Russell & Company

Okay.

And William Huntington Russell, the scion of Russell and Company, which was the third largest opium smuggler in the world.

Number one in America.

Okay.

And Teddy was president.

And see, the Roosevelts were heavily involved with the drug trade because they owned ships and were ship captains.

And then actually, William Delano, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather, was the chief factor for Russell and Company in Canton for 20 years.

Matter of fact, he was there, came back, lost all his money in a panic, and went back and made another fortune.

And one of

the things that they did, and again, it boils around drugs, Okay, because William Huntington Russell was the scion of Russell & Company, and they were the third largest opium smuggling concern in the world, the largest in the United States.

And, well, let's talk about opium just for a little bit.

The British East India Company was growing opium in China and sending it over, I mean, excuse me, growing it in India and sending it to China.

We won't ship it anymore.

We'll just grow it.

And so what that meant was there needed to be shipping companies, right? And so your number one was Jardine Matheson, okay, which is now Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, okay? Number two was Denton Company, and number three was Russell & Company.

And during the first opium war, the Americans didn't fight, just the British and the French and the Dutch.

"I want you with me," said the merchant, "partly because it will be more homelike for you than a hotel, and partly because I shall have a better chance to instruct you in the business which you are to transact for me in London." Guy learned that Mr.

Saunders was a special partner in the London firm of Russell and Company and had constant transactions with them.

A part of Guy's instructions related to business to be done with them.

He had thought that this would be all, but he was mistaken.

Well, New York importers, even though they were wealthy, but they couldn't get tea directly from China, they had to commission some US houses in China We call them commission houses.

They were just the agents, the middlemen between the importers and Chinese suppliers, like Russell and Company, like Augustan Herd and Company, Oliphant and Company.

All of these were very important commission houses to US importers to get tea.

Well, these Americans, they were stationed in China.

Technological innovation, transportation revolution, trans-Pacific shipment became much easier and much less expensive.

So now US, maybe grocers like them, they could they could travel directly to China back to the, like the, second half of the 19th century, they could buy tea on themselves.

So like Russell and Company, their workers, their partners complained about these smurf rights coming to China to buy tea.

Well, they didn't know anything about tea, but they didn't want to go back empty-handed.