The Far East
BY
JAMES H. MAURER
The Far East
By JAMES H. MAURER
Press of Sentinel Printing Co.,
428–436 Washington Street, Reading, Pa.
1912.
PREFACE
The writer's part in making this book has been chiefly one of selection, compilation and arrangement. A work of this character could not be otherwise. China is a vast country; its people impoverished and stupefied; the writer who would attempt to analyze the economic condition of this wonderful and mysterious country first hand would be confronted by insurmountable obstacles—at best, after mastering the language, he in all probability, due to a woeful lack of governmental statistics, would be able to record but a small fraction of such a colossal undertaking after years of hard labor.
It therefore follows that far better results can be obtained by gathering the reliable data as it has come to us through recorded history, travelers, scientists, writers and government officials. True, very little contained in this book is new, but never to our knowledge has such a vast fund of information been gathered in so small a book upon the opium traffic and the commercialization of China, nor has any effort been made to give these historical events an economic interpretation.
In view of the fact that the Capitalist system has well nigh exploited every part of the earth into a sterile condition, it must and will seize the remaining spots and drain them to exhaustion. We as people who are fighting for our very lives under these conditions, must understand the economic result, not only upon the oppressed Chinaman, but upon the entire human race.
The great captains of industry and finance are now at work in the Celestial Empire; vast sums have been poured in to rend and destroy the Manchu dynasty; a supposed republic is now in process of organization, and in just a little while the nerveless Chinamen, under the scientific management of the best engineers and most skilled workmen from ail countries, will flood the earth with cheap commodities and lower the standard of living to that of the lowly Mongolian.
THE FAR EAST
China is one of the most corrupt of nations and yet the standard of personal and commercial honesty is probably higher in China than in any other country in the world.
Women in China are treated as beasts of burden. It is a land where the women wear socks and trousers and the men wear stockings and robes; where a man shakes his own hand, not yours. White, not black is a sign of mourning. Where the compass points south, not north. Books are read backward, not forward. The woman cries when being married and men laugh when they talk of their mother's death.
The Chinese are unquestionably the oldest nation in the world.
They speak the language and observe the same social and political customs that they did several thousand years before the Christian era.
Up to the Nineteenth century China was in a commercial sense, isolated from the rest of the world. She was indifferent to and ignorant of the ceaseless competition and contests of mankind outside her orbit.
She scarcely knew or cared to know that Christian England had conquered and was ruling India. The British, no different from all other nations had but one object in view in wars of conquest, and that was to rob and exploit the conquered. British capitalists at once inaugurated what appeared to be the most profitable system of industry, and that was the cultivation of opium. The means of transportation in India and China was limited in a great measure to pack mules, and a single mule could transport several thousand dollars' worth of opium, and that is one of the reasons why opium is a more profitable crop than potatoes or wheat. But the production and manufacture of opium in itself would be useless unless there was a sale for the product, and there can be no sale for any product unless there are consumers of the product.
Therefore, the Christian British proceeded to find a people who could be taught to consume their poisonous opium.
China appeared to them as the most fertile territory for them to fasten their curse upon. China after all was a long way off and Chinamen were only Chinamen, besides they were miserably poor. For ages the social parasites of China had been sucking the life's blood out of the great race of yellow men. Surely, reasoned the British, these miserable, impoverished beings would welcome their drug. Would it not act as a stimulant and prove a blessing as a cheap luxury to these weak and underfed people?
China was a wonderful field ready prepared for the ravages or opium; none better. But there was an obstacle in getting opium into the currents of trade. The Chinese were not an opium consuming race.
They did not use opium; they did not want opium, and steadily resisted the inroads of opium. But the British rulers were far-seeing men. Tempt misery long enough and it will take to opium.
As late as 1765 the importation of opium into China by energetic traders (smugglers) had never exceeded 28,000 pounds a year which was mostly consumed as a remedy for malaria, and these first smokers seam to have mixed a little opium with their tobacco.
Four grains of opium administered in one dose to a person unaccustomed to its use, is apt to prove fatal.
The Chinese government, conscious of the demoralizing effect that the use of opium would have on her people, strongly prohibited the importation of if. Yet in spite of official resistance, British traders, with the assistance of Chinese merchants, succeeded in smuggling into China the death-dealing drug. But the work of cultivating a taste for opium was slow. In 1785 it could be bought in China for $1.40 a pound (Mexican money). Its cheapness proved a temptation to many and thirty-five years later, during the year of 1820, the Christian British disposed of 566,000 pounds of opium.
These figures show that the debauching of a nation, of then more than three hundred million beings, was making considerable headway.
But the Christian gentlemen were far from satisfied. India must produce mete opium and China must consume it. Capital must have its profit even if the largest and oldest nation on earth must be destroyed.
Smuggling was too slow and uncertain; it entailed risk and expense. China must rescind her attitude towards opium. The East India Company, in itself, was not powerful enough to accomplish this, but the British government would be. Therefore, in 1843 the British government took full control of the far eastern trade and three-fifths of this trade consisted of opium—a prohibited article.
A government trade agent, Captain Charles Elliot, was sent to Canton to look after British interests, also to protect British smuggling.
When Captain Elliot took up his work at Canton, the ravages of opium had already made such inroads on the Chinese that the Chinese government, seeing misery and desolation ahead, was making strong efforts to save her people and drive the opium dealers and smugglers out of business.
Even Captain Elliot in time sickened at the havoc caused by the drug. In 1837 he wrote to Lord Palmerston about the vicious luxury, pointing out that it was a menace to the yellow race and suggested that a check to the growth and importation of opium would be beneficial. British merchants and British trade agents had by this time worked into the good will of the Chinese merchants and bought, bribed and cajoled many mandarins (Chinese officials), thus enabling them to carry on their nefarious work with more ease and success.
Many European merchants and others who were in no manner connected with the opium traffic, shared with China the opinion that opium was detestable and its use or sale a mark of depravity.
In January, 1239, the Chinese Emperor ordered Lin Tsihseu, an official of high reputation, to proceed to Canton as special commissioner, to report on the situation and to propound the best remedy for the opium evil. The instructions given to Commissioner Lin, as he is historically known, were to cut off the fountain of evil, to resort to any and all honorable and lawful means to abolish the opium traffic.
Commissioner Lin was a man of unusual force; he understood the situation in-so-far as it concerned China.
Within a week of his arrival at Canton, he issued an edict denouncing the opium trade and ordered that all stores of opium be surrendered to him within three days. Only a few traders complied with his orders. Lin's appeals to Queen Victoria received less consideration than did his orders to the merchants.
Meeting with such small consideration, he set about carrying out his orders. He surrounded the residences of the traders with an army of Chinese soldiers and again demanded that they deliver to him every pound of opium they had.
Now business men rarely die for their principles. They prefer living for them and let the dying for their principles to others.
England was a long way off and a long time would elapse before the arrival of British working men (soldiers) who harbor the insane idea that it is honorable to fight and die for business men's principles.
And as the traders seldom die for their own principles, there was nothing left for them to do but surrender to Lin.
And with a rapidity that was almost haste, 20,000 chests containing each about 140 pounds of opium, were handed over to Commissioner Lin, who promptly destroyed it by placing it in trenches, then mixed it with salt and lime and finally emptied it into the sea.
After this very considerable triumph, Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria begging her to help suppress the opium traffic, and in time to abolish it forever, pointing out to her the demoralizing effect that the drug had on its consumers. If this letter was ever delivered to the Queen, she neglected to reply.
Lin knew what China needed and was striving to save her, but he did not seem to know that the British aristocracy needed money and that one of the many ways they had of getting it was by exploiting the toilers of India, and if the product of India could not be disposed of, then there would be less money, hence less idleness, fewer luxuries, mansions, castles, gowns, jewels, horses, servants, pleasure jaunts, etc., for the pampered, blue blooded nobility.
This one very important point Lin seems to have overlooked.
To the Chinese official mind China was the greatest of nations, and had a right to manage her affairs to suit herself.
The Christian rulers never disputed China's right to rule her own country, only she must be taught to manage her affairs so as not to jeopardize the vested interests of the Christian nobility.
So when China strove to destroy the opium trade, which meant an annual revenue of millions to the British-India government and many millions more to the Christian merchants, China right there pricked England on her most vital spot.
England Forces China to Adopt Opium and
Christianity
To sooth her wounded dignity, England sent to China troops on board twenty-five transports, with a fleet of fifteen men ef war ships. She took port after port; forts and barracks were destroyed, thousands of Chinese killed and an incalculable number wounded.
The Chinese possessed a very rudimentary knowledge of the art of war and showed no capacity to take advantage of the strength of their position. So after a war lasting nearly three years, from 1840 until 1843, the British succeeded in teaching China her lesson—not to jeopardize in any manner the revenue of the British-India government or the profits of her Christian merchants.
The Treaty of Nankin, August 20, 1842, which was negotiated for the British government by Sir Henry Pottinger, resulted in the Chinese government making the following concessions:
1. The British were to have the right of trading at five of China's principal ports.
2. The Island of Hongkong was to be ceded to Great Britain.
3. There was to be a lasting peace between the two nations.
4. An idemnity of $21,000,000 was to be paid, made up as follows: Six millions for opium that Lin had destroyed; three millions for destruction of property of British subjects and twelve millions for the expense of the war.
The Nankin Treaty and the Commercial Treaty, signed at Hongkong, on July 25, 1843, seem to have covered most every point at issue, but left unsettled the main point of the controversy.
Nothing was said in the treaty about opium—it being the principal object at stake during the war, yet left as much unsettled as ever.
It is just possible that British diplomats reasoned that this all important point could be settled more advantageously at some future time.
How a lasting peace was to be maintained while the question of opium, the cause of all the trouble, was still unsettled, is indeed hard to understand.
The result was that the lasting peace did not last.
Less than fifteen years after the first opium war there was another war. Chinese forts were destroyed: port after port taken and thousands of Chinese killed and the Christian British for the second time crushed and subdued their prey. By the second treaty, made at Tiensin in 1858, the British received three millions more idemnity, five more ports, admission of opium and toleration for the Christian religion.
What a contrast. Opium and Christianity. Surely this concession must have puzzled the Chinese brain.
Poor China could not understand that the religion of their capitalist conquerors is as doubtful and contradictory as their political economy, whose love of liberty, equality and fraternity extends but so far as it helps them to accumulate treasure.
Their patriotism is always measured by gold. To be loyal to their economic interests and supremacy is patriotic, but to question their right to exploit the toilers, drug the nation with opium, or to devastate the earth is in their capitalistic eyes, vile treason.
China had learned her lesson at the expense of twenty-four million dollars, the loss of her best trading ports and thousands of lives.
For thousands of years she got along without being to any great extent molested by the Christians.
She hoped to be treated by the Christians as she treated them.
She asked for nothing more than to be left alone.
It seemed indeed a very difficult problem for her to grasp the significance of this new power that threatened to debauch and financially ruin her.
She seemed indeed blind to the fact that the same economic force that moved China to action also moved the Christians. That it is not ideals and morals that determine man's actions, but that the development of the material conditions under which man lives, determines his ideas and morals. When the material productive forces of society change, the institutions of human society change to suit them.
Ideas on all subjects relating to man in society, including those of right or wrong, between man and his God, are changed by man in accordance with and be- cause of those changed material conditions that control his existence.
While many nations were adapting themselves to the changes in the material productive forces, China was in a commercial sense, asleep.
She believed that she was the greatest of nations; that is was China that set the pace for the rest of the world.
Her quaint Oriental ideas unfitted her for the struggle of existence; she refused, or at least failed to adapt herself to the new material productive forces.
She failed to realize that nations even like individuals that cannot, or do net, adapt themselves to their environments, are bound to suffer and eventually die.
In the struggge for an existence, a nation holding to its old antiquated Tenth century ideas and forms, cannot hope to survive against other nations who hold modern Twentieth century ideas.
No more so could the old stage lines compete against the modern railroads.
China had a rude awakening from her, slumbers. She knew that she was crushed; that her independence as a nation was gone; that the opium curse was to be fastened.upon her, no matter what she thought about it; that she was not only to be debauched but also ruined financially.
The Christians not only were determined to debauch her, but demanded an idemnity of twenty-four million dollars, with interest, besides the loss of some of her best seaports.
The great mass of wealth producers were already poverty-striken, due to the native parasites who had long since fastened themselves upon them. Therefore, this extra burden meant the squeezing still tighter of a starving nation. Chinese officials reasoned that since their subjects were already bled to the last drop, it would be useless to try and collect from them the twenty-four million dollars, or even the interest.
Some other means for raising the amount must be considered.
China Legalizes the Cultivation of Opium
If the cultivation and sale of opium was profitable enough for the British to fight for its sale, why not, reasoned the Chinese diplomats, go into the opium business ourselves? Then, instead of our silver finding its way into the Christian capitalists' pockets in exchange for opium, it would remain at home and the profits would gently glide into the pockets of the Chinese capitalists, and from these pockets it would be easy to transform it to the coffers of the government.
This would solve the pressing financial problem. Yet if all restrictions on opium growing and its sale were removed, would it not in time demoralize, debauch and wreck the nation? On the other hand, if she stood faithfully by her old morals and ideas and refused to be a partner in the crimes, then how about the $24,000,000 that Great Britain was anxious to collect and China's silver was constantly leaving the country?
Besides, in the treaty made at Tientsin in 1858 British opium was to be admitted into China. Therefore, the curse was to be fastened upon her no matter what position she took.
If China held aloof from the degrading business, the Christians would not. In other words, she could not pay the idemnity and the British would with their terrible fighting machinery proceed to collect it, and this meant the loss of much, or probably all of her domain.
***
For a time China wavered, then took the great step. All restrictions on opium growing were removed.
A half century has passed since China took this step, with what terrible results is very vividly described by Mr. Samuel Merwin, to whom the writer is indebted for some of his information on this subject.
