Chapter XXXI: Awakened Interest in America 567 (7)

Foreign firms advertise in Chinese almanacs, which circulate in immense numbers throughout the land. An example is _Hallock’s Miscellany_, printed in a scholarly manner by the American Presbyterian Mission Press, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai. The Chinese editions of the Hongkong and Shanghai papers are excellent mediums, if one is not on the ground. Chinese travelers arrive at a station hours before the departure of a train, and foreign firms find it advantageous to display their cartoons and advertising in Chinese at railway stations. Even if some of the Chinese can not read, they become familiar with the “chop” or cartoon, which accordingly is more important than in any land, and should therefore be registered with the foreign consul and the Chinese taotai. The Asiatic Petroleum Company, of London, (Dutch-British), uses a cartoon of three square oil tins, with a tin lamp flaming on the top. The Standard Oil Company uses a picture of the hand lamp and some paraffin candles. Scott’s Emulsion Company shows the familiar codfish on the back of the man. Green Island Cement Company shows the famous mountain island of Macao’s inner harbor, with the cement chimneys at its foot. Barnard & Leas Company, of Moline, Illinois, use a picture of their grain sifter. Mousin et Cie, of Frankfort on Main, use a picture of a rose spray and a Chinese man and woman. The New Home Sewing-Machines use a picture of the machine and a greyhound. The Victor Talking Machines show the well-known fox-terrier listening to “His Master’s Voice”. Many of the firms draw attention by quoting an epigrammatic gem of Chinese wisdom. The Singer Sewing-Machine insists that the Chinese shall become familiar with the English letters and not the Chinese letters in the bridge of their machine, and they have had wide success. The Wheeler & Wilson Sewing-Machine Company shows Gabriel blowing his horn, or the spirit of reform telling China to wake up! The Longines Watch Company, of Paris, uses a Chinese lily in a vase and a winged hour-glass. The Chinese are becoming large buyers of time-keepers, and these trade-marks are most important. Several suits over trade-marks on watches have appeared in the courts of Hongkong. The Taussig Soap Company, of Vienna, uses a man-headed bird, which appeals to the humorous Chinese, whose hobgoblins are legion.

The get-equipped-quick advertising correspondence schools are teaching advertising pupils in America to change their advertisements constantly. This will not do in China. Nothing pays like a known “chop”, rigidly adhered to for decades. The Chinese will have nothing else than their favorite cartoon, or “chop” on cotton bolt, flour bag and everything else. “Once a customer always a customer” is truer in China than anywhere else in the world, but it is harder there than anywhere else to get that customer the necessary “once”, as he has probably linked up with a “chop” that preceded yours. The Harrison Knitting Machine Company, of Manchester, England, merely show cuts of their machines, and a competitor could do the same, and thus confuse the Chinese. Staedtler, the pencil manufacturer of Nuremberg, shows the man in the moon and a cock. J. H. Birch, of Library Street, Burlington, New Jersey, shows merely cuts of his rickshaws, which compete with the Japanese vehicle. The whisky houses of Britain cease neither day nor night in the attempt to give China something Occidental to take the place of the debarred opium. They try to adopt different shaped bottles to distinguish their goods, and some double bottles are now blown almost in the shape of the whisky’s “W”. The Burnese Alps Milk Company, of Stalden, has adopted a mother Teddy bear, giving a baby bear forced lactary injections. Nestle’s Milk Company, of Vevay, shows the “cow that jumped over the moon”. Aquarius Water Company shows a Chinese boy bearing a tray with the aerated water. Pathe’s French Films show the crowing cock. The United States Steel Products Export Company use the crouching tiger. Swift’s Hams show “S” in a diamond. Clarke’s Manila Coffee uses a volcano of coffee beans in imitation of Mayon volcano in the Philippines. The Chee Hsin Cement Company, of Tangshan, Pechili province, has a pony whose fiery breath has set the sun on fire. This is the weird mythological style of “chop” with which the poetical Chinese are familiar and which they like.

The Chinese are a race who have nearly as much imagination as the Greeks. The Hupeh Cement Works, of Tayeh, use a seventeen-storied pagoda, which is supposed to represent a very fine product, as pagodas tower only thirteen stories at the highest. The Indo-China Cement Company uses the well-known dragon of the Manchus, which tosses three medals in the air. The British-American Tobacco Company advertises a nautch girl pulling portiéres apart, a “chop” which is a little more luxuriously Mohammedan than staid China cares for. Veluvine Protective Paint has adopted a crouching bulldog. Isuan Aerated Waters, of the Philippines, use a hand pouring a bottle that fills a glass. The Toyo Kisen Kaisha uses a red circle in a white fan on a blue flag. Flags are becoming popular chops. Shields are also used by the British and the Spanish, but they are rather intricate for the Chinese to understand. There is not much competition yet, and most of the foreign firms, in their desire to educate the Chinese, are merely using photographs of their machinery and product, but as soon as John Chinaman has to choose between two dynamos, two gas engines, two pumps, etc., each of them must use a “chop” or trade-mark, just as the oil, the flour, the ham, the cement bag, the bolt of cotton, etc., have now to be chopped to maintain their position on the slogan popular throughout Canada and Britain of “what we have we hold.”

The treaty ports of China, such as Shanghai, Tientsin, Hongkong, etc., show that almost every form of business is incorporated. Doctors and dentists form companies, and bring out juniors under indenture. The share list shows active trading in the following companies among others: railway, steamship, rubber, banks; marine, life and fire insurance; oil, refineries, sugar, mining, engineering and contracting, ship-building, car building; docks, wharves and warehouse (godown); lands, hotels, clubs, buildings, cotton mills and plantations, cement, power, light, water, trams, millinery, telephone, telegraph, cable, tailors, dairy farm, abattoir, soda water, distilleries, flour mills, iron mills, gas, electricity, druggist, newspaper, booksellers, conservancy, athletic clubs, race course, import and export firms, jewelers, silk filatures, tea farms, matting factories and plantations, furniture factories, etc. I know of no place where the craze of men to get rich faster than savings will accumulate is indicated more than at Shanghai, Hongkong and Singapore. The bund of Shanghai is as speculatively feverous as Wall Street.

