foundation of its prosperity, the backbone of its commerce, the symbol
of its wealth, is the bean--the common soja, or soy bean as we know
it. What corn is to our Corn Belt and what cotton is to our Southern
States, that the bean is to Manchuria: supreme among products. There
is no class of people not affected by the prosperity or the adversity
of his Majesty the Bean. Bankers, merchants, farmers, even the ladies
one meets in the drawing-rooms in the foreign concessions, not only
"know beans," but can talk beans too. If the present rate of progress
is maintained, it will not be long until no one will enumerate the
world's great crops--wheat, corn, oats, rice, rye, barley, cotton,
etc.--without including beans. The first beans were shipped to Europe
only about four years ago, and the London _Times_ correspondent
estimates that next year Europe will take $35,000,000 worth. In a very
great measure the beans have the same properties as cottonseed, an oil
being extracted that is used for much the same purposes as cottonseed
oil, while the residue called "bean cake" is about the equivalent of
cottonseed meal. It is somewhat superior, Mr. Parker says, to
cottonseed meal or linseed meal as a stock feed, but is now chiefly
used for fertilizing purposes. My first acquaintance with the bean
cake was in Japan, where I found it enriching the earth for
vegetable-growing, Japan importing an average of half a million tons a
year to put under its crops. Manchuria also uses not a little for the
same purpose. The more intelligent Manchurian farmers, however, are
learning that it is a waste to rot one of the best cattle feeds in the
{76} world and get its fertilizing value only--just as our American
farmers, it is gratifying to see, are at last waking up to the
disgraceful folly of using cottonseed meal as a crop-producer without
first getting its other value as a meat-producer.
I find out, furthermore, that what old Maury's Geography led me to
believe was a vast Desert of Gobi here in North China or Mongolia
alongside Manchuria is not a genuine desert at all, but chiefly a
great grass plain with golden possibilities as a cattle country. Mr.
Parker declares that if cattle were grown on these immense ranges and
brought to Manchuria in the fall to be fattened off on bean cake,
millet, etc., Harbin, Chang-chun, Mukden, and other Manchurian cities
might soon build packing plants that would rival Chicago's in bigness.
This system of stock-raising would also solve the problem of
maintaining soil fertility, just as it would bring relief to those
sections of America where the policy of selling everything off the
land and putting nothing back threatens disaster.
The old ridge system of growing crops, the rows thrown up as high as
the little plows will permit and the crops planted on top, is the
general practice here, and Mr. Parker is making an effort through the
experiment farm to convince the people of the advantages of level
cultivation. He also wishes to introduce better plows. "The truth is,"
he says, "that we never had any real plows until James Oliver and John
Deere invented theirs. All the plowing before that was merely
scratch-work, and here in Manchuria the plows are hardly better than
those the Egyptians used. But for the extremely light, ash-like,
wind-drift soil the people with such crude tools could hardly make
enough to subsist on."
In Korea I noticed some moderately fair cotton fields, and in
Manchuria I have also found a few patches, though the climate here is
obviously too cold for its profitable production. I find that the
Japanese have great faith in the future of the industry in Korea.
This notice of Manchurian farming would not be complete {77} without
some mention of the queer aspect of many of the cultivated fields--
thick-dotted with earth mounds, around which the rows are curved and
twisted, these mounds resembling medium-sized potato hills. They
contain not vegetables, however, but bones. Each cone-shaped mound is
a Chinaman's grave. I first noticed this method of burying in Korea,
but the mounds are quite low there--all that I saw, at least, except
the Queen's Tomb at Seoul. Here in Manchuria they are about three or
four feet high in most cases, and sometimes six. One of the famous
sights of Mukden is the Peilang, or Northern Tomb, where old Taitsun,
the first great Manchu Emperor of China, lies buried, and the grave
proper (reached after a long approach of temple buildings, magnificent
gates, images, and monuments) is a huge earth mound, probably an acre
in extent. The base is thrown up twenty-five or thirty feet high and
surrounded by a rock wall, while the cone-shaped summit runs up about
twenty feet higher. The Chinese have a deep-rooted superstition as to
the existence of a sort of devil or "fung-shui" in the ground, and to
disturb this fung-shui may prove the direful spring of more "woes
unnumbered" than the Iliad records. Such a fung-shui is supposed to
exist under the surface of the earth about the Mukden royal tombs,
and, accordingly, the railroad between Mukden and Peking had to run
twenty-five miles out of its proper course in order not to disturb it.
Mukden, Manchuria.