Mr. Merwin spent considerable time in China, making personal investigation of the opium evil. He in part says: "This is the land into which the enterprising Christian traders introduced opium, and into which they fed opium so persistently and forcibly that at last a 'good market' was developed. England did not set out to ruin China. One finds no hint of a diabolical purpose to seduce and destroy a wonderful old empire on the other side of the world. The ruin worked was incidental to that Far Eastern trade of which England has been so proud. It was the triumph of the balance sheet over common humanity. And so it is today British India still holds the cream of the trade, for the Chinese-grown opium cannot compete in quality with the India drug
The British-India government raises the poppy in the rich Ganges Valley. (More than 600,000 acres of poppies were raised there last year.) Sixty-five tons of Indian opium goes to China every week.
No one knows how much opium was grown in China last year.
There are estimates—official, missionary and consular—and they disagree by thousands and tens of thousands of tons. But it is known that where the delicate poppy is reared it demands and receives the best land. It thrives in the rich river bottoms. It has crowded out grain and vegetables wherever it has spread, and has thus become a contributing factor to famines. Its product—opium—has run over China like a black wave, leaving behind it a misery, a darkness, a desolation that has struck even the Chinese, its victims, with horror.
China hag passed from misery to disaster.
The trade in Indian opium has been hurt, to be sure, but not supplanted.
It will never be supplanted until the British Government deliberately puts it down. For the Chinese cannot raise opium which competes in quality with the Indian drug. Indian opium is in steady demand for the purpose of mixing with Chinese opium. No duties can keep it out; duties simply increase the cost to the Chinese consumer—simply ruin him a bit more rapidly.
The opium provinces of China, that is, the provinces which have been most nearly completely ruined by opium, lie well back in the interior. They cover roughly an area of 1,200 miles long by half as wide, say about one-third the area of the United States, and they support, after a fashion, a population of about 160,000,000.
Shansi Province is a heap of ruins. The same sad conditions exist at Szechuan, Yunnan and Kneichow, and a half dozen other places.
In the Chao Cheng district the people have been more or less ruined by opium. In Taiku there is a large family by the name of Meng, perhaps the wealthiest family in the province of Shansi. For the past few years they have been steadily going down, simply from the fact that all the heads of the family have become opium users. In Taiken there is a large fair held each year and all the old bronzes, porcelains, furniture, etc., that this family possesses are sold, Each year more is brought out to be sold.
Another rich man in Jen Tsuen possessed a fine summer residence previous to 1900. The residence contained several large houses an@ some fine trees and shrubs, but during the last seven years he has taken to opium it has been steadily going down. He has been selling out his residences, pulling down the houses and cutting down the trees and selling the wood and old bricks. He is now a beggar in the streets of Jen Tsuen. All through the hills west of Tai Yuan-fu the peasants are addicted to the use of opium; about seventy per cent. of the population take opium in one form or another.
Your true opium smoker stretches himself on a divan and gives up ten or fifteen minutes to preparing his thimbleful of the brown drug. When it has been heated and worked to the proper consistency, he places it in a tiny bowl of his pipe, holds it over a low lamp and draws a few whiffs of smoke into his lungs.
It seems, at first, a trivial thing; indeed, the man who is well fed and properly housed and clothed seems able to keep it up for a considerable time without noticeable ill results.
The great difficulty in China is, of course, this: that very few opium smokers are well fed and properly housed and clothed.
All the smokers can be roughly divided into two classes, those who smoke in order to relieve pain or misery, and those unfartunate victims who smoke to relieve the acute physical distress brought on by the opium itself. Probably the majority of the victims take it up as a temporary relief; many begin in early childhood—the mother will give the baby a whiff to stop its crying.
It is a social vice only among the upper classes.
The most notable outward effect of this indulgence is the resulting physical weakness and lassitude.
The opium smoker cannot work hard: he finds it difficult to apply his mind to a problem or his body to a task. As the habit becomes firmly fastened on him, there is a perceptible weakening of his moral fiber; he shows himself unequal to emergencies which make any sudden demand upon him. If opium is denied him, he will lie and steal in order to obtain it.
Opium smoking is a costly vice.
A pipeful of a moderately good native product casts more than a laborer can earn in a day: consequently the poorer classes smoke an unspeakable compound based on pipe scrapings and charcoal, Along the highroads the coolies even scrape the grime from the pack-saddles to mix with this dross.
The clerk earning from twenty-five to fifty Mexican dollars a month will frequently spend from ten to twenty dollars a month for opium.
The typical confirmed smoker is a man who spends a considerable part of the night in smoking himself to sleep, and all next morning in sleeping off the effects. If he is able to work at all it is only during the afternoon, and even at that it will not be many days until the official or merchant will be incompetent to conduct his affairs.
Thousands of prominent men are ruined every year.
Everywhere along the highroad and in the cities and villages of Shansi you see the opium face. The opium smoker, like the opium eater, rapidly loses flesh when the habit has fixed itself on him.
The color leaves his skin and it becomes dry, like parchment.
His eye loses whatever light it may have and becomes dull and listless.
The opium face has been best described as a "peculiarly withered and bloated countenance." With this face is always associated a thin body and a languid gait. Opium gets such a powerful grip on a confirmed smoker that it is actually unsafe for him to give up the habit without medical aid.
His appetite is taken away, his digestion is impaired, there is congestion of the lungs. Constipation and diarrhoea result, with pain all over the body.
By the time he has reached this stage, the smoker has become both physically and mentally weak and inactive.
With his intellect deadened, his physical and moral sense impaired, he sinks into laziness, immorality and debauchery. He has lost his power of resistance to disease, and becomes predisposed to colds, bronchitis, diarrhoea, dysentery and dyspepsia,
When a man has got himself into this condition, he must have opium and must have it all the time.
I have already pointed out that opium smoking not only is perhaps the most expensive of the vices, but that unlike opium eating, it consumes an immense amount of time.
Few smokers can keep slaves to fill their pipes for them. It takes a seasoned smoker from fifteen minutes to half an hour to prepare a pipe to his satisfaction, smoke it, and rouse himself to begin the operation again. If he smokes ten or twenty pipes a day, which is common, and then sleeps off the effects, it is net hard to figure out the number of hours left for business each day. When he has slept and the day is well started, his body at once begins to clamor for more opium. He must begin smoking again, or he will suffer an agony of physical and mental torture. His ten or twenty pipes a day will cost him from one dollar (if he is a poor man and smokes the scrapings from the rich man's pipe) to ten or twenty dollars, or more if he smokes a high grade of opium.
There are many wealthy merchants and officials who smoke from forty to sixty pipes a day.
It is just at this period, when the smoker is so enslaved by the drug that he has lost his earning power, that his opium expenditure increases most rapidly.
He is buying opium now, not so much to gratify his selfish vice, as to keep himself alive. He becomes frantic for opium. He will sell anything he has to buy the stuff. His moral sense is destroyed. A diseased, decrepit, insane being, he forgets even his family. He sells his bric-a-brac, his pictures, his furniture. He sells his daughters, even his wife if she has attractions as slaves to rich men. He tears his house to pieces, sells the tiles off his roof, the bricks off his walls, the wood-work about his doors and windows. He cuts down the trees in his yard and sells the wood, and at last he crawls out on the highway, digs himself a cave (if he has strength enough) and prostrates himself before the camel and donkey drivers, whining, chattering, praying that a few coppers be thrown to him.
An opium den usually takes up one floor of a building. Against the walls is a continuous wooden platform, perhaps two feet high and extending out seven or eight feet into the room. This platform is divided at intervals of five or six feet by partitions. Each compartment accomodates two smokers, with one lamp between them. Sometimes a rug or a bit of matting is laid on the hard couch—sometimes not—for the Chinaman accustomed to sleeping on bricks prefers his couch hard.
A man always lies down to smoke opium, for the porous pill, which is pressed into the tiny orifice of the pipe, cannot be ignited, but is held directly over the lamp and the flame drawn up through it.
The keeper of the den sits behind a table or desk, on which is a litter of pipes and thimble-like cups; an attendant keeps moving about the room with fresh supplies of the drug. For each thimbleful, enough for one or two smokes, the price varies (according to quality) from ten cents up (Mexican money).
How may thousands of these vile, disease-breeding dens there are in China no one knows.
Their grade and style varies nearly as much as do their numbers—from a handsomely furnished and clean den, where the genuine is sold, down to the low, vicious resorts maintained fer the purpose of catering to a degrading habit, where a mixture cf some kind of poison is sold at the rate of two pipes for three cents.
In this small work the reader can hope for little more than a mere glimpse of the disaster that opium brought upon China.
Volumes could be written depicting the destruction and misery caused by the drug, and still leave untold the physical and mental suffering of its victims.
Fifty years have passed since China was compelled to admit opium and the Christian religion.
Fifty years age China took the great step, by removing all restrictions on opium growing.
With what terrible results, has been very briefly described.
The Dismemberment of China
Legs than twenty-five years after China had taken the unfortunate step, the degrading vice had so debauched, demoralized and weakened the people that they lost not only the power of resistance, but also their productive power.
She was not only sick and getting sicker every day, but poor and getting poorer.
The social status of the army sank to the very lowest strata of her social fabric. The army in the main was composed of outlaws and rascals of all shades, who joined the army as a last resort from starvation. They were ill drilled and poorly equipped. As a protective force, China's army and navy was not only a farce, but a burden as well.
Great in numbers, but small inefficiency, it was kept busy almost continually.
The Taeping rebellion, which developed a Chinese Gordon, the Mohamedan revolt, and various other civil disturbances were a constant strain upon her resources.
Poverty and chaos hand in hand stalking over the Empire.
In the midst of all this tumult, it seems as though even the elements of the universe were against her.
The year of 1876 witnessed the commencement of a drought in the two great provinces of Honan and Shansi which has probably never been surpassed as the cause of such a vast amount of human suffering. Although the provinces named suffered the most from the prevalent drought, the suffering was general over the whole of Northern China.
Poverty stricken, sick and helpless was the world's oldest nation, while in distress struggling for its very existence. The avaricious eyes of the commercial world were focussed upon her—not for the purpose of offering her succor and deliver her from distress, but for the purpose of attacking her and by force removing the barriers that for ages stood against foreign trade.
To plunder her rich mineral deposits, or cut up and divide the country among the Christian nations.
In 1880 European envoys invaded the primitive kingdom of Corea for the purpose of forcing their trade on the forbidden land of the Far East, and by 1881 the draft of a commercial treaty was drawn up at Pekin, and Commodore Schufeldt, an American naval official, took it to the Court of Seoul for acceptance and signature.
The Corean king, helpless against the principal powers of the Western World, signed the treaty. Thus was it arranged that Corea was to open her ports to foreign trade and another market secured for the exploiters of the western toilers to unload their surplus product upon.
French capitalists in the meantime had a corps of explorers on the frontiers of China, whose duty it was to discover the best route into some of the richest provinces of interior China.
In 1882 the French Government decided to establish a definite protectorate over Tonquin,
The weak kingdom of Annam was taken under the protecting wing of France, and before the end of 1882 France had captured the Capitol of Tonquin and the town of Hanoi, in the delta of the Red River. This put the French in a position to tap the wealth of the richest mineral province in China.
In 1883 the French fleet, representing itself as a friendly power, was allowed to safely pass the forts of the Min River. Once this point was gained, France without any formal declaration of war attacked Chinese possessions and destroyed many forts.
The Chinese displayed great energy and resource in forming defences against any advance inland, and the French Government was brought to face the fact that unless they were prepared to send a large expedition of not less than $0,006 more men to attack Pekin, there would be no possible hope of making Ching surrender any of her possessions.
France failed to send extra men, and on June 9, 1885, a treaty of peace was signed, which gave France nothing more than she had before her treacherous invasion two years previously.
In 1889 the young Emperor Kwangsu (who reigned only; he did not rule) was married. The marriage was celebrated with the usual state, and more than five million dollars is said to more been squandered by China's Government in honor of the event, and this at a time when hundreds of thousands of China’s workera were on the verge of starvation.
One of the official acts of the Emperor after his marriage, was to issue an edict legalizing the cultivating of opium, which, although carried on for 30 years before, was merely allowed but not formally legalized.
The commercial treaty signed by the Corean king in 1886 and Japan's constant encroachments developed a spirit of revolt among many of the Coreans, whom the European powers classed as "Reactionists," because they were opposed to the concessions made to the foreigners.
Those who stood loyally by the helpless King, and who were not disturbed by the invasion of the foreigners, were called the Progressive party.
For centuries Corea was considered a Chinese dependency, and China was opposed to the concessions made to the foreigners. Therefore China was compelled to lean upon the Reactionisits. The Japanese, holding that they possessed a historical right to an equal voice with China in the Corean peninsula, allied themselves with the Progressive party.
Internal disturbances between the so-called Progressive and Reactionary parties and Christian reformers kept Corea in a constant state of revolution.
Finally the Japanese, eager for an excuse to subjugate Corea, called attention to what she called the misrule that prevailed in Corea, and proposed that the Chinese should join them in carrying out what the Japanese considered reforms.
To this proposal China would not agree, believing that Corea should be left alone; besides, China was hampered by her alliance with the reactionary party. Consequently, Japan undertook the work of conquest alone. As a first step in that direction, the Japanese kidnaped the Corean king and compelled him to act as the instrument of his captors.
The first document which his captors compelled him to sign was an order that the Chinese troops who had come at his invitation should leave the country, This occurred on July 23, 1894, and marked the beginning of the war between the two chief races of the Far East.
The war lasted but nine months, yet during this time nearly ten thousand lives were lost and three times as many persons wounded.
Most all of China's war vessels were destroyed or taken and her forts demolished.
The Chinese soldiers had sunk to such a low social status that even the lowest civilian despised them.
Opium had the same effect upon the soldiers that it had upon the civilian.
As has already been pointed out, opium causes its victims to become physically and mentally weak and inactive.
It was indeed very seldom that the Japanese army encountered any sturdy resistance on the part of the Chinese. Many times the Chinese abandoned their forts without firing a shot. Even Port Arthur, a naval fortress and arsenal on which $30,000,060 had been spent, and which was the bone of contention during the Russian ad Japanese war, was taken by the Japanese in one day, the latter only losing 18 men, and this port was considered China's strongest position.
The Chinese soldiers, undrilled, unfed, unled, propertyless to a degree of nakedness, could hardly be expected to be animated by military or patriotic spirit.
