and raked the whole world for cargoes of old horseshoes and iron scrap,
but since the blast furnaces at Hanyang have been a success, China is
doing considerable smelting of ore, of which she has beds almost as
rich as her coal and lime beds. The largest iron mines now worked are
at Phing Ting in eastern Shansi province and Tayeh in eastern Hupeh
province. The Hanyang smelters supply the rail mills of Hanyang, and
also ship pig iron to the Wakamatsu iron works on Kyushu Island, Japan;
40,000 tons of pig to the Western Steel Corporation of Seattle, and to
the eastern seaboard of America, as well as to Hongkong, on occasions.
There is iron ore in more than half of the provinces, notably in
Kiangsu (near Nanking); Nganhwei and Kiangsi, besides the provinces
mentioned. China is already turning out 400,000 tons of iron ore a
year, largely by primitive methods. The Han Yeh Ping Iron and Coal
Company at Hanyang, Hupeh province, has three German blast furnaces,
eight Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnaces, a rolling-mill of one
thousand tons a day, blooming mills and a foundry. The cranes are run
by electricity. The iron ore and limestone are secured at Tayeh eighty
miles down the Yangtze from Hankau. Here a whole range of hills is full
of hematite ore. A railway of fifteen miles brings the ore to the
Yangtze River, where it is loaded on junks and towed by steam launches
up to Hanyang.
Among the Chinese companies (stock held by Chinese and foreigners)
which have been managed successfully are the Taku (Tientsin) Tug
and Lighter Company; Shanghai Tug and Lighter; Shanghai Dock and
Engineering; Shanghai and Hongkew Wharf Company; China Oil Company;
Tientsin Iron Works; Union, Yangtze, North China and Canton Marine
Insurance Company; Hongkong, Canton, Yangtze, North China and China
Fire Insurance Companies; China Merchants’ Steamship Company; Ewo,
Shanghai and Soy Chee Cotton Mills; Hai Ho Conservancy (Tientsin);
Ching Ching Mining Company; Kiangnan Dock and Ship-building at
Shanghai; Yangtzepoo Dock and Ship-building at Shanghai; Vulcan
Iron and Car Works; Han Yeh Ping steel plant at Hanyang; colliery
at Pinghsiang; iron mines at Tayeh; Commercial Press of Shanghai in
publishing; Chee Hsin Cement Company (at Tayeh, Hupeh).
In joint stock organization, China will for a while suffer from two
things, nepotism and graft. We have ourselves not yet emerged from
staffing companies with inexperienced and dummy relatives, and from
plundering the corporation exchequer. The Shanghai taotai who decamped
during the rubber panic of 1910, having given several million dollars
of fiduciary funds to friends, will never be forgotten in the Paris
of the East. No more however will the “squeezing” Manchu mandarin
come down “like a wolf on the fold” on struggling concerns or private
business.
China mines only 15,000,000 tons of coal yearly, mainly at the
following mines:
Kaiping (near Tientsin), in Pechili province; Wei Hsien, in Honan
(anthracite).
Pingsiang, in Kiangsi province; Lin Cheng, in Pechili (anthracite).
Fangtsze (near Tsinan), in Shangtung province.
Lung Wang (near Chungking), in Szechuen province.
Tse Chow, in Shansi province.
Ching-Ching, in Shansi province (anthracite).
Pao Chin, in Shansi province (anthracite).
Fushun (near Mukden), in Manchuria (owned and operated by Japanese).
Heijo (near Chemulpo), in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).
Ping Yang, in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).
Hungay and Kebao, in Tonquin (owned and operated by French and Hongkong
capitalists).
This of course is only a beginning. On account of poor transportation
by rail and canal, China imports about 2,000,000 tons of Japanese
coal, and Hongkong and Shanghai import Australian and Welsh coal,
some of it for admiralty purposes. The largest anthracite mines now
open are, in their order, in Shansi, Honan, Pechili and Shangtung
provinces; the bituminous as far as mined, in their order, in Pechili,
Kiangsi, Shensi, Kansu, Shangtung, Szechuen, Yunnan, Kweichou, Hunan
and Kwangsi provinces. Over a million tons of lignite are mined yearly
in Manchuria. England has a coal supply for only one hundred and fifty
years, and America’s supply will not last much longer. This means
that China will step full-panoplied into the coal and iron arena with
plethoric supplies which, with her population, will make her probably
the world’s richest nation, in material resources, if not in brains.
