As one of the precursors of the Boxer affair Chang Yen Mow got into the bad graces of the government, gave up his position and was forced to flee from Pekin and take refuge in Tientsin. Even here he was dragged out of his palace and stood up before a firing squad, and escaped with his life only through vigorous interference by his Director of Mines. Because he thought that he might save from probable confiscation a valuable coal mining property at Tongshan about eighty miles from Tientsin, he desired to transfer this property outright to Hoover's name for the protection of the foreign title. Hoover refused this, but did undertake to go to Europe on a contract with Chang to enlist the aid of the Belgian and British bondholders of the Company to protect the property. These men rescued and reorganized the Company, dispatched their own financial agents to China, and appointed Hoover chief engineer to superintend the real development of the great property. The wily old Celestial finding, after all, that China was not to be partitioned by the powers that had defended it against the Boxers, and that private property was not to be confiscated, now proposed to break his contract so eagerly made. And there seemed to be no hope that the curious course of Chinese law would ever compel him to recognize his previous agreements. But there was something in the persistent, indomitable pressure of the quiet but firm young Belgian agent, named de Wouters, who had come back with Hoover, and of the young American, which did finally compel the old Chinaman, after much trouble and delay, to live up to his contract. Years later the situation, with kaleidoscopic picturesqueness, took on another hue, and Hoover found himself defending Chang's interests from the overzealous attempts of some of the foreign owners to get more out of the mines than was their fair share. In making the original contracts it had been agreed to have a Chinese board with a Chinese chairman, as well as a foreign board. This led to much difficulty and some of the Europeans declared that the young American had been much at fault in consenting to an arrangement which left so much share in the control to the Chinese, and they repudiated this arrangement. Hoover and de Wouters had a long hard struggle in getting justice for old Chang, but just as their persistence had earlier held Chang up to his agreements for the sake of the European owners of the undertaking, so now, directed in the opposite direction, it succeeded in getting justice for Chang and his Chinese group.