China was again conquered and her power of defense measured by the rest of the world.
On April 17, 1895, a treaty was signed. The terms of the treaty were as follows: First China was to surrender Formosa and the Pescadores Islands and the southern part of the Shinking province, including the Liau-Tung, or Regents Sword Peninsula, and of course, also, the naval fortress of Port Arthur.
China was also to pay in eight installments a money indemnity of $160,000,000. She was also to grant certain commercial concessions.
Just at this stage of the drama new actors appeared upon the scene—the allied powers of Russia, France and Germany, who determined to interpose. Surely these Christian nations would without any selfish motives come to the rescue of poor bleeding China.
They presented to the Mikado in the name of the three powers a request that he should leave his hands off the Liau-Tung Peninsula which also included Port Arthur. It was proposed that in return for the renunciation of this territory on the Chinese mainland, the pecuniary indemnity should be increased by $30,000,000.
The demand could not be rejected without war against the three interposing powers, and the odds were too great for Japan to face without the assistance of Great Britain, and this assistance the British did not see fit to offer.
The Mikado accordingly submitted to the loss of the best part of the fruit of victory.
A year tater, in the spring of 1896, China received another cruel jolt. Russia informed her that the Czar's interposition was not intended to be gratuitous. In what form the payment for Russia's services should be made was, for some time, the subject of debate. Li Hung Chang left China in the spring of 1896 as a special embassador to attend the coronation of Nicholas Ii, at Moscow. During his stay in Russia, he signed an agreement which embodied the concessions to be so-called services. Through fear of civil disturbances and opposition from other nations, the details of this momentous agreement were kept a secret for eight months, and this secret treaty gave Russia the control of the Liau-Tung Peninsula, including Port Arthur, which the little God had rescued for China at an expense of $30,000,000 to China. In other words, China, due to Russia's interference, was compelled to pay thirty million dollars to Japan to save part of her possessions and then the Czar takes the same possessions, for services rendered. Leaving China just $30,000,000 poorer than she would have been had Russia not helped to save her. Besides the dear philanthropic Czar demanded and got an extra bonus—the right to build a branch of the Trans-Siberian railway through Manchuria to Talienwan and Port Arthur.
High finance? Yes, sir. Russia's school of piracy is evidently the one which Diaz, of Mexico, and Lord Rockefeller, of the United States, were tutored in.
The concessions made to Russia were scarcely revealed before Germany with two men-of-war were on hand to gather her share of the spoils.
Germany demanded the exclusive right to construct railways and work mines throughout the extensive and populous province of Shantung. It is needless to say that Germany got what she demanded.
Next in line stood France demanding and taking her share of the loot. France obtained possession of the best of Kwangchowfoo, which is the best outlet to the sea for the trade of the southern province of Kwangsi.
She also got the right to control the commercial development of the province of Yunnan. While these acts, which virtually amounted to mutilation of the Middle Kingdom, were being committed by Russia, Germany and France, the British opium feeders undertook to assert the principles of the open door, but compromised by taking Wei-hal-Wel, which is one of the two keys to the Gulf of Pechihli, She also secured a promise from the Pekin government that the valley of the Yaugstekiang should never be transferred to any foreign power except Great Britain. She also secured the right to build railways in Manchuria.
Surely China had up to this time, 1898, paid a stupendous price for her indifference or inability to keep page with the rest of the world.
What could the incentive have been which impelled these Christian nations to pillage a sick and helpless race?
Expansion
What are the actual motives of this persistent policy of expansion on the part of Russia, Germany, France.
Russia's motives are different from any of the other nations, because Russia is almost exclusively an agricultural country; manufacturing is yet very much in its infancy, and cannot supply its own domestic market.
As yet there is no powerful middle class in Russia.
The ruling class in Russia is composed of officials of bureaucrats.
The bureaucracy is interested in having as many faithful subjects as it can get. The Russian subjects are not sufficient for the officials' appetite. An addition of millions of subjects would furnish a new field for exploitation by an army of police officers, judges, revenue inspectors and such other officials.
The expansion of Russia means the expansion of the power of the bureaucratic class recruited from the ranks of the degenerated gentry. The Russian people have nothing to gain by expansion, but much to lose in money and blood.
With France, Germany, England and the United States there are different reasons for pursuing a policy of expansion or imperialism. These are manufacturing countries in which the ruling classes are the captains of industry, the owners of the complete mechanism of production and transportation of commodities.
The working classes of these countries do not receive the full product of their toil and are therefore not able to buy all the goods produced by them. With the increasing perfection of the tools and the methods of production this underconsumption of commodities must also increase proportionately. The owners of the tools of production, in order to create a profit for themselves, are therefore compelled to leak for new markets for their goods or commodities—as well as new territory for exploitation.
Therefore expansion and imperialism are consequently a policy dictated by the class interests of the capitalists.
Before the present industrial system had developed, agriculture was the chief occupation of the people. This was necessary owing to the very low rate of production. Primitive methods and tools required much labor and gave small returns. The people were therefore almost entirely dependent upon agricultural pursuits for their existence.
Now, the lord or a number of lords who formed a land aristocracy were in position ta dictate terms to the propertyless workers who, in order to live, had to have access to the soil. Therefore the vast majority could only work and live by the grace of the land-owning minority. The land owners were the masters, and the landless lived for and by the grace of the masters.
During this epoch manufacturing was conducted under the old domestic system. The workers lived more or less in the rural districts; work was carried on by the artisan in his little house. He had also, in nearly all cases, his plot of land near the house. Work, too, was more regular than is is at present, for there were fewer commercial fluctuations.
The relations between employers and employed were far closer than now.
There were no gigantic blast furnaces rising amid blackened heaps of cinders; no infernal coke regions, where the corroding gases are so deadly that for miles around fruit will not ripen, flowers will not bloom, trees die, and grass will not grow; no tall chimneys belching forth clouds of evil smoke; no disease breeding spinning mills, housing and working under a single roof thousands of women and children; the factory and furnace were almost unknown. These were yet to come.
The change from the domestic system of industry to the modern system of production by machinery and steam power was sudden and violent. Great discoveries and inventions soon worked deep changes. The previously slow growth of industry developed quickly into a feverish burst of manufacturing production that completely revolutionized the industrial world.
The old primitive hand tools had to give way to the new machine—hand craft could not compete with the more modern machine. The tools used in the homes were mostly owned by the users, they being simple, crude and cheap. The most humble toilers could in time become owners of the tools necessary to their existence or the making of things essential to their comfort.
But to own a machine or a number of them, house them in suitable buildings and purchase the raw materials necessary to feed the machines required more than ordinary means. The small factory or mill could be owned by a small capitalist. The larger industries naturally required greater capitalists to own them.
As the machines developed to the gigantic proportions they possess today, it was necessary that their owners keep pace with them.
With the evolution of the tools of production and distribution there developed two distinct classes in society which hitherto did not to any great extent exist.
The one a property class, owning the tools they do not use; the other a great propertyless class using tools they do not own. The latter class cannot live unless they work, and they cannot work unless the owing class (employers) allow them to.
It is therefore plain to be seen that the relations between these two classes is that of Master and Slave.
The tool users are as much dependent upon the tool owners for their existence as were the tillers of the soil dependent upon the owners of the soil, for neither can apply their labor to the source from which they draw their subsistence without the consent of the properties class. It is evident, therefore, that this property class controls the destinies, in fact the very lives of the great army of dispossessed toilers. Shakespeare said: "You take my life when you take the means whereby I live."
Frightful Sacrifice of Human Lives
As we see today, many lives are needlessly sacrificed.
The United States Government through its various bureaus of statistics shows that more people are being killed every year in the United States during times of peace than in the bloodiest battles of history.
During the last 19 years the railroads of America have killed 143,527 persons. During the same period 931,450 persons have been injured by American railroads.
During the last 17 years American coal mines have killed 22,840 men and made at least 10,000 widows and 40,000 orphans.
During a single year American street railways killed and injured a few less than 49,000 persons.
Every year 6,000 Americans lose their lives in fires.
American Industrial plants kill every year a trifle over 25,006 persons, and injure 125,000 more.
American building operations cost 3,000 lives every year, and 10,000 other persons sustained injuries.
Automobile accidents of last year took 229 lives, without estimating the thousands more or less seriously injured.
At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Association of State Dairy and Food Departments, held in Chicago, April 1, 1908, reports were submitted showing that 455,000 infants died in the United States during the previous year from the effects of food poisons. J. M. Hurty, Secretary of the Indiana State Board of Health, produced figures to show that 65 per cent. of the deaths of infants in America last year were due to poisons administered in impure foods and the deadly concoctions placed on the market by fraudulent food manufacturers.
Great numbers of adult deaths each year are recorded by heart failure or acute indigestion, and these deaths to a considerable extent can also be placed at the door of poisonous food adulterants.
Dr. Thomas Darlington, president of the New York Board of Health, says that among wage workers 30 per eent. of the deaths are due to the dreaded disease, tuberculosis; that the money loss has been estimated in the United States alone at $330,000,000 annually.
During the past eight years 71,000 people sought relief from this horrible system of capitalism by suicide.
The frantic struggle for existence is also responsible for most of the 1,000 murders which the United States averaged annually during the past dozen years.
Insanity has doubled in the last 13 years. Every one of the 330 mad houses in America is clamoring for more room; on an average of 50,000 insane are admitted into these institutions annually, to say nothing of those admitted into almshouses or private sanitariums.
Enforced idleness, and the exploitation of the toilers when employed, even in its narrow sense, is responsible for many deaths. Thousands die because the necessary medical aid cannot be purchased.
Millions are underfed, poorly housed, underclad, and having no security in the means of life, fail an easy victim to the ravages of diseases that mankind is subject to.
But why continue this horrible story of privation, suffering and murder?
The question of far more importance is, who or what is responsible for it? Surely no one individual; nor does one find any diabolical plot on the part of: the capitalists to bring about this frightful death roll. The havoc being worked is incidental to the system of the private ownership of the means that mankind is dependent upon for its existence. And this guilty monster is the system of capitalism, whose very life depends upon its carnivorous, cannibalistic nature, It has encircled the globe and fastened its poisonous claws deep into the very vitals of Mother Earth. Wherever it touches blank desolation and misery prevail. It devours millions of beings and is particularly fond of Httle children because of their cheapness. Its appetite can never be appeased; the longer it lives the more hideous, destructive and ferocious the monster becomes.
The industrial system of modern capitalism had scarcely touched China yet; but the havoc wrought through the opium traffic was considerably more destructive to the people of China than up-to-date capitalism has proven to be to such countries as it has fastened itself upon.
It took the Christian opium merchants more than a century to weaken and debauch the oldest nation on earth.
While the capitalist system has in some countries been in existence for a longer period, it has not as yet brought about such dire results. Capitalism has the whole earth as a field of operation. It is highly developed in Germany, England, Italy, France, Austria, Japan and the United States, and preparations are just being made for its entrance into South America and Russia, while in China it is now making its initial bow. India and Egypt are hopelessly in the rear.
While the competitive system has been abolished, in so far as most nations are concerned, there is active competition between nations for the world markets. Each nation strives to monopolize its own home market and unload its surplus abroad. The capitalists of the United States have erected a tariff wall with which to bar out foreign competition, and spend over two hundred million dollars annually for an army and navy whose principal functions are to find a market to unload the surplus goods upon, and once the market is secured, to hold it no matter what the cost to human life. It is estimated that war and preparations for war cost the nations of the earth, called civilized, one-fifth of their total product of wealth.
The expenditure for military and naval purposes of England, Spain, Germany, Russia, Japan and the United States in a single year would provide every family on earth with a comfortable home.
Edmund Burk asserted that not less than 3,500,000,000 have been killed in war since the beginning of history.
During the early development of the system in this country and other countries, there existed a life and death struggle between the masters for the home market.
The apologists referred to competition as the life of trade, yet history tells us that thousands committed suicide when they experienced a real taste of it. The competitive system of capitalism meant that the manufacturer who could sell the cheapest secured the market. The prices of commodities were then, as now, determined by a combination of circumstances; but the chief item was labor, The manufacturer having the lowest paid workers had a decided advantage over his competitors. Take for example, the manufacturing of cigars: Prior to 1863 there were less than three thousand cigar makers in the United States. Today we have about 125,000. Of this number nearly 50,000 are organized.
A very good man may engage in the cigar manufacturing business, erect a model factory in a city, pay the Union scale of wages, and be content with a small profit on his investment. Now along comes another good man and goes into the same business. He erects his factory in a country town and the village fathers hail him as a public benefactor and exempt his factory from taxation. This gentleman will not pay the Union scale, because it is not necessary. His employees can live cheaper than the city workers. Rents are lower; each house has its little garden, where the employees can raise their own garden truck; they also keep poultry and hogs. True, with these extra cares these village cigar makers work more hours than do the city workers, and that is one reason why their employer need pay them less.
Now, these cheaper made cigar, very often come into direct competition with those made in the city, and on the other hand the city-made cigar can never come into competition with the cheap village product, everything else being equal.
In the meantime a far-seeing business man opens his cigar factory in the city slum district, amid filth and disease, and he employs the very cheapest city labor—father, mother and children all employed in the same pest hole—and this product comes into competition with the product of the model city and village factory.
Now, some enterprising business men conceived a plan whereby they could undersell the cheap slum workers by moving their factories to the Pacific Coast and employing cheap Chinese labor. Prior to the Exclusion Act the cigar factories of San Francisco employed about forty American citizens and nearly seven thousand Chinese.
Competition; yes, a survival of the fittest. Those who can adapt themselves to the system survive, and those who cannot are sure to perish.
Dunn and Co, inform us that in 1864 there wert 520 failures with liabilities of $8,579,000, while in 1907 there were 11,725 failures with liabilities of $197,385,225.
Those best fitted to survive decided that competition was the death of trade, and therefore as far as they were concerned there should be no more competition, and formed a trust, known as the American Tobacco Company. This trust believes competition is all right when it comes to crushing an independent manufacturer or dealer, and above all it thinks it's good for the workers to compete fer each others' jobs.
