out the worthless ones, and separating the perfect from the inferior.
This is an easy but monotonous task and is given to women. Slipping
the wound silk off the reels, testing, weighing, and twisting it into
beautiful shapes for shipment requires more skill, and brings somewhat
higher wages. Most of this, too, is woman’s work.
The pathos of a silk filature mill centres in the reeling room. Steam
pipes for supplying boiling water keep it at a high temperature the
year around, while in the fierce heat of July and August, the place,
as one foreign manager expressed it, “is a veritable Gehenna.” Only
when the breeze is not strong enough to break the silken, web-like
threads can the windows be left open. Down the length of the long
apartment sit rows of women, and in front of them, with a wire frame
between, stand rows of little girls. Each child controls a stationary
copper basin half filled with boiling water. It is her business to
soften the cocoons by swashing them around in the water, using a small
reed brush. After the threads are sufficiently loosened, the bunch of
cocoons is handed over to the woman opposite, who also has in front of
her a shallower copper basin filled with boiling water. Dexterously she
picks up a thread from each cocoon and fastens it to the frame. Then
by working a treadle it is spun out and out and finally passes above
and back of her, where it is wound onto the reel, which is enclosed
on three sides by a wooden case to keep it from the dust. Quickly and
deftly the women splice the almost invisible threads when they break,
keeping often as many as six spinning at the same time. When at night
the silk is taken off the reel, any shortness in weight or imperfection
in the thread means a fine for the one who has wound it. Women and
children grow very skilful in keeping their hands out of the water, yet
they are loose-skinned and parboiled, for fingers must of necessity be
continually dipped in. Then, too, the Chinese women overseers, passing
constantly up and down the lines, occasionally punish a child’s
inefficiency, or supposed laziness, by thrusting the little hand into
the bubbling caldron. The hours are long, from five thirty in the
morning to five or six at night, and it is not strange if, as the day
wanes, youthful senses are dulled and energy flags. The children, most
of them, are such slips of girls and some scarcely more than babies.
Faces are blanched by the continuous moist heat, and the little slim
bodies, even in winter, are often wet with perspiration. Robbed of
their birthright of schooling and play, not the youngest among them
knows the sweet luxury of laying her tired head on mother’s breast in
sleep. An American lady living in the vicinity of a silk filature mill
was aroused morning after morning about half past four o’clock by the
shrill cries of a child. One day she slipped out on her veranda to
discover the cause of the trouble, and saw a little girl being dragged
along the ground by one arm to the mill. Frightened perhaps by the
sternness of the overseer, or half sick from the confinement, she was
trying to escape from bondage. But her parents were inexorable, for in
over-populated, underfed China,
“‘Children’ must work and women must weep,
For there’s little to earn and many to keep.”
One European mill has for its manager a kind-hearted Italian, who says
he understands sericulture from A to Z, having learned to care for
silk-worms when a little lad in his native land. He has introduced
several humane features, one of them being stools for the children to
sit on while at work, the only mill in the city that has them. Fines
collected from the employees the management allows him to use in buying
medicine for the sick, coffins for the dead, and in paying for beds in
the hospital. “Do the people ever faint in this great heat?” a visitor
asked. “Oh, yes.” “And drop dead?” “No, they have never done that. If
we see they are getting too bad we send them home in a ricsha.”
None of the silk from the filature mills is kept in China. It is all
exported, most of it to Lyons, France, and to New York. Waste silk,
which is made principally from defective cocoons, is one of the paying
by-products of the industry. The only waste silk filature mill in China
is in Shanghai. The silk it turns out is coarse in quality and does not
keep its lustre but can be utilized in many ways, as for sewing silk,
and in making cords, tassels, Chinese caps, carpets, and portières.