The first shipment of Chinese coal for America occurred in July,
1910, when the steamer _Inverkip_ called at Ching Wang Tao on the Gulf
of Pechili and loaded the famous Kaiping coal for San Francisco. The
British Peking Syndicate, mining anthracite coal in Shansi province,
purposes to build colliers to take coal to America. Coal costs at
the mines only seventy-five cents a ton, and with machinery opulent
China could reduce this cost. It is a knowledge of the potentiality of
this great wealth that kindled some of the fire of the October, 1911,
revolution, and led the provincial assemblies of Szechuen and Hupeh to
say: “China’s mines and transportation franchises shall not be passed
over to foreigners.” The Peking Syndicate, mainly British, operating
hard coal and iron mines in Shansi, is capitalized at $6,000,000. The
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company has a capital of $5,000,000.
It has for many years operated the famous Kaiping coal mines north of
Tientsin. This is the company which employed Mr. Kinder, the British
engineer, who surreptitiously built the “Rocket,” the first locomotive
used continuously in China.
A wonderful tin mine has been worked for many years at Kuo Chao, in the
southeast corner of Yunnan province, the tin being exported through
Mengtsu. It used to seek Hongkong via the Red River and Haiphong and
sometimes via Nanning, the West River and Canton. The costly narrow
gage railway which the French have run from Haiphong to Yunnan now
catches nearly all of this product. There is much complaint regarding
rates, which are based “on all the traffic will bear,” and it is
proposed by the Chinese to build a railway to Nanning, and send the tin
the remainder of the way by junk and launch. This rich mine produces
about 15,000,000 pounds a year, valued at nearly $6,000,000, and now
that German machinery and German experts have been introduced by
the Chinese miners, a greater and a purer product will result. Until
recently the product had to be resmelted at Hongkong. Of course,
great as this product is, the Straits Settlements still lead in tin
mining. There are 30,000 miners (mostly boys, on account of the narrow
unhealthy shafts) at Kuo Chao, and owners, miners, smelters, porters
and the government representatives all have their compulsory labor
unions. This protection of labor must be copied in all countries, the
government forcing the laborer to protect himself, and making the
industry share in the cost of government supervision. Charcoal is used
as fuel at the clay smelters, and the bellows are hand-worked.
As is well known, Southern China is cursed with white ants and
humidity. The former eat the wooden beams, and the latter rusts iron
beams. Ceilings have to be perforated to admit air and light between
the floors so as to keep down the ravages of the white ant. However,
Southern China is copying Hongkong’s example and risking metal beams
and ceilings, the trouble being to find a suitable protective paint.
China has graphite, lead for oxides, carbon, silica, and oils in
abundance, and she will in time manufacture her own protective paints,
but we shall supply the machinery. Brass hardware is used instead of
iron on account of the humidity.
The important copper mines of Yunnan were worked as a Manchu monopoly.
Hunan is perhaps the next richest province, with Szechuen, Shansi and
Kweichou following, although every province has copper. Nickel mines
exist in Yunnan, Kwangsi and other southern provinces.
The first engagement between the two immense sugar refineries
(Butterfield’s and Jardine’s) at Hongkong and the great refiners of
Formosa has been won by the latter, which were helped until recently
by indirect Japanese subsidies. When the Sugar Trust, after the
government fine and municipal suit, jumped the price two cents a pound,
in 1911, if America had a Price Board at the head of affairs to induce
Congress to act as was done in the coal shortage, Formosa and Hongkong
sugar could have flooded the country until the price was restored
to the five cents rate, or about that rate. The immense Hongkong
refineries (Taikoo and China Sugar) use Javan raw sugar. The Formosa
refineries use their local raw. They not only supply Japan under a
protective tariff, but have enough to supply China. Formosa produces
600,000,000 pounds a year, and could handily double the amount. America
has the Louisiana, Hawaii and Philippine cane fields to protect, it is
true, but if sugar rises over five and one-half cents a pound retail,
the insistent knockers at the high door, Formosan and Hongkong sugars,
might be allowed to come in, as the tariff-enslaved countries are going
to heed the new cry that food, clothing and building material must be
duty-free, or nearly so.
