Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/295

Rh pawnshops, proofs of the improvidence and small necessities of these easy-going, chance-inviting people; and while we were haggling over a veined kris-blade with the most obdurate Chinese that ever kept a pawnshop, a timid little woman stole in and offered her sarong to the arrogant, blustering old rascal. He scowled and scolded and stormed at the frightened little creature, shook out and snapped the finely patterned battek as if it were a dust-cloth, and still muttering as if making threats of blood and vengeance, made out a ticket, and threw it at her with a few silver cents. We wanted nothing more from that shop, save the head of the "uncle" on a trencher or impaled on a kris's point.

With a shameless eye to revenue only, the government has long continued to sell pawnbrokers' licenses at auction to the highest bidder, after a brief relapse from the year 1869 to 1880, when the experiment was tried of selling licenses to any one at a moderate rate. The great income from such licenses fell away so amazingly that the auctions were resumed, and the improvident natives handed over again to the merciless Chinese pawnbrokers, who charge interest even up to ninety per cent., and usually retain everything that crosses their counters. M. Emile Metzger, in a communication to the "Scottish Geographic Magazine" (vol. iv., 1888), gives fifty thousand florins a year as the annual revenue during the eleven years when the other system prevailed, which soon increased to as much as one million, sixty-five thousand florins a year when licenses were again auctioned off. Since 1903 pawnshops are under government management.