If the butchers refuse to sell, they all refuse, entirely confident in each other's loyalty.

Foreign merchants who have offended the Chinese guilds by some course of action not approved by those powerful bodies, have often found to their cost that such conduct will not be tolerated for a moment, and that their only course is to withdraw, sometimes at considerable loss, from the untenable position they had taken up.

The other side of the medal is equally instructive.
Some years ago, the foreign tea-merchants at a large port, in order to curb excessive charges, decided to hoist the Chinese tea-men, or sellers of tea, with their own petard.

They organized a strict combination against the tea-men, whose tea no colleague was to buy until, by what seemed to be a natural order of events, the tea-men had been brought to their knees.

The tea-men, however, remained firm, their countenances impassive as ever.