When Porto Rico was gathered under the protecting wing of the American Eagle, the American Tobacco Company promptly took advantage of the cheap labor there, with the result that 125,000,000 cigars are now annually coming into the United States free of duty from Porto Rico. The Porto Rico cigar makers are now fairly well employed, while thousands of American cigar makers are idle. In 1902 the cigar makers' unions expended for out-of-work benefit purposes $15,558. In 1908 they expended $101,483.50, an increase of $85,925.50. Surely these gentlemen of business are far seeing, for away down in the Philippine islands they discovered still cheaper labor whom they hoped to exploit and bring into competition with the Porto Ricans and Americans.
The Trust (American Tobacco Co.) in 1909 asked Congress to admit duty free from the Philippine Islands 150,000,000 cigars annually.
A bulletin of the Department of Labor shows that there were employed all told in the cigar industry in the Philippine Islands about 20,000 people at an average wage of $10.00 per month. A good cigar can be obtained in Manila for one cent.
Mr. Edward Rosenberg, an American, while in Manila, in a letter says: "Considering the very small wages paid the Filipino workers, the poor and scanty food they necessarily live on, they are, next to the Chinese, the cheapest and best workers of the Orient. They live in light shacks built of bamboo and covered with leaves; cast of building from $20 to $70. The number of Chinese living on the Island estimated to be between 100,000 and 350,000."
Mr. William Bancker, of Springfield, Mass., sent the following letter to George W. Perkins, President of the Cigar Makers' Union:
"I served two years in the Philippines in the army, mostly around Manila, and out of curiosity I visited a number of shops there. Now, every soldier knows the uncleanliness of the average Filippino, and if you ask him he will tell you that many a poor fellow came home in a box by too close association with them as they are poison to the white man. They are affected with a skin disease, and a large majority are covered with open sores or scars. Leprosy, beri-beri, cholera, beubonic plague and other infectious diseases, are, as everyone knows, prevalent there. They sit half naked and work and scratch, while the air is rank with the smell of decayed fish and rank cocoanut oil, which the women use on their hair. Now, imagine one of these natives, whose teeth have rotted black by the constant chewing of the betel-nut, biting out heads, which I took particular notice to see if they did, and using their spittle to help paste the heads on their work, and you can form some idea of what the American smoker will get when the trust dumps these far-famed Manila cigars on the market. The United States government spends thousands of dollars to quarantine against these Asiatic diseases and when one leaves the island for this country, himself and effects are thoroughly disinfected, and in the face of all this, our law makers propose to put their seal of approval on this bill which will put into the mouths of thousands of citizens, a most prolific means of contagion, and if as I firmly believe, it will be the means of infecting these filthy Asiatic diseases into the blood of the American people the present administration can thank itself for it. I believe that even the trust smoker, if he has these things brought forcefully upon him, will think twice before purchasing these goods."
In this summary of a single industry only the making of cigars is considered. The raising and manufacture of tobacco is another question.
The object of giving this brief sketch of a single industry is to show that no matter how good or benevolent a business man or company may be, or try to be, philanthropy can have no place in business if the business is to survive. The system sets the pace. Those without any conscientious scruples are most likely to succeed; and what is true of the cigar industry is practically true of every other industry. There may be different methods, for example, the labor-displacing machine, the Taylor speeding-up system, woman and child labor, etc. Although different, they all bring about the same results.
Now, what is true of the methods and results of the capitalist system of a nation is true of the system in the industrial field of the world.
Just as an industry struggles for the market of its country, so are the countries struggling for the markets of the world; and just as cheap labor and easy access to raw materials are the very important factors in a competitive war of a nation, so are they in a competitive commercial war between nations.
As mentioned before, the trustifying of industry has in a great measure abolished competition in the United States, and the monopolizing of the means of production and distribution places those dependent upon these means for their very existence at the mercy of the owners.
Capitalism cannot stand still. It must move forward or backward, and the next move is into China.
Abolishing the Opium Evil
As stated in previous chapters, the capitalist world had its eyes on this country for many years.
Few of us realize that the Chinese Empire contains 440,000,000 of people, about one-third the population of the entire globe. China is larger than all Europe and contains mere natural wealth than any other single nation. An eminent geologist makes the claim that a single province in China would be able to supply the entire world with coal for one thousand years. Millions of tons of iron ore abound in many parts of the empire—of a higher grade than the very best ore found in the United States.
Physically the country is surpassingly rich in picturesque mountains and fertile valleys, while the stupendous rivers cau float an enormous commerce, Indeed, China is the most interesting and most important country in the world yet undeveloped, with its several hundred millions of illiterate and superstitions workers whose standard of living is lower than most any other people on earth, Surely China today looks as inviting to the capitalists of the world as it did to the opium feeders of England more than a century ago. The capitalists found several very serious obstacles in the way, and the principal obstruction was opium; an opium consuming race would not make very profitable wage slaves. Therefore the traffic in opium must be abolished.
On February 1st, 1909, there met at Shanghai, at the instigation of the United States Government, commissions from China, Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, Siam, Portugal, Holland, Persia and the Uniten States. These delegates propounded the question of abolishing the opium evil not only in China and the Philippines, but other countries as well.
For a century and a quarter the combined powers of the world refused to interpose and save China from the debauching influence of the poisonous drug. And the great Christian church spent millions of dollars exhorting the Chinamen to come to Jesus, but offered no word of protest against the opium habit inflicted upon her people by a Christian nation.
And now for some reason we find the Christian world determined to abolish the curse.
Since the first opium convention held in 1909, several other important international opium conferences were held.
Here are the newspaper dispatches:
London, Nov. 19, 1911.—American delegates and secretaries of the International Opium Conference at the Hague will arrive at Plymouth tomorrow, Hamilton Wright and Wallace Young will come to London for a brief halt, and Henry J. Finger and Frederick Huyder Kooper will continue their journey to Holland, where the conference opens on December 1.
The Right Rev. Charles Henry Brent, Protestant Episcopal bishop of the Philippines, who was president of the previous commission, will be chosen to preside.
In connection with the published statement that the official appointment of the British delegates had been delayed pending the receipt at London of the conference program, it may be pointed out that the preparation of the program has been left to the United States as the initiator of the international meeting.
China Bars Use of Opium
The Chinese government decided in 1906 to abolish the use of opium in the course of ten years by forbidding the consumption of the drug and the cultivation of the poppy, carried on hitherto in every province.
The prevention of imports received from India, Japan, Persia and Turkey then became necessary, and a conference was proposed by the American officials at Manilla, This was held at Shanghai in 1909, and measures were adopted for the prohibition of the export of opium and morphine to countries which interdicted the importation.
The twelve powers represented at that conference will complete their work when the delegates reassemble at The Hague.
Great Britain is called upon to make the largest sacrifice, since the Indian government derives a considerable revenue from opium, but it is expected to persevere in the policy by which all exports of the drug will cease by 1920.
Persia, Turkey and Japan will also agree to restrict their exports, and stringent measures will be proposed for breaking up the morphine traffic. Morphine is now manufactured on a large scale in London, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Berlin, New York and San Francisco, and it is exported through indirect channels and reaches China.
OPIUM CONVENTION SIGNED
American Delegates Will Not Divulge Terms of
Agreement
[Marconi Transatlantic. Wireless Telegram to the Public Ledger.]
London, Jan. 27, 1912.—The American delegation to the opium conference at The Hague returned to London yesterday and will sail on the Auguste Victoria to-morrow. All the members of the delegation refused to discuss the subject in any way, saying that it would not be proper to do so before reporting to Washinton.
A convention was signed in London on Tuesday on behalf of the American government by William Phillips, Charge d'Affaires, who, appropriately enough, while a member of the Pekin legation, pioneered the movement which brought about the conference. The secretary of the American delegation, Wallace Young, told your correspondent that the convention would be made public simultaneously by the governments concerned.
[The Literary Digest, November 18, 1911.]
THE OPIUM FIGHT IN CHINA
China's awakening may not be due to its discontinuance of the use of the pipe whose fumes of drowsy poppy-juice bring false contentment, but the two events, perhaps, are part of the same forward movement toward a new time in the old land. Since the bonfire of the books of magic by the Ephesian sorcerers, never has such a resolute holocaust of pestiferous property been made than was recently witnessed at Tien-Tsin, when the spoils of many opium-dens—pipes, lamps, saucers, etc.—were consumed by the flames. This was done under the auspices of the Anti-Opium League, which is waging a stubborn war against the use of this fatal drug.
These, of course, are the lines on which the Anti-Opium League is working. By destroying publicly the pipes and other utensils employed by the smokers they practically remove, in some degree, the temptation and opportunity from the young, and at the same time set a stigma on the vice. This is the sentiment expressed over and over again by the Rev. Edward Waite Thwing, the indefatigable Secretary of the League. Of the recent "solemn incineration of utensils employed in the consumption of opium," at his suggestion, the "Illustration" (Paris) says:
"The best people in China, realizing the perils of the opium habit, appear to be obstinately determined to oppose, by every possible means, the spread of an evil which, in spite of official edicts, extends its ravages day by day. A veritable battle has been going on for a long time. Public addresses, postal cards, and imposing public demonstrations have been resorted to for the purpose of impresing the popular mind. The Viceroy of Yunnan recently caused to be burnt up in public, to the sound of gongs and fifes, thousands of opium-pipes."
Capitalism Entering China
Why this sudden and seemingly philanthropical world-wide mavoment to stamp out opium in China? Surely this action on the part of the ruling class of the world is not impelled by any benevolent motives. No, it's business—that's all.
Capitalism is moving into China, and the money kings have come to the conclusion that debauching and killing the Chinamen with opium is not as profitable as letting them live and exploiting the race as wage slaves.
For some years preparations have been under way for the next great move of capitalism.
Opium was not the only obstacle; chattel slavery must be abolished in so far as it is expedient. While the captains of industry strive to abolish competition among themselves, they very much prefer it for their workers. The chattel slaves never compete for each others' jobs, as do the wage slaves. Besides, the chattel slave must be bought very often at considerable expense and cared for, housed, fed, clothed and doctored when sick. This they get from the master if they work or not.
The wage slave hunts the master and can be had without the consideration of a purchase price, besides the master need not care for these slaves—he has no money invested in them, The wage may be ground down until the slaves are underfed and become too weak to work, when the muster simply turns them out; the masters have nothing to lose if they work their wage slaves to death so long as a fresh supply can be secured. That's why they encourage the workers to raise large families.
It is therefore plain to be seen just why the capitalists are arranging conditions in China so as to give them a clear field for exploitation.
In the following news item from China we see how careful the powers are not to infringe too far upon the beneficiaries of the old system who are, to be sure, bitterly apposed to the new regime.
[Gazette-Times, Pittsburg, Pa. May 11, 1911.]
PURCHASE AND SALE OF HUMAN BRINGS IN CELESTIAL EMPIRE NOW FORBIDDEN
Freedom For Millions
Washington, May 10.—The Chinese government by imperial rescript has abolished slavery throughout the empire and has prohibited henceforth the purchase and sale of human beings under any pretext. The reform, however, is not altogether complete as by rescript certain forms of slavery will still be tolerated. In a report made to the state department it is said that the retainers of Manchu princes are not emancipated, but it is forbidden to call them slaves. They have long enjoyed educational and other privileges although still bound to their hereditary masters.
The household slaves of the Manchus are also refused emancipation, but their status, under the law is improved. They are to be regarded as hired servants, but their services are due for an unlimited term of years, so that they are in reality perpetual slaves. Under this rescript the immemorial practice of selling children in China in times of famine is abolished, although they may be bound for a specified term, but never beyond the age of twenty-five years.
Concubinage is still to be permitted, but there is to be no bargain and sale. Such concubines are to be married with proper legal formalities and they will enjoy the protection of the law, but in reality they will be no better than perpetual slaves to the principal wife. The rescript will eventually give freedom to millions of human beings, and is declared to mark a distinct advance in civilization.
The captains of industry are far-seeing people, and as early as 1905 decided that a system of public education on similar lines as that in existence in the United States was to be inaugurated in China. The illiterate Chinaman would do all right for the old regime, but the ignorant wage slave, uninstructed in science, is not near as profitable to the master class as the educated. In 1905 not one in a hundred Chinese could read the simplest characters of his language, and it is safe to say that not more than one in five hundred had an education along tht old lines as advanced as that of our grammar schools. All this is to be changed, and by the next generation it is safe to say that the majority of the people will all have gone to school.
That the United States Government is quite a factor in this nation-wide enlightenment is very evident, as the following article published in the Philadelphia Press, October 3, 1909, shows:
Revolution in China
There will soon arrive in this country forty Chinese boys to be educated in American colleges and universities at the expense of their home government. The tremendous significance of this fact, which appears in news cablegrams in the daily press, may not be appreciated upon the first reading. The sending of these boys to America by the Chinese Government marks an epoch in the history of that ancient empire unsurpassed in the past two thousand years. One of the greatest revolutions of the ages is now in progress in that country—a revolution in the educational system of China that means new thought and enterprise, a westernizing of the most exclusive of Oriental peoples.
In this revolution the United States is playing a leading part. The overturning of the old system of learning—that monastic, difficult, caste education—is being accomplished by the decree and with the assistance of the Chinese Government, but the United States has contributed practical suggestions and pointed the way for advance along the path of modern progress.
When President Roosevelt determined that the United States should not make any money out of the Boxer uprising, and when, upon his recommendation, Congress returned to China several millions of dollars that had been paid in excess of the actual damages sustained by Americans in the trouble, the opportunity was afforded for a practical suggestion to China. Mr. Root, then Secretary of State, in a diplomatic way proposed that China use the income, from these returned millions for a long series of years to educate Chinese boys in the United States. China agreed to the proposition, and the first forty boys are now ready to sail for this country to begin their studies. There will be in time four hundred of these boys, and that number will be kept here for many years, the ranks being filled up as the graduates go back to China.
"The eager manner in which China adapted Secretary Root's suggestion leads to strong hopes that the American education carried back to China will be one of the potent agencies in effecting a complete revolution in the education of that empire. Chinese officials have shown wisdom in their method of selecting the youths to be sent to the United States. This selection is not made haphazard or by favor. A preparatory school will be established in Peking where boys from ail over China can enter for a course of training in the English language, the customs, habits laws, etc., of the United States, and the most proficient and apt will be selected for the Western education. After the young men have gone through their courses here they will return to China and take part in her activities.
