Part 12

The Chinese engine builders of Hongkong, who were apprenticed at the British Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, are successfully copying foreign marine engines and pumps, and for boats under one thousand tons European builders can not compete with them, except in the matter of quicker delivery, which is often important. Many motor-boats, manufactured in Hongkong, are brought across the Pacific for delivery in Canada via the C. P. R. steamships. Until recently the Szechuen and Hupeh boatmen of the upper Yangtze would not permit the competition of steam, but the Kwangtung province men of the West River--the brainiest men of modern China--have been quick to adopt machinery, possibly because wonderful Hongkong was so near as an example of the new era and an efficient interpreter of the West to the East. While the labor at Hongkong is Chinese, most of the capital and the expert foremanship is British.

The total taxes that a Chinese pays for national, provincial and municipal purposes is one dollar per head per year, against seven dollars in Russia, and twenty dollars in Europe and America. As most of this money is wasted on soon obsolete navies and armies, and is drawn from mines and land that can not be replenished, one can see the vast wealth with which China will some day suddenly step into the world arena, China strong, and the others impoverished in all but brain power.

In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, very simple methods are followed in producing cotton-seed oil. The seeds are heated, packed into a barrel and pressure is exerted by driving wedges under a hoop. Meal is made in buffalo-driven stone mills. These methods will soon change with modern industrial organization and the importation of our machinery.

At Kiating in the south of Szechuen province are the remarkable gas and salt wells, the former supplying fuel to evaporate the brine of the latter. The industry is immense, there being many thousands of wells in the opulent Min River valley of Central China. The salt is a government monopoly, and may be retained as such in the new financing, as in some features of national revenue French and Japanese methods, instead of American and British, may be followed. In that case, the federal government would be the purchaser of the new machinery.

Only north of the Yangtze River are ponies seen. Szechuen province has the most beautiful, many of them being black. The Mongolian pony of the provinces farther north has a heavier body and a worse temper. Japan has commenced the stocking of horses, and China will do likewise, when she widens her roads, and increases the size of her farms so as to make an animal useful, the men displaced from employment going to the new mines and railways. Moreover, China is at her wits’ end for fertilizer, which stock will furnish. She has been at her wits’ end for fuel and has been burning the field stubble and straw needed for compost. Now coal will save for her this land enricher.

The fine guild houses in the various cities are erected by subscription and are put in charge of a caretaker. Meeting halls, showrooms, restaurants, theater and sleeping quarters are provided. It is the same as if the Ohio men put up a guild house in New York, and the New York men put up a guild house in Cincinnati; or if Edinburgh traders erected a guild house in London, and London men reciprocated. It was the reciprocal working of these guilds which showed the Chinese that assemblies and parliaments were feasible, and next to the foreign-trained students, the guild men have been foremost in China’s representative political bodies. Here are some of the practical proverbs that are hung up in the guild rooms:

“He who keeps everlastingly at it will grow legs long enough to jump the highest mountain.”

“When there’s fire a distant lake is not so good as a near bucketful.”

“Gambling is not good, but still I have known one who risked his last penny and got his first pound.”

“You don’t need to thrash a fast horse, or yell at a wise man.”

“Trust an orange-seller to say that his oranges are sweet, and a shoemaker to say that his shoes don’t leak.”

“A smiling salesman enhances his wares.”

“A little attention to the cutting end of a chisel makes necessary only a little attention to the striking end.”

The inland Chinese are sometimes clever in working themselves into the foreigner’s personnel of staff. First the father brings his boy, and the boy brings his cousin, imploring the foreigner to let them wait around the office to pick up a little English. They insist on doing or pretending to do chores; they whisper to the staff to halve their work with them, and then they beg for or demand a wage “while they are learning English.” Seldom does the kind-hearted foreigner refuse it, and he is really spreading the commercial and literary gospel of the West by doing so.

In some of the Yangtze provinces designs are even yet stamped into the dyed cotton and silk, by stencil with lime, which takes out the color, as compared with our system of rolling the inked design on plain goods. The old will be rung out by the new, as Tennyson prophesied.