British Hongkong, like China, holds that all land is crown or state land, and therefore leases are granted instead of fee-simple deeds, American style. The British government has gone extensively into the land business at Hongkong, leveling many terraces, filling many valleys in the mountains, and reclaiming from the sea vast areas at West Point and East Point, Hongkong, and at Yaumati, Kowloon and Hunghom on the mainland section of the hilly colony. Leases for these valuable sites are then put up at auction, bringing about twice the rental that obtains in Brooklyn or Jersey City, or the outlying districts of London. In the same way the foreign concession municipalities of Shanghai, Tientsin, Fuchau, Amoy, Hankau, Newchwang, Harbin, etc., prepare land for long leases. These will in time all be strenuous questions with the new republican government of China. When the foreigner gave up the extraterritorial right in Japan, the Japanese never again permitted him to own land, unless he became a Japanese citizen. Many land companies, subletting long leaseholds, have been formed in all the treaty ports where there are foreign concessions. I do not believe that republican China desires to acquire these leaseholds for many years, and if she did she would purchase them. The foreign navies would see to that.

VI

RAILWAYS IN CHINA

In the third book of _Paradise Lost_, Milton humorously discussed transportation in China as follows:

“On the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light,”

but the matter has now reached a development worthy of being discussed seriously.

China had in 1912 about 5,500 miles of railway in operation, new main lines having been built from Tientsin to Nanking (Pukow) by German and British contractors, and from Nanking to Shanghai by British contractors, so that it is now possible to take cars at Shanghai and go through to Calais, France, by rail. Branch lines connect the German colony of Kiaochou and Chifu with this Tientsin trunk railway, so that a German may go straight through from his Crown colony in cars to Berlin. Before long, when the Canton-Hankau section is completed, Hongkong’s colonial secretary will be able to leave Government House, facing the wonderful Botanical Garden on the hill of Hongkong, take a chair down to the Star Ferry Wharf, cross the mile of harbor, then take his railway carriage and be whisked through to Downing Street, London, to take his orders from the secretary of state for the Crown colonies, with only one ferriage, that from Calais to Dover. Not only a northern railway route is available, but a southern railway route will soon be open. When the easy section through Persia, and the short railway from Yunnan City through Mung Ting pass connects with Mandalay, it will be possible for the colonial secretary of Indo-China to leave the palatial Palais at Hanoi and entrain at the Tonquin Railway Gare on the palm-lined boulevard, going straight through to the Ministré on the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, via Hyderabad, Teheran, Constantinople and the Gates of the Danube, all the way without seeing salt water. Likewise the governor of Singapore will soon be able to entrain opposite Government House for Calais and London, and cross the teeming continents, passing through the site of the Garden of Eden, on his way to Downing Street to consult with his chief. He can also pick up his traveled friend (since the _entente cordiale_), the Gouverneur at L’Hotel du Gouverneur, Saigon, and drop him at the Gare du Nord, Paris, on his way to the departments on the left bank of the Seine.

The Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo railway, built by the British and Chinese Corporation, and by the Chinese themselves, will soon be completed. The Peking-Kalgan railway (the route for the tombs of the Ming emperors) has been finely built by China’s leading engineer, Jeme Tien Yao (educated at Yale, 1883) and this road will some day, with Russian and French help, break across Gobi Desert to Kaikhta and Irkutsk, flanking two thousand miles of Manchurian railway, and saving all that distance in reaching Europe from Shanghai. The Kaifong-Singan railway will soon be ready. It is planned to open a new port at Haochow, where the Yellow River (Hoang Ho) used to meet the Yellow Sea, and to run the railway through to Kaifong, Singan, Lanchow (in Kansu province) and on to the historic Tarim valley, and Kashgar, opening up Turkestan. It is also proposed to open a new port at ice-free Hunshan on the Ginmen River, D’Anville Gulf, Sea of Japan, where China owns a narrow neck of land running between Northern Korea and the Vladivostok district of Siberia. From Hunshan a road would be run to Kirin, two hundred miles over difficult forest-covered country. From Kirin China has independent lines running between the Russian and Japanese lines. Hunshan would be an excellent port whence to attack commercially the two rich northern provinces of Manchuria. The road planned by America from Chin Wang Tao to Tsitsikar and Aigun is possibly more of a postponed than a dead road despite Russia and Japan.

The roads from Hankau north to Mukden have paid heavy dividends and helped the imperial exchequer during the revolution of 1911. These roads have been hindered neither by difficult construction, nor by obstacles to traffic such as the likin tax system, which has cursed the free trade and transportation of the southern part of the country. The Hanyang iron mills can supply rails at one-third the American cost, viz., nine dollars as compared with twenty-eight dollars per ton, so that China can afford to build four miles of railway to America’s one mile, and reduce rates accordingly because of the lower capital cost. The cars can be erected at Hongkong in the south, Hankau in the center, and at Tongshan in the north of China. The locomotives and trucks will be imported from America, Germany and England. The necessary coast railway from Hongkong to Ningpo has only been constructed in the neighborhood of Amoy. Something has been done on the railways from Hongkong to Yunnan City, and from Hongkong to Chungking, and from Yunnan to Chungking. American engineers have made the surveys. The railway along the ancient Ta Peh Lu (Great North Road) post road from Chingtu to Singan has not yet been begun. A road, too, will break across west from Chingtu to the Tibet gateway at Tachien. Mention should be made of the railway from Kidalova, following the north bank of the Amur to Blagovestchensk and Khabarovka, which Russia is building so as to have an all-Russian railway to Vladivostok. This railway is under way, although the debt of the Russo-Japan War has almost destroyed Russian railway building, and postponed Russia’s commercial (and other?) attack in India’s direction. Had it not been for that debt, Russia might to-day be striking for railway entrance to Peking, to Hankau, to Herat and Constantinople, as so many of the British imperialists like Kipling and Sir Gilbert Parker fear.

