The collapse of silver has been so great that whereas twenty or thirty years ago four silver dollars would purchase a sovereign, and a salary of four hundred dollars a month represented twelve hundred pounds a year, now it takes more than twelve dollars to purchase a sovereign, so that a similar salary of four hundred dollars a month represents less than four hundred pounds a year.
It is a common belief at home that fluctuations in the value of silver are not felt when purchases are confined to a silver-using country. This is quite a mistake. China is a silver-using country, yet the standard of value maintained by her four hundred million souls is neither silver nor gold but copper cash, and the ultimate cost of _everything_ of native origin is regulated by its value in cash.
A coolie's wages a few years ago may have been six thousand cash a month, and a dollar being then purchasable for say a thousand cash, you gave him six dollars a month. To-day his wages may still be six thousand cash but a dollar being now worth only five hundred cash, you are obliged to give him twelve dollars a month. Precisely the same rule applies to meat, coals, vegetables, etc.
For all imported foreign articles, such as clothes, stores, wines, etc., you must give enough in silver dollars to make up the price as reckoned at home, that is, in gold, and as you now have to give three times as many dollars for a sovereign as formerly your imported goods are three times dearer, or, in other words, the value of silver has fallen and its purchasing power is very much less than it used to be the whole world over.
For a man drawing his salary in dollars the cost of living in the Far East is more than double what it was twenty-five years ago. For those who direct big businesses the earnings of which are in silver and the expenses largely in gold, as well as for those who had already invested their fortunes in shares prior to the utter collapse of silver, the past few years have been a period of crushing losses, while the future must be fraught with grave anxiety.
In short, but few fortunes are to be made in China, while money is very easily lost, and unless a man before leaving home secures a definite position in a good business firm, in Government employ or in some profession, it would be most unwise of him to go out on the chance of finding employment after his arrival.