Man as a beast of burden must depart in patient earnest China, which is associated with such unique sights of physical slavery as dozens of coolies harnessed to a wagon-load of teak in Hongkong, or several hundred trackers tied to long bamboo hawsers, while they pull junks through the terrific rapids of the noble Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien. Men for thousands of years have also supplied with their legs the motive power of irrigation wheels for raising water, and of tread wheels for turning paddles. Billions of tons of freight have been carried on the backs and from the shoulders of men, women and children over the hundreds of mountain passes on the great trade routes of mountainous China, such as the steep Mei Ling pass of Kwangtung, the Tangyueh pass of Yunnan, the Tachien pass into Tibet, etc. Hongkong’s thousand palatial villas and châteaux eighteen hundred feet above the clouds were carried up brick by brick and stone by stone in baskets and on bamboos balanced on the bare shoulders of human beings, who panted piteously in a stifling hot and humid atmosphere in the equator region. Men have pumped the brine from the deepest brine wells in the world. Their arms have lifted the weights that have driven the wells for gas and brine. A pulley, a rope, an endless chain, have been unknown, and hearts and feet have strained up the thirteen stories of the pagodas with the coping stone and upcurled eaves. The day of labor-saving devices dawns for a China whose population is going to decrease within reason, not with the intent to starve labor, but so that labor may devote itself to better-paying work. Government officials only can supervise this condition in China or in America, government’s work being to govern the big as well as the small, as we are just discovering in the West.

Shopping has been done by a tedious system of bargaining extending over days, the contract concluding with a shout of “Mai Te” (sale attained), which corresponds with our stock exchange phrase of “Bid taken.” Doubtless the modern Chinese will adopt the Anglo-Saxon method of saving time and coming to a decision quicker. Healthy competition will bring this about.

Many guilds and Chinese merchants continue the old custom of sending letters from city to city by messenger or trusted traveler. Hongkong has attacked this competition with the government post-office by fining those who deliver private letters from out-ports, though Hongkong permits private delivery by the excellent “chit-book” system within the city.

China is finding that she can knit her own goods, and she will soon import yarns mainly. I shall instance the Wei San factory as a sample of five factories in Hongkong. Canton has ten factories, and Kwangtung province has many more, not to speak of the immense number of hand-knitting machines which the Japanese and the Germans are supplying. Tientsin and Shanghai have several knitting factories, and much foreign machinery will be needed throughout the land, especially in the Yangtze valley.

Up to Viceroy Chang Chih Tung’s régime in Hupeh in 1906, China scraped and raked the whole world for cargoes of old horseshoes and iron scrap, but since the blast furnaces at Hanyang have been a success, China is doing considerable smelting of ore, of which she has beds almost as rich as her coal and lime beds. The largest iron mines now worked are at Phing Ting in eastern Shansi province and Tayeh in eastern Hupeh province. The Hanyang smelters supply the rail mills of Hanyang, and also ship pig iron to the Wakamatsu iron works on Kyushu Island, Japan; 40,000 tons of pig to the Western Steel Corporation of Seattle, and to the eastern seaboard of America, as well as to Hongkong, on occasions. There is iron ore in more than half of the provinces, notably in Kiangsu (near Nanking); Nganhwei and Kiangsi, besides the provinces mentioned. China is already turning out 400,000 tons of iron ore a year, largely by primitive methods. The Han Yeh Ping Iron and Coal Company at Hanyang, Hupeh province, has three German blast furnaces, eight Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnaces, a rolling-mill of one thousand tons a day, blooming mills and a foundry. The cranes are run by electricity. The iron ore and limestone are secured at Tayeh eighty miles down the Yangtze from Hankau. Here a whole range of hills is full of hematite ore. A railway of fifteen miles brings the ore to the Yangtze River, where it is loaded on junks and towed by steam launches up to Hanyang.