These young men are to be taught specialties. Medicine, law, agriculture, forestry, mining, chemistry, architecture, physics, banking, etc., will be taken up as their aptitude for these professions develops. It is proposed also by the Chinese Government to give these youths, when they graduate, all assistance possible in the way of employment, so that the whole of their people may be benefited by what has been learned.
China has been going to school for several years. The educating of over four hundred million people is now under full way; every governor is active, and every city is organizing new schools as fast as it can.
in Funchow there are thirty native schools of foreign instruction; also a Normal School, a High School, a Military School, a Police Training School and a very large number of private schools.
Tientsin has all sorts of educational institutions, from kindergartens to colleges. There are similar ones in Peking, and among them a half-day school for officials who wish to improve themselves along modern lines.
China is also establishing industrial schools, where the use of modern machinery is taught and where the boys learn mechanical trades. The Chinese city has an Industrial institute under its Board of Commerce. It was started five years ago, and is now in full operation with over seven hundred students at work.
This school teaches twelve industries and it gives a course of three years. In addition to this there are seven other Industrial Schools in Peking and the Manchus are starting some in the Tartar city.
Peking is not so far advanced as Tientsin in the pushing of the new education. Still it has more than two hundred new schools, and over twenty thousand children and young men are working away in Government institutions.
In some schools there are courses in law and political economy. The most of these schools are, as yet, not far advanced; but there are something like ten thousand students attending them in Peking alone, and of them, four or five thousand are Manchus.
High Schools and Normal Schools are now to be found everywhere. According to the regulation every town and city has to maintain one, and every provincial capital must have a normal school of the first grade.
These schools are all equipped with chemical, physical and botanical laboratories, and in some of the cities, such as Tientsin, there are also teachers' museums, where models and books describing the teaching in foreign countries are exhibited. The Normal Schools are largely attended by those who wish to fit themselves for work along the lines of the new development.
Peking has its law schools, Government and medical schools. It teaches law and government, as well as political science, and one may see five hundred students there at some of the lectures.
There is also a language school of high grade, where Chinese boys are prepared for the foreign office and for the diplomatic service abroad. This school already has three hundred students. It is open to any who can pass the entrance examinations and give certificates of good character.
In addition to the modern languages, the school gives a good academical education along foreign lines. Every boy is required to take at least one foreign language. He may choose either English, French, German or Russian. English is now the most popular, and about eighty students are studying it. French ranks next, and then German, and after that Russian and Japanese.
With this wonderful development along educational lines, it is quite natural there should be similar progress with the newspapers of China. Within the past five years over five hundred periodicals have been established, and nearly three hundred dailies are now being published in the different cities.
Some of the dailies are now putting stereotyping outfits in, and the "Sin Wan Pao" is cast in cylinders, just like an American newspaper.
It is run of on a rotary press which prints 30,000 an hour. It goes to press at four o'clack in the morning and has telegraphic news up to that hour.
Nearly all these dailies publish cartoons. This is especially so of the papers of Peking. The change in dynasty, the opium evil and the new army are graphically pictured.
The old Peking "Gazette" has been modified. It is now issued in a different form, but it comes out regularly and has a wide circulation all over the Empire.
This is the oldest journal in the world. It was being read by the Chinese centuries before America was discovered.
Until recently the Peking "Gazette" was set up from movable type made of wood, and printed on double pages of about the size and shape of the old-fashioned patent drug store almanacs.
It recorded the times when the Emperor went out to sacrifice at the Temple of Heaven, and when his Imperial Majesty prayed for snow or rain, or started the Spring plowing. It gave the official reports from the provinces, and the sentences of slicing to death and other punishments, which were so common until the new regime came in.
The Peking "Gazette" of today is largely devoted to the modern movements now going on over China. It contains memorials relating to the schools and the establishments of constitutional government. It is full of edicts regarding the opium evil, and the importation of morphine, and it has much to say about railways and foreign loans.
The only woman's daily newspaper published in Asia, if not in the world, is issued in Peking. Its editor is a Chinese girl belonging to a well-to-do family. Her paper is known as the Peking "Woman's Journal." It is published in an attractive form and is written in classic Chinese.
It is largly devoted to educational matters, and especially to the advancement of woman. It advocates the anti-footbinding movement, supports the anti-opium crusade, and, in general, is for woman's rights from a Chinese standpoint.
What a wonderful change in a few years! Ten years ago the Chinese had no press worth mentioning; the few papers published then were entirely under the influence of the official classes, or if published in the treaty ports, under the influence of the foreign monied interests.
In the interior of China the people knew nothing of what was going on on the Coast. The officials and writers took good care to keep them in the dark regarding the weakness of the Empire and the hollowness of the pretension which caused the Chinese to regard themselves superior to every other people.
Just what the average Chinese opinion was of the foreigners, up to a half dozen years ago, is told in an interview given by a Chinaman who lives near Shanghai.
This interview was printed in the Literary Digest, January 29, 1888:
"We are always told that the countries of the foreign devils are grand and rich, but that cannot be true, else what do they all come here for? It is here that they grow rich. But you cannot civilize them; they are beyond redemption. They will live weeks and months without touching a mouthful of rice, but they eat the flesh of bullocks and sheep in enormous quantities. That is why they smell so badly; they smell] like sheep themselves. Every day they take a bath to rid themselves of their disagreeable odors, but they do not succeed. Nor do they eat their meat cooked in small pieces. It is carried into the room in large chunks, often half raw, and then they cut and slash and tear it apart. They eat with knives and prongs; it makes a civilized being perfectly nervous. One fancies himself in the presence of sword-swallowers. The opium poison, which they have brought us, they do not use themselves. But they take enormous quantities of 'weski-chn' and 'shang-ping-chu' (whiskey and champagne). The latter is very good. They know what is good, the rascals. It is because they eat and drink so much that they never rest. A sensible civilized person does nothing without due consideration, but the barbarians hurry with everything. Their anger, however, is only a fire of straw; if you wait long enough they get tired of being angry. I worked for two of them. The one we used to call the 'Crazy Flea' because he was always jumping about; the other we named the "Wooden Gun' because he never went off, though he was always at full cock.
"They certainly do not know how to amuse themselves. You never see them enjoy themselves by sitting quietly upon their ancestor’s grave. They jump around and kick balls as if they were paid to do it. Again, you will find them making long tramps into the country: but that is probably a religious duty, for when they tramp they wave sticks in the air, nobody knows why. They have no sense of dignity, for they may be found walking with women, They even sit down at the same table with women, and the latter are served first. Yet the women are to be pitied, too. On festive occasions they are compelled to appear almost naked before every man who likes toe look alt them, and then they are dragged around a room to the accompaniment of the most hellish music.”
While we cannot fully agree with this gentleman's analysis, there is, however, much about it that we cannot deny. But thirteen years ofter this interview we find that the abolishment of the Chinese pigtail and modernizing their clothing is now in order:
Peking, January 8, 1911.—The Prince Regent of China, who is practically head of the Empire during the little Emperor's infancy, intends to bring about the modernization of Chinese dress and the abolition of the traditional pigtail. The Prince already has discarded the national costume when receiving Ministers from Western Powers. He wears instead a military uniform which is modelled on those of the "foreign devils."
There is a tremendous discussion on this question of the pigtail, the modernists arguing that it is unsanitary, ridiculous and antiquated. The conservatives defend the queue on the grounds of dignity and sentiment. Along with this pigtail agitation is the question of adopting Western costume without which China cannot make progress toward the ideal that has been set by the reformers and so follow the example of Japan.
At present the conservatives are in the majority, but the Prince Regent is determined to make an effort to bring about the change next year. Whether he will be able to detail and betrouser the millions of Chinamen by issuing an imperial edict remains to be seen.
[Literary Digest, November 11, 1911.]
"Additional concessions wrung from the throne but not yet announced by edict include the cutting off of the queue, the ancient badge of servile loyalty to the Manchu dynasty, as forced by the conquerors; the disbandment of the 'Eight Banners,' the old Manchu military organization, long useless save on pension rolls; that the Manchus be compelled to adopt Chinese surnames, thus being completely absorbed into the Chinese population, and that the pensions paid to all the Manchu families be abolished."
Chinese tradition said that the queue was necessary to enter heaven, but the queue has no commercial value to the capitalists—they know that to the wage slave it would be a hindrance; so the Chinese idea about heaven, dignity and sentiment will change to suit the new economic forces.
Man can hold in biology rudimentary survival organs; so in sociology he may hold rudimentary customs and habits: he may hold all kinds of ideas about spirits, witchcraft, etc., but when he enters the workshop, mill or mine the master demands science. The gueue or any other traditional custom that in any way threatens the profits of the master class must go. We therefore see on all sides the wonderful preparations being made for China's next great step—the entrance of the Capitalist System.
Before very long China will successfully dispute with the United States and other countries for the iron and steel supremacy of the world.
In 1907 the following article by Frank N. Basiskett appeared in the Technical World Magazine:
New Steel Plant in China
"Situated at Han-Yang, some seven hundred miles up the Yang-tse river from its junction with the Hawangho or Shanghai river, there today is established an industry that is already competing with America and Europe in supplying the rails for the immense railroad systems projected in China. This establishment will in a short time be able to supply the Philippines, Japan and all other points of the far East with such railroad materials, including bridge work, cars, and all types of steel construction, that are required.
"With an unlimited supply of labor at such cheap rates that labor-saying machinery is at a discount, without any fear of strikes or trade combinations, with an abundance of iron ore and coal within easy distance of the works, and with mines all owned by the company, the products can be turned out in less time and at lower prices than the same articles of manufacture can be imported from the United States and Europe.
"This new establishment is comprised of twelve Bessemer and four open-hearth Siemens furnaces, over half of which are now in working order and the others are to be completed within a very short time.
"Twenty sets of rolling mills of rails and other steel products are also in running order. The engine power at present in use is 17,500 actual horse capacity, while the electrical units for lighting and power aggregate over 5,000 horse power. Ore which is worked into steel by the direct electric process is brought from the mines in steel barges holding from 500 to 800 tons, and delivered at the wharf near the works; from the wharf it is conveyed to the works in steel cars. A fully equipped railroad runs over the entire works, and long trains of cars carrying limestone and coke to the converters and returning with pig iron to load on steamers for Japan, line the tracks. Immense piles of slag, that the company will in the near future convert into cement, are to be seen along the railroad, while tons of old scrap iron, bought all over the East, are used to mix with the rich iron ore of the company's mines.
"With the utilization of the Siemens furnaces the entire elimination of phosphorous has been attained in the manufacture of rails; in fact it is claimed, the rail product is far better than can be produced in Europe. All milled steel products turned out also are excellent. Flat and round steel, bent over again and doubled under a steam hammer, shows no sign of fracture, and all tests for torsion, elongation and ductility prove the grades to be of the nighest character.
"During the coming spring, when the mills will be in full working order, their output of rails will be at the rate of from 5,000 to 8,000 tons monthly. The major part of this product is already bespoken, as by order of the Peking government all promoters of Chinese railroads must place their orders with this national concern.
"The management of this new enterprise is solely under the supervision and direction of Chinese. Mr. Lee, who spent some time in the United States and England studying the steel business, is the manager. He has two assistants, one of whom is a graduate of Cornell University. The chiefs of the technical departments have had thorough educations in the manufacture of steel in Belgium, one of the most important steel centers in the world.
"At the present time this Chinese steel mill is shipping 5,000 tons of its products to Japan monthly. Shipments have been made during the past year to San Francisco of pig iron, but the most noteworthy shipment of this product was made three months ago on the steamer Seneca. There was loaded at Han-Yang, 3,000 tons of pig iron consigned to the United States Steel Corporation and ordered by the corporation as a trial shipment. The price paid for this shipment yielded a nice profit.
"There is a clause in the regulations of the establishment which provides that no foreigners can obtain any interest in the works. In addition to the mills now in operation an immense plant for the construction of railroad passenger and freight cars, bridges and structural steel will be built before the end of the year 1908, the capitalists of Shanghai having already put up the funds for extension of the industry.
"Open-hearth furnaces will be erected at the mines and a railroad will be built to the colliery, so as to enable deep draft steamers to load direct from the cars, for it is proposed to open up the coal industry also to compete with the poor and unserviceable present product of Japan. Fuel will be transported to Shanghai and even to Hong Kong. It is the intent of the management of this new industry to expend at least a million dollars in improvements this year (1907)—an indication of the scale on which this plant is operated."
Mr. W. H, Donner, president of the Union Improvement Company, and formerly president of the Union Steel Company, in part says: "Less than a year ago during the course of a world's tour, I visited at Han-Yang, China, a modern steel plant in full operation and exporting steel rails and pig iron to Japan, and some of the latter product to the Pacific Coast of the United States."
This same gentleman is quoted by The Gazette-Times, of Pittsburg, on February 18, 1912, as having said that if the steel industry in China is properly developed the Chinese manufacturers will be enabled to deliver the finished product to the eastern coast of the United States upon the completion of the Panama Canal.
Mr. Donner said that China has everything in her favor where the iron and steel industry is concerned.
"They have enormous deposits of iron ore," he said, "very much higher in iron than the ore we now use, and running from 62 to 65 per cent, in ore. This ore is almost free from sulphur and is low in phosphorous. They have an abundance of excellent coking coal, which can be mined at very low cost, because they have the cheapest labor in the world. To one who has never visited China this may appear an exaggeration, but it is a fact. I believe it is possible to produce pig iron and finished steel more cheaply in China than in any other country in the world.
"The Hanyang Iron and Steel Works employs more that 5,000 workmen in its plant and several thousand others in its ore and coal mines. The company is now filling a pig iron contract of iron 36,000 to 72,000 tons annually for 15 years, with a steel plant building on Puget Sound.
