The eastern states of America and Great Britain have a new slogan: “Get ready for the Panama Canal.” The western states of America, and indeed all America, should have another slogan: “Get ready for the China trade.” It is not far off; it is already on the horizon, “arising a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand”. It may come with a rush any year and thousands of companies will have their headquarters at New York. There are many things to arrange, internally and externally, in currency, in a tariff of twelve per cent. instead of five per cent., in provincial, inter-provincial and international politics, in loans and finances, in education, in nationalization of trunk railways, in harbor, canal and river conservancy, in reforestation, in patent, copyright and mining laws, in commercial law, in army matters, in a revenue navy, in police, in municipal organization, in hygiene, in paternalization as far as famine, flood and seed grain are concerned, in collection of taxes, in civil service, etc., but none of these difficulties is insuperable. Then comes the great trade.

On my travels and life of three years in China, I have listened, and I have glanced about for signs of the new times; and I shall relate just a few of the indications of progress, indications as different from the old manifestations as day is from night. Three years ago, yes, one year ago, few thought that these things were possible. Twenty recent books and five thousand newspaper articles prophesied that they were not possible. Thirty recent authors and ten thousand newspaper writers were Laodicean in attitude. Alas, ye Manchuized scribes! A few books, a few articles, many missionaries, and the October, 1911, revolution said they were possible, and the fall of Nanking proved it.

Agricultural machinery will before long be required on the great plains of Pechili, Mongolia and the three Manchurian provinces, whence America will draw much grain, meat, oil, lumber and coal. Nail, needle and glass factories are going up on a small scale. China has the iron in the mine, but she will need our machinery. Paper mills are largely increasing, and we need their pulp. Some mills use bamboo, which the Japanese successfully experimented on in Formosa. Factories for making soap, the most glaringly deficient thing in dirty China hitherto, have been erected, even in far western Chingtu City. China, like Japan, has concluded to adopt wool in the northern provinces instead of padded cotton and sheepskin. Woolen mills have been erected at Shanghai, Peking, Lanchow, Hankau, Kalgan, etc., to work up to the vast supplies of Mongolian and Pechili shearings. The old method of making winter clothing was to pad cotton and silk with cotton batting and silk waste, the wearer being transformed into a comical Falstaffian size. Modern tanneries have been erected by Mohammedan Chinese at Hankau, Lanchow, Singan, etc. Hardware and enameled ware factories have been erected at Tientsin, Canton, etc., but China can not for years take care of her needs in hardware. Flour mills abound at Harbin, Shanghai and Hongkong, and will be rapidly extended throughout the north. Cement is being heavily produced, and will increase, great factories now being run at Tongshan in Pechili, Canton and Macao in Kwangtung, and Tayeh in Hupeh provinces. All of these industries will need machinery. Of all municipal improvements, China has needed modern water-works the most. They are now in operation in the cities of Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin, Canton, Peking, Mukden, Chingtu, Nanking, Hangchow, Chinkiang, Swatow, Tsinan, Newchwang, etc. Electric cars are run at Canton, Shanghai, Peking, Hongkong, Hankau, Tientsin, Tsingtau, etc. Hongkong has a wonderful cable railway up 1,500 feet of mountain, which will be copied at Kiukiang, and other hill resorts from the heat. Telephone service is installed at Hongkong, Canton, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Chingtu, Wuhu, Hangchow, Ningpo, Nanking, etc. Electric light is furnished at Nanking, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Hankau, Swatow, Mukden, Newchwang, Shanghai, Hangchow, etc. In little of this have the Americans entered as yet, though they will on a vast scale as American finance and industry extends its agencies. The financing and the contracting often go together, and it is not unknown for the British and Germans to combine, though the British would be glad to join with the Americans, if there were Americans on the ground. Often the suppliers divide on a plant, the British furnishing the engines and boilers, and the Germans the dynamos. Gas works are also being erected, and the incandescent mantle lamps are very popular. As China has untold riches in coal, her development in gas lighting will be extensive. There is a great field for American machinery here. Her pipe foundries will grow, as she has as much iron as coal. For many years, however, her industrial, municipal and railway supplies, and certainly her machinery, must largely come from abroad. It is a great field for the manufacturing nations, and even Austria is entering it with recent success. She has increased the service of the Austrian Lloyd Steamship Company from Trieste, and her manufactures are seen more and more throughout the Far East. Yet Austria is not a nation that can be compared with America, Britain or Germany in potentiality.

