in these countries to maintain the productive power of their soils,
but it is worth while, in the interests of western nations, as
helping them to realize the ultimate necessity of such economies, to
state again, in more explicit terms, what Japan is doing. Dr.
Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce,
taking his data from their records, informed me that Japan produced,
in 1908, and applied to her fields, 23,850,295 tons of human manure;
22,812,787 tons of compost; and she imported 753,074 tons of
commercial fertilizers, 7000 of which were phosphates in one form or
another. In addition to these she must have applied not less than
1,404,000 tons of fuel ashes and 10,185,500 tons of green manure
products grown on her hill and weed lands, and all of these applied
to less than 14,000,000 acres of cultivated field, and it should be
emphasized that this is done because as yet they have found no
better way of permanently maintaining a fertility capable of feeding
her millions.
Besides fertilizing, transplanting and weeding the rice crop there
is the enormous task of irrigation to be maintained until the rice
is nearly matured. Much of the water used is lifted by animal power
and a large share of this is human. Fig. 169 shows two Chinese men
in their cool, capacious, nowhere-touching summer trousers flinging
water with the swinging basket, and it is surprising the amount of
water which may be raised three to four feet by this means. The
portable spool windlass, in Figs. 27 and 123, has been described,
and Fig. 170 shows the quadrangular, cone-shaped bucket and sweep
extensively used in Chihli. This man was supplying water sufficient
for the irrigation of half an acre, per day, lifting the water eight
feet.
The form of pump most used in China and the foot-power for working
it are seen in Fig. 171. Three men working a similar pump are seen
in Fig. 150, a closer view of three men working the foot-power may
be seen in Fig. 42 and still another stands adjacent to a series of
flooded fields in Fig. 172. Where this view was taken the old farmer
informed us that two men, with this pump, lifting water three feet,
were able to cover two mow of land with three inches of water in two
hours. This is at the rate of 2.5 acre-inches of water per ten hours
per man, and for 12 to 15 cents, our currency, thus making sixteen
acre-inches, or the season's supply of water, cost 77 to 96 cents,
where coolie labor is hired and fed. Such is the efficiency of human
power applied to the Chinese pump, measured in American currency.
This pump is simply an open box trough in which travels a wooden
chain carrying a series of loosely fitting boards which raise the
water from the canal, discharging it into the field. The size of the
trough and of the buckets are varied to suit the power applied and
the amount of water to be lifted. Crude as it appears there is
nothing in western manufacture that can compete with it in first
cost, maintenance or efficiency for Chinese conditions and nothing
is more characteristic of all these people than their efficient,
simple appliances of all kinds, which they have reduced to the
lowest terms in every feature of construction and cost. The greatest
results are accomplished by the simplest means. If a canal must be
bridged and it is too wide to be covered by a single span, the
Chinese engineer may erect it at some convenient place and turn the
canal under it when completed. This we saw in the case of a new
railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The bridge was completed and the
water had just been turned under it and was being compelled to make
its own excavation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on
the canal had not been obstructed.
In the foot-power wheel of Japan all gearing is eliminated and the
man walks the paddles themselves, as seen in Fig. 173. Some of these
wheels are ten feet in diameter, depending upon the height the water
must be lifted.
Irrigation by animal power is extensively practiced in each of the
three countries, employing mostly the type of power wheel shown in
Fig. 158. The next illustration, Fig. 174, shows the most common
type of shelter seen in Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces, which are
there very numerous. We counted as many as forty such shelters in a
semi-circle of half a mile radius. They provide comfort for the
animals during both sunshine and rain, for under no conditions must
the water be permitted to run low on the rice fields, and everywhere
their domestic animals receive kind, thoughtful treatment.