{78}
IX
WHERE JAPAN IS ABSORBING AN EMPIRE
"The Open Door in Manchuria--of what concern is it to me any more than
the revolution in Portugal or the Young Turks movement in
Constantinople?" With some such expression the average American is
likely to dismiss the question--a question whose determination may
prove the pivot on which will swing the greatest world-movements of
our time as well as the prosperity of many European and American
industries, and that of the labor dependent upon them.
I
Concerning Manchuria and all the issues involved in the present
struggle for its possession, all kinds of misconceptions are rife.
That it is a small country; that it is an infertile country; that it
must be already well developed in point of population and consumption
of goods: this is only the ABC of Manchurian misinformation.
In answer, it need only be said that Manchuria is larger than all our
New England, Middle, and South Atlantic States from Maine to Georgia
inclusive, and that into its borders all of Great Britain (England,
Scotland and Wales), together with all of the German Empire, could be
crowded, and still leave a gap so big that Holland, Belgium, and
Switzerland would lack thousands of square miles of filling it: while
as to population Manchuria has only 18,000,000 people as compared with
{79} 118,000,000 in the European countries just mentioned. And after
having travelled in all of them as well as in Manchuria I should say
that the Asiatic area is the more fertile.
The possibilities of such an empire situated in the fairest portion of
Asia's temperate zone are simply illimitable. No one who has been
through the fruitful lands of the American Corn Belt and Wheat Belt
and goes later through Manchuria can fail to note the similarity
between them in physical appearance and natural resources, and it may
well be that what the settlement of the West has meant in America
these last fifty years the development of Manchuria will mean in Asia
these next fifty.
In itself the sheer creation of such a country--larger far than Great
Britain and Germany, as rich as Illinois and Manitoba--would appeal
at once to American commerce and industry, but you have only begun to
grasp the significance of Manchuria when you compare it to the
creation of such an empire in some favored portion of the sea.
Manchuria means all this, but it means more: Its possession would give
such vastly increased influence to any Power possessing it as to make
that Power a menace to the commercial rights of all other nations in
Asia--rights of almost vital importance both to Europe and America.
England and Germany, of course, are already dependent upon foreign
trade for their prosperity, and President McKinley was never so
seerlike as when, in his last speech at Buffalo, he reminded the
American people that their own future greatness depends upon the
development of trade beyond the seas. And it was to Asia, the greatest
of continents, and especially to China, the greatest of countries on
this greatest of continents, that he looked, as we must also look
to-day. In Secretary Hay's memorial address on McKinley, which I had
the good fortune to hear, the dead President's determined efforts to
maintain the ancient integrity of the Dragon Empire were fittingly
mentioned as one of his most distinguished services to his people and
his time. {80} To keep the immense area of China from spoliation by
other nations and to preserve to all peoples equal commercial rights
within boundaries are absolutely essential to the proper future
development of both European and American commerce and industry.
II
This is why the Open Door in Manchuria is a matter of very real
concern to every Occidental citizen; this is why the other nations
after the ending of the Russo-Japanese War were careful to see that
these belligerents guaranteed a continuance of the Open Door policy;
this is why it is of importance to us to know whether this pledge is
being kept.
In centering my attention upon Japan in this article let me say in the
outset, I am not to be understood as being one whit more tolerant of
Russian than of Japanese aggression in Manchuria--I am not. In the
Russo-Japanese War my sympathies were all with Japan, my present
friendships with numbers of her sons I prize very highly, but I cannot
blind myself to the fact that she is apparently "drunk with sight of
power" in the Orient.
As conditions are to-day, the reason for giving primary attention to
Japan's position in Manchuria rather than Russia's must be
self-evident. In the first place, the territory embraced in her sphere
of influence is more important and contains two thirds the population.
Then again: Northern Manchuria being cold and inhospitable, Japan's
sphere not only covers the fairer and more favored section
agriculturally, but from the standpoint of military strategy (as a
mighty war taught all the world) Japan is vastly better placed. With
Port Arthur in her possession, and the new broad-gauge line from
Antung and Mukden enabling her to rush troops across the Sea of Japan
and through Korea to Manchuria without once getting into foreign
waters or on foreign soil, she could ask nothing better. And finally
and most significant of all, Russia has {83} suffered perhaps the greatest
humiliation in her history by reason of Manchurian aggression; she has
learned Japan's point of vantage; and whatever advance she makes in
the near future will be only by Japanese sufferance and connivance.
{81}
[Illustration: LIKE SCENES FROM OUR WESTERN PRAIRIES.]
Manchuria is a vast empire--one of the most fertile portions of the
earth's surface. The great money crop is the soy bean, and the lower
picture shows miles of beans and bean-cake awaiting shipment at
Changchun.