XV
A PAGE FROM THE STORY OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS
Late in the autumn of 1842 as the setting sun was illumining the
western sky, a vessel very different from the surrounding Chinese junks
steamed slowly up the Woosung river toward Shanghai. On board were the
new British Consul and his suite and the Consul’s interpreter, the
Rev. Walter H. Medhurst, D.D. But the missionary had other and more
important business, for with his colleague, William Lockhart, M.D., a
younger man, he came as the first ambassador of the Great King to the
Yangtse valley. Eight years before he had called at this port, when
cruising up and down the coast, and distributed thousands of Testaments
and tracts among the friendly natives. Indeed Dr. Medhurst was already
a veteran of twenty-seven years’ service, while Dr. Lockhart had landed
in Canton in 1839, being the second medical missionary sent to China.
Both men were commissioned by the historic London Missionary Society,
which gave to China its first Protestant Missionary, Robert Morrison,
in 1807.
[Illustration: CHINESE BOY SCOUTS]
While the Consular party was proposing toasts to the greatness
of the Shanghai to be, the missionaries were thinking hopefully and
prayerfully of the task awaiting them in proclaiming the Kingdom of
Christ to this people. For a while, on that memorable day, it was
impossible to see the city because of the intervening masts on the
numberless junks lying at anchor, but presently, as the little steamer
approached the shore, it was found to be thronged with Chinese who had
gathered to watch and ridicule the strange “fire-wheel ship” of the
“foreign devils.”
The following weeks sped quickly by, and before the year closed, a
little chapel and a small hospital had opened their doors inside
the Chinese city. It is easy enough to state the bald fact, but
what mountains of difficulty were climbed, what dangers faced and
discouragements overcome before that much was accomplished, is told
only in part in the sacredly guarded mission records, yellow and worn
with age. Happily, ludicrous episodes were not lacking. Dr. Medhurst
in particular was blessed with a saving sense of humour which eased
many an otherwise hard jolt on the rough road he and his colleague were
obliged to travel.
As time passed other missionaries were sent out from home to reinforce
the pioneers, and women’s voices and children’s sweet laughter made
homelike the mission premises. Then suddenly a war-cloud appeared in
the sky, and almost before its presence was realized, it had burst and
the T’aiping Rebellion was raging in all its fury. Grave dangers now
threatened the little foreign community, officials and merchants as
well as missionaries. It was during this period that a fair-haired,
handsome youth made his appearance in Shanghai, and although not a
member of the London Mission sought a home among their missionaries. He
was Hudson Taylor, destined to become the founder of the China Inland
Mission. The story of his early years in China, as told in his recently
published biography, makes one of the most captivating chapters in
the history of Shanghai. From it we are interested to learn that this
sensitive, shrinking young man did not at first adopt from choice the
Chinese dress and mode of living, afterward a distinguishing mark of
China Inland Missionaries, but because he was driven to it through
scarcity of funds.
The present headquarters of the China Inland Mission are conveniently
located in the down-town district. They include business offices,
a rest house for travelling missionaries, and a chapel where both
Chinese and English services are held, although the Mission, as it has
done from the beginning, confines its actual work to the interior.
The buildings form a square around a spacious, secluded compound
that seems as far apart from the turmoil of the street as if it were
miles distant. In the spring of 1915, at the Jubilee celebration of
the founding of the Mission, tea was served on the beautiful lawn,
and following it a large company of friends gathered in the chapel
to listen to the reading of reports and papers of thrilling interest
relating to the experiences of the past fifty years.
While the T’aiping Rebellion was still in full swing, the London
missionaries performed a courageous act. Having succeeded in purchasing
a large tract of land at some distance from the foreign Settlement
and the Chinese City, they at once effected the transfer of their
work and took possession of the new property. When the British
Consul learned of it he shook his head dubiously, affirming frankly
that if the missionaries were rash enough to risk living in that
exposed place, he could not undertake to furnish them protection. But
unaffrighted they stayed on, and presently a hospital, a chapel, and a
few dwelling houses arose amidst the rice fields. Events proved that
the missionaries builded better than they knew, for the plot that at
first seemed so far away and out of reach of the very people the work
was intended to benefit is now in the heart of one of the most thickly
populated Chinese districts of the International Settlement.
