employees of these places. It even has its recruits from the professional classes. From the highest to the lowest in all strata of society in Vancouver it has spread its slimy trail. White men and yellow men and black men; men of all races and colors and creeds, and worst of all, women are in the organization."

Another article from a Vancouver paper describes the activities of the Ring as follows:—"There is a well-organized, smooth-working machine that has its regular runs into Winnipeg from here. The same ring operates an underground route into Chicago from this port. It is no secret among the denizens of Vancouver's underworld. They will tell you of a former Calgary resident who came here with $600, invested $400 in drugs, made his first run to Winnipeg, and in less than six months had clear over $50,000. And he has only worked after the arrival of each boat from the Orient to Vancouver. For the balance of the time he spends a life of luxuriousness around one of Vancouver's quietest and most exclusive hotels. He takes no chances in the actual smuggling, buying his 'stuff' wholesale from Chinatown and then running it into Winnipeg with the connivance of the sleeping-car porters.

"Should his suitcase be taken on the train, both he and the porter would deny all knowledge of it. His only risk is during that brief time he takes the suitcase out of the cloakroom where it has been deposited by a baggage transferman, and walks with it to the train, and again in Winnipeg before he hands it over to customers already waiting.

"He is pointed out as a 'Wisenheimer,' 'a wise guy' by the underworld habitués but in the hotels he is known as 'a financial man.' Quiet, well-dressed, smooth-spoken and with an engaging personality, there is nothing to suggest the law-breaker about him."

The Police and White Cross officials of Seattle, Washington, state that a drug-ring does business in their city to a trade running into six or eight million dollars a year. The above-mentioned authorities claim that the great bulk of addictive drugs come from Vancouver, and are brought down by automobile, launch, train and steamer. One of the biggest "hang-outs" is said to be a private house in the fine residential section known as Shaughnessy Heights, this being the headquarters for the export trade to Seattle. It is estimated that there are upwards of ten thousand addicts in Seattle. A correspondent writing from Seattle says, "This is a trade in bodies and human souls which numbers in its salesforce men who ride in limousines, ordinary looking individuals along the streets, painted demi-mondes in the cabarets, down-and-outers along the pavements-all highly trained, trained not alone to sell, but to create demand where none now exists; trained to destroy, to corrupt and to pollute."

At Montreal, Canada, there is a well-organized Ring, or syndicate, which is running all kinds of addictive drugs into the States. For the month of November, 1921, one hundred and eighty-seven persons were tried under the Opium and Drugs Act.

Writing of this matter, a high Canadian official said lately, "It should be remembered that while Montreal is about the worst city in Canada in this respect, it is owing to the geographical location, being a seaport in addition to being a terminus of nearly all Canadian and United States Railways and within thirty-five miles of the American border with the best of highways connecting it up with the large United States cities, and being the largest city in Canada, it is the national rendezvous for these large drug rings and crooks. To use a vulgar expression, "Birds of a feather flock together.' Members of the underworld from all over the United States and Canada made Montreal their Canadian headquarters for carrying on this illicit drug traffic."

That this Ring has its runners directly across Canada is evidenced by a communication received recently from Chief-Constable William Thompson of Windsor, Ontario, "There is," he says, "every evidence that there is a drug organization from the continuous endeavors to transport drugs from Montreal to border cities, and across the line to the American cities, namely Detroit, Pontiac, and other places within close range of our border. I have also had information to the effect that 'dope' crosses at our own border and is taken through to Chicago.

This statement is borne out by Sergeant A. Birthwistle of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who declares that prominent men in commercial and club life in Windsor are at the head of a Ring which is supplying drugs to pedlars. It is altogether likely that these men receive the bulk of their supplies from Montreal as suggested by Chief-Constable Thompson.

It is said that the ringleaders' names in Montreal were obtained through the death-bed confession of Mrs. William Bruce, aged 24 of that city in February of this year.

Mrs. Bruce and her friend, Dorothea Wardell, aged 21, were found unconscious on the Montreal express, near New York City, by a Pullman porter, suffering from overdoses of heroin.

The girls received emergency treatment but the Wardell girl died on the way to the Bellevue Hospital.

Mrs. Bruce recovered sufficiently to tell her story to the deputy-police commissioner in charge of the drug squad.

According to the police, Mrs. Bruce said, "I have known Dorothea Wardell for about eighteen months. She and I fell into the hands of a crowd of bootleggers and drug smugglers in New York and Montreal, who got us under their control with drugs, and used us for their own purposes. They never caught me. but Dorothea has been caught twice, once in Utica and once in Syracuse. We both carried drugs and whiskey in suitcases, between Montreal and Boston, and made much money for the men. Dorothea's man let her wear his diamonds sometimes. He is very rich."