Among the Chinese companies (stock held by Chinese and foreigners) which have been managed successfully are the Taku (Tientsin) Tug and Lighter Company; Shanghai Tug and Lighter; Shanghai Dock and Engineering; Shanghai and Hongkew Wharf Company; China Oil Company; Tientsin Iron Works; Union, Yangtze, North China and Canton Marine Insurance Company; Hongkong, Canton, Yangtze, North China and China Fire Insurance Companies; China Merchants’ Steamship Company; Ewo, Shanghai and Soy Chee Cotton Mills; Hai Ho Conservancy (Tientsin); Ching Ching Mining Company; Kiangnan Dock and Ship-building at Shanghai; Yangtzepoo Dock and Ship-building at Shanghai; Vulcan Iron and Car Works; Han Yeh Ping steel plant at Hanyang; colliery at Pinghsiang; iron mines at Tayeh; Commercial Press of Shanghai in publishing; Chee Hsin Cement Company (at Tayeh, Hupeh).

In joint stock organization, China will for a while suffer from two things, nepotism and graft. We have ourselves not yet emerged from staffing companies with inexperienced and dummy relatives, and from plundering the corporation exchequer. The Shanghai taotai who decamped during the rubber panic of 1910, having given several million dollars of fiduciary funds to friends, will never be forgotten in the Paris of the East. No more however will the “squeezing” Manchu mandarin come down “like a wolf on the fold” on struggling concerns or private business.

China mines only 15,000,000 tons of coal yearly, mainly at the following mines:

Kaiping (near Tientsin), in Pechili province; Wei Hsien, in Honan (anthracite).

Pingsiang, in Kiangsi province; Lin Cheng, in Pechili (anthracite).

Fangtsze (near Tsinan), in Shangtung province.

Lung Wang (near Chungking), in Szechuen province.

Tse Chow, in Shansi province.

Ching-Ching, in Shansi province (anthracite).

Pao Chin, in Shansi province (anthracite).

Fushun (near Mukden), in Manchuria (owned and operated by Japanese).

Heijo (near Chemulpo), in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).

Ping Yang, in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).

Hungay and Kebao, in Tonquin (owned and operated by French and Hongkong capitalists).

This of course is only a beginning. On account of poor transportation by rail and canal, China imports about 2,000,000 tons of Japanese coal, and Hongkong and Shanghai import Australian and Welsh coal, some of it for admiralty purposes. The largest anthracite mines now open are, in their order, in Shansi, Honan, Pechili and Shangtung provinces; the bituminous as far as mined, in their order, in Pechili, Kiangsi, Shensi, Kansu, Shangtung, Szechuen, Yunnan, Kweichou, Hunan and Kwangsi provinces. Over a million tons of lignite are mined yearly in Manchuria. England has a coal supply for only one hundred and fifty years, and America’s supply will not last much longer. This means that China will step full-panoplied into the coal and iron arena with plethoric supplies which, with her population, will make her probably the world’s richest nation, in material resources, if not in brains. The first shipment of Chinese coal for America occurred in July, 1910, when the steamer _Inverkip_ called at Ching Wang Tao on the Gulf of Pechili and loaded the famous Kaiping coal for San Francisco. The British Peking Syndicate, mining anthracite coal in Shansi province, purposes to build colliers to take coal to America. Coal costs at the mines only seventy-five cents a ton, and with machinery opulent China could reduce this cost. It is a knowledge of the potentiality of this great wealth that kindled some of the fire of the October, 1911, revolution, and led the provincial assemblies of Szechuen and Hupeh to say: “China’s mines and transportation franchises shall not be passed over to foreigners.” The Peking Syndicate, mainly British, operating hard coal and iron mines in Shansi, is capitalized at $6,000,000. The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company has a capital of $5,000,000. It has for many years operated the famous Kaiping coal mines north of Tientsin. This is the company which employed Mr. Kinder, the British engineer, who surreptitiously built the “Rocket,” the first locomotive used continuously in China.