Hongkong has at last beat out Shanghai for the trade of the great western provinces of China. Transshipment is made at Hongkong for Haiphong, where the new French railway takes merchandise five hundred miles northwest to Yunnan as a distributing center. Hongkong also has the West (Si Kiang), Yu, Hong Chu, Eta and Peh Rivers as arteries into the west. Until two hundred miles of Yangtze gorges and rapids are flanked by a railway, Shanghai must lose more and more of the vast western trade which she used to control before the French railway was built. The French finished in 1910 this remarkable railway from Haiphong to Yunnan, five hundred miles, and have thus beat out the British, who, because of Colquhoun’s books, were approaching Yunnan from three points in Burma. This railway attack on Yunnan has been a battle of two imperial minds of the Kipling imperialistic type, Colquhoun and Doumer. Colquhoun, the British governor and author, began urging the construction of British railways in 1881, and followed up his arguments with a further book in 1898. In 1897, the famous Paul Doumer, once a printer, went to French China as governor. In 1898 he began his railway to Yunnan. The line, though narrow gage, has cost $50,000 a mile, even with cheap Oriental labor. Near the coast of Tonquin the country is that of flat rice fields and only requires trestling and banking. From Hung Hoa (Bed River) to Lao Kai no fewer than 180 bridges had to be erected (a fine contract for French structural firms) to cross the wild broken country of stream, marsh, gorge and mountain pass. The line rises from sea level to a pass of 5,000 feet altitude. Much of the Yunnan tin and other exports, which, by pack saddle and shoulder load, formerly went down to Nanning and took the Yu and Si Rivers to Hongkong, are now diverted to Haiphong, from which port the French run branch ship lines to Hongkong and Saigon, connecting with the great subsidized Messageries Maritimes line to Marseilles. The French need subsidies because the foreign trade which their bankers control is not so heavy as is that of Britain and America.

The Hongkong and Canton Railway, 106 miles, has been completed and marks a new lease of life for Hongkong as the emporium of South, West and Central China, when the railways from Canton are extended. The Hongkong Railway starts from Kowloon, across the narrow harbor, running through 19 miles of British territory, and the remainder through Chinese territory. The British section, on account of the many tunnels through mountains, cost almost as much as the entire Chinese section. The fine steamers of the Hongkong and Canton Steamboat Company, which are well known to world tourists, and many Chinese steamers and junks compete, but there is traffic for all, and when there isn’t there will be pooling for all. The Hongkong government, through the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, loaned the Kwangtung province government the money for the Chinese section. (This is an illustration of a few loans which have not been made to the national government at Peking, and represents provincial as against the nationalized trunk railway scheme which helped to bring on the revolution.) The road runs through a part of the country requiring much trestle work, and bridging on account of waterways. The long Chinese section of the road cost less with one exception than any standard gage railway in the world, $35,000 per mile, the nearest approach to this in America being sections of the Great Northern Railway built years ago at $40,000 per mile. Nearly all the freight and passenger cars were made at Hongkong. The best built railway in China is the Shanghai-Nanking. In easy country it cost $55,000 per mile. It was built by British contractors on the elaborate, permanent English plan, whose maxim is, “a stitch in time saves nine”. What spoiled the Chinese in hiring foreign contractors was their experience with a section of the Shanghai-Hangchow railway. The Kiangsu and Chekiang provincial governments, hiring native contractors and engineers (who were trained in America) built a satisfactory road of 125 miles at $25,000 per mile, as compared with the British continuation north, of $55,000 per mile. The Chinese have never ceased talking of this economy, although they admit that the English road is better and worth $35,000 per mile, but not $55,000. Another objection they make is that foreign syndicates charge five per cent. commission on their purchases. In the railway from Pukow (opposite Nanking) to Tientsin, the foreign syndicate was not allowed commission on purchases, so that the “Pukow plan” is favored. In reference to the low cost, $35,000 per mile, of the difficult Peking-Kalgan railway, 140 miles, which was built by the Chinese exclusively, the _Chinese Students’ Journal_ says: “In the construction of the railway, economy, which must not be confounded with cheapness, must always be kept in view. All railways built in China must be paid for by our people, and our people are poor. A railway is not a club-house on which to expend millions. The redemption of bonds must not be forgotten for a moment. On the Peking-Kalgan railway there was no temptation to spend money recklessly, as no five per cent. commission was needed to enrich the coffers of the foreign corporation. There were no foreign style residences, cement tennis-courts, ice machines, palatial house-boats, and princely salaries; no interpreters to make a fortune (_i. e._, compradores); no graft. There were no unpleasantnesses through the interference of foreign consuls, and no reference of insignificant incidents to ministers at Peking.”

The Siberian Railway cost $150,000 a mile through flat country, but $100,000 of that amount was for nepotism, graft, bureaucracy, boodle and sweet Roederer champagne.

The revolution and the argument over the nationalization of railways of course delayed the great Gorge Railway which runs from Ichang to Wan Hsien on the Yangtze, thus surmounting the almost impassable rapids of the gorges, which heretofore have split populous Szechuen province from Hupeh. It would be hard to say how many books have been written about these difficult rapids and the sublime scenery. The most notable are by Archibald Little, the trade pioneer of the Yangtze, and then there are interesting works by Dingle, Geil, Mrs. Kemp, Mr. Bird, Mr. Blakiston, Mr. Hart and Mrs. Bishop. The road could not possibly parallel the river along the parapets of the gorges. It breaks inland through great tunnels, some 6,000 feet long. This gorge railway was the most necessary in the whole world; it should have been the first begun in China. When it is running, however, the finest scenery in the world will be shut out from the wondering eyes of man, as the famous gorge boatmen and trackers will give up their work, and, as it is, many of them have been killed in the recent war of the revolution, Szechuen and Hupeh provinces being the first to recruit armies. From Wan Hsien railways will go across country to Chingtu, and up the Yangtze to Chungking, thus linking the great west with India, French China and the populous eastern and northern provinces.