In this statement Mrs. Bruce was found to be correct, Dorothea having been arrested in Syracuse while wearing $35,000 worth of diamonds and carrying two suitcases with drugs and whiskey.

Mrs. Bruce in her confession said further, "We both had a small supply of heroin which we carried in our hats. … It is easy to get the stuff over the border. If the inspectors would start to look in our suitcases, we would just say, 'Oh, go along sweetie; I haven't got anything in there' and the inspectors would 'mosey' along."

Despatches state that both the American and Canadian Police believe these girls to have been murdered—drugged to death by smugglers.

One might write at length, concerning the great and powerful rings on the American continent, but it will probably be more interesting at this juncture to turn our eyes to look at some in the Orient.

The International Anti-Opium Association of Pekin has recently informed the Reuter's Agency, that Rings have been formed throughout China for the sale of morphine, and that this drug undoubtedly threatens to envelope China with a more destructive force than opium.

The despatch which appears in a Tientsin paper sent to Canada, has this to say: "In Mukden and South Manchuria generally, the sale of morphia is principally in the hands of Japanese druggists and pedlars. The latter are initiating the villages in large numbers in the use of drugs. As drugs are cheaper than opium, they are preferred. Jehol opium is sold at two dollars per ounce for the cheaper quality, and four dollars for the better quality. This low cost is attributed to the competition of opium brought in by gangs of smugglers from Siberia, and North Manchuria."

Describing the personnel of these cosmopolitan traffickers, and their methods, the Chinese paper says:—"This gang is said to consist of Russians, Japanese, Chinese, Turks, Greeks, Caucasians and nondescripts of other nationalities to the number of about one thousand. They are said to have in their pay minor customs officials all along the line of traffic so rarely one of them is arrested … The attention of the Government should be concentrated in the first instance in driving the gang mentioned out of business … Vast sums of money are being made daily by these most disreputable elements. Yet the work goes on. Undoubtedly, a percentage of their profits goes into Chinese hands, and for this pittance these Chinese are allowing their nation to be ruined."

There is no doubt that the average Anglo-Saxon is filled with disgust and anger in reading how the Chinese betray their nation for so unholy an aggrandisement. We naturally classify these traitors as men of fishy blood who might easily be guilty of any enormity no matter how villainous. We execrate them, and take upon ourselves a kind of "depart-ye-cursed" attitude.

But, hark you, Saxons of America, having done so, let us stay awhile and ask to what extent if any, the Rings on this continent are receiving protection in their evil traffic as a price for the Oriental vote in all or any elections.

One hates to raise even a wondering cogitation on the matter but in view of the fact that it is discussed by well-instructed officers, we may make bold to lay the matter before the public for their consideration.

Among the Chinese in Canada and the United States, there are two rival societies, or tongs, the Nationalist and the Masons, the former being probably the more influential.

These may be pitted the one against the other, in which event they can be depended to betray each other, also the white folk who grant them protection. When one hears what these say about the "Melican Man" and his ways as compared or approximating with their own, one may properly recall that observation made by Victor Hugo that the worm has the same mode in gliding along as the serpent and the same manner of raising its head.

This protection by certain politicians may be implied rather than directly arranged but, nevertheless, it is sometimes sufficiently real for the political boss to keep his câche of drugs intact and to escape any serious prosecution. How these things happen we cannot know exactly. Being as yet uninstructed in politics, it is not reasonable to suppose that a mere woman could know. All a woman can do is to ponder within herself whether the real bogey man on this continent is the one who causes adults to be sleepy because of the gold dust he flings in their eyes.

Still, it is a good thing to have the civic, provincial, state, or federal police forces all working at once to eliminate the traffic. In this way, the protected man, or the favorite stool-pigeon of one force, is apt to get "pinched" by the officers of another. When this occurs, there is usually an outcry in police circles of "a lack of co-ordination," which outcry often finds wide sympathy with the press, and with those of the public who are fighting the traffic.

The public need not, however, waste any tears over this matter, and they would not if they knew the story.

It is true that a good officer may thereby lose the moiety of a fine in a case he has worked up, but worse tragedies than this have occurred.

Besides, officers of different forces have even been known to split the moiety when it worked out to their advantage, and there was no great harm in this either.

It is not rational to expect the "boys in blue" to carry crêpe on their spears all the time. Indeed, it isn't!