Foreigners Superintend
"The plant is owned entirely by a Chinese company; but actively engaged in superintending its operation were several Germans and Americans, among the latter a former Pittsburgh man. When asked why the wonderful opportunity offered by China had not been seized by enterprising persons, or why the iron and steel industry there had net been developed more largely than it has, Mr. Donner explained that it is very difficult to obtain concessions from the Chinese government; but after the present internal troubles are ended things may be different.
"The younger generation of Chinese is very wide-awake, and I believe there will be a wonderful development and building of railroads in China," he said. "While China has the oldest civilization in the world, the religious fanaticism of her people has checked development. The building of railroads has been almost entirely blocked because it interfered with the tombs of the Chinaman's ancestors, which he regards as sacred. The same difficulty was encountered in mining. However, these old-fashioned beliefs are gradually being supplanted by modern ideas. The Chinaman of today realizes the advantages of a railroad.
Railroad Proves Important
"While in Nanking there wag a terrible famine in a district into which a railroad was being constructed, and while the railroad was not completed or ready for operation, it was possible to use it in transporting rice to the starving people. The building of this road made it possible to save more than 1,000,000 from starvation, who, under former conditions, would have perished. The intelligent Chinese appreciated this."
Mr. Donner declared that the people in and about Hankow and Hanyang, where the steel mill is located, did not appear to be greatly impressed by the importance of their industry. In his opinion, if China develops into a dangerous competitor in the iron and steel trade it will not be the Chinese themselves who will be responsible, but enterprising Americans or Germans who will secure concessions and build up the industry
China, with labor at a figure which makes unnecessary the expensive labor-saving devices so common in America and Germany, with a wealth of raw materials that could be assembled very cheaply, and excellent transportation facilities for export trade, would, in the opinion of Mr. Donner, lead the world in the iron and steel industry.
Mr. Donner was in China last April. With Mrs. Donner and their two sons, Robert and Joseph Donner, he toured the world, leaving Pittsburgh in January, 1911, and arriving home again the following July. His son Robert took several kodak pictures of the steel works at Hanyang.
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CHINA'S INDUSTRIAL AWAKENING
(By Frederick Poole)
Mr. Poole, who was formerly in charge of the Chinese mission in Race street, Philadelphia, Pa., upon his return from-a seven months' tour through central China, speaks of the amazing development in industrial pursuits in the empire.
A great number of the laborers, he says, are children.
"On every side," said Mr. Poole, "I found the most astounding indications of industrial progress, and everywhere, especially in Canton, the first city I visited, and the largest city in China, I noted the great national awakening of the people and their ambition to equal, if not excel, the highest attainments of the Occident in all the arts of peace, especially in the development of the industries of the country.
"Canton, with all her very progressive activities, has a close rival, however, in the steel and iron works of Han Yang in central China. It was well worth while traveling those 1,400 miles from Canton across the China sea and up the Yang-tse river into the heart of China in order to stand upon the Kwei San (the tortoise hill) and look down through the smoke that poured from towering stacks upon steel and iron foundries that are the Pittsburgh of China and bid fair to compete with the biggest smoke town in Pennsylvania.
Furnaces in Full Blast
"Here, towering high above pagodas, may be seen the smoke stack, of four blast furnaces, capable of producing 870 tons per day, while the immense steel works and rolling mills are furnished with the most modern equipment all in complete and working order with accessory machinery and machine tools driven by electric power. The quality and cost prices of the various products of these blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills are of the best comparable kind, and they can compete in the markets of the world with any of such products used by railroads, engineering works, machine shops, navy yards, etc. Twenty thousand men are employed in connection with this huge enterprise, and they are all Chinese.
"Seventeen years ago I tramped across this same area, stumbling amid decayed coffins and wading through its dismal swamp. Today it accommodates the greatest commercial enterprise in all China, and the shrill whistle of the locomotive and the morning, noon and night ear-splitting 'buzzer' are playing havoc with ‘'Feng Shui' superstition while the gilded eaves and roofs of pagodas and temples are now begrimed by clouds of factory smoke.
"Under the personal direction of Mr. Yen, a foreign educated engineer, and highly honored by his government, I traversed from one end to the other of these colossal works, With pardonable pride he declared they were ready to supply pig iron and steel rails to America, or any other country, and his boast is being made good, for not long ago a shipload of pig iron from these works was disposed of at profitable prices in San Francisco.
Chinese Adaptability
"As I wandered through the up-to-date factories, whose 600 looms were busily humming night and day, I saw evidence of Chinese adaptability everywhere, and especially in the fact that most of the operators were children, boys and girls, ranging from 12 years upward.
"I protested that such a condition would not be permitted in America, and referred to our child labor prohibition laws. 'But,' replied my official guides, 'these factories have proven the greatest blessing to Wu-Chang, for by the employment of these children families have been saved from starvation, and the children wildly clamor for such employment.'
"And yet they receive but 10 cents per day. Combine this cheapness of labor with the willingness to learn and produce, and is it not probable that the real yellow peril lies in Chinese commercial competition?
"And what shall be said of China's marvelous railroad enterprises? It is but a few years ago that rails were torn up as fast as they were laid down, and rolling stock destroyed by an infuriated populace who feared the introduction of the foreign iron horse would disturb the spirits of their revered dead. Today there is no more popular public work than the construction of railroads. Trunk lines have been and are being laid down which shall connect the southern capital, Canton, directly with the national capital, Pekin, in the north. More than 3,000 miles of railroad lines today shimmer under the celestial sun.
"I have but briefly referred to the portentous signs of the times as they relate to the struggle of this new aspirant to the privileges of membership in the family of progressive nations. I am not a pessimist, nor do I believe that the Anglo-Saxon race will eventually yield and succumb to the dominion of the Asiatic, but I believe in an honest acknowledgement of the ability to do things wherever we find it, East or West.
"Western nations have long been pushing and the Celestial ball has begun to roll, and with each revolution the momentum shall become greater until it is not improbable that the international diplomatic question of a not far distant future shall be 'What power, or combination of powers, shall or can prevail against it?'
With the wonderful development of the iron, steel and other industries, we find similar progress in the development of railroad construction.
Washington, August 14, 1909.—China rapidly is awakening to the importance -of railway building.
This is indicated in the translation of a recent memorial on railways submitted to the Chinese throne by the Ministry of Posts and Communications. This translation has been sent to Washington by Minister W. W. Rockhill, of Peking, who says it has received the approval of the Chinese Government.
Railway extension is to be made in northwestern China, Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan. A corps of engineers is also proposed as is the development of mines and iron works to supply railway material and render the country independent of foreign sources of supply.
The memorial proposes two trunk lines for the northwest, an eastern trunk line from Kalgan to Urga and a western trunk line from Kalgan to Sul Yuan Cheng, thence through Mongolia, Liang-Chou and the Kuan to Ili.
A thriving passenger business is done by the Nanging City railway, which is of standard guage, connecting the Shanghai-Nanking railway and the port of Hsai-Kuan, This road is to be extended to Wuhu, a distance of sixty miles. This extension will tap the second greatest rice district of China.
The Shanghai-Nanking railway is a first class line. It cost more per mile to construct and equip than any other railway in China. When finished its schedule between Shanghai and Peking will be twenty-four hours.
Chinese Great Travelers
Mr. McNally says: "Chinese are of a migratory disposition, and as those of the middle and lower classes usually travel with all they possess, it is not difficult for them to change their place of abode. But even these stationary in the cities, which includes the more wealthy and better classes, have a remarkable inclination for travel.
"It was at first thought that some natural prejudices would limit the expected receipts from passenger traffic, but the Chinese have taken readily to railway travel, and it is not an uncommon sight to see the second and third class coaches packed with passengers three or four hours before the schedule time for the train to leave. Some arrive at the station the night before and sleep on the platform until the train backs in, when they get aboard. They seem to derive as muck pleasure from sitting in the cars when the latter are stationary as they do when under way.
Comfort of Passengers
"The trains are arranged for the greatest comfort of passengers, with beautifully upholstered leather compartments, electric lights and up-to-date lavatories.
"The push button for food or refreshments brings immediate answer and the usual good service of competent Chinese boys is always the rule."
Regarding the railway extensions proposed or in progress in northern China, Consul General Williams, of Tientsin, declares that the Board of Communications has announced that Chinese merchants have subscribed the capital needed for the extension of the Kai-Feng-Lo-Yang railway, 184 miles farther westward from Honan Fu, to Tung-Kuan, which is situated in the great bend of the Yellow river, near the mouth of the Wei. The extension will be completed in three years, at an estimated cost of $6,500,000.
It is intended eventually to extend this line up the valley of the Wei river to Hsian Fu, capital of the province of Shensi, with its 1,000,000 people. Thence the road would follow the old trade route northwestward over the watershed to Lanchau, capital of Kansu, and on to Liang-Chou near the western terminus of the great wall.
Other Extensions
The narrow gauge branch of the Peking-Hankow railway has been completed between Shih-Chia Chuang and T'ai Yuan Fu. Now it is proposed to extend the Tao-k'ou-Ch'ing-Hau Road, in Honan, to P'ing-Yang, in Shan Si, where it is to connect with a line to be built from Taung in the north to J'u-Chour in the southwest. The government is anxious to develop the mineral resources of the province and has issued an edict reducing freight charges.
The construction of the Peking-Kalgan railway has been proctically completed. For the heavy grade above Nank'ou the company has ordered three American locomotives. Those now in use are of British make.
Consul General Williams emphasizes the importance of having American manufacturers represented in China by American agents. The Chinese themselves have made progress in the manufacture of railway materials, rolling stock, etc, For several years past rails have been supplied by the mills at Han Yang and the T'Ong-Shan shops, eighty miles northeast of Ttantsin, on the Peking-Mukuen Line.
Competition
The following report from the United States Consul Genera] William Martain, of Honkow, China, tells just what kind of competition the western world can expect when once the industrial machinery of the Far East is in full operation. Mr. Martain reports that the Japanese are underselling the Standard Oil Company. He calls attention to a striking illustration of the skill with which Japanese manufacturers imitate any marketable article. During 1907, to aid in the sale of kerosene among the masses of Chinese, the Standard Oil Company had manufactured in the United States a large quantity of small brass lamps to be distributed at or under cost.
These were shipped to their various agencies and ordered sold at retail for seventeen cents Mexican, which at the present price of silver amounts to about seven sents. For that sum the Chinese received a small brass hand lamp and glass chimney, as well as a wick, one-half inch wide. The lamp holds one-half pound of oil and will give a continuous light for fourteen hours.
The Japanese are filling the markets with an exact imitation of the Standard Oil lamp and selling them for less than the Standard Oil lamps under cost price. Yet the Japanese make a profit.
The Department of Commerce and Labor Consular report No. 29, shows how the city of Hankow, as early as 1908, was adapting itself to the new order.
"Hankow continues to grow very rapidly, and the foreign concessions are extending wherever land will permit, and new buildings are going up on every hand. Property is still increasing in value at almost incredible rates, and the prediction that prices of land would drip seems less probable as time goes on. The British concession has been extended during the year, improvements are being made, and the new area will soon be built up. The Japanese concession is being improved rapidly. Work an the bunding is going on, and they hope to have it completed before the next summer rise of the river. Streets are being laid out, several substantial foreign buildings have been erected, and work hag been started on the new Japanese consulate. The concession was extended 1,500 yards along the river front, with a depth of the original concession, during the early part of the year.
"A new company known as the International Export Company has erected a place in the German concession of considerable size and will engage in canning meats, preserving and; shipping eggs, and the slaughtering business.
"The large factory of the British-American Tobacco Company is now practically completed and the leaf department already operating. They are preparing about 25,000 pounds of tobacco a day and have 300 Chinese women engaged as stemmers. The machines in the cigarette factory are being set up, and they hope to start manufacturing the middle of 1908.
"The beautiful new buildings of the German-Asiatic and Russo-Chinese banks are nearing completion, and should be ready for occupancy within a few months. New municipal buildings have been erected in the German-Russian concessions, supplying commodious offices for the municipal authorities. The British and French concessions expect to erect municipal buildings during 1908.
"The Hanyang Iron and Steel Works have completed their large new steel plant, which is equipped with the most modern open-hearth furnaces and latest rolling-mill machinery.
The Standard Oil Company and the Asiatic Petroleum Company have each erected a large storage tank to take care of the increasing oil business.
Wages Paid to Iron Workers
Sharon, Pa., January 19, 1909.—Honorable Theodore D. Morgan, of this city, writes from China that that country seems to be awakening at last from its long sleep, and that the new regime will be more progressive and better.
Think of it! Rollers earning from $4 to $6 a month, and open hearth steel melters $6 a month. Hankow has a modern steel mill employing 20,000 men, and only 20 of that number are Europeans. Following is a part of Mr. Morgan's letter:
"In passing through China anyone must be impressed with the thought that she is at last really awakening from her long sleep.
"Since the death of the Emperor there is a subdued air of uncertainty everywhere, but as yet there has been no serious outbreak against the government. The general feeling seems to be that the new regime will be more progressive and better.
"Newspapers are now printed throughout China and the people read them. This has a broadening and educating influence. The religious missions have done and are doing a great work in China, both religious and educational, though the latter, no doubt, is the most far-reaching, The Chinese, like the Japanese, are now eager for education and the mission schools can hardly take care of all who apply.
"The city of Hankow, which is often called the Chicago or Pittsburg of China, has an up-to-date real estate boom, properties doubling in value In quick time, and in such cities as Tien-Tsin and Shanghai one is amazed at seeing the fine wide streets and splendid buildings. Even Peking itself, the changeless city, now has macadamized streets, well drained.
"Hankow has a large modern steel plant that employs 20,000 people—only 20 of these are Europeans—Another large plant for building engine, machinery and steel boats will be in operation in a few months starting with one thousand men. There is a match works here employing five thousand people, besides many others, including a modern cold storage plant. This city is nearly 700 miles inland on the Yangtse-Kiang River, but the stream here is a mile in width and deep draft, ocean-going steamers come here. There are, I believe, six lines of river steamers plying between Hankow and Shanghai.
"There is in operation in Hankow another important plant, a Government arsenal, with a productive capacity of 150 modern army rifles per day. The material for these comes from Great Britain, but the work on them is all done here by Chinese exclusively. This place also makes field guns up to four inches, and makes cartridges and powder. There are two other such arsenals in China.
