Page:James Hudson Maurer - The Far East (1912).pdf/60

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feet in granite at the Suan mine is four dollars per foot including labor, tools, and explosives, but exclusive of superintendence. Working day and night Koreans can drive a tunnel in granit at the rate of fifty feet per month.

"When practicable it is customary, in some mines, to employ Korean miners by plecework or small contract work. When this is done the results obtained per day from the Korean miner fully equal the average American or Cornish miner, Korean miners seem to possess a special adaptability for placing mining timbers, supports, etc., in position,"

There is really nothing remarkable about capitalism entering China, with this multitude of cheap workers, of whom tens of thousands starve to death annually. The old regime, long ago, failed to provide a means whereby the subject class could live and they quite naturally welcome a change, any kind of a change, even though brought about by the foreign devils.

On the other hand this new field for exploitation is necessary to the life of capitalism.

There has been for some years a constant agitation of the Chinese secret societies against the imperial power. The Manchus for two hundred and sixty years have ruled China, there being about 10,000,000 Manchus in the country and every one, man, woman and child draws a pension from the emperor.

Then there is another very important disturbing influence that must be reckoned with. It is the agitation of the Chinese rights party, the cry of which is, "China for the Chinese." This consists mainly of the element which objects to the foreign commercial invasion.

The Chinese rights party evidently read the hand writing on the wall. The foreigners were not only taking her ports, but much of her domain; besides the crafty European and American financiers were actually taking millions of her cash and giving nothing in return.

***

The following is a striking example of but one of the games that some of our eminently respectable gentlemen of America worked on the Chinese Government in 1895:

Thurlow Weed Bartes, grandson of the once mighty Thurlow Weed and brother of "Boss Bill" Barnes, of Albany, in company with a number of other eminently