The Christianized Chinese in Canada and the States are also anxious to clear up crime or misbehaviours among their compatriots, and so are proceeding to make these conform to the provisions of the white man's laws.

Fussy folk, and self-opinionated ones, can be found who claim there is no such thing as a Christianized Chinaman, and that his profession is one of entire hypocrisy, just as though Jehovah's arm were shortened and His ear heavy when the suppliants' color was just a shade deeper than their own.

Knowing many men from the Flowery Kingdom who exhibit all the traits of Christian gentlemen, we are prepared to take them as such until the contrary is proven. What Sa'di, the Persian, said of the morals of the dervishes is here applicable: "In his outward behaviour I see nothing to blame, and with the secrets of his heart I claim no acquaintance."

We believe that the letter here following was written by a Chinaman who desires to be a good citizen, and who has the same desires for his compatriots. At any rate, he speaks to the point and is no trembler. This was received by us a few months ago, and is interesting as showing the ideals and expressions of a naturalized Oriental:—

"Magistrate Murphy,
   The Police Court,
      Edmonton, Alberta.

Dear Magistrate:—

I have information that the China Town of this City, has lots of gambling houses and opium smokers. Things around here are so quiet just now, and hard times coming soon. I do not like the people around here getting starving, because I found out lots of poor labourers lost all their money for play the Chinese gamble which is called *'fine tin' [*fan-tan] and waste up their good money for smoking opiums and so let their families, such as their father, mother, sisters, and young brothers starving at China.

And I am also afraid that the peoples around here spoil their own condition, and spoil all business in this city too, because the peoples lost their money, but they must betting lazy, then they must go stealing anythings for their lives around this town, and getting all kinds of troubles here.

I am now wish you to stop all the China gambles houses at once, and would like to show you all the gambling houses address to arrest them.

If you spent a month time for the gambling houses, I believe the all gambling houses be stop so all the gamblers have to work for their own foods and every body have take care their families. Then I say 'Amen'.

I think you would be glad to do this for me. If you want any help let me know soon.

Yours sincerely,
………
(Chinaman)

It came about this year in Vancouver that the Chinese merchants and leading members of the colony, with the support of the Chinese consulate, joined in the citizens' campaign to clean up Chinatown both morally and physically.

Realizing that their actions might lead to reprisals and to financial loss—that "the ungodly might bend their bow"—they still decided to wage war on those elements which had brought disrepute and opprobium upon all Chinamen in the Province of British Columbia.

The advantages of such co-operation with the citizens has been set forth in an article in a Western daily paper by a reported with a well-oiled mind. "The members of the Colony" he says, "have the inside information. They know where the drugs are coming from; who is getting them into Vancouver; the underground methods by which they are being brought in; who has the financial interest in the drug ring; the methods of distribution in this and other cities; all the ramifications of the drug traffic are known to them. And they will tell all they know to the proper authorities. It is to be open warfare and they will do all in their power to combat the drug-ring."

It is claimed that in some of the anti-narcotic campaigns, men who have financial interest in the Ring are among the most active workers, whether these are joining for sinister purposes, or merely to divert suspicion from themselves, it would be difficult to say. Probably their purpose includes both, but, be this as it may, it was a clever move to secure the co-operation of the reputable members of the Oriental Colony as allies in this campaign.

In Vancouver and Victoria during the present year, mass meetings have been held and committees appointed to take active steps in the organization of every public service body in Canada for a fight against the activities of the Ring. The local organizations then proceeded to get in touch with all kindred branches in other cities in the Dominion, emphasizing the need of their taking a definite stand on the question.

Some of the organizations back of the movement in the cities are the Board of Trade, Ratepayers' Association, Women's Institutes, Women's Press Club, War Heroes' Association, Victorian Order of Nurses, Kiwanis, Rotary, Kwannon and Gyro Clubs, Parent-teachers' Association, Woman's New Era, and the One Hundred Per Cent. Clubs, the Women's Church Temperance Union, the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, Trades and Labor Council, University Women's Club, King's Daughters, The Maccabees, Child Welfare Association, Orangemen, American Women's Club, the Great War Veterans, the Local Council of Women, the "Y" Associations, the Medical Association, as well as the municipal and provincial authorities, and a hundred churches.

In Seattle, believing that organization is the key to success, they are also combining their forces in a drive on addictive drugs. In Seattle, they too, have a branch of the White Cross Association. This Association has done more than any other agency to combat the drug evil, and at a lesser expense. In seven months last year, one paid agent caused 275 arrests, some of the persons convicted received heavy fines and other terms of imprisonment of from one to four years. It is claimed by White Cross workers that police departments cannot appropriate the sums required for the detection of pedlars in that most of the police officials are known to the drug runners, and hence large sums must be spent to secure arrests.