The mission chapel bears the marks of age and is shortly to be torn
down and replaced by a more commodious one, but will the tablets
back of the chancel, to the memory of the brave missionary veterans,
ever seem quite so appropriate on any other walls? At the Christian
Endeavour meeting held in the chapel every Wednesday afternoon may
usually be seen a little white-haired lady of over ninety, the oldest
Chinese Christian in Shanghai and some say in all China. Though
exceedingly deaf, Mrs. Lai Sun’s memory is unimpaired and her mind as
alert as a woman half her age. She delights to see her friends and
entertain them with stories of her romantic life, how in her earlier
years she visited America with her parents, dined at the White House
as the guest of President and Mrs. Grant and was made much of at a time
when Chinese women were a rarity in the Occident. But her favourite
topic is her student days in Miss Aldersey’s school in Ningpo, Miss
Aldersey being not only the first single woman to enter China as a
missionary, in 1843, but the first one to open a school for Chinese
girls. Mrs. Lai Sun is without question the only living pupil of that
far-famed school.
The chapel built so long ago by Dr. Medhurst in the Chinese city is
still standing, sandwiched in between a book shop on one side and
a shop selling funeral supplies on the other. Its years exceed the
allotted age of man, and if bricks could speak, many a tale this pile
could relate of fires and floods, famines and pestilence, riots and
rebellions. While destruction was rife and changes taking place all
around, the little chapel, within whose walls was proclaimed daily
the Evangel of Peace, remained intact as if it possessed a charmed
existence.
It is rather singular that to-day there is not a single hospital
foreign or Chinese, in the populous Chinese City. The small plant
started so long ago by Dr. Medhurst was transferred, in 1861, with the
other activities of the Mission, to the new site, now known as Shantung
Road, where a great medical work is carried on. Accident cases are
especially numerous in the roomy wards, where an empty bed is rarely
seen, and hundreds attend the daily clinic.
In the centre of another crowded district is beautiful St. Elizabeth’s
Hospital of the American Episcopal Mission. This hospital, which is
for women only, receives patients from the Municipal Prison, and when
one looks about the cheerful, sunny wards, it ceases to be a wonder
that the poor creatures often make a feint of illness in order to be
kept on a little longer where they are so happy and comfortable.
One other woman’s hospital is located near the western entrance to
the Chinese City. Thirty-five years ago a large-hearted American,
Margaret Williamson, had a vision of helpless sufferers in China,
and in dying left money for a hospital which bears her name. While
waiting for the building to be completed, the doctor and trained nurse
just out from home opened a dispensary in a small rented house in the
disease-infected Chinese city. They toiled on day after day through all
the unaccustomed heat of July and August. “Some friend ought to have
warned us of the danger of it,” one of them, years afterward, smilingly
told a caller. “How did the Chinese feel about the hospital? Were the
women afraid to go to it?” “Oh, not at all. We were always full. In
fact it was necessary to keep enlarging our borders as fast as we could
get the money.” The sweet face in its frame of snow-white hair broke
into a reminiscent smile, and the listener knew something interesting
was coming. “We used to have most amusing clinic experiences. Patients
many times would persist in taking internally what was meant for
external application. It was necessary to be careful and give nothing
strong enough to do any great harm either way. Then, too, the women
would get so excited and jealous over the medicines. If one patient
received something and another did not, the latter felt unhappy. It did
no good to explain to her that she wasn’t in need of that particular
medicine. She wanted it just the same. I remember one time the doctor
had ordered a large dose of castor oil for a patient. Her companion
saw it and begged for some too. She was so persistent that I finally
asked the doctor if I should give it to her. “Yes, do,” said she. “It
can’t hurt her and the experience may do her good.” The clinics are
very large. On a winter’s afternoon an unexpected visitor found one
young doctor in sole charge, her colleague having been taken sick.