General Kuroki’s military railway from Antung to Mukden has now been turned into a standard-gage road, and a bridge has been thrown across the Yalu River (famous for its great naval engagement) to Wiju. It is now possible to take a sleeping-car from Tokio to Shinonoseki, cross the strait by ferry, take another sleeper at Fusan, and go all the way through Mukden to Kuang Chang Tsu, connecting there with the Russian line for Moscow and St. Petersburg. For fast service, however, the Russians are able to favor the all-Russian line to Vladivostok, whence steamers can be taken for Hakodate, etc. Passengers from Shanghai can take two routes, one by steamer to Dalny, and thence via the South Manchurian (Japanese) railway, or via Tientsin, Newchang, etc. (Chinese railways). The Korean-Yalu route, however, is infinitely the more scenic. Most of the bridges of this route were brought from America.

The German railway of 271 miles in Shangtung province shows the effects of the iron hand in paying small wages, the working expenses in 1910 being only thirty-five per cent. of the gross earnings. The gross earnings were $8,000 a mile. In a bare country, where mining is undeveloped, the average receipts were only seventy-one cents per passenger mile, and ninety cents per ton mile. Over 90 per cent. of the traffic is third class. The average mixed trainload is 150 tons of freight and sixty passengers. The famous beans, straw braid, grain and petroleum predominated in the traffic, but in 1912 coal was beginning to be a growing factor. The German railway in Shangtung province has set the example of planting trees. It was copied by the Pennsylvania railway. Nearly all the railways of China are copying the reforestation methods.

At Tongshan, eighty miles northeast of Tientsin, are the modern shops, engineering college and town of the national railways of North China. Here the first Chinese locomotive, the “Rocket”, was built in stealth by the British mechanical, railway and mining engineer, Mr. C. W. Kinder, who has done so much for the railways and mines of North China. The college turns out railway engineers, and some of the instructors are American, like Mr. F. A. Foster. Other lecturers are British, like Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope.

Railway cars can now be built in the Tongshan shops, the Hanyang works, the Shanghai works and the Kowloon (Hongkong) works, as well as at Dalny. The Tongshan works can and have built locomotives.

In 1910 the Department of Communications established at Peking a railway school. Three hundred of the six hundred students were under twenty-five years of age. There were eight foreign and thirty-five foreign-trained Chinese teachers. The course was three years. English, mainly, and French, German and Chinese were taught. There is no military drill, and the curriculum includes history, economics, railway bookkeeping and law, engineering, management of traffic, shops and stations, physics, chemistry, drawing, mathematics, geography, etc.

Electric tramways have been established at Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai, Canton and the Manchurian cities, the example having been taken from Hongkong’s tramway, built in 1905. Recent photographs show the remarkable change in the bunds and roads of the treaty ports, where the automobile, electric car, rickshaw, wheelbarrow, chair and litter all have their fight for the passenger and his nimble coin.

On new lines it is necessary to use blue instead of white glass in the coaches, as the coolies in their excitement over the scenery forget and put their heads through the white glass, to which they are not accustomed.

The old system of transportation has not altogether departed, and even if it had, its memory would linger long. Neither the Peking cart, nor the mule litter of Shansi, in which one rides between two tandem mules, is on springs. They are padded so that the passenger, who is not made of rubber, may be somewhat protected. If the conveyances were not padded, only a man dressed up for American football could survive the jolting. These are the vehicles in which dignified (on other occasions) ambassadors have ridden at Peking in all the years since foreigners were granted the legation privileges.

VII

SHIPPING AND WATER ROUTES IN CHINA

The larger steamship lines now supplying the China ports are the following:

AMERICAN

Pacific Mail--Trans-Pacific.
Standard Oil--Trans-Pacific and Suez route.
Dollar Steamship Company--Trans-Pacific.
Northern Pacific Railway--Trans-Pacific.
American and Asiatic--To America via Suez (agency, American; flag,
British).
Barber Line--To America via Suez (agency, American; flag, British).
Shewan, Tomes & Co.--To Philippines.

BRITISH

Canadian Pacific Railway--Trans-Pacific.
Peninsular and Oriental--Suez route to Europe, and coastal.
Ben Line--Suez route to Europe.
Shire Line--Suez route to Europe.
Sassoon Line--To India.
Jardine, Matheson & Co.--To India, coastwise and Philippines.
Butterfield and Swire--Australia, India, coastwise, etc.
Gibb, Livingston & Co.--Australia and Africa.
Blue and White Funnel Lines--Europe, trans-Pacific, coastwise.
British-India--India, trans-Pacific, etc.

JAPANESE

Toyo Kisen Kaisha--Trans-Pacific to America and South America.
Nippon Yusen Kaisha--Trans-Pacific, Europe, coastwise and riverine.
Osaka Shosen Kaisha--Trans-Pacific, coastwise and riverine.
Nippon Kisen Kaisha--Coastwise.
Mitsui Bussan Kaisha--Coastwise.

GERMAN

North German Lloyd--Europe, coastwise and probably trans-Pacific.
Hamburg-America--Europe, coastwise and probably trans-Pacific.
Hansa Steamship Company--Europe.

AUSTRIAN

Austrian Lloyd--Europe and coastwise.

CHINESE

China Merchants’ Steamship Company--Coastwise and possibly
trans-Pacific.

BRITISH AND CHINESE

Chinese Engineering and Mining Company--Coastwise and trans-Pacific
planned.
Peking Syndicate--Coastwise and trans-Pacific planned.

FRENCH

Messageries Maritimes--Europe, Indo-China and coastwise.

RUSSIA

Russian Volunteer Fleet--Europe and coastwise.
Chinese Eastern Railway Steamers--Coastwise.