In the less level sections, where streams have sufficient fall,
current wheels are in common use, carrying buckets near their
circumference arranged so as to fill when passing through the water,
and to empty after reaching the highest level into a receptacle
provided with a conduit which leads the water to the field. In
Szechwan province some of these current wheels are so large and
gracefully constructed as to strongly suggest Ferris wheels. A view
of one of these we are permitted to present in Fig. 175, through the
kindness of Rollin T. Chamberlin who took the photograph from which
the engraving was prepared. This wheel which was some forty feet in
diameter, was working when the snap shot was taken, raising the
water and pouring it into the horizontal trough seen near the top of
the wheel, carried at the summit of a pair of heavy poles standing
on the far side of the wheel. From this trough, leading away to the
left above the sky line, is the long pipe, consisting of bamboo
stems joined together, for conveying the water to the fields.
When the harvest time has come, notwithstanding the large acreage of
grain, yielding hundreds of millions of bushels, the small, widely
scattered holdings and the surface of the fields render all of our
machine methods quite impossible. Even our grain cradle, which
preceded the reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met
with the old-time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill
by hill, as it was transplanted.
Previous to the time for cutting, after the seed is well matured,
the water is drawn off and the land permitted to dry and harden. The
rainy season is not yet over and much care must be exercised in
curing the crop. The bundles may be shocked in rows along the
margins of the paddies, as seen in Fig. 176, or they may be
suspended, heads down, from bamboo poles as seen in Fig. 177.
The threshing is accomplished by drawing the heads of the rice
through the teeth of a metal comb mounted as seen at the right in
Fig. 178, near the lower corner, behind the basket, where a man and
woman are occupied in winnowing the dust and chaff from the grain by
means of a large double fan. Fanning mills built on the principle of
those used by our farmers and closely resembling them have long been
used in both China and Japan. After the rice is threshed the grain
must be hulled before it can serve as food, and the oldest and
simplest method of polishing used by the Japanese is seen in, Fig.
179, where the friction of the grain upon itself does the polishing.
A quantity of rice is poured into the receptacle when, with heavy
blows, the long-headed plunger is driven into the mass of rice, thus
forcing the kernels to slide over one another until, by their
abrasion, the desired result is secured. The same method of
polishing, on a larger scale, is accomplished where the plungers are
worked by the weight of the body, a series of men stepping upon
lever handles of weighted plungers, raising them and allowing them
to fall under the force of the weight attached. Recently, however,
mills worked by gasoline engines are in operation for both hulling
and polishing, in Japan.
The many uses to which rice straw is put in the economies of these
people make it almost as important as the rice itself. As food and
bedding for cattle and horses; as thatching material for dwellings
and other shelters; as fuel; as a mulch; as a source of organic
matter in the soil, and as a fertilizer, it represents a money value
which is very large. Besides these ultimate uses the rice straw is
extensively employed in the manufacture of articles used in enormous
quantities. It is estimated that not less than 188,700,000 bags such
as are seen in Figs. 180 and 181, worth $3,110,000 are made annually
from the rice straw in Japan, for handling 346,150,000 bushels of
cereals and 28,190,000 bushels of beans; and besides these, great
numbers of bags are employed in transporting fish and other prepared
manures.
In the prefecture of Hyogo, with 596 square miles of farm land, as
compared with Rhode Island's 712 square miles, Hyogo farmers
produced in 1906, on 265,040 acres, 10,584,000 bushels of rice worth
$16,191,400, securing an average yield of almost forty bushels per
acre and a gross return of $61 for the grain alone. In addition to
this, these farmers grew on the same land, the same season, at least
one other crop. Where this was barley the average yield exceeded
twenty-six bushels per acre, worth $17.
In connection with their farm duties these Japanese families
manufactured, from a portion of their rice straw, at night and
during the leisure hours of winter, 8,980,000 pieces of matting and
netting of different kinds having a market value of $262,000;
4,838,000 bags worth $185,000; 8,742,000 slippers worth $34,000;
6,254,000 sandals worth $30,000; and miscellaneous articles worth
$64,000. This is a gross earning of more than $21,000,000 from
eleven and a half townships of farm land and the labor of the
farmers' families, an average earning of, $80 per acre on nearly
three-fourths of the farm land of this prefecture. At this rate
three of the four forties of our 160-acre farms should bring a gross
annual income of $9,600 and the fourth forty should pay the
expenses.