She that day treated two hundred and forty-seven dispensary patients
besides caring for the wards and performing three difficult operations.
“I shall not stay a minute,” declared the caller when the last woman
had departed, “you must rest.” “Oh, do sit down a little while. I need
to get my mind off my work,” urged the doctor. Just then the friend,
noticing the exhausted look on the wan face before her, remarked
impulsively, “I wish I could take you home with me and put you to
bed and give you a little mothering.” “Don’t speak to me like that,”
cried the younger woman almost sharply, while a few hot tears forced
themselves into her eyes. “I shall break down and cry if you do, and I
mustn’t; I mustn’t!” This hospital belongs to that pioneer in the field
of woman’s work for women, The Woman’s Union Missionary Society of
America.
The glory of the Presbyterian Mission is its Press. In 1843, that
year of momentous happenings in the Far East, it was first set up in
Macao, a Portuguese settlement near Canton and of chief interest to
Protestants because on its tropical shores Robert Morrison, the first
Protestant missionary to China, was laid to rest. Soon afterward the
Press was brought north to Ningpo, and in 1860 was moved to Shanghai.
With it came Mr. Gamble, whose name was William and not John, but if
ever a man was “sent of God” to do an all-important work, he was one.
A native of Ireland, from an old Protestant family that had the honour
of giving many ministers to the Presbyterian Church, he migrated to
America in his youth and got his training as a printer in a publishing
house in Philadelphia and later in the Bible House, New York. Mr.
Gamble spent only eleven years in China and nine of them in Shanghai,
but in that brief period he accomplished a monumental work. With a
prophet’s eye he foresaw the future development of the city when few
believed in it and urged the removal of the Press to this metropolitan
centre, influenced “by his desire to plant the Gospel in the heart
of China with the minimum of effort and the maximum of results.” His
energy, industry, and inventive genius gave a great impulse to printing
throughout the country, not only in connection with the mission press
but the secular press as well. This was so universally recognized that
when he died years later in America every one realized the truth of
the eulogy pronounced at his funeral: “For a century to come not a
Bible, Christian or scientific book in China or Japan but will bear the
impress of Mr. Gamble’s hand.”
The Presbyterian Press justly claims to be the oldest in China,
although the London Mission Press, established by Robert Morrison in
Malacca in 1818, was removed to Hongkong, at very nearly the same
time. The Presbyterian Press was the first to introduce movable
Chinese type in China, and for a long time remained the sole source
of supply. During the fifty-seven years since the plant was set up in
Shanghai it has changed homes several times and is now housed in new,
completely equipped quarters which would have delighted the aspiring
soul of William Gamble. A dozen power presses are kept busy from Monday
morning till Saturday night turning out vast quantities of Christian
literature, veritable “Leaves of Healing,” which find their way the
year through to the remotest corners of this needy, sin-cursed land and
whose uplifting influence far outreaches all human reckoning.
Among the Chinese publications which are working a quiet transformation
in the lives of the people are two popular monthly magazines, “The
Woman’s Messenger” and “Happy Childhood.” The very artistic cover of a
recent Christmas number of “Happy Childhood” was designed by one of the
pupils in a Girls’ Baptist Mission Boarding School.
The spiritual interests of the large force of Press employees are
not forgotten. In two chapels Sunday and week-day services are held.
There are day schools and a kindergarten for the children of the men,
the wife of one of the Presbyterian missionaries devoting much of her
time to evangelistic work among the women. Every morning prayers
are conducted by the missionary in charge, attended by most of the
employees, at least half of whom are Christians. Many give touching
and convincing proof of the sincerity of their profession. The case of
Elder Loo is an illustration and refutes the oft-repeated assertion
that no Chinese can handle money without some of it clinging to his
palm. For twenty years all the Press’s money excepting checks passed
through Mr. Loo’s hands. He died one night very suddenly. It was
with considerable anxiety that the foreign manager the next morning
opened the accountant’s safe and examined his books, but they balanced
exactly. In a corner of the safe were found stowed away several bad
dollars that had been palmed off on Mr. Loo, but which he had quietly
made good out of his own meagre funds.