"Chinese turn all the rolls in the Hankow Steel Works, with Europeans to do the drafting. They do the steel melting, the heating and rolling in the mills. The chief engineer of these works said they seem to have instincts in the handling of foreign steels, seldom injuring a piece in the working, and tempering tools perfectly of any of the high quality steels, either self-hardening or others.
"At all these works Chinamen have entire charge of the electric department, operating and keeping in repair, and do it perfectly.
"That they are resourceful the following will show: At the steel plant a valve of one of the largest engines wsa broken badly. It would take four months to get one from the makers. The matter was serious, but the break was evidently too bad to even make an attempt to repair it. The valve was taken into the repair shop, but after thorough consideration it was decided there was nothing to do but send to the makers for a new one. At this point a Chinese foreman of the shop, an exceptionally clever mechanic, said in his guileless way, "Me can fixee."
"'No you can't. That cannot be repaired,' said the chief engineer.
"'Yes, can do!' repeated the foreman.
"'Well how? Show me what you would do.'
"The foreman explained his plan, the engineer decided to let him try; the work was done in two days and the valve has been in use two years, and still running, with a new one lying in the shop waiting for it to break.
"A yard locomotive came from America in the knockdown. The drawings for it were delayed in transit. The engine was put in the shop in pieces, and the chief engineer forgot to say that nothing should be done with it until the drawings came.
"Shortly after he was astonished to see the engine running up and down the tracks in front of the shop, being tried out. They had assembled the engine without the drawings and had done the work perfectly.
"When I asked the engineer if he considered it much of a feat, he replied, laughingly, 'I would not have undertaken it.'
"He also spoke of the wonderful manner in which the Chinese move heavy objects. When a heavy casting for instance, has to be moved, a labor contractor is called. He looks the job over and quickly says 'Yes, can do,' names his price, gathers his coolies and by a system of extending his carrying poles so that many men can get at the weight effectively, they actually pick up the object and walk off with it. In this way they carried a steam hammer anvil weighing 20 tons for half a mile, and many other awkward and heavy objects that were shown us. Said the gentleman who told us this: 'When one sees how the Chinese handle these heavy objects it can be readily understood how the Egyptians might have handled the great blocks of stone that built the pyramids.'
"Wages are very low in China. At the Hankow Steel Works, for example: Rollers get from $4 to $6 per month; heaters on furnaces, $6 per month; helpers on furnaces, $4 to $5 per month; open-hearth steel melters, $6; first helpers, steel melters, $5.50; blacksmiths, $7.50 to $20; bollermakers, $7.50 to $10; common labor men about 7½ cents per day; common labor women, 5 cents per day; Chinese get from $11 to $15 per mouth. All the common labor at these works are paid in full each night and hired anew each morning. The people must have the money to live. All the above is American money.
"The bricklayers and stone masons on buildings get about sixty cents Mexican money or thirty cents gold per day. When employed at piecework they will make $1 a day, but to do this work from dawn to dark nearly. The bricklayer's trowel is a small butcher's cleaver in shape and with it he lifts the mortar and cuts the brick. The pointing up of joints is done with a simple tool that forces a bit of round iron into the joint, where it rubs a round grove in the mortar; for finer work they use a V-shaped tool. These tools make nicely finished work.
"A Chinaman works very hard when on piece-work. I have seen them toiling like mad on piece-work, but when on day work they must be carefully watched or they have a tendency to slight the work. For example, they will not put heading courses into a brick wall, will put half bricks where the headers should be and fill up in back with mortar. When remonstrated with for not doing the work as ordered they simply say, 'Oh, think can do.' 'It is not that they want to do bad work; it's more because they don't fully understand the necessity for such things as headers to make a strong wall,' said the engineer who told me this.
"Fabulous stories are told of the coal and iron deposits of China. If these are but one half true one day the entire world will be drawing its supplies of both from China. Japan is even now at the mercy of China as regards her iron ores.
"The steel works at Hankow gets most of its ore from a visitable mountain of solid ore near the Yagtse river. This body of ore is over six hundred feet high; the ore is a hematite, containing 65 per cent. of iron and is just quarried out of the hill. There are known to be many other deposits even greater than this.
"There are many ancient little furnaces in operation near these ore fields. These are queer little affairs, using half-charred wood as fuel and making about two tons of iron per day. The brick work is supported on bamboo columns, the blast of air is supplied by donkey power; the ore and fuel is carried in baskets. The stock hoist is unique: the stockman places his baskets on a little platform, then he ascends the ladder to the top and by his weight lifts the load. When the load reaches the top he is at the bottom. He goes up again, empties his baskets and repeats the process.
"The Chinese cast cooking pots from this iron that are remarkable things. Many that we saw were no thicker than No. 18 guage, and some large ones about 18 inches in diameter and 8 inches deep were not one-sixteenth of an inch thick yet they were perfect castings.
"It is an interesting thing to see these pots repaired with molten iron on the streets by traveling tinkers. He has a little furnace about eight inches in diameter and ten inches high, with a little blast pipe at the bottom through which air is forced from a small cylindrical hand bellows. The fuel is charcoal mixed with anthracite coal.
"His clay crucible, about half the size of a tea cup, is filled with iron and in a few minutes is melted. When the pot is cracked he carefully breaks out bits of iron till there is a small hole all along the line of the crack. A bit of cloth that covers about one-half of his hand has a thin layer of ashes from his furnace smoothed over it. He row with an iron spoon dips out a bit of the molten iron from the crucible and pours it out on the ash-covered cloth in his hand. The metal appears like a small yellow hot marble. He now carefully places his hand under the hole in the pot presses upward and the molten metal exudes through the hole, when instantly with a piece of smooth wood in his other hand he presses down the soft metal and smooths it over. He continues this until the hole is filled, making a good job, for the pot does not leak- after. We have seen large pieces that were broken out of these pots thus replaces and welded in perfectly. No preparation is made for the work—the metal of the pot is not heated, not even cleaned.
"More is known of the coal fields of China than of the iron ore deposits. There are hundreds of coal mines that are operated in most primitive ways.
"It is estimated that in the Ping-Siang district, from which the steel works draw their coal supplies, there are 300,000,006 tons of coal in sight.
"The three mines of the Chinese Mining Company, northeast of Tien-Tsin, produced nearly one million tons in 1906. We are informed that there is a vein of soft anthracite forty feet thick in Central China. From this field the Yangtse-Eng company will draw its supplies of anthracite for power purposes,
India
Surely China has changed more in the past five years, than in the preceding three thousand. Even if these statements may be open to the charge of same exaggeration. From east to west, from north to south, throughout all of her borders they are making ready for the new life.
Nor is this true alone of China; India, with its population of 296,000,000 must not be ignored; this country is agricultural and in the march of progress, seems hopelessly in the rear. Yet there are today employed in the Indian textile mills 215,000 workmen and these mill hands begin work at 5 o'clock in the morning and stop at 8 o'clock at night.
Thus they sweat for fifteen hours, getting half an hour recess at noon.
The average wages earned by these mill hands in cotton mills is as follows:
Men, $4.60 per month; women, $2.40 per month; children, $1 a month. While considerable preparatory work is still necessary before capitalism can enter India, yet, since China is to stop using opium, is logically follows that India must stop raising it. That the agriculturists will turn to raising more wheat, corn, cotton, etc., and since these articles cannot be transported profitably on pack mules, as opium was, railroads will be built, and while the evolution of capitalism may be slow in India, it is sure to develop.
If India was as well prepared as China is for the new order, then capitalism would now be marching into India also.
Primitive Mode of Living
The people of the mill or several mills, if the mills are nearly located together, occupy a village, which is made up of huts made of mud, bricks, and palm leaves woven into sheets and tacked onto bamboo poles. All are thatched with a long tough grass used throughout India for covering huts and bungalows, and which makes a tight, cool, and durable roof. The floor is made of clay tamped down hard, which makes a very good floor. On this floor is spread in places matting made of bamboo grass. On this matting many of the natives throw down a cotton blanket, or possibly a thin mattress, for beds. Some have a rude bed made of four posts sixteen inches high with crossheads and side pieces pinned together and then cris-crossed with bed cords. There may be a few rude benches, but little or no other furniture is to be seen in the hut. The natives eat on the floor, squatted around a pot or pan containing the food. The men and boys eat first and the women and girls afterwards, taking what is left. The mode of life is thoroughly primitive. No knives, spoons or forks are used in eating, the fingers answering all purposes. Each Indian is ambitious to own a brass jug or pot, and these brasses are handed down as heirlooms and are held as almost sacred in possessions. They are kept bright by scouring them with mud and water. After a meal the brasses that have been used in any way are taken out in the street, where the women or men, as the case may be, squat on the ground and rub them with the dust and water.
China, just at this time, is the most fertile spot on earth for the exploiting class to feed upon, with its millions of cheap workers and its boundless natural resources. The American and European wage slaves will before very long in their struggle for an existence be compelled to compete with the toilers of the Far East.
A glimpse at the wages paid the Asiatics, will explain how very low their standard of living must be.
Wages of newspaper men in China: Compositors are paid by the month. They each receive from two to seven dollars for thirty days of hard work, there being no rest on Sundays.
The two-dollar men are apprentices—boys who have had & slight education and are learning to set type.
Editorial writers are fairly well paid, some receiving as high at thirty-five dollars a month, while reporters get twenty-five cents and upward per day. Some space work is done, and correspondents are paid for what they send in according to the valuation of the editor.
The Pittsburg Gazette-Times, of Feb. 18, 1912, quotes W. H, Donner on the subject of wages in China:
Mr. Donner declared that laborers in Hankow, which is just across the river from Hanyang, near the steel works, receive ten cents, gold standard, for a twelve hour day; skilled laborers, such as brick-layers, carpenters and machinists, receive thirty cents gold for the same twelve hour period of labor. They feed and clothe themselves and save a little.
Miners Receive Seven Cents a Day
The Chinese coal miner is paid seven cents for a day of twelve hours; in addition he receives his food from his employer, but this consists only of about one cent's worth of rice and meal. Coal at the pit's mouth in China is sold at thirty-five cents a ton.
The coal is transported from the mine to the river or railroad by coolies, the lowest class of Chinese labor. The coolie is paid one cent for carrying on his back a four hundred pound load of coal in same instances a distance of more than a mile from the mine to the export station. These coolies work only every other week.
According to Mr, Donner it costs a Chinese workman about ninety cents a month to live.
Chinese Economical
"The Chinese practice economy in a way that is almost beyond comprehension," he declared. The average American wasts more food than the average Chinaman consumes, and more expensive food at that. It is possible for a Chinaman to secure an abundance of wholesome food that satisfies him, at three cents a day. They subsist principally on rice and meal and have never known any other kind of food. Then, they have no amusements, such as theaters, nickelodeons and other sources from which the American derives so much pleasure and which he patronizes so freely.
"Their dress is simple in style, and they use the material until it is literally worn out; so there is the same economy in their cothes. In fact, there seems to be nothing wasted in China."
Wages, to be sure, vary among Asiatics as well as among the Americans and Europeans.
The United States Department of Commerce and Labor informs us that wages in Dalny are as follows:
"Wages are about fifteen cents per day for unskilled laborers, who are all Chinese with the exception of a few Koreans, thirty-two cents for Chinese carpenters and bricklayers, etc."
On mining in Korea, the same department gives us the following information:
The Mining Industry
American Interests Predominate—Valuable Latent
Minerals
"American interests largely predominate in the mining industry in Korea. British, Japanese, German, Italian and French interests are also represented, but the chief mining property of the Empire is that of the American company (Oriental Consolidated Mining Company) in the Usan district of northwestern Korea. This company has already taken out nearly $10,000,000 in bullion, the bullion output for 1907 being $1,500,000 United States gold; it has approximately $1,000,000 tons of average $5 to $5.20 (per ton) ore in reserve, and ordinarily crushes 300,000 tons annually.
Experience With Korean Miners
"The Korean miner possesses all the good qualities of a miner with very few of his defects, being physically strong and very easy to handle. As regards the amount of work done, it is estimated that two Korean miners are more than equal to one white miner. Generally speaking a Korean miner's father and grandfather were miners before him and his son will, as a rule, be a miner. They withstand hardship, such as water and bad ventilation, much better than the average white miner.
"At the Suan mine the following wages per day of ten hours are paid: Miner, thirty cents; laborer, twenty-five cents; blacksmith, thirty-five cents, and carpenter, forty cents.
"The average cost of driving a tunnel five by seven 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 respectables, organized the China Railway and Concessions Project.
Its object was to obtain and exploit concessions from the Government of China. With this distinct object of robbing China, they procured subscriptions of which a part was employed in sending agents to China, and a part in paying for the incorporation of the project, thereby legalizing their robber scheme.
By 1898 their plans were working splendidly and everything looked good for a big haul; up to this time but $27,000 had actually been put up by the subscribers, but millions of dollars worth of concessions were secured; one for a railroad from Hankow to Canton, a distance of 1,000 miles, and coal lands which William Blarely-Parsons, after a personal investigation, had declared to be richer than anything in Pennsylvania, had been obtained. Out of this original company there grew two others—they were syndicates within syndicates—and in time the name was changed to the American-China Development Company, and the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Morgans became financially interested. Just how these chiefs got in on the game, Mr. Barnes could never explain. Nor could he understand how Elihu Root and Justice Ingraham got in. It was the mind of Root that outwitted the subtle Oriental intellect in the final closing of the transaction, and this only a few weeks before Mr. Root became Secretary of State in President Roosevelt's cabinet.
Five years previously Mr. Root, as Secretary of War in the McKinley cabinet, had conducted ail the diplomatic negotiations that preceded and followed our participation in the invasion of China by the allied armies of Christendom to suppress the Boxer uprisings. Thus his name was very familiar at Peking and in the councils of the mighty at the Chinese capital,
Two Chinese ministers to this country also figured conspicuously in the transaction. One of them was the talkative Wu Ting Fang, who, for the second time, was representing China at the capital of the United States. The other was Chentung Liang Chang, who came over to succeed Wu, fresh fom the inner circle of the Foreign Office at Peking.