Since China has become a purchaser of machinery, she invites the world to advertise in Chinese in her newspapers, and to open agencies in China, where Chinese is read by the compradores at least. She hates concession hunters when they are of the Pizarro and Cortez type, and desires to exploit and profit by her own wealth. I have seen the bitterest complaint in the Ching Wei Pao, an able native paper of Tientsin, that too many franchises are given free to foreigners, who pay small wages and take the profits out of the country. Can you blame them for desiring municipal ownership, if they are willing to buy our machinery and hire our instructors?

China is slowly establishing fire departments in its municipal and marine life. I have seen a fire break out on oil boats in the West River of Kwangtung province. Gongs were struck everywhere, and tugs and launches hastened to the scene and with hose poured water upon the blaze.

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.

The Chinese furniture makers of Ningpo, Yunnan, Shanghai, Hongkong and Canton, are famous. They copy foreign models and also execute the native designs. The artistic cabinet work of Li Kwong Loong can be seen in the Shanghai and Hongkong clubs, in the Hongkong Hotel, and in Watson’s Store at Hongkong. The best effects are in the prized teakwood, which is becoming the rage in San Francisco. Vantine’s and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, exhibit specimens of the careful and strong handwork of these Chippendales of the land of Han. China can take care of herself in furniture making if time is not of the “essence of importance.” Loving art, I would not recommend sending her our machinery for furniture, but if government schools and offices are to be supplied quickly, I suppose we shall be compelled to make esthetics surrender to utility here also!

The Germans plan to meet the leadership of America, Britain and Japan in technical instruction in China. The British and Americans control the Tongshan Engineering School at Tongshan, and the Americans are powerful in the Pei Yang Science College at Tientsin. At Mukden the Japanese are influential. At the mechanical shops at Hongkong, Shanghai and Hankau the British are influential. The Germans plan, with the aid of Krupps, their foreign office and the Deutsche Asiatische Bank, to establish a central engineering college at Tsingtau, Shangtung province, with branches possibly at Hankau and Kaiphong. They believe that the graduates will order German machinery and material for China’s coming prodigious development.

The American government has included in its humanitarian pure food laws a prohibition on the importation of green tea, which is colored in the pot over the fire with Prussian blue, indigo, talc and gypsum. This changes the leaf from its flat state and dull yellow and green color to a ball state, colored lustrous emerald, and increases the aromatic flavor slightly. The Chinese complain of having to pot-dry the green tea longer to preserve it under the new rule, and moreover old custom dies hard in China as far as agriculture is concerned. The American government has done a world service in improving the quality of the ideal beverage, and the Chinese, who do things by wholesale, will insist in time that Australia and England, the champion tea-drinkers per capita, though not in bulk, shall take what the Americans have made “ploper fashion.” There were amusing instances of cousin John’s habit of “bluffing” laws on the maxim followed in more lands than in China, “If laws interfere with your business, why laws?” He heard of the May 1, 1912, law of the Americans, but he sent his crop over just the same, saying, “Surely America won’t put it back on my hands, as I haven’t got used to the law yet; like Mencius’ thief, I can only get used to law gradually!” Had America relented, John would have seen that his firers never got used to our laws. China formulated a patent and copyright office at Peking in 1905, but it has not yet reached efficiency for various reasons, one being that the states’ rights feeling is stronger than the centralized government movement up to date. In the meantime the district or municipal taotai will, upon application of the foreign consul, issue a proclamation prohibiting all Chinese within his jurisdiction from manufacturing, selling or consuming property which is pirated; and such theft and infringement are considered unpardonable by the great body of highly moral Chinese guild merchants, as compared with the lack of similar honor in the first days of modernized commercial Japan. Prosecutions have been actually carried on in the mixed courts of foreign consuls and Chinese taotais against Chinese dealers for handling goods made in Europe and imported into China under marks similar to American marks registered with the taotai, and the dealers, whether ignorant or not, have been convicted and severely punished. Until China is able to establish an efficient patent department the method that should be followed is to register the mark or patent at the consul’s and taotai’s office in each province and port where the goods are to be sold. This will answer very satisfactorily until the growth of trade, transportation and machinery of government make the central government more familiar with modern business methods and international law. It is important in China and absolutely essential in Japan for the foreigner to register his patent promptly, for a pirate may precede him and cause irrevocable loss, in Japan at least.