“Where did you receive your education?” The question was asked of a
bright young Chinese matron into whose pretty home a foreign friend had
just been introduced. “In McTyeire School,” came the smiling answer.
This reply, in response to similar inquiries, is given so often in
Shanghai that a newcomer, unfamiliar with local mission work, is sure
soon to ask another question: “What and where, pray, is this famous
institution?” Every resident knows, or nearly every one. Those who do
not are half ashamed to confess it, for to be uninformed about McTyeire
Girls’ School is to be ignorant indeed. Its capacious buildings are
kept full, too full, even though the younger pupils have just been
transferred to rented Chinese houses across the road, the Assembly
Hall converted into dormitories and every available foot of space
utilized to the best advantage.[2] Pleasant recitation rooms open
from either side of the school corridors and a peep inside shows well
organized classes hard at work, in algebra, drawing, physics, sewing,
domestic science. What an immaculate place is the domestic science
kitchen, with snowy tables, muslin window curtains, shining stove, and
artistically arranged enamel pots and pans! No wonder the cooking class
covers itself with laurels. The missionary in charge modestly disclaims
the credit, but adds, “I do mean that my girls shall learn two
important lessons, to keep themselves tidy and to clean up when their
work is done,” items that it would do no harm to emphasize in other
countries than China. The music rooms are upstairs. An invitation to a
musicale is something to rejoice over. Last year one of the graduates
in music gave a recital, all her own, and acquitted herself most
creditably. Two years ago Commencement week opened with Baccalaureate
Sunday, a distinct innovation in the history of Girls’ Schools in
China, but a custom other mission schools are beginning to follow.
[2] Since writing the above a splendid piece of property covering
about fifteen acres, with a three-story brick mansion on it built by
a wealthy deceased Chinese, has been purchased, and the congestion
is relieved now that the High School pupils have removed to the new
quarters.
[Illustration: CORNER STONE OF BOYS’ BUILDING, Y. M. C. A.]
It is doubtful whether any department of work in McTyeire School is
yielding more abundant fruit than the “Annex,” a school for married
women and girls too old or backward to enter the regular classes.
Last term among the many interested pupils was the wife of the
socialist leader of Shanghai, the mother of five young children. The
patriarchal system of family life common in China makes it possible
for a mother to leave her children for lengthy periods, as there are
usually plenty of women relatives ready to assume the care of them in
her absence. Any pupil in the Annex ambitious to pursue a complete
course of study is admitted to the regular school classes as soon as
she can be prepared for them.
Above the mantel in the parlour of the Missionary Home, adjoining the
main building, hangs the portrait of a noble-faced woman. It is Laura
Haygood, the first principal, who “being dead yet speaketh.” She was
sent to China in 1884 by the Woman’s Board of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, and for eight memorable years prayed and toiled, much of
the time weighed down by great physical weakness. Then came the glad
realization of her cherished hopes in the opening of this girls’ school
named for a bishop of the denomination.
The highest grade of scholarship is the goal, but the building up
of Christian character and training for service have always had
first place. “I want to save my people,” sobbed a girl in a burst of
confidence to her foreign teacher. “As soon as I finish here I mean
to go as a missionary to my native place and teach and try to save
that place.” This is the spirit that prevails among the Christians.
Every week Bible students and teachers go out to hold services for
the street children in the neighbourhood. Last winter evangelistic
meetings were held in the school chapel. “I wish you could see how our
Christian girls work for their unconverted friends,” said one of the
missionaries. “They have their sweetest and holiest times in their own
little prayer-meetings, led by themselves. The passionate earnestness
of their prayers and testimonies would move any heart.”