The original company consisted of 27 men, each of whom put up $1,000 only. Among these 27 were such men as Andrew Carnegie, J. E. MeGrow, ex-Gorvernor of the State of Washington, and others prominent in public life. Now what really took place? After the concessions were secured, presto, change! Not only did the founder, Barnes, but most of those who had started the game with him, find themselves outside the breastworks (kicked out.} The Chinese Government seeing its blunder could not be expected to get along well with the American-Chinese Development Company, nor was it intended that she should; a cleaning up and gathering in of the sheckels was now in order, not only to rob China but bunco the original Barnes' company as well.
During the summer of 1905 the company agreed to give back to China the concessions, providing China paid $6,750,000. This sum was paid, and poor old China was once more buncoed, and Thurlow Weed Barnes and his friends are still wondering who got all the money. Yet there are those who say there is honor among thieves.
***
Since 1902 the banking interests of England, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States have been active in establishing their institutions in China. The first American institution in the Orient is the branch of the International Banking Corporation and known as the Harriman Bank, capitalized at $3,250,000 and located at Peking. Other branches of this bank have been established at Hongkang, Shanghai and Canton.
***
Capitalists the world aver have, for the past decade, been busy preparing China for her next great step. Having started the Chinese to school, abolished to a great extent chattel slavery, modernized the Chinese dress and removed the traditional pig tail, abolished the opium evil, etc., etc., yet there remained a very serious obstacle, and that was nothing less than the Manchu dynasty, represented by the child Emperor.
There is no strong central government; currency is debased; each province had its own system of coinage, which fluctuates with market conditions. The central government is without sufficient financial resources to undertake most anything of a very serious nature.
The entire system of taxation is so involved that financial regeneration of all political improvements is well nigh impossible.
The real Government of China is in the hands of the Governors of the provinces, each of which is practically an independent state, and manages its affairs with little consideration for the orders from Peking.
There is very little restraint upon government officials, who have no conscientious scruples about using their official positions to amass private fortunes. Hence the entire system is so honey-combed with graft that it is the rule rather than the exception.
With a Government of this kind the development of capitalism would indeed be slow and uncertain.
It, too, must change and conform to the new order, and nothing short of a revolution could bring about this change. During the years of 1910 and 1911, the greater portion of the world's oldest nation was again suffering, due to the failure of her crops. Tens of thousands starved to death, poverty striken, sick and helpless; all over the empire were murmurings of discontent. Local uprisings became more and more numerous; the spirit of revolution was in the air, but those willing to rebel against the government were in mast cases poor, starving and empty handed. Now someone, or some combination of interests, did furnish these willing to be revolutionists, food supplies, guns, ammunition, in fact the most modern weapons of war, and a real revolution against the Manchu dynasty was on.
The writer is unable to tell just who financed the revolution, but feels quite safe in making the statement, that it was a combination of Japanese, German, English, French, Russian and American capitalists. Time will reveal this bit of history. The revolution was fought and a republic, we are informed, is to follow the abdication of the old dynasty,
China a Republic by Imperial Decree.
Associated Press to American Newspapers:
Peking, February 12, 1912.—After occupying the throne of China for nearly three centuries, the Manchu dynasty, represented by the child emperor, abdicted today. Three edicts were issued, the first proclaiming the abdication, the second dealing with the establishment of the republic, and the third urging the maintenance of peace and approving the conditions agreed upon by the imperial premier, Yaun Shi Kai, and the republicans. The text of the first edict is as fellows:
We, the emperor of China, have respectfully received today the following edict from the hands of her majesty, the dowager empress:
In consequences of the uprising of the Republican army to which the people of the provinces of China have responded, the empire is seething like a boiling caldron and the people are plunged in misery,
Yuan Shi-Kai was therefore commanded to dispatch commissioners in order to confer with the Republicans with a view to the calling of a national assembly to decide on the future form of government, Months have elapsed and no settlement is now evident.
The majority of the people are in favor of a republic. From the preference of the people's hearts the will of heaven is discernible. How could we oppose the desires of millions for the glory of one family?
Therefore, we, the dowager empress and the emperor, hereby vest the sovereignty of the Chinese empire in the people.
Let Yuan Shi-Kai organize to the full the powers of the provisional republican government and confer with the Republicans as to the methods of union assuring peace in the empire and forming a great republic with the union of Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans and Tibetans.
We, the empress dowager and the emperor, will thus be enabled to live in retirement, free of rsponsibilities and cares and enjoying without interruption the nation's courteous treatment.
Peking Relieved
At an audience yesterday, the empress dowager touchingly thanked Yuan Shi-Kai for his successful efforts in obtaining good treatment for the imperial family from the Republicans. The publication of the edicts has given profound relief to every one in Peking, both foreigners and Chinese. The arrangement is considered to be a skillful compromise, and it is believed that the terms will satisfy the Republicans. The first edict provides that the terms shall be communicated to the foreign legations for transmission to their respective governments, the object being to record worldwide the Republican pledges.
Eight Pledges
In consideration for abdication the Republicans make the following eight pledges to the emperor:
First—The emperor shall retain his title and shall be respected as a foreign monarch.
Second—The emperor shall receive an annual grant of 4,000,000 tales until the currency is reformed, after which he shall receive $4,000,000 Mexican.
Third—A temporary residence shall be provided in the Forbidden City, and later the imperial family shall reside in the summer palace ten miles outside of Peking.
Fourth—The emperor may observe the sacrifices at his ancestral tombs and temples, which will be protected by Republican soldiers.
Fifth—The great tomb of the late emperor, Kwang-su, will be completed and the funeral ceremony fittingly observed at the republic's expense.
Sixth—The palace attendants may be retained, but the number of eunuchs cannot be increased.
Seventh—The emperor's property will be protected by the republic.
Eighth—The imperial guards will be governed by the army board, the republic paying their salaries.
Treatment of Imperialists
A contended point as to whether the throne shall be perpetuated or will terminate with the present emperor's death, is not mentioned. Four pledges for the treatment of the imperial kinsmen follow:
First—The princes, dukes and others having hereditary titles shall retain their ranks.
Second—The nobility shall have the rights and privileges of ordinary citizens.
Third—Their private properties will be protected.
Fourth—The nobility shall be permitted exemption from military service.
Seven pledges are given in the interest of the Mongols, Manchus, Mohammedans and Thibetans:
First—They shall have rights and privileges similar to the Chinese.
Second—Their private property will be respected.
Third—The nobility will retain their hereditary ranks.
Fourth—The state will find employment for such of the nobility as are in financial difficulties.
Fifth—The Manchus' pensions will continue until the state finds them occupations.
Sixth—Restrictions of occupations and dwelling places will be abolished.
Seventh—They shall be accorded religious liberty.
In concluding the second edict, the empress dowager says: "Our sincere hope is that peace will be restored and that happiness will be enjoyed under the republic.
Peace is Urged
The third edict describes the throne's motive in modelling its policy "according to the progress of the times and the earnest desires of the people, with the sole object of suppression of a great disorder and restoration of peace."
"Should the warfare continue," adds the edict, "the country might be irreparably ruined and would suffer the horrible consequences of a racial war." It exhorts the general in command in Peking to maintain order and to explain to the people that "the throne is acting upon heaven's will." It commands the members of the cabinet and the viceroys to continue their duties and not to shirk their responsibilities, conforming with the throne's perpetual intentions to love and cherish the people.
No Disorder at Capital
The Peking authorities are taking military precautions, but there have been no disorders in the capital. It is expected, however, that disorders will occur throughout the interior.
The imperial army under General Chang Hsun, after sacking Su Chow-Fu, Anhwei province, have for the most part dispersed, laden with loot and carrying off their arms and ammunition. The United States protected cruiser Cincinnati has gone from Shanghai to Teng Chow-Fu, Shantung province, at the request of American missionaries who fear the town may be sacked because Republicans are retreating in the direction of that place after their defeat by the imperial soldiers, who are now fighting in several places for plunder.
First Step Concluded
The legations consider the first phase of the revolution has been concluded, but they fear that the second may be more disastrous. The legations will deal unofficially with Yuan Shi Kai's government until it is recognized. It is expected that such recognition will be given immediately upon the formation of a coalition cabinet. As the throne's final edicts were signed by only gone cabinet minister besides Yaun Shi Kai, five portfolios are now available, and of these it ts believed three will be filled respectively by Tang Shao Yi, the imperial premier’s representative in the peace negotiations at Shanghai; Wu Ting-fang, the minister of justice in the Republican provisional cabinet, and Chin Chin-tao, the Republican finance minister. General Li Yuen-heng, the rebel leader at Hankow, who was appointed vice-president of the Republic by President Sun Yat Sen, probably will be chief of the general staff. Provision for Dr. Sun has not yet been made.
Today's abdication of the Chinese throne by Fu Yi, the child Emperor, brings to an end the powerful Manchu dynasty which has reigned in China since 1644. The boy ruler has been on the throne since November 14, 1908, when the Emperor Kwang-Su, his uncle, died. His father, prince Chun, was appointed regent and was the chief figure in China for three years.
Dr. Sun an American
Washington, February 12.—Dr. Sun Yat Sen, first president of the Chinese Republic, is a naturalized American.
The Department of Commerce and Labor so held in 1904 on the ground that Dr. Sun, who had been born in the Hawaiian Islands, had been endowed with American citizenship by the act of 1900, which provided a government for Hawaii and declared all citizens of the territory to be citizens of the United States. {{dhr} ***
SINGLE TAX FOR CHINA
Dr. Sun an Ardent Disciple of Henry George
London, April 4.—"I have finished the political revolution and now will commence the greatest social revolution in the world's history," said Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the ex-provisional president of China, in an interview at Shanghai today, according to a dispatch from that city to the Daily Telegraph. "The abdication of the Manchus is only the means to greater development and the future policy of the republic will be in the direction of Socialism.
"I am an ardent follower of Henry George whose ideas are practicable on the virgin soil of China, as compared with their impractibility in Europe of the United States where the money is controlled by the capitalists."
Dr. Sun says that he has the full consent of the government to start his propaganda immediately whereby the railroads and similar industries will be controlled by the government. The single tax system, and as far as possible free trade, will be adopted.
***
By applying the single tax theory in China, one thing is certain—it will in a great measure solve a very important problem by providing a means of existence for its millions of superstitious toilers. The change from feudalism to capitalism, or from hand craft, with primitive methods and tools, to modern capitalism, is a step of such magnitude that millions will be unable to adapt themselves to the new order, nor is it really necessary that they all do so.
The land question properly solved will not only prove a means of existence for these people, but will be a valuable asset for the nation. What it took other nations a century to do, China, like Japan, hopes to accomplish tn a decade.
Doctor Sun's Socialism means nothing more than state Socialism (state capitalism), along the lines the post office business is conducted in our own country.
The Chinese government is now, and has for some time, been negotiating for the loan of hundreds of millions of dollars to build railroads. And hundreds of millions more will be borrowed to develop her resources, and for the erection of mills, factories, etc. It therefore necessarily follows that China will be at the mercy of the house of Rothchilds.
No matter if some of the loans are made through the banking houses of Germany, France, England, and the United States, all the great financial institutions of the world are a part of the great banking system of the house of Rothchilds.
Indeed, it is of little concern to these captains of finance what system of reform China works out, so long as the money lords remain the absolute sovereigns.
After the great change which took place in Japan half a century ago, the bank of Rothchilds would much prefer State Socialism (State Capitalism), because to deal directly with a nation, instead of a multitude of individuals, is far more profitable; besides, it entails little or no risk. Even in the United States we find many capitalists who favor state or national ownership of railroads, mines, mills, telegraph, etc., etc. A splendid program for the master class, STATE CAPITALISM, which to the working class means dependence upon the government.
State Capitalism is simply an extended order of Feudalism. Instead of being confined to principalities, it encompasses empires. Under State Socialism (capitalism) the worker would be a serf no different from that of the feudal serf any more than he might be granted the right of franchise, otherwise the principle is the same. No matter by what name a system is called, no matter if capital is owned privately or by the state, if it is operated for profit, it is capitalism. We can only be purely Socialistic when the industries are operated for use and not for profit. To illustrate the disadvantage of the workers under State Capitalism: To protest against unfair conditions would be equivalent to treason against the state.
China on pain of extinction, is taking the great step from Feudalism to Capitalism. Advancing by great strides are also Germany, France, England and the United States. They form the most highly developed capitalist countries. They can no more stand still than could Japan or China. They too MUST change. In the past China furnished a wonderful market for the highly developed capitalist countries to unload their surplus upon. All this will now change; in a few years she will be able to not only supply her own market, but will be looking for a foreign market upon which to unload her surplus. And with the completion of the Panama Canal, the United States promises a fertile field for this surplus.
***
In this small work, the writer has shown how very low the standard of living is among the toilers of the Orient. Capitalism will harness these hundreds of millions of cheap toilers to the most modern tools of production, and this cheap labor, surrounded with seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, will come in direct competition with the workers of the Western world. What will America do? Stand still as China did, and take a chance in competing with the Orient? Or will we profit by the experience of the past and prepare ourselves for a new social order?
Just as China on pain of extinction had to take the step from Feudalism to Capitalism, so much we of highly developed Capitalist countries, take the next great step from Capitalism to Socialism.
The application of large machinery and the establishment of the factory system, begun little more than a century ago, completely revolutionizes, the. institutions of every civilized nation, and has even aroused such Oriental countries as China from centuries of sleep.
The factory system and the manufacture for a world market changes the lower classes from slaves and serfs into wage-workers who quickly learn that their interests are the same the world over. The fact that the industries are gigantic in size and require the co-operation of millions of workers to carry on the process from raw material to the finished product, teaches that the means of employment, the lands, mines, mills, railroads and the like, are really social property and should be owned by the people together.
The wage-workers being more or less free politically, unite into the Socialist Party, to secure the powers of government and thereby take over the industries. Once this is done, the payment of rent, interest, profit and other forms of unearned wealth, is made to cease, and the whole of the people become useful workers, making things for their own enjoyment. Thus begins the coming civilization—Socialism.
THE END.
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This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1912, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1944, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 79 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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