SPAIN

Spanish Royal Mail--Europe via Suez.

HOLLAND

Shell Transport and Trading--Coastwise and Europe.

When the Panama Canal opens, many more Atlantic lines, such as the Royal Mail, International Marine, German lines, etc., will probably extend their service in time to China, and many trans-Pacific lines, especially Japanese and the Pacific Mail, will extend to America’s eastern coast, not to speak of new lines which may be formed. The British-India Steamship Company intends to extend its Calcutta line across the Pacific and to New York. The American railroads could, at small cost, by a generous pro rata of division rates, have covered the Pacific and Atlantic with American steamship lines, but they have held off, expecting the really unnecessary government subsidies. The subsidy argument would possibly have a different complexion if it were assured that the steamship lines would remain forever independent, and permit no dummy holdings of stock. In the meantime, Japanese and British vessels have been employed on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans on account of the lower cost of officers’ wages only, the crews’ wages being the same on a Pacific mailer and a Nippon Yusen Kaisha mailer, for instance. Both hire Chinese mainly, who are good and cheap sailors. The American railroad, controlling the west-bound freight, and the American banker, controlling the heavier east-bound freight, could make American steamship lines on the Pacific profitable; indeed, the Pacific Mail already pays its way. The government could, of course, pay a just amount for mails on an increasing ratio for time made, but if the American railroad, American banker, American shipper and American globe-trotter will come to the aid of the American ship, we can, without subsidy, except to independent smaller owners, cover the Pacific with our starry flag.

All the large lines are building new ships for the China trade. The Osaka Shosen Kaisha, running to America in connection with the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, has ordered steamships from Armstrong, in England, and from the Japan shipyards. The Canadian Pacific Railway Steamship Company and the Pacific Mail are having twenty-knot ships built. The Hansa Steamship Company, running from Bremen, has ordered ships from the Weser Ship-building Company, of Bremen. The Russian Volunteer Fleet has ordered new ships from the Alexander-Nevski works. Wireless is to be used generally, the first shore station having been fitted at Hongkong. The Chinese Merchants and the Sino-American companies (both Chinese) intend to run ships to America, as their plans enlarge. We may yet see the Chinese flag regularly in New York. The Japanese are to run a line into the Black Sea in competition with the Russian Volunteer Fleet; they have already sent boats into Trieste in competition with the Austrians, and they have before now humbled the Germans in the Bangkok-Shanghai service. To show that the Japanese are not the least timid in declaring their maritime ambitions on the Pacific, I shall quote the following circular signed by Manager Iwanaga of the subsidized Nippon Yusen Kaisha (the steamship line in which the Mikado is a large shareholder) at the time of the competition with the long-established British firm of Butterfield and Swire, a firm which had been very friendly to the Japanese during the Russian War. Mr. Iwanaga says: “These foreign firms must be induced to pay respect to the Japanese mercantile flag. It is the duty of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha to check the arrogance of foreign steamers east of Suez.”

The history of China’s greatest steamship line, the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, is as follows: When Li Hung Chang was viceroy of Pechili province at Tientsin in 1871, on advice of Americans and British who were in his employ, he formed this government-controlled line, partly to carry tribute grain from the south; because the Grand Canal was allowed by the various governors to collect silt, while their pockets collected gilt (and guilt)! Merchants and guilds were invited or coerced to subscribe to some of the stock. In 1877 the company bought the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company and its dock for 2,000,000 taels silver. In 1878 Li diverted from the Grand Canal to the steamship company the Yunnan copper destined to the Peking and provincial mints. The great government university at Peking, with provincial branches, created by Kwang Hsu’s reform edicts of 1898, was to be financed partly by the revenues of this steamship company. The republicans used its revenues to aid the 1911 revolution because the imperialists used the railway revenues. The head office of the company is in Shanghai, and it has branches at Newchwang, Chifu, Tientsin, Chinkiang, Kowkiang, Hankau, Ningpo, Fuchau, Hongkong and Canton. The ships are distinguishable at the Chinese ports both by the yellow funnel, and by the immense Chinese characters which, in Austrian fashion, are not always borne on the bow, but midships. The fine vessels of this company were once put under the American flag in 1884 to save them from the French, who were at war with China.

One of the great movements of the future in the reforming Far East will be the Malay Peninsular Canal, about fifty miles long, which will save 1,500 miles in the voyage from Saigon to Calcutta, Madras, etc. It will not cut off and make useless the expensive garrison port of Singapore, which holds the five equatorial seas for Britain, as the Singapore-Rangoon railway will run along the entire peninsula. All these probabilities in the Far East should be considered in full by the student of world politics, finance, commerce and ethnology. A dozen Chinas, Americas, Britains and Germanies could well work many centuries before the world is restored to the economic Eden state, where each man will be free, and have enough to support him and his in peace. Every work of commerce is then a world-work, claiming the altruist’s enthusiasm, and while we often use the phrase, “war of the ports of the Far East,” we mean that joyful exhibition of strength which the wrestler, rather than the warrior, puts forth.

A movement is growing in Japan to deprive foreign ships of the right to trade between Japanese ports, which is similar to a regulation now in operation in America and Canada. Japanese vessels, of course, trade between British and China ports. Another plan that is advocated is to place on ships not built in Japan such a high duty that Japanese owners will be compelled to build in Japan, which would include a personal penalty if Japanese owners owned steamship stock under a foreign flag. All this involves considerable conflict with British interests that have loaned immense sums in Japan, and it is certain that the British foreign office, now so friendly to Japan, will hear from the British Board of Trade, as it is hearing every day from the consular service and such writers as Beresford, Colquhoun and Gilbert Parker.

Whampoa, the first port in China where Europeans traded, is to be opened by the Chinese as a treaty port for deep-sea trading. It is about six miles below Canton. The port will, of course, compete with Hongkong; but Hongkong opened up a railway to Canton to protect herself, and she will see that fast and cheap handling maintains her leadership. The taotai, and Chang Iu Hin who was educated and enriched at British Singapore, are representative republicans of Canton who are interested in Whampoa port. It is proposed to do dredging and make free grants of land for godowns, wharves, etc.