I want to portray a Chinese character as a type of one interesting and powerful set of men with whom the West will now come in contact. Ah Chuk (I shall call that his name for present purposes) was a Cantonese about fifty-five years of age, though he looked much older because of his parchment face. He had few of his teeth, because he lived in the days before the advent of foreign-trained dentists. In his youth he did not fear to strike. His race were the men who had set in motion the greatest rebellion ever known, the Taiping scourge. My patriotic and legal duty was to obey the law in spirit and in letter, and in addition, under no circumstances to lose temper, but to treat Chuk with unfailing manners. Chuk was the only Chinese whom I ever knew who disobeyed his Confucian code of flowery courtesy (Li). He hated me, as he bitterly hated all who firmly withstood him, and he showed his feelings on every occasion. His gods were not Buddha, but money and power. On one occasion he said: “I can get you a Chinese slave girl for four hundred dollars.” I replied: “You insult me, Chuk.” He hissed, “I meant to.” He asked me why I could not obey the letter of the law and not the spirit, and I told him that an Occidental corporation employÉ, like the soldier, was expected to be absolutely loyal to orders. He said I was a fool because I made a god of conscience, instead of expediency; that I had no tact. I replied by quoting their maxim; “Tact is the discounting of principle in the mart of expediency.”

He feared neither the American, British or Chinese governments, nor the rich corporation. He corrupted foreign consulates in the old days when forged citizenship certificates were not unknown. He bullied the Canton viceroy. He was lord over half a dozen valleys and a hundred hamlets of Kwangtung province, whose inhabitants were his slaves, because they had signed bonds of $1,000 each for every Chinese whom he safely got into that Eldorado, America. He did not press the man in America any more than he would attempt to press a man in Mars. He pressed his father, his relatives in Kwangtung, who were on the bond also, for the payment of the $1,000, and it took the son in America twenty years to pay the money and the heavy interest. With his foot on the sacred bones of his grandfather he held the grandson in America in constant fear.

He was lord of the underground routes which ran to South Africa, America, Australia, Mexico, Canada and wherever Chinese laborers are not received free. He seldom dressed well; it did not do in those days to look opulent in China, and besides American inspectors might suspect a well-dressed dealer in contract slaves. His voice, unlike the usual pliable voice of his race, was deep in his raucous throat. He would not fear to take life if he had a chance in the lonely walks of his province, if his opponent was a strong obstacle to his worship of his two gods, money and power. He could not get in as many as he wanted by the direct route, so he determined to institute the first Chinese trans-Pacific steamship company, crossing the Pacific to Mexico. I told him that he never could get the money, as Queen’s Road, Hongkong, was a long way from Wall Street; that he would sink a million of the money of his beloved countrymen. He got the money from the Chinese, intensely conservative as they were, which proved the power of his persuasion, and he sank it all in two years. He could not be drawn into much expression by me, though he could speak English well. I heard him, however, speaking like a Rooseveltian tornado of storm and lightning unto his own, and once to two foreigners in whom he trusted, because they had obeyed him at their risk, and he owned them by the bribes they had accepted. His will was of iron, unyielding. His persistency was as tireless as Napoleon’s, and his swift victories were many. He could live without sleep when he planned his campaigns. He would go anywhere and to anybody to accomplish his aims. He loved whispering. He cast looks which wielded men. He swept like a vulture on lambs. He struck at his opponents like a tiger. He was not a Manchu, but he was Manchuized in his confidence that the Oriental was superior to the foreigner. I shall never forget the time when he told me that he had “a white man working for him.” That white man was descended in the third generation from a brother of a president of America.

Chuk was not uncomfortable when he thus wore the crown. He ruled over his subject races of the West with all the assurance which Xerxes or Kublai Khan did. He could plot; he could bribe; he could threat; he could spend with a lavish hand. One time he would travel in state at home and abroad, and on another occasion incognito like a spy. He felt he was abler than any white man because he added the easier conscience of the Orient, which he called wisdom, to an ability equal to the white man’s, and a will just as imperious. He despised all religions as he said “conscience makes faint-hearts of us all.” He had no pity for his dupes or victims. He was a Cantonese Tippo Tib. I never know, when I am speaking to an American or Cuban Chinese, if he is not a slave of Chuk’s, remitting to his old father in Kwangtung province, who will in turn remit to Chuk or Chuk’s heirs, to pay off that $1,000 and usurious interest added. Chuk is a Cantonese example of the power which may come to a money lord who has decapitalized labor, which will never catch up with the principal. His profits on the real cost were 1,500 per cent. Not even a surveillance of communications could probe Chuk’s underground methods. Three insurmountable barriers interposed, the extent of the territory, the Chinese language, and the changing codes which he used. It would be as difficult as ferreting out a criminal in the Trastevere section of Rome, if for one reason alone, because the Trasteverans will not turn informers. Neither will the Chinese. Therefore, with espionage of communications and informing for bribes eliminated, a secret service on Chinese law breakers, as far as we are concerned, is as yet in many respects ineffective.