At the Nara Experiment Station we were informed that the money value
of a good crop of rice in that prefecture should be placed at ninety
dollars per acre for the grain and eight dollars for the
unmanufactured straw; thirty-six dollars per acre for the crop of
naked barley and two dollars per acre for the straw. The farmers
here practice a rotation of rice and barley covering four or five
years, followed by a summer crop of melons, worth $320 per acre and
some other vegetable instead of the rice on the fifth or sixth year,
worth eighty yen per tan, or $160 per acre. To secure green manure
for fertilizing, soy beans are planted each year in the space
between the rows of barley, the barley being planted in November.
One week after the barley is harvested the soy beans, which produce
a yield of 160 kan per tan, or 5290 pounds per acre, are turned
under and the ground fitted for rice, At these rates the Nara
farmers are producing on four-fifths or five-sixths of their rice
lands a gross earning of $136 per acre annually, and on the other
fifth or sixth, an earning of $480 per acre, not counting the annual
crop of soy beans used in maintaining the nitrogen and organic
matter in their soils, and not counting their earnings from home
manufactures. Can the farmers of our south Atlantic and Gulf Coast
states, which are in the same latitude, sometime attain to this
standard? We see no reason why they should not, but only with the
best of irrigation, fertilization and proper rotation, with multiple
cropping.
XIII
SILK CULTURE
Another of the great and in some ways one of the most remarkable
industries of the Orient is that of silk production, and its
manufacture into the most exquisite and beautiful fabrics in the
world. Remarkable for its magnitude; for having had its birthplace
apparently in oldest China, at least 2600 years B. C.; for having
been founded on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and
for having lived through more than four thousand years, expanding
until a $1,000,000 cargo of the product has been laid down on our
western coast at one time and rushed by special fast express to New
York City for the Christmas trade.
Japan produced in 1907 26,072,000 pounds of raw silk from 17,154,000
bushels of cocoons, feeding the silkworms from mulberry leaves grown
on 957,560 acres. At the export selling price of this silk in Japan
the crop represents a money value of $124,000,000, or more than two
dollars per capita for the entire population of the Empire; and
engaged in the care of the silkworms, as seen in Figs. 184, 185, 186
and 187, there were, in 1906, 1,407,766 families or some 7,000,000
people.
Richard's geography of the Chinese Empire places the total export of
raw silk to all countries, from China, in 1905, at 30,413,200
pounds, and this, at the Japanese export price, represents a value
of $145,000,000. Richard also states that the value of the annual
Chinese export of silk to France amounts to 10,000,000 pounds
sterling and that this is but twelve per cent of the total, from
which it appears that her total export alone reaches a value near
$400,000,000.
The use of silk in wearing apparel is more general among the Chinese
than among the Japanese, and with China's eightfold greater
population, the home consumption of silk must be large indeed and
her annual production must much exceed that of Japan. Hosie places
the output of raw silk in Szechwan at 5,439,500 pounds, which is
nearly a quarter of the total output of Japan, and silk is
extensively grown in eight other provinces, which together have an
area nearly fivefold that of Japan. It would appear, therefore, that
a low estimate of China's annual production of raw silk must be some
120,000,000 pounds, and this, with the output of Japan and Korea,
would make a product for the three countries probably exceeding
150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps
$700,000,000; quite equalling in value the wheat crop of the United
States, but produced on less than one-eighth of the area.
According to the observations of Count Dandola, the worms which
contribute to this vast earning are so small that some 700,000 of
them weigh at hatching only one pound, but they grow very rapidly,
shed their skins four times, weighing 15 pounds at the time of the
first moult, 94 pounds at the second, 400 pounds at the third, 1628
pounds at the fourth moulting and when mature have come to weigh
nearly five tons--9500 pounds. But in making this growth during
about thirty-six days, according to Paton, the 700,000 worms have
eaten 105 pounds by the time of the first moult; 315 pounds by the
second; 1050 pounds by the third; 3150 pounds by the fourth, and in
the final period, before spinning, 19,215 pounds, thus consuming in
all nearly twelve tons of mulberry leaves in producing nearly five
tons of live weight, or at the rate of two and a half pounds of
green leaf to one pound of growth.