Portuguese Macao, the second port in China where Europeans traded, forty miles from Hongkong, is dredging her silted harbor preparatory to bidding for some of the great oversea trade that is expected. China, which has ambitions for native ports in the vicinity of Canton, frequently sends her warships into Macao waters. The natives of the Macao district (Heung Shan) do not like Portugal’s ambition, and much bitterness is shown.

The Whang Poo Conservancy Board has deepened the river from Wusung up to Shanghai, and larger ocean steamers are now able to ascend to the bund. For a long time the largest vessels must lie at Wusung bar, the “heaven sent barrier” against foreign intrusion, as the Manchus called it years ago. The Tientsin Conservancy is deepening the river up from Taku. Both of these boards are controlled by the foreign settlements, although the Chinese share in the expense. Foreign engineers are hired.

Other trans-oceanic ports planned by China are at Chin Wang Tao in Pechili province; Hunchun, near Vladivostok on the Japan Sea, and Haochow, near the junction of Shangtung and Kiangsu provinces. The British may also develop the port of Wei Hai Wei, now that connection with the trunk railways of China is in sight.

Few of the great Chinese ports look after the foreign seamen, but Hongkong has established a sailors’ club and seamen’s institute on a liberal scale. This idea should be copied along the long yellow coast, for the devil’s whisper is loudest and his traps are most numerous in China.

The Grand Canal as a shipping factor is grand no more, for three reasons: it has silted up; it has been paralleled by the railway from Hangchow to Peking, 1,000 miles; and it has also been paralleled by the China Merchants and other steamship services from Shanghai to Tientsin. This once noble work, with its beautiful bridges, pagodas, embankments, sluices, aqueducts and picturesque junks, passes into history, so far as its transportation feature is concerned. It may be continued in parts as an aqueduct, for conservancy purposes in relieving the water pressure on the flood districts of the Whei and Yangtze valleys, or for water power for a vast scheme of manufacturing, but that is for engineers, and not economists, to decide. Marco Polo first made this famous work known to the western world. The southern section from Hangchow, the bore city and capital of the Sung dynasty, to the Yangtze River at Chingkiang, was dug about 610 A. D. The oldest, and most important section from a conservancy point of view, from Chinkiang to the Whei River, 130 miles, was built about 485 B. C. Kublai Khan is credited with being the dreamer of the idea, the digger of the ditch, the De Lesseps of China, and the fact is that he built the northern section of about 650 miles from the Whei River to Peking in 1289 A. D. in order to bring the tribute rice and copper of the southern provinces to Peking. Those who are interested in the canal in its last days of picturesque use should read the works of Sir John Francis Davis, who was governor of Hongkong, and whose experience in China covered the crowded years from 1820 to 1846. The American general, J. M. Wilson, has also written a book covering his inspection of parts of the canal.

On sections of the Yellow River and on the Kia Ling River in Szechuen province, lumber boats are made up to carry produce to market, the boats being broken up at Chungking. Return freight which can not be tracked through the rapids is portaged. Although the Yellow River is 2,500 miles long, it is only navigable 150 miles from its mouth to Tsinan City, and in short broken sections in Mongolia and Honan. The loess silt which it carries, and the porous loess bed through which it flows, make it only a roaring unmanageable spring and summer drain, China’s sorrow of flood and famine. Its memorable changing of bed to mouths 300 miles apart, from Kiangsu to Shangtung province in 1854, and from banks 100 miles apart in the Gobi Desert, are well known.

Most of the riverine and coast, junk and sanpan sails are square or oblong, but at Ichang there are strange wupan boats which use the towering peaked sails seen on the Arab dahabiyehs of Aden and the Nile, the object being to coax down the high breezes of the difficult gorges of the Yangtze. This is not the only instance in China of Arab influence in crafts, arts and blood.

Chinese riverine shipping is growing heavily. All flags are seen on the Yangtze, and several flags in the lower parts of the Kan and Siang Rivers. The British and Chinese, and some French flags go up the West and Yu Rivers to Nanning. Chinese shipping on the Liao River to Newchwang is heavy in the ice-free season. There are scores of other rivers which will be dredged so that they may feed the steamship and railroad lines.

The Chinese have an amusing word for captain. “Lao ta” is literally “old fellow”; because the captain of the old Yangtze rapids boats was generally the oldest man on board. The captain of the Hakka sanpans of Canton is often a woman, but she is humorously called “lao ta” with the rest! China led in all inventions, including woman’s rights!

In the coming great development of Western China, the one name to inscribe on the tablets is that of the pioneer merchant writer, Archibald Little, who, after twenty years of effort, broke the veil of the Yangtze gorges and took the first steamer to open up the ports of Ichang and Chungking in 1898. This brought him within beckoning distance of British Burma and Archibald Colquhoun’s propaganda, and split China in two with the wedge of commerce, despite the obstructive Tsung Li Yamen at Manchu Peking. Mr. Little’s three books on Western China are: _Through the Yangtze Gorges_, _To Omi Mount in Szechuen_, and _Across Yunnan_; and he wrote, moreover, a very important geological work which places him high as a prospector and explorer.

