Even unpractised and inexpert eyes can see great room for improvement
in the management of these businesses. Here, I must admit,
the Japanese are ahead of us. Take, for instance, the Yokohama Specie Bank:
it has a paid-up capital of Yen 30,000,000 and has branches and agencies
not only in all the important towns in Japan, but also in different ports
in China, London, New York, San Francisco, Honolulu, Bombay, Calcutta
and other places. It is conducted in the latest and most approved
scientific fashion; its reports and accounts, published half-yearly,
reveal the exact state of the concern's financial position
and incidentally show that it makes enormous profits. True,
several Chinese banks of a private or official nature have been established,
and some of them have been doing a fair business, but candor compels me to say
that they are not conducted as scientifically as is the Yokohama Specie Bank,
or most American banks. Corporations and joint stock companies
are still in their infancy in China; but Chinese merchants and bankers,
profiting by the mistakes of the past, will doubtless gradually improve
their systems, so that in the future there will be less and less cause
to find fault with them.
One system which has been in vogue within the last ten or twenty years
in America, and which has lately figured much in the limelight,
is that of "Trusts". Here, again, it is only the ingenuity of Americans
which could have brought the system to such gigantic proportions
as to make it possible for it to wield an immense influence over trade,
not only in America but in other countries also.
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