According to Paton, the cocoons from the 700,000 worms would weigh
between 1400 and 2100 pounds and these, according to the
observations of Hosie in the province of Szechwan, would yield about
one-twelfth their weight of raw silk. On this basis the one pound of
worms hatched from the eggs would yield between 116 and 175 pounds
of raw silk, worth, at the Japanese export price for 1907, between
$550 and $832, and 164 pounds of green mulberry leaves would be
required to produce a pound of silk.
A Chinese banker in Chekiang province, with whom we talked, stated
that the young worms which would hatch from the eggs spread on a
sheet of paper twelve by eighteen inches would consume, in coming to
maturity, 2660 pounds of mulberry leaves and would spin 21.6 pounds
of silk. This is at the rate of 123 pounds of leaves to one pound of
silk. The Japanese crop for 1907, 26,072,000 pounds, produced on
957,560 acres, is a mean yield of 27.23 pounds of raw silk per acre
of mulberries, and this would require a mean yield of 4465 pounds of
green mulberry leaves per acre, at the rate of 164 pounds per pound
of silk.
Ordinary silk in these countries is produced largely from three
varieties of mulberries, and from them there may be three pickings
of leaves for the rearing of a spring, summer and autumn crop of
silk. We learned at the Nagoya Experiment Station, Japan, that there
good spring yields of mulberry leaves are at the rate of 400 kan,
the second crop, 150 kan, and the third crop, 250 kan per tan,
making a total yield of over thirteen tons of green leaves per acre.
This, however, seems to be materially higher than the average for
the Empire.
In Fig. 188 is a near view of a mulberry orchard in Chekiang
province, which has been very heavily fertilized with canal mud, and
which was at the stage for cutting the leaves to feed the first crop
of silkworms. A bundle of cut limbs is in the crotch of the front
tree in the view. Those who raise mulberry leaves are not usually
the feeders of the silkworms and the leaves from this orchard were
being sold at one dollar, Mexican, per picul, or 32.25 cents per one
hundred pounds. The same price was being paid a week later in the
vicinity of Nanking, Kiangsu province.
The mulberry trees, as they appear before coming into leaf in the
early spring, may be seen in Fig. 189. The long limbs are the shoots
of the last year's growth, from which at least one crop of leaves
had been picked, and in healthy orchards they may have a length of
two to three feet. An orchard from a portion of which the limbs had
just been cut, presented the appearance seen in Fig. 190. These
trees were twelve to fifteen years old and the enlargements on the
ends of the limbs resulted from the frequent pruning, year after
year, at nearly the same place. The ground under these trees was
thickly covered with a growth of pink clover just coming into bloom,
which would be spaded into the soil, providing nitrogen and organic
matter, whose decay would liberate potash, phosphorus and other
mineral plant food elements for the crop.
In Fig. 191 three rows of mulberry trees, planted four feet apart,
stand on a narrow embankment raised four feet, partly through
adjusting the surrounding fields for rice, and partly by additions
of canal mud used as a fertilizer. On either side of the mulberries
is a crop of windsor beans, and on the left a crop of rape, both of
which would be harvested in early June, the ground where they stand
flooded, plowed and transplanted to rice. This and the other
mulberry views were taken in the extensively canalized portion of
China represented in Fig. 52. The farmer owning this orchard had
just finished cutting two large bundles of limbs for the sale of the
leaves in the village. He stated that his first crop ordinarily
yields from three to as many as twenty piculs per mow, but that the
second crop seldom exceeded two to three piculs. The first and
second crop of leaves, if yielding together twenty-three piculs per
mow, would amount to 9.2 tons per acre, worth, at the price named,
$59.34. Mulberry leaves must be delivered fresh as soon as gathered
and must be fed the same day, the limbs, when, stripped of their
leaves, at the place where these are sold, are tied into bundles and
reserved for use as fuel.
In the south of China the mulberry is grown from low cuttings rooted
by layering. We have before spoken of our five hours ride in the
Canton delta region, on the steamer Nanning, through extensive
fields of low mulberry then in full leaf, which were first mistaken
for cotton nearing the blossom stage. This form of mulberry is seen
in Fig. 43, and the same method of pruning is practiced in southern
Japan. In middle Japan high pruning, as in Chekiang and Kiangsu
provinces, is followed, but in northern Japan the leaves are picked
directly, as is the case with the last crop of leaves everywhere,
pruning not being practiced in the more northern latitudes.