VIII

AMERICA IN CHINA

Where the Happy Valley Road branches off, one part leading to the Royal Golf Club, and the other to the Mohammedan, Parsee and European cemeteries, and Wong Nei Chong valley, Hongkong, on a spot where Secretary William Henry Seward stood in 1869, there is a monument which has particular interest for Americans and Britons, and possibly it is a prophecy of their united work in the future in developing China. The monument tells its own story of brothers in arms in the dangers of the Far Eastern seas in lonely days as follows:

_Erected by the officers and crews of the
United States steam frigate Powhatan
and
H. B. M. steam sloop Rattler,
in memory of
their shipmates who fell in a combined attack on a
fleet of piratical junks off Kuhlan (Kowloon)
August 4, 1855.
Killed in the action:
Powhatan.
John Pepper, seaman.
James A. Halsey, landsman.
Isaac Coe, landsman.
S. Mullard, marine.
B. F. Addamson, marine._

The first American treaty is dated 1844 when Caleb Cushing and Daniel Webster’s son, Fletcher, went to Hongkong, Canton, Macao, etc., but American trade began at a still earlier date, when the _Empress of China_, Captain Green, Purser Samuel Shaw, sailed from New York on Washington’s birthday, 1784. The ship _Alliance_ sailed from Philadelphia in 1788 without charts. The ship _Massachusetts_ sailed from Boston in 1789, armed with twenty six-pound guns, and half the cargo being useless furs for the southern Chinese! The old Philadelphia merchants interested in the China trade were of the Archer, Girard and Rulon families. The Boston merchants who despatched regular packet ships to Canton were of the Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell, Cushing and Coolidge families. The first American consuls lived at beautiful Macao. Major Shaw, purser of the _Empress of China_ was consul in 1786, Samuel Snow in 1794, and Edward Carrington in 1804. On November 16, 1856, just before the “Arrow” war, Captain Armstrong, U. S. S. _Portsmouth_, attacked the Canton (Bogue) forts. This was the only time America attacked China, except at Peking in 1900. When all Europe hesitated to befriend the northern states, China issued this edict to viceroys in 1863: “Keep a careful and close oversight, and if the Confederate steamer _Alabama_, or any other vessel of war, scheming how it can injure American property, shall approach that part of the coast of China under your jurisdiction, you are to prevent all such vessels entering our ports.”

The American representatives in China were first trade commissioners, and afterward diplomats, and the tendency now, at least with the British and Germans, is to have both commissioners and diplomats. The American officials were the following:

Caleb Cushing, commissioner, 1844 (first treaty).

Alex. H. Everett, commissioner, 1846 (died, Canton, 1847).

John W. Davis, commissioner, 1847.

Humphrey Marshall, commissioner, 1852.

Robert M. McLane, commissioner, 1853.

Doctor Parker, commissioner, 1856.

William B. Reed, minister, 1857 (first minister).

John E. Ward, minister, 1859.

Anson Burlingame, minister, 1861 (remarkably brilliant).

Mr. Low, minister, 1870.

J. B. Angell, minister, 1882 (later president University of Michigan).

Charles Denby, minister, 1885.

Mr. E. H. Conger, minister, 1900.

W. W. Rockhill, minister, 1905.

Mr. Calhoun, minister, 1909.

The most famous secretary of the American legation was Samuel Wells Williams, the author of the _Middle Kingdom_, etc., and editor of the _Chinese Repository_. His son serves at present in the Peking legation. It would take a volume to cover Mr. S. W. Williams’ brilliant work as interpreter of missions and legations, printer at Canton and Macao, translator, author, lecturer, secretary, dictionary compiler, professor at Yale, sinologue, money raiser for the causes of missions and letters, and diplomat.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Note the use of English signs. These balconied shops and homes have a Spanish effect.]

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Modern buildings; wider streets. Note woman with deformed feet
being carried on shoulders of servant; also the healthy alert
boyhood of China.
]

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Where the first treaty between America and China was signed. The
Porta Cerco gate between Portuguese and native China. The treaty
was signed by Caleb Cushing and Daniel Webster’s son, Fletcher,
on July 3d, 1844, the tablets on the gate being of a later date,
and commemorating a Portuguese victory.
]

Daniel Webster had not a little to do with America’s relations with China. He studied the subject deeply. He suggested the first mission that secured a treaty, and wrote the president’s message of December 30, 1842, to Congress suggesting the mission. Cushing’s letter of instructions was signed by Webster, and showed deep knowledge of Chinese affairs. The treaty was signed in a temple at Wanghai, outside the Porta Cerco stone gate at Macao; and I would recommend the pilgrimage to the many tourists who visit the picturesque settlement in South China.

In 1861 an American, Frederick G. Ward, formed the nucleus of the Manchu imperialist army which finally overcame the Taiping rebels. Another American took service with Li Hung Chang as secretary. His name was W. N. Pethick. He had served in the Civil War in America. Mr. Pethick had considerable influence with Li, assisting him in treaty making, reading to him reform and economical books, and taking a part in urging the crusade against opium. Mr. Pethick died from the hardships of the siege of Peking in 1900.

When John Hay and Philander Knox secured the assent of the nations to the American and British doctrine of the non-partition of China, they were repeating the “square deal” terms of the famous treaty of 1868, which the brilliant American, Anson Burlingame, on behalf of China, which nation he was then serving as commissioner, secured from America, stipulating the “territorial integrity of China, and disavowing any right to interfere with China’s eminent domain”.

In 1900 the American troops found a great store of silver at Tientsin, but gave it up, as America returned the Boxer indemnity of 1908, and the abstention of the American troops from looting in Peking in 1900 set the usual high standard of altruism and soldierly honor which Sun Yat Sen and Wu Ting Fang say China connects with the name America.

In 1901 Mrs. Conger and the other ladies of the American legation began the work which threw down the zenana bars which held Manchu and Chinese women in repressive exclusiveness.

Years ago prominent Chinese made some study of American leaders. Seu Ki Yu, governor of Amoy and member of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board at Peking) in 1866, to whom Secretary W. H. Seward sent a picture of Washington, composed the following essay:

“Washington was a very remarkable man. In advising plans he was more daring than our heroes, Chin Shing or Han Kwang. In winning a country he was braver than Tsau or Lin Pi. Wielding his four-foot falchion he enlarged the frontier myriads of miles, and yet he refused to usurp regal dignity or even to transmit it to his posterity; but, on the contrary, first proposed the plan of electing men to office. Where in the world can be found a mode more equitable? It is the same idea, in fact, that has been handed down to us from the three reigns of Yau, Shun and Yu (the immortal reigns of China). In ruling the state he honored and fostered good usages, and did not exalt military merit, a principle totally unlike what is found in other kingdoms. I have seen his portrait. His mien and countenance are grand and impressing in the highest degree. Who is there that does not call him a hero?” This essay was reissued by the republicans in 1911 and had a wide influence in their propaganda.

