season, and nearing maturity, is seen in Fig. 127, standing rather
more than three feet high, as indicated by our umbrella between the
rows. Beyond the wheat and to the right, grave mounds serrate the
sky line, no hills being in sight, for we were in the broad plain
built up from the sea between the two mountain islands forming the
highlands of Shantung.
On May 22nd we were in the fields north of Kiaochow, some sixty
miles by rail west from Tsingtao, but within the neutral zone
extending thirty miles back from the high water line of the bay of
the same name. Here the Germans had built a broad macadam road after
the best European type but over it were passing the vehicles of
forty centuries seen in Figs. 128 and 129. It is doubtful if the
resistance to travel experienced by these men on the better road was
enough less than that on the old paths they had left to convince
them that the cost of construction and maintenance would be worth
while until vehicles and the price of labor change. It may appear
strange that with a nation of so many millions and with so long a
history, roads have persisted as little more than beaten foot-paths;
but modern methods of transportation have remained physical
impossibilities to every people until the science of the last
century opened the way. Throughout their history the burdens of
these people have been carried largely on foot, mostly on the feet
of men, and of single men wherever the load could be advantageously
divided. Animals have been supplemental burden bearers but, as with
the men, they have carried the load directly on their own feet, the
mode least disturbed by inequalities of road surface.
For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle equals the
wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel and two feet. No vehicle is
used more in China, if the carrying pole is excepted, and no
wheelbarrow in the world permits so high an efficiency of human
power as the Chinese, as must be clear from Figs. 32 and 61, where
nearly the whole load is balanced on the axle of a high, massive
wheel with broad tire. A shoulder band from the handles of the
barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the load or the
road is heavy, men or animals may aid in drawing, or even, when the
wind is favorable, it is not unusual to hoist a sail to gain
propelling power. It is only in northern China, and then in the more
level portions, where there are few or no canals, that carts have
been extensively used, but are more difficult to manage on bad
roads. Most of the heavy carts, especially those in Manchuria, seen
in Fig. 203, have the wheels framed rigidly to the axle which
revolves with them, the bearing being in the bed of the cart. But
new carts of modern type are being introduced.
In the extent of development and utilization of inland waterways no
people have approached the Chinese. In the matter of land
transportation they have clearly followed the line of least
resistance for individual initiative, so characteristic of
industrial China.
There are Government courier or postal roads which connect Peking
with the most distant parts of the Empire, some twenty-one being
usually enumerated. These, as far as practicable, take the shortest
course, are often cut into the mountain sides and even pass through
tunnels. In the plains regions these roads may be sixty to
seventy-five feet wide, paved and occasionally bordered by rows of
trees. In some cases, too, signal towers are erected at intervals of
three miles and there are inns along the way, relay posts and
stations for soldiers.
We have spoken of planting grain in rows and in hills in the row. In
Fig. 130 is a field with the rows planted in pairs, the members
being 16 inches apart, and together occupying 30 inches. The space
between each pair is also 30 inches, making five feet in all. This
makes frequent hoeing practicable, which is begun early in the
spring and is repeated after every rain. It also makes it possible
to feed the plants when they can utilize food to the best advantage
and to repeat the feeding if desirable. Besides, the ground in the
wider space may be fitted, fertilized and another crop planted
before the first is removed. The hills alternate in the rows and are
24 to 26 inches from center to center.
The planting may be done by hand or with a drill such as that in
Fig. 131, ingenious in the simple mechanism which permits planting
in hills. The husbandman had just returned from the field with the
drill on his shoulder when we met at the door of his village home,
where he explained to us the construction and operation of the drill
and permitted the photograph to be taken, but turning his face
aside, not wishing to represent a specific character, in the view.
In the drill there was a heavy leaden weight swinging free from a
point above the space between the openings leading to the respective
drill feet. When planting, the operator rocks the drill from side to
side, causing the weight to hang first over one and then over the
other opening, thus securing alternation of hills in each pair of
rows.
Counting the heads of wheat in the hill in a number of fields showed
them ranging between 20 and 100, the distance between the rows and
between the hills as stated above. There were always a larger number
of stalks per hill where the water capacity of the soil was large,
where the ground water was near the surface, and where the soil was
evidently of good quality. This may have been partly the result of
stooling but we have little doubt that judgment was exercised in
planting, sowing less seed on the lighter soils where less moisture
was available. In the piece just referred to, in the illustration,
an average hill contained 46 stalks and the number of kernels in a
head varied between 20 and 30. Taking Richardson's estimate of
12,000 kernels of wheat to the pound, this field would yield about
twelve bushels of wheat per acre this unusually dry season. Our
interpreter, whose parents lived near Kaomi, four stations further
west, stated that in 1901, one of their best seasons, farmers there
secured yields as high as 875 catty per legal mow, which is at the
rate of 116 bushels per acre. Such a yield on small areas highly
fertilized and carefully tilled, when the rainfall is ample or where
irrigation is practiced, is quite possible and in the Kiangsu
province we observed individual small fields which would certainly
approach close to this figure.