The White Cross are agitating that the Harrison Anti-Narcotic law be so amended as to permit of sentences of from seven to twelve years. The organization declares that short terms and fines are no deterrent in that the Ring has abundant money with which to pay the fines while the pedlar has no fear of from thirty to sixty days imprisonment. Besides, he is well rewarded for his temporary incarceration in jail.

In January of this year, a Narcotic Drug Control League was formed in New York, this League comprising the most notable organizations and workers in the State. The secretary is Joseph P. Chamberlain, Columbia University, New York City.

The objects of their anti-drug League as set forth on the invitation sent out are as follows:—"To marshal representative forces against the world drug menace of drug addiction. The Narcotic Drug Control League represents the first organized movement against this evil which has reached alarming proportions and is producing a growing horde of incompetents and criminals involving even the youth of our country."

"Habit forming drugs are destroying and enslaving a steadily increasing number of our people. The toll of victims among the youth of the country is the striking development of recent years. The people do not know the facts. Our program is definite and constructive. Its success demands the aid of the churches, the judiciary, the medical profession, and public-spirited citizens representative of every class in the community. Patriotic people must unite to remove this scourge from our land and from the world."

This claim that the people do not know of the terrifying growth of the narcotic evil, was referred to recently by Dr. J. A. Drouin of the State of Vermont who said, "Most of us have been lulled to sleep by the usual so-called hospital reports, and other 'official' reports, regarding the fast disappearing drug addicts in the United States, especially after the enactment of the Harrison Narcotic Act."

In Canada, our federal officers declare that the people would be astounded if they comprehended the extent of the illicit traffic and the foothold it has gained.

That this method of organized public effort is a good one cannot be disputed. A Presbyterian clergyman, in Canada, speaking of this matter said the Drug Ring is successful in its operation because its brains are pooled and concentrated. Occidental ingenuity and Oriental craftiness are dangerously combined. Unless all the different public bodies become organized into a single fighting force, and the best brains of our camp centralized and concentrated as the directing mind, the fight will be futile. To carry on successfully the crusade, monetary backing is necessary also. It will take money to fight money.

In a previous chapter it was stated that white men of every clime and color were engaged in this traffic, and it was rumored that Japanese and German interests were chiefly responsible. As the Germans have not been trafficking in any goods with the people of this continent, for several years past, it would seem that the charge must be impossible of proof. Indeed, in communicating with the Chiefs-of-Police in the United States concerning the ravages of drug-intoxication, it was markworthy that those bearing German names were especially prompt and thorough in reply to my enquiries, and in making suggestions as to the applications of practical remedies.

It is true that the finest grade of cocaine in the world is manufactured in Germany and is known as "Mercks." Buyers claim—with what verity we cannot say—that this is now exported into Spain and shipped to this continent as "No. I Spanish." It is alleged on excellent authority that a kilo of cocaine (about two-and-a-fifth pounds) can, at the present time, be purchased in the Province of Alberta, Canada, for $18.00 or at about seventy-five cents an ounce. This seems incredible, in view of the prices paid by the addicts, but the Ring are not telling their secrets, not registering their profits, so that we have no means of exactly verifying these figures.

On the other hand, we know that there are more narcotic drugs in Europe at the present time than in pre-war days, and that the market for these is in England, the United States and Canada, among the Anglo-Saxon races.

In Germany itself, the use of narcotic drugs is "verboten," so that almost their entire traffic must be with other countries. Indeed, the same remark is practically applicable to all the European countries, a fact which is dealt with more fully elsewhere in this volume.

It is also true that while no Japanese ever becomes an addict, yet it is claimed he is the most active and dangerous of all the persons forming the Ring in that he keeps well under cover and is seldom apprehended.

We know, however, that several large seizures of contraband drugs have been made on Japanese steamers on the western coast of America. In March of this year, narcotics worth, at the wholesale price of $20,000, and a considerable quantity of Japanese whiskey were seized at Portland, on the Japanese steamer Miegyi Maru. The Japanese seamen hurled overboard a large number of sacks which were believed to have contained bottles.

The United States have made, this year, a formal protest to the Japanese Government against the smuggling of opium, morphine, heroin and other narcotics into America. Replying to this complaint, the Tokio foreign office has informed the American Government that efforts will be made to prevent illegal traffic in drugs and has requested Japanese ship owners to co-operate in the suppression of the same.

