Chinese bankers and cashiers are largely Shansi men, that is, men from the province of Shansi, where the profession of banking has become hereditary in a large number of families. They are all, or nearly all, members of the powerful organization known as the Bankers’ Guild, which has branches in every part of the Empire. The Bankers’ Guild has discovered that it is practically impossible to conduct large financial operations without honesty; and it therefore enforces honesty by means of a discipline that is as rigorous ... as that of the New York Stock Exchange.... If a Chinese banker breaks faith, violates a contract, or betrays a trust, he is expelled from his guild and the doors of banks are closed against him for all time. In the first place, therefore, the Chinese cashier is honest because honesty is a condition of his business existence. He may not be honest in other respects,--often he is not,--but he is absolutely honest in the handling of money. In the second place, he is probably the most expert man living in the rapid calculation of exchanges. The monetary system of his country is the most confused, chaotic, and complicated system in the world. There are fifteen or twenty different kinds of taels, no one of which bears a fixed relation to any other, or to any established monetary standard.... The necessity of dealing in some way with this great mass of unstable and fluctuating currency and of earning a subsistence from it has made the Chinese cashier one of the most expert of living accountants. He will solve difficult monetary problems by short cuts of mental arithmetic, and he calculates exchanges to eight points of decimals. In the third place, the Chinese cashier counts and manipulates bank bills and coins with extraordinary skill and accuracy. I have had dealings with him in many parts of the Far East, but I cannot remember ever to have seen him count a sum of money twice, and I have never caught him in an error....