The American exports to China, including Hongkong, consisting chiefly of cotton, machinery, oil, flour and tobacco, were as follows: 1908, $34,000,000; 1909, $28,000,000; 1910, $23,000,000 (exports to China from all countries, $305,580,000); 1911, $25,000,000.

The American imports were, in their order, chiefly silk, tea, hides, wool, straw braid, pig iron, musk, hair, raw cotton, albumen, bristles, and amounted as follows: 1908, $24,000,000; 1909, $31,000,000; 1910, $38,000,000 (exports by China to all countries, $251,460,000); 1911, $32,000,000.

This is but a beginning, as it were, “a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand”.

America should keep stocks in Manila to attack the Chinese market, where “time is of the essence of importance”. This applies to iron, hardware, tinware, structural beams, cottons, woolens, yarn, shoes, machinery, educational and military apparatus, foods, utensils, pipes, and everything necessary in municipal, industrial and domestic development. A Cantonese or Shanghai Chinese does not mind the trip to Manila to inspect, though he would prefer seeing what America has to offer in Hongkong, Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin, Mukden, Chingtu and Yunnan, if America shortly concludes to take advantage of these seven strategic trade centers. In the meantime full stocks at Manila would be a good beginning. Even in disturbed years, such as 1911, America’s imports from China were $32,000,000, and exports $25,000,000. These figures are small compared to those that will soon obtain, and, of course, America desires first to increase her exports of machinery, drugs, novelties, utensils, loom products, tools, etc.

American food and harvester companies will doubtless yet take up land directly or indirectly in fertile Manchuria, where America must look for supplies of vegetable oil, wheat, fertilizer, oil cake for milch cows, lumber and coal, and a market for machinery and manufactures. There is a virgin territory seven hundred miles by seven hundred miles, inviting the agriculturist. The American-Chinese Railway planned in 1910, from Chin Wang Tao, the only ice-free port on the Liaotung Gulf, to Tsitsikar and on to Aigun on the Amur River, was an excellent scheme and one which may eventually be accomplished.

The Western Electric Company, of America, installed Peking’s telephone system. The American Banknote Company set up China’s central bank engraving department. American companies furnished the stamping machinery for the new mints. American bridges and locomotives are frequently seen throughout China. American sewing machines, oil cans and tobacco papers are on view everywhere throughout the twenty-one provinces, and the American flour bag, when empty, patches the sails of the southern junks. Some American presses have come over, but they do not as yet compete strongly with the British and German presses. American hotel and kitchen utensils would compete were it not that the palatial treaty port hotels are controlled as yet by British and German shareholders. American mining, gas, electric, cranes, sawmill, cement, flourmill and pumping machinery are coming in, excepting where foreign contractors and bankers interpose. British shipyard machinery is still ahead. American protective paints for steel are holding their own in competition with the British and German paints, especially in the Yangtze valley. American turbines are slightly ahead, but American pipes, dynamos, stationary engines, winches, heating plants, dredgers, condensers, cables, electric fans, bleaching and cotton machinery, refrigerating machinery, wood-working machinery, water meters, hauling plants, lamps, etc., are still behind the British and German article, the British trade exceeding the American four to one. American machinery, with its generally nicer finish and greater adaptation and efficiency, has a vast field. In sugar machinery, Japan leads, but America will pass her. In car wheels, rails, and in simple foundry and rolling mill output, China can not be competed with for any length of time. In shovels, ballast unloaders, coal and ore hoists, America will lead, as she leads in locomotives. In the immense telegraph development, Britain leads. In water-tube boilers, America leads. In couplers, roofing, steam hammers and drilling machinery, America has a fair chance. In military supplies, Germany and Japan lead. In motor-boats, America will lead, although if time is not important, the Chinese dockyards can not be competed with in steam launches, which are now used very largely to tow the cargo junks. In automobiles, America leads. In family hardware, America and Britain lead. In lubricating oils, America meets some competition from the Dutch and Russians, but in illuminating oils, America leads. In fuel oils, the Dutch probably lead at present, the Shell Company having tanks of Sumatra oil at the ports. One of them was dramatically punctured with a shell in the recent revolution. In brakes, Britain and America share the field. In elevators, America will win. In reinforcing steel, America will lead. In typewriters, she long ago won the field. In sanitary hardware, scales, safes, rubber goods, America has an excellent chance. In phonographs, she has won, but in amusement films, France is ahead. In milks, Switzerland leads, and France leads in candies. In extensive systems of harbor improvements, sewerage, water supply, municipal improvements, power and light plants, institutions, mill erecting, etc., America will win as soon as the banking department is attached to the erecting and contracting department. At present the British and Germans lead, as they have done in South America, because of the banking department being attached to the constructive and diplomatic. In sporting goods, drugs, book supplies and school furniture, America will soon close up on Britain’s lead. In jewelry and fancy goods, France, Japan, Britain, Germany and America divide the field, in which there is a fighting chance, with the Chinese themselves as apt pupils in the competition. In brewery machinery, Japan and Germany lead. In canning equipment, America could easily seize the kingdom, and give the world added table necessities and delights from a new realm of sunshine and warmth. In leather, felt and underwear, America could lead. In special pianos for the moist climate, Britain leads, but she could be outplayed. In types, America could win. The field is not for war, but tournament, and the most efficient should and will win the joust! There are enough events to provide honors and rewards for each and all. Those nations which have had high tariffs will suffer most at the beginning of the competition, because while a high tariff may be the mother of the trusts, it is seldom the mother of a prodigy in competitive efficiency.