A wonderful tin mine has been worked for many years at Kuo Chao, in the southeast corner of Yunnan province, the tin being exported through Mengtsu. It used to seek Hongkong via the Red River and Haiphong and sometimes via Nanning, the West River and Canton. The costly narrow gage railway which the French have run from Haiphong to Yunnan now catches nearly all of this product. There is much complaint regarding rates, which are based “on all the traffic will bear,” and it is proposed by the Chinese to build a railway to Nanning, and send the tin the remainder of the way by junk and launch. This rich mine produces about 15,000,000 pounds a year, valued at nearly $6,000,000, and now that German machinery and German experts have been introduced by the Chinese miners, a greater and a purer product will result. Until recently the product had to be resmelted at Hongkong. Of course, great as this product is, the Straits Settlements still lead in tin mining. There are 30,000 miners (mostly boys, on account of the narrow unhealthy shafts) at Kuo Chao, and owners, miners, smelters, porters and the government representatives all have their compulsory labor unions. This protection of labor must be copied in all countries, the government forcing the laborer to protect himself, and making the industry share in the cost of government supervision. Charcoal is used as fuel at the clay smelters, and the bellows are hand-worked.

As is well known, Southern China is cursed with white ants and humidity. The former eat the wooden beams, and the latter rusts iron beams. Ceilings have to be perforated to admit air and light between the floors so as to keep down the ravages of the white ant. However, Southern China is copying Hongkong’s example and risking metal beams and ceilings, the trouble being to find a suitable protective paint. China has graphite, lead for oxides, carbon, silica, and oils in abundance, and she will in time manufacture her own protective paints, but we shall supply the machinery. Brass hardware is used instead of iron on account of the humidity.

The important copper mines of Yunnan were worked as a Manchu monopoly. Hunan is perhaps the next richest province, with Szechuen, Shansi and Kweichou following, although every province has copper. Nickel mines exist in Yunnan, Kwangsi and other southern provinces.

The first engagement between the two immense sugar refineries (Butterfield’s and Jardine’s) at Hongkong and the great refiners of Formosa has been won by the latter, which were helped until recently by indirect Japanese subsidies. When the Sugar Trust, after the government fine and municipal suit, jumped the price two cents a pound, in 1911, if America had a Price Board at the head of affairs to induce Congress to act as was done in the coal shortage, Formosa and Hongkong sugar could have flooded the country until the price was restored to the five cents rate, or about that rate. The immense Hongkong refineries (Taikoo and China Sugar) use Javan raw sugar. The Formosa refineries use their local raw. They not only supply Japan under a protective tariff, but have enough to supply China. Formosa produces 600,000,000 pounds a year, and could handily double the amount. America has the Louisiana, Hawaii and Philippine cane fields to protect, it is true, but if sugar rises over five and one-half cents a pound retail, the insistent knockers at the high door, Formosan and Hongkong sugars, might be allowed to come in, as the tariff-enslaved countries are going to heed the new cry that food, clothing and building material must be duty-free, or nearly so.

Flake and amorphous graphite are mined in the Ping An section of northern Korea, and Japan will, therefore, enter into the manufacture of crucibles, lubricants, pencils and steel-paint.

China continues to use the earthenware jar and the paper bottle, reinforced with bamboo withes, to transport her valuable nut, bean and seed oils. Sometimes staves are brought in by foreigners and set up at Hankau, Newchwang, etc., in barrels, but it would seem that tin would eventually come into use, with the idea of conserving wood. The earthenware and bamboo paper containers are the ideal from a conservation point of view, but they are too tender and risky for movement abroad. The Hanyang plant will probably have the first tinware factory.

The royalty imposed in Korea for mining by the Japanese government is thirty per cent. of the net revenue. The Chinese royalty is twenty-five per cent. in general, plus an additional twenty per cent. in the case of precious stones, ten per cent. in gold, silver and quicksilver mines; five per cent. in coal and iron; and export duty of five per cent., and likin (inland customs and provincial transportation tax, literally “cash a catty”) two per cent. As China’s mines are more lucrative, this royalty is not so onerous as the comparison would seem to make it, and the tendency is to reduce it, under the new government.

The ship-building and dock facilities of the Far East have fully risen to the demands. The three largest are at Hongkong, all British owned. The Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company on the China mainland of Hongkong (Kowloon), and at Aberdeen on Hongkong Island, over the mountains from the city of Victoria, has six docks, one of them seven hundred feet long on the keel blocks. The company builds ships, locomotives, cars, bridges, engines, motor-boats, boilers, machinery, and, indeed, anything after the steel is furnished to them, by Britain chiefly.