Flake and amorphous graphite are mined in the Ping An section of
northern Korea, and Japan will, therefore, enter into the manufacture
of crucibles, lubricants, pencils and steel-paint.
China continues to use the earthenware jar and the paper bottle,
reinforced with bamboo withes, to transport her valuable nut, bean
and seed oils. Sometimes staves are brought in by foreigners and set
up at Hankau, Newchwang, etc., in barrels, but it would seem that tin
would eventually come into use, with the idea of conserving wood.
The earthenware and bamboo paper containers are the ideal from a
conservation point of view, but they are too tender and risky for
movement abroad. The Hanyang plant will probably have the first tinware
factory.
The royalty imposed in Korea for mining by the Japanese government is
thirty per cent. of the net revenue. The Chinese royalty is twenty-five
per cent. in general, plus an additional twenty per cent. in the case
of precious stones, ten per cent. in gold, silver and quicksilver
mines; five per cent. in coal and iron; and export duty of five per
cent., and likin (inland customs and provincial transportation tax,
literally “cash a catty”) two per cent. As China’s mines are more
lucrative, this royalty is not so onerous as the comparison would seem
to make it, and the tendency is to reduce it, under the new government.
The ship-building and dock facilities of the Far East have fully risen
to the demands. The three largest are at Hongkong, all British owned.
The Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company on the China mainland of Hongkong
(Kowloon), and at Aberdeen on Hongkong Island, over the mountains
from the city of Victoria, has six docks, one of them seven hundred
feet long on the keel blocks. The company builds ships, locomotives,
cars, bridges, engines, motor-boats, boilers, machinery, and, indeed,
anything after the steel is furnished to them, by Britain chiefly.
The Taikoo Dock (Butterfield & Swire) on the eastern end of Hongkong
Island has a dock 787 feet long, and is also equipped to turn out the
largest ships.
The Admiralty Dock of the British Navy on Hongkong Island was built
from shore in the center of the city of Victoria, into the water by
reclamation, instead of being cut out of the rock, as was done with the
other docks. It is equipped to handle large battleships, and can be
used by the mercantile marine in an emergency.
The Tanjong Pagar Dock at Singapore is equipped to handle battleships
and maritime vessels. It is controlled by the Crown Colony.
The Mitsu Bishi Dock, cut out of the high rock at Nagasaki, has one
dock 722 feet long. This company built the new 19,000 tons displacement
ships, oil burners, of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha for the San Francisco
route, and like the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock it always has large
salvage steamers ready to go to the rescue of wrecks, now that wireless
has been established in the Orient. There have been some wonderful
expeditions of help recently on the romantic seas of the Far East.
The Kawasaki Dock Company at Dairen, South Manchuria, has a dock 380
feet long, together with the usual machine and boiler shops. There is
a commercial dock at Kobe, the Harima Dock at Oh, and large government
docks and arsenals at Yokosuka (near Yokohama), Kure and Sasebo. The
last named dock, 777 feet long, built the dreadnought battleship
_Kawachi_, 21,000 tons.
The Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Works, Shanghai (Chinese), built the
imperial yacht once owned by Prince Tsui, and small cruisers which the
republicans seized. It has a dock 575 feet long on the blocks, and has
the usual machine and boiler shops. The Yangtzepoo Dock at Shanghai
(Chinese and foreign owned) has a dock 455 feet long on the blocks.
The Shanghai Dock and Engineering Company (Chinese and foreign) has
docks 560 feet long, where some of the vessels for the Philippine
government were built in 1912.
