This text is part of:
[218]
knowledge of the facts — the upper class of resident Chinese.
Among the small group of rich and educated Chinese living in San Francisco, Lee Wong, a merchant of high standing and approved integrity, seems to be a man more likely than any other to give true answers to plain questions.
Lee Wong happens to lie under obligation to our excellent Consul, for certain good offices in connection with his business.
He is willing to pay some portion of his debt, by giving us any information we may seek.
We therefore ask him to a conference at the Consulate.
He comes at the appointed hour, and after formal compliments we seat him in a chair, so that the majesty of Queen Victoria's face may beam into his Asiatic eyes.
“ Will you be kind enough to tell us, Lee Wong, about the Six Companies?
”
“Six Companies!
Your people make mistakes about these Companies.
We have, in fact, Five Companies, not six.
The body called by you the Sixth Company is a committee of management and arbitration, a local body, living in America, and charged with looking after business on the Pacific ”
1875.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.