How many people can say that their Chinese ancestor started an international egg cartel before having it all seized by the communists? As long as you draw the right lessons from it.https://twitter.com/jhamby/status/1224541392896049157 …
You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more
“Thus, 8 leading wholesalers in #Shanghai took 200,000 Mexican dollars out of their profits from the war years and established a refrigerating company of their own in 1923. As Zheng Yuanxing, CEPC’s manager, boldly declared, ‘The foreigner can build refrigerating plants in Chinapic.twitter.com/y6cPOZ2Tj7
…and collect eggs. Why can’t we Chinese establish a plant and sell the egg products abroad?’ Unique among the interwar entrants into the egg products business during the interwar period, this company was an indigenous Chinese firm & had a different organizational architecture.”
This history is fascinating. Well, you can see how a few families can have an egg monopoly (cartel would be a better word), on selling cheap frozen eggs for export. Of course she didn’t have a monopoly on the eggs that the farmers didn’t sell to “egg collectors”, big or small.
“Moreover, China was in the so-called Warlord period and only nominally unified under a series of weak central governments.…Foreign firms, otoh, were protected by the privileges of extraterritoriality. Once they had paid the 5% export duty & the 2.5% coast-wise tax, they were…pic.twitter.com/PLivXE2yQs
…exempted from the local transit tax.”
“At the beginning the company’s scale was small. Its production of frozen eggs was only about 5 to 10 tons per day, and the number of workers was below 100. The situation changed in the second half of 1923”, with an order of 3,000 tons. 
Speaking of cornering the market on agriculture commodities, did any of you ever play the card game Pit? The one with the hotel bell that you ring when you’ve got a full hand of one commodity?
The game was invented by Edgar Cayce, the psychic.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(game)
“The specific commodities have varied over the various editions…, but those used in most modern editions are Barley, Corn, Coffee, Oranges, Oats, Soybeans, Sugar and Wheat. The classic version has seven commodities: flax, hay, oats, rye, corn, barley, and wheat.”
“Two special cards are also included, the Bull and the Bear; use of these cards is optional.” “Pit has no turns, and everyone plays at once. Players trade commodities among one another by each blindly exchanging one to four cards of the same type.”
My dad, who always believed in psychic powers, liked to tell the story that Edgar Cayce had invented the game because the fast-paced, non-turn-based nature of “Pit” meant that his psychic powers didn’t give him an unfair adventure over the other players.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.