The Taikoo Dock (Butterfield & Swire) on the eastern end of Hongkong Island has a dock 787 feet long, and is also equipped to turn out the largest ships.

The Admiralty Dock of the British Navy on Hongkong Island was built from shore in the center of the city of Victoria, into the water by reclamation, instead of being cut out of the rock, as was done with the other docks. It is equipped to handle large battleships, and can be used by the mercantile marine in an emergency.

The Tanjong Pagar Dock at Singapore is equipped to handle battleships and maritime vessels. It is controlled by the Crown Colony.

The Mitsu Bishi Dock, cut out of the high rock at Nagasaki, has one dock 722 feet long. This company built the new 19,000 tons displacement ships, oil burners, of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha for the San Francisco route, and like the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock it always has large salvage steamers ready to go to the rescue of wrecks, now that wireless has been established in the Orient. There have been some wonderful expeditions of help recently on the romantic seas of the Far East.

The Kawasaki Dock Company at Dairen, South Manchuria, has a dock 380 feet long, together with the usual machine and boiler shops. There is a commercial dock at Kobe, the Harima Dock at Oh, and large government docks and arsenals at Yokosuka (near Yokohama), Kure and Sasebo. The last named dock, 777 feet long, built the dreadnought battleship _Kawachi_, 21,000 tons.

The Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Works, Shanghai (Chinese), built the imperial yacht once owned by Prince Tsui, and small cruisers which the republicans seized. It has a dock 575 feet long on the blocks, and has the usual machine and boiler shops. The Yangtzepoo Dock at Shanghai (Chinese and foreign owned) has a dock 455 feet long on the blocks.

The Shanghai Dock and Engineering Company (Chinese and foreign) has docks 560 feet long, where some of the vessels for the Philippine government were built in 1912.

The Tsingtauer Werft, owned by the Germans, has a floating dock at Tsingtau, Kiaochou, Shangtung, China, lifting vessels 460 feet long, and there is the immense floating dock, “Dewey”, of the American navy, at Cavite, Manila, which does not refuse to do a friendly act for maritime commerce, when necessary, if the ships are not over 600 feet long.

The French have small docks at Haiphong and Saigon. It will be seen that as far as taking care of battleships is concerned, only Britain and Japan have more than one string to the bow, Britain being easily in the lead. America has only one dock, and that a floating one. It could not lift a dreadnought, and therefore America has in the meantime wisely moved her first defense line, as I think the writer, Thomas Millard, a Shanghai American, recommended in his books, back to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, counting on Cavite, Philippines, as a picket post. Germany at Kiaochou, and Russia at Vladivostok are as yet out of the running, with inferior docking accommodations. The Russians are spending $10,000,000 in Vladivostok on a floating dock, ice-breakers and a wharf. As far as America is concerned, she can count on Britain. Dewey fitted out at Mirs Bay, Hongkong, despite all conventions. As Commander Tatnall said at Taku in China, “Blood is thicker than water,” which was reciprocated by Admiral Seymour at Manila. When Admiral Diedrichs asked what the British would do if the Germans fired on the Americans, Seymour replied: “You had better ask Admiral Dewey, who is informed.” That is the story that goes the rounds in the East, and if it is not wholly true in fact, it is so potentially.

There is a growing number of smaller Chinese docks, machine shops and ways. Inland at the Pinghsiang colliery on the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan provinces, China has machine shops fitted to turn out almost anything, and the Hanyang Steel Works, across from Hankau, have been already described. Railway shops are opening up everywhere, and do creditable work, especially the North China railway at Tongshan; the Shanghai & Nanking Railway shops at Wusung, near Shanghai, and the Hongkong and Whompoa Dock shops. The Vulcan Iron Works at Shanghai construct railway and street-cars.

The immense cement works which are already in operation are the Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong, in Tonquin (French); Tayeh, in Hupeh province (Chinese); Chee Hsin Cement Company, at Tongshan, near Tientsin (Chinese); Green Island Cement Company, at Macao and Hongkong (British and Chinese). Half of the many bridges that are being erected for the immense transportation development throughout China and the Philippines are made of this new concrete.