The Tsingtauer Werft, owned by the Germans, has a floating dock at
Tsingtau, Kiaochou, Shangtung, China, lifting vessels 460 feet long,
and there is the immense floating dock, “Dewey”, of the American navy,
at Cavite, Manila, which does not refuse to do a friendly act for
maritime commerce, when necessary, if the ships are not over 600 feet
long.
The French have small docks at Haiphong and Saigon. It will be seen
that as far as taking care of battleships is concerned, only Britain
and Japan have more than one string to the bow, Britain being easily
in the lead. America has only one dock, and that a floating one.
It could not lift a dreadnought, and therefore America has in the
meantime wisely moved her first defense line, as I think the writer,
Thomas Millard, a Shanghai American, recommended in his books, back
to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, counting on Cavite, Philippines, as a picket
post. Germany at Kiaochou, and Russia at Vladivostok are as yet out of
the running, with inferior docking accommodations. The Russians are
spending $10,000,000 in Vladivostok on a floating dock, ice-breakers
and a wharf. As far as America is concerned, she can count on Britain.
Dewey fitted out at Mirs Bay, Hongkong, despite all conventions. As
Commander Tatnall said at Taku in China, “Blood is thicker than water,”
which was reciprocated by Admiral Seymour at Manila. When Admiral
Diedrichs asked what the British would do if the Germans fired on the
Americans, Seymour replied: “You had better ask Admiral Dewey, who is
informed.” That is the story that goes the rounds in the East, and if
it is not wholly true in fact, it is so potentially.
There is a growing number of smaller Chinese docks, machine shops and
ways. Inland at the Pinghsiang colliery on the borders of Kiangsi and
Hunan provinces, China has machine shops fitted to turn out almost
anything, and the Hanyang Steel Works, across from Hankau, have been
already described. Railway shops are opening up everywhere, and do
creditable work, especially the North China railway at Tongshan; the
Shanghai & Nanking Railway shops at Wusung, near Shanghai, and the
Hongkong and Whompoa Dock shops. The Vulcan Iron Works at Shanghai
construct railway and street-cars.
The immense cement works which are already in operation are the
Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong, in Tonquin (French); Tayeh, in
Hupeh province (Chinese); Chee Hsin Cement Company, at Tongshan, near
Tientsin (Chinese); Green Island Cement Company, at Macao and Hongkong
(British and Chinese). Half of the many bridges that are being erected
for the immense transportation development throughout China and the
Philippines are made of this new concrete.
The Chinese furniture makers of Ningpo, Yunnan, Shanghai, Hongkong
and Canton, are famous. They copy foreign models and also execute the
native designs. The artistic cabinet work of Li Kwong Loong can be
seen in the Shanghai and Hongkong clubs, in the Hongkong Hotel, and
in Watson’s Store at Hongkong. The best effects are in the prized
teakwood, which is becoming the rage in San Francisco. Vantine’s and
the Metropolitan Museum, New York, exhibit specimens of the careful and
strong handwork of these Chippendales of the land of Han. China can
take care of herself in furniture making if time is not of the “essence
of importance.” Loving art, I would not recommend sending her our
machinery for furniture, but if government schools and offices are to
be supplied quickly, I suppose we shall be compelled to make esthetics
surrender to utility here also!
The Germans plan to meet the leadership of America, Britain and Japan
in technical instruction in China. The British and Americans control
the Tongshan Engineering School at Tongshan, and the Americans are
powerful in the Pei Yang Science College at Tientsin. At Mukden the
Japanese are influential. At the mechanical shops at Hongkong, Shanghai
and Hankau the British are influential. The Germans plan, with the
aid of Krupps, their foreign office and the Deutsche Asiatische Bank,
to establish a central engineering college at Tsingtau, Shangtung
province, with branches possibly at Hankau and Kaiphong. They believe
that the graduates will order German machinery and material for China’s
coming prodigious development.