Returning to the matter of the alleged participation of German persons in this traffic, one of the authorities claiming this is Dr. Erwin C. Ruth, head of the Narcotic division of the International Revenue Department of Boston. He alleges that the opium and cocaine traffic is financed largely by interests in Germany and Great Britain, and that certain Germans have powerful corporations operating in South America, which deal in coca leaves, from which is produced cocaine.

Concerning the operations of Drug Rings in Asia especially in relation to opium, Dr. Ruth states that the opium traffic in Asia has grown to immense proportions and has become one of the greatest industries in the world, being organized with Standard Oil efficiency. In Persia, Turkey and India, immense plantations are operated by powerful interests, while great banking institutions for financing the drug traffic are well established.

Among the pedlars who are the agents of the Ring, the traffic is chiefly in the hands of Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Negroes, Russians and Italians, although the Assyrians and Greeks and running closely in the race.

It is claimed also, but with what truth we cannot say, that there is a well-defined propaganda among the aliens of color to bring about the degeneration of the white race.

Maybe, it isn't so, after all, the popular dictum which has something to do with a flag and a bulldog.

Oh! yes! it is the one which declares, "What we have we'll hold." The trouble with most bulldogs is that their heads are only developed in the region of the jaw and that any yellow terrier can hamstring them from behind.

We have no very great sympathy with the baiting of the yellow races, or with the belief that these exist only to serve the Caucasian, or to be exploited by us. Such a belief was exemplified in a film once shown at a five-cent theatre in Chicago, and was reported by Jane Addams.

In the pictures, a poor woman is surrounded by her several children, all of whom are desperately hungry, and hold out pleading hands for food. The mother sends one of the boys on the streets to beg but he steals a revolver instead, kills a Chinaman, robs him of several hundred dollars, and rushes home with the money to his mother.

The last scene portrays the woman and children on their knees in prayer thanking God for His care and timely rescue of them.

The Chinese, as a rule are a friendly people and have a fine sense of humor that puts them on an easy footing with our folk, as compared with the Hindu and others we might mention.

Ah Duck, or whatever we choose to call him, is patient, polite, and persevering. Also he inhales deeply. He has other peculiarities such as paying his debts and refraining from profanity. "You sabe?"

The population of China amounts to 426,000,000 or one-third of the human race. Yes! it was a New York citizen who, looking up from an encyclopedia exclaimed with deadly earnestness, "In this household, we shall not have more than three children seeing this book says every fourth child born in the world is a Chinaman."

Still, it behooves the people in Canada and the United States to consider the desirability of these visitors—for they are visitors—and to say whether or not we shall be "at home" to them for the future.

A visitor may be polite, patient, persevering, as above delineated, but if he carries poisoned lollypops in his pocket and feeds them to our children, it might seem wise to put him out.

It is hardly credible that the average Chinese pedlar has any definite idea in his mind of bringing about the downfall of the white race, his swaying motive being probably that of greed, but in the hands of his superiors, he may become a powerful instrument to this very end.

In discussing this subject, Major Crehan of British Columbia has pointed out that whatever their motive, the traffic almost comes with the Oriental, and that one would, therefore be justified in assuming that is was their desire to injure the bright-browed races of the world.

Naturally, the aliens are silent on the subject, but an addict who died this year in British Columbia told how he was frequently jeered at as "a white man accounted for." This man belonged to a prominent family and, in 1917, was drawing a salary of six thousand dollars a year. He fell a victim to a drug "booster" till, ultimately, he became a ragged wreck living in the noisome alleys of Chinatown, "lost to use, and name and fame."

This man used to relate how the Chinese pedlars taunted him with their superiority at being able to sell the dope without using it, and by telling him how the yellow race would rule the world. They were too wise, they urged, to attempt to win in battle but would win by wits; would strike at the white race through "dope" and when the time was ripe would command the world.

"It may sound like a fantastic dream," writes the reporter, "but this was the story he told in one of the brief periods when he was free from the drug curse, and he told it in all sincerity."

Some of the Negroes coming into Canada—and they are no fiddle-faddle fellows either—have similar ideas, and one of their greatest writers has boasted how ultimately they will control the white men.

Many of these Negroes are law-abiding and altogether estimable, but contrariwise, many are obstinately wicked persons, earning their livelihood as free-ranging pedlars of poisonous drugs. Even when deported, they make their way back to Canada carrying on their operations in a different part of the country.

Back to Table of Contents   Go to Part II, Chapters 9 to 16