Not all silk produced in these northern countries is from the
domesticated Bombyx mori, large amounts being obtained from the
spinnings of wild silkworms feeding upon the leaves of species of
oak growing on the mountain and hill lands in various parts of
China, Korea and Japan. In China the collections in largest amount
are reeled from the cocoons of the tussur worm (Antheraea pernyi)
gathered in Shantung, Honan, Kweichow and Szechwan provinces. In the
hilly parts of Manchuria also this industry is attaining large
proportions, the cocoons being sent to Chefoo in the Shantung
province, to be woven into pongee silk.
M. Randot has estimated the annual crop of wild silk cocoons in
Szechwan at 10,180,000 pounds, although in the opinion of Alexander
Hosie much of this may come from Kweichow. Richard places the export
of raw wild silk from the whole of China proper, in 1904, at
4,400,000 pounds. This would mean not less than 75,300,000 pounds of
wild cocoons and may be less than half the home consumption.
From data collected by Alexander Hosie it appears that in 1899 the
export of raw tussur silk from Manchuria, through the port of
Newchwang by steamer alone, was 1,862,448 pounds, valued at
$1,721,200, and the production is increasing rapidly. The export
from the same port the previous year, by steamer, was 1,046,704
pounds. This all comes from the hilly and mountain lands south of
Mukden, lying between the Liao plain on the west and the Yalu river
on the east, covering some five thousand square miles, which we
crossed on the Antung-Mukden railway.
There are two broods of these wild silkworms each season, between
early May and early October. Cocoons of the fall brood are kept
through the winter and when the moths come forth they are caused to
lay their eggs on pieces of cloth and when the worms are hatched
they are fed until the first moult upon the succulent new oak leaves
gathered from the hills, after which the worms are taken to the low
oak growth on the hills where they feed themselves and spin their
cocoons under the cover of leaves drawn about them.
The moths reserved from the first brood, after becoming fertile, are
tied by means of threads to the oak bushes where they deposit the
eggs which produce the second crop of tussur silk. To maintain an
abundance of succulent leaves within reach the oaks are periodically
cut back.
Thus these plain people, patient, frugal, unshrinking from toil, the
basic units of three of the oldest nations, go to the uncultivated
hill lands and from the wild oak and the millions of insects which
they help to feed upon it, not only create a valuable export trade
but procure material for clothing, fuel, fertilizer and food, for
the large chrysalides, cooked in the reeling of the silk, may be
eaten at once or are seasoned with sauce to be used later. Besides
this, the last unreelable portion of each cocoon is laid aside to be
manufactured into silk wadding and into soft mattresses for caskets
upon which the wealthy lay their dead.
XIV
THE TEA INDUSTRY
The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great
industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture,
if not above it, in the important part it plays in the welfare of
the people. There is little reason to doubt that the industry has
its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water
palatable for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water has
been universally adopted in these countries as an individually
available, thoroughly efficient and safe guard against that class of
deadly disease germs which it has been almost impossible to exclude
from the drinking water of any densely peopled country.
So far as may be judged from the success of the most thorough
sanitary measures thus far instituted, and taking into consideration
the inherent difficulties which must increase enormously with
increasing populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods
must ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety
must be secured in some manner having the equivalent effect of
boiling water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races, and which
destroys active disease germs at the latest moment before using. And
it must not be overlooked that the boiling of drinking water in
China and Japan has been demanded quite as much because of congested
rural populations as to guard against such dangers in large cities,
while as yet our sanitary engineers have dealt only with the urban
phases of this most vital problem and chiefly, too, thus far, only
where it has been possible to procure the water supply in
comparatively unpopulated hill lands. But such opportunities cannot
remain available indefinitely, any more than they did in China and
Japan, and already typhoid epidemics break out in our large cities
and citizens are advised to boil their drinking water.