The American government has included in its humanitarian pure food laws
a prohibition on the importation of green tea, which is colored in the
pot over the fire with Prussian blue, indigo, talc and gypsum. This
changes the leaf from its flat state and dull yellow and green color
to a ball state, colored lustrous emerald, and increases the aromatic
flavor slightly. The Chinese complain of having to pot-dry the green
tea longer to preserve it under the new rule, and moreover old custom
dies hard in China as far as agriculture is concerned. The American
government has done a world service in improving the quality of the
ideal beverage, and the Chinese, who do things by wholesale, will
insist in time that Australia and England, the champion tea-drinkers
per capita, though not in bulk, shall take what the Americans have made
“ploper fashion.” There were amusing instances of cousin John’s habit
of “bluffing” laws on the maxim followed in more lands than in China,
“If laws interfere with your business, why laws?” He heard of the May
1, 1912, law of the Americans, but he sent his crop over just the same,
saying, “Surely America won’t put it back on my hands, as I haven’t got
used to the law yet; like Mencius’ thief, I can only get used to law
gradually!” Had America relented, John would have seen that his firers
never got used to our laws.
China formulated a patent and copyright office at Peking in 1905, but
it has not yet reached efficiency for various reasons, one being that
the states’ rights feeling is stronger than the centralized government
movement up to date. In the meantime the district or municipal taotai
will, upon application of the foreign consul, issue a proclamation
prohibiting all Chinese within his jurisdiction from manufacturing,
selling or consuming property which is pirated; and such theft and
infringement are considered unpardonable by the great body of highly
moral Chinese guild merchants, as compared with the lack of similar
honor in the first days of modernized commercial Japan. Prosecutions
have been actually carried on in the mixed courts of foreign consuls
and Chinese taotais against Chinese dealers for handling goods made
in Europe and imported into China under marks similar to American
marks registered with the taotai, and the dealers, whether ignorant or
not, have been convicted and severely punished. Until China is able
to establish an efficient patent department the method that should
be followed is to register the mark or patent at the consul’s and
taotai’s office in each province and port where the goods are to be
sold. This will answer very satisfactorily until the growth of trade,
transportation and machinery of government make the central government
more familiar with modern business methods and international law. It is
important in China and absolutely essential in Japan for the foreigner
to register his patent promptly, for a pirate may precede him and cause
irrevocable loss, in Japan at least.
I want to portray a Chinese character as a type of one interesting and
powerful set of men with whom the West will now come in contact. Ah
Chuk (I shall call that his name for present purposes) was a Cantonese
about fifty-five years of age, though he looked much older because of
his parchment face. He had few of his teeth, because he lived in the
days before the advent of foreign-trained dentists. In his youth he
did not fear to strike. His race were the men who had set in motion
the greatest rebellion ever known, the Taiping scourge. My patriotic
and legal duty was to obey the law in spirit and in letter, and in
addition, under no circumstances to lose temper, but to treat Chuk
with unfailing manners. Chuk was the only Chinese whom I ever knew who
disobeyed his Confucian code of flowery courtesy (Li). He hated me,
as he bitterly hated all who firmly withstood him, and he showed his
feelings on every occasion. His gods were not Buddha, but money and
power. On one occasion he said: “I can get you a Chinese slave girl for
four hundred dollars.” I replied: “You insult me, Chuk.” He hissed, “I
meant to.” He asked me why I could not obey the letter of the law and
not the spirit, and I told him that an Occidental corporation employé,
like the soldier, was expected to be absolutely loyal to orders. He
said I was a fool because I made a god of conscience, instead of
expediency; that I had no tact. I replied by quoting their maxim; “Tact
is the discounting of principle in the mart of expediency.”
He feared neither the American, British or Chinese governments, nor the
rich corporation. He corrupted foreign consulates in the old days when
forged citizenship certificates were not unknown. He bullied the Canton
viceroy. He was lord over half a dozen valleys and a hundred hamlets of
Kwangtung province, whose inhabitants were his slaves, because they had
signed bonds of $1,000 each for every Chinese whom he safely got into
that Eldorado, America. He did not press the man in America any more
than he would attempt to press a man in Mars. He pressed his father,
his relatives in Kwangtung, who were on the bond also, for the payment
of the $1,000, and it took the son in America twenty years to pay the
money and the heavy interest. With his foot on the sacred bones of his
grandfather he held the grandson in America in constant fear.