Further along in our journey of the day we came upon a field where
three, one of them a boy of fourteen years, were hoeing and thinning
millet and maize. In China, during the hot weather, the only garment
worn by the men in the field, was their trousers, and the boy had
found these unnecessary, although he slipped into them while we were
talking with his father. The usual yield of maize was set at 420 to
480 catty per mow, and that of millet at 600 catty, or 60 to 68.5
bushels of maize and 96 bushels of millet, of fifty pounds, per
acre, and the usual price would make the gross earnings $23.48 to
$26.83 per acre for the maize, and $30.96, gold, for the millet.
It was evident when walking through these fields that the fall-sowed
grain was standing the drought far better than the barley planted in
the spring, quite likely because of the deeper and stronger
development of root system made possible by the longer period of
growth, and partly because the wheat had made much of its growth
utilizing water that had fallen before the barley was planted and
which would have been lost from the soil through percolation and
surface evaporation. Farmers here are very particular to hoe their
grain, beginning in the early spring, and always after rains,
thoroughly appreciating the efficiency of earth mulches. Their hoe,
seen in Fig. 132, is peculiarly well adapted to its purpose, the
broad blade being so hung that it draws nearly parallel with the
surface, cutting shallow and permitting the soil to drop practically
upon the place from which it was loosened. These hoes are made in
three parts; a wooden handle, a long, strong and heavy iron socket
shank, and a blade of steel. The blade is detachable and different
forms and sizes of blades may be used on the same shank. The
mulch-producing blades may have a cutting edge thirteen inches long
and a width of nine inches.
At short intervals on either hand, along the two hundred and fifty
miles of railway between Tsingtao and Tsinan, were observed many
piles of earth compost distributed in the fields. One of these piles
is seen in Fig. 133. They were sometimes on unplanted fields, in
other cases they occurred among the growing crops soon to be
harvested, or where another crop was to be planted between the rows
of one already on the ground. Some of these piles were six feet
high. All were built in cubical form with flat top and carefully
plastered with a layer of earth mortar which sometimes cracked on
drying, as seen in the illustration. The purpose of this careful
shaping and plastering we did not learn although our interpreter
stated it was to prevent the compost from being appropriated for use
on adjacent fields. Such a finish would have the effect of a seal,
showing if the pile had been disturbed, but we suspect other
advantages are sought by the treatment, which involves so large an
amount of labor.
The amount of this earth compost prepared and used annually in
Shantung is large, as indicated by the cases cited, where more than
five thousand pounds, in one instance, and seven thousand pounds in
another, were applied per acre for one crop. When two or more crops
are grown the same year on the same ground, each is fertilized,
hence from three to six or more tons may be applied to each
cultivated acre. The methods of preparing compost and of fertilizing
in Kiangsu, Chekiang and Kwangtung provinces have been described. In
this part of Shantung, in Chihli and north in Manchuria as far as
Mukden, the methods are materially different and if possible even
more laborious, but clearly rational and effective. Here nearly if
not all fertilizer compost is prepared in the villages and carried
to the fields, however distant these may be.
Rev. T. J. League very kindly accompanied us to Chengyang on the
railway, from which we walked some two miles, back to a prosperous
rural village to see their methods of preparing this compost
fertilizer. It was toward the close of the afternoon before we
reached the village, and from all directions husbandmen were
returning from the fields, some with hoes, some with plows, some
with drills over their shoulders and others leading donkeys or
cattle, and similar customs obtain in Japan, as seen in Fig. 134.
These were mostly the younger men. When we reached the village
streets the older men, all bareheaded, as were those returning from
the fields, and usually with their queues tied about the crown, were
visiting, enjoying their pipes of tobacco.
Opium is no longer used openly in China, unless it be permitted to
some well along in years with the habit confirmed, and the growing
of the poppy is prohibited. The penalties for violating the law are
heavy and enforcement is said to be rigid and effective. For the
first violation a fine is imposed. If convicted of a second
violation the fine is heavier with imprisonment added to help the
victim acquire self control, and a third conviction may bring the
death penalty. The eradication of the opium scourge must prove a
great blessing to China. But with the passing of this most
formidable evil, for whose infliction upon China England was largely
responsible, it is a great misfortune that through the pitiless
efforts of the British-American Tobacco Company her people are
rapidly becoming addicted to the western tobacco habit, selfish
beyond excuse, filthy beyond measure, and unsanitary in its
polluting and oxygen-destroying effect upon the air all are
compelled to breathe. It has already become a greater and more
inexcusable burden upon mankind than opium ever was.
China, with her already overtaxed fields, can ill afford to give
over an acre to the cultivation of this crop and she should prohibit
the growing of tobacco as she has that of the poppy. Let her take
the wise step now when she readily may, for all civilized nations
will ultimately be compelled to adopt such a measure. The United
States in 1902 had more than a million acres growing tobacco, and
harvested 821,000,000 pounds of leaf. This leaf depleted those soils
to the extent of more than twenty eight million pounds of nitrogen,
twenty-nine million pounds of potassium and nearly two and a half
million pounds of phosphorus, all so irrecoverably lost that even
China, with her remarkable skill in saving and her infinite patience
with little things, could not recover them for her soils. On a like
area of field might as readily be grown twenty million bushels of
wheat and if the twelve hundred million pounds of grain were all
exported it would deplete the soil less than the tobacco crop in
everything but phosphorus, and in this about the same. Used at home,
China would return it all to one or another field. The home
consumption of tobacco in the United States averaged seven pounds
per capita in 1902. A like consumption for China's four hundred
millions would call for 2800 million pounds of leaf. If she grew it
on her fields two million acres would not suffice. Her soils would
be proportionately depleted and she would be short forty million
bushels of wheat; but if China continues to import her tobacco the
vast sum expended can neither fertilize her fields nor feed, clothe
or educate her people, yet a like sum expended in the importation of
wheat would feed her hungry and enrich her soils.
In the matter of conservation of national resources here is one of
the greatest opportunities open to all civilized nations. What might
not be done in the United States with a fund of $57,000,000
annually, the market price of the raw tobacco leaf, and the land,
the labor and the capital expended in getting the product to the men
who puff, breathe and perspire the noxious product into the air
everyone must breathe, and who bespatter the streets, sidewalks, the
floor of every public place and conveyance, and befoul the million
spittoons, smoking rooms and smoking cars, all unnecessary and
should be uncalled for, but whose installation and up-keep the
non-user as well as the user is forced to pay, and this in a country
of, for and by the people. This costly, filthy, selfish tobacco
habit should be outgrown. Let it begin in every new home, where the
mother helps the father in refusing to set the example, and let its
indulgence be absolutely prohibited to everyone while in public
school and to all in educational institutions.
Mr. League had been given a letter of introduction to one of the
leading farmers of the village and it chanced that as we reached the
entrance way to big home we were met by his son, just returning from
the fields with his drill on his shoulder, and it is he standing in
the illustration, Fig. 131, holding the letter of introduction in
his hand. After we had taken this photograph and another one looking
down the narrow street from the same point, we were led to the small
open court of the home, perhaps forty by eighty feet, upon which all
doors of the one-storied structures opened. It was dry and bare of
everything green, but a row of very tall handsome trees, close
relatives of our cottonwood, with trunks thirty feet to the limbs,
looked down into the court over the roofs of the low thatched
houses. Here we met the father and grandfather of the man with the
drill, so that, with the boy carrying the baby in his arms, who had
met his father in the street gateway, there were four generations of
males at our conference. There were women and girls in the household
but custom requires them to remain in retirement on such occasions.
A low narrow four-legged bench, not unlike our carpenter's sawhorse,
five feet long, was brought into the court as a seat, which our host
and we occupied in common. We had been similarly received at the
home of Mrs. Wu in Chekiang province. On our right was the open
doorway to the kitchen in which stood, erect and straight, the tall
spare figure of the patriarch of the household, his eyes still
shining black but with hair and long thin straggling beard a uniform
dull ashen gray. No Chinese hair, it seems, ever becomes white with
age. He seemed to have assumed the duties of cook for while we were
there be lighted the fire in the kitchen and was busy, but was
always the final oracle on any matter of difference of opinion
between the younger men regarding answers to questions. Two sleeping
apartments adjoining the kitchen, through whose wide kang beds the
waste heat from the cooking was conveyed, as described on page 142,
completed this side of the court. On our left was the main street
completely shut off by a solid earth wall as high as the eaves of
the house, while in front of us, adjoining the street, was the
manure midden, a compost pit six feet deep and some eight feet
square. A low opening in the street wall permitted the pit to be
emptied and to receive earth and stubble or refuse from the fields
for composting, Against the pit and without partition, but cut off
from the court, was the home of the pigs, both under a common roof
continuous with a closed structure joining with the sleeping
apartments, while behind us and along the alley-way by which we had
entered were other dwelling and storage compartments. Thus was the
large family of four generations provided with a peculiarly private
open court where they could work and come out for sun and air, both,
from our standards, too meagerly provided in the houses.
We had come to learn more of the methods of fertilizing practiced by
these people. The manure midden was before us and the piles of earth
brought in from the fields, for use in the process, were stacked in
the street, where we had photographed them at the entrance, as seen
in Fig. 135. There a father, with his pipe, and two boys stand at
the extreme left; beyond them is a large pile of earth brought into
the village and carefully stacked in the narrow street; on the other
side of the street, at the corner of the first building, is a pile
of partly fermented compost thrown from a pit behind the walls.
Further along in the street, on the same side, is a second large
stack of soil where two boys are standing at either end and another
little boy was in a near-by doorway. In front of the tree, on the
left side of the street, stands a third boy, near him a small donkey
and still another boy. Beyond this boy stands a third large stack of
soil, while still beyond and across the way is another pile partly
composted. Notwithstanding the cattle in the preceding illustration,
the donkey, the men, the boys, the three long high stacks of soil
and the two piles of compost, the ten rods of narrow street
possessed a width of available travelway and a cleanliness which
would appear impossible. Each farmer's household had its stack of
soil in the street, and in walking through the village we passed
dozens of men turning and mixing the soil and compost, preparing it
for the field.
The compost pit in front of where we sat was two-thirds filled. In
it had been placed all of the manure and waste of the household and
street, all stubble and waste roughage from the field, all ashes not
to be applied directly and some of the soil stacked in the street.
Sufficient water was added at intervals to keep the contents
completely saturated and nearly submerged, the object being to
control the character of fermentation taking place.
The capacity of these compost pits is determined by the amount of
land served, and the period of composting is made as long as
possible, the aim being to have the fiber of all organic material
completely broken down, the result being a product of the
consistency of mortar.
When it is near the time for applying the compost to the field, or
of feeding it to the crop, the fermented product is removed in
waterproof carrying baskets to the floor of the court, to the yard,
such as seen in Fig. 126, or to the street, where it is spread to
dry, to be mixed with fresh soil, more ashes, and repeatedly turned
and stirred to bring about complete aeration and to hasten the
processes of nitrification. During all of these treatments, whether
in the compost pit or on the nitrification floor, the fermenting
organic matter in contact with the soil is converting plant food
elements into soluble plant food substances in the form of
potassium, calcium and magnesium nitrates and soluble phosphates of
one or another form, perhaps of the same bases and possibly others
of organic type. If there is time and favorable temperature and
moisture conditions for these fermentations to take place in the
soil of the field before the crop will need it, the compost may be
carried direct from the pit to the field and spread broadcast, to be
plowed under. Otherwise the material is worked and reworked, with
more water added if necessary, until it becomes a rich complete
fertilizer, allowed to become dry and then finely pulverized,
sometimes using stone rollers drawn over it by cattle, the donkey or
by hand. The large numbers of stacks of compost seen in the fields
between Tsingtao and Tsinan were of this type and thus laboriously
prepared in the villages and then transported to the fields, stacked
and plastered to be ready for use at next planting.
In the early days of European history, before modern chemistry had
provided the cheaper and more expeditious method of producing
potassium nitrate for the manufacture of gunpowder and fireworks,
much land and effort were devoted to niter-farming which was no
other than a specific application of this most ancient Chinese
practice and probably imported from China. While it was not until
1877 to 1879 that men of science came to know that the processes of
nitrification, so indispensable to agriculture, are due to germ
life, in simple justice to the plain farmers of the world, to those
who through all the ages from Adam down, living close to Nature and
working through her and with her, have fed the world, it should be
recognized that there have been those among them who have grasped
such essential, vital truths and have kept them alive in the
practices of their day. And so we find it recorded in history as far
back as 1686 that Judge Samuel Lewell copied upon the cover of his
journal a practical man's recipe for making saltpeter beds, in which
it was directed, among other things, that there should be added to
it "mother of petre", meaning, in Judge Lewell's understanding,
simply soil from an old niter bed, but in the mind of the man who
applied the maternity prefix,--mother,--it must have meant a vital
germ contained in the soil, carried with it, capable of reproducing
its kind and of perpetuating its characteristic work, belonging to
the same category with the old, familiar, homely germ, "mother" of
vinegar. So, too, with the old cheesemaker who grasped the
conception which led to the long time practice of washing the walls
of a new cheese factory with water from an old factory of the same
type, he must have been led by analogies of experience with things
seen to realize that he was here dealing with a vital factor.
Hundreds, of course, have practiced empyrically, but some one
preceded with the essential thought and we feel it is small credit
to men of our time who, after ten or twenty years of technical
training, having their attention directed to a something to be seen,
and armed with compound microscopes which permit them to see with
the physical eye the "mother of petre", arrogate to themselves the
discovery of a great truth. Much more modest would it be and much
more in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due to admit
that, after long doubting the existence of such an entity, we have
succeeded in confirming in fullness the truth of a great discovery
which belongs to an unnamed genius of the past, or perhaps to a
hundred of them who, working with life's processes and familiar with
them through long intimate association, saw in these invisible
processes analogies that revealed to them the essential truth in
such fullness as to enable them to build upon it an unfailing
practice.