{82}
[Illustration: MANCHURIAN WOMEN (SHOWING PECULIAR HEAD-DRESS),]
[Illustration: CHINESE WASTE-PAPER COLLECTOR.]
Everything in China is scrupulously saved--except human labor. That
is wasted on a colossal scale through the failure to use improved
machinery or scientific knowledge.
{83 continued}
Whatever may be the meaning of the alleged secret treaty between Japan
and Russia, the great truth which all nations need to remember is
this: Whatever scotches Japanese aggression in Manchuria scotches
Russian aggression at the same time--automatically and simultaneously.
To the Open Door in Manchuria Japan carries the key.
III
Japan's primary commercial advantage over all other nations in South
Manchuria, her railway monopoly, together with the use she is making
of this monopoly and her plans to maintain it, we must now consider
more in detail.
When the war with Russia ended, Japan succeeded Russia in the control
of what is now the South Manchurian Railway, running from Dairen
(formerly Dalny) to Chang-chun, 438 miles, through the very heart of
the country, and she also obtained from China the right "to maintain
and work the military line constructed between Antung and Mukden
_and_"--as if of secondary importance--"to improve the said line so as
to make it fit for the conveyance of commercial and industrial goods
of all nations." The stipulation with regard to the South Manchurian
Railway was that China should have the right to buy it back in 1938,
and with regard to the Antung-Mukden line, in 1932, by paying the
total cost--"all capital and all moneys owed on account of the line
and interest." And just here Japan is playing a wily game.
Consider, for example, the Antung-Mukden line just referred to, now
regarded as a part of the South Manchurian system. Although running
through a very mountainous and sparsely settled area, it is of immense
importance to Japan {84} from a strategic standpoint, connecting Mukden as
it does with the Japanese railway in Korea leading directly to Fusan,
and thus enabling Japan to transport troops across her own territory
to Manchuria without taking any of the risks involved in getting out
of her own waters and boundaries. The paramount military importance of
the line is further indicated by the fact that no one had thought of a
commercial line here at all. Simply as a matter of war-time necessity
Japan stretched a 2-1/2-foot narrow-gauge line across these mountain
barrens to transport her troops in 1905. It is interesting to see,
therefore, how she has now interpreted her right to "work, maintain
and improve"--especially "improve"--this line. In October I spent two
days travelling over its entire length (188 miles), most of the time
on the narrow-gauge part, and I was amazed to see on what a
magnificent scale the new broad-gauge substitute line is now building.
In striking contrast to the traditional Japanese tendency to
impermanence in building, this line is constructed regardless of
expense as if to last for a thousand years. Tunnel after tunnel
through solid rock, the most superb masonry and bridges wherever
streams intervene, the best of ballast to make an enduring
roadbed--all these indicate the style of the new, not "improved" but
utterly reconstructed, line which is building for Japan's benefit at
China's expense--at China's expense directly if she buys it back in
1932, at China's expense indirectly if she doesn't.
It will be remembered, of course, that according to her agreement with
China, Japan was to begin the work of "improving" the Antung-Mukden
line within two years. Whether she was strangely unable to make any
sort of beginning in the period, or whether she purposely delayed it
in order to show her contempt for Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria, it
is difficult to say; what is known is only that the Mikado's
government let its treaty rights lapse, and then when China objected
to a renewal, defied China, and proceeded with the work of
"improvement" by what was euphemistically termed "independent action."
{85}
Incidentally, it may be recalled just here that in the Portsmouth
Peace Treaty Japan and Russia jointly promised the rest of the world
"to exploit their respective railways in Manchuria exclusively for
commercial and industrial purposes and in no wise for strategic
purpose."
That Japan (in the event no other method of getting control of
Manchuria appears) hopes to make the railroads too expensive for the
hard-pressed Peking government to buy back is self-evident. She is
looking far ahead, as those interested in the continuance of the Open
Door policy must also look far ahead. The real Open Door question is
not a matter of the last four or five years or of the next four or
five years, but whether after a comparatively short time the Door is
to be permanently closed as in Korea. If it be said that Japan is only
human in laying many plans to gain so rich an empire, let it also be
said that other nations are only human if they wish to protect their
own interests.
IV
For one thing, as has been suggested, Japan has a perfectly obvious
plan to make the railways too expensive for China to purchase when the
lease expires, and just here some comparisons may be in order. In
Japan proper the government-owned railway stations are severe and
inexpensive structures in which not one yen is wasted for display and
but little for convenience. When I was in Tokyo, for example,
Ex-Premier Okuma, in a public interview, called attention to the
disreputable condition and appearance of the leading station
(Shimbashi) in the Japanese capital, declaring that foreign tourists
must inevitably have their general impressions of the country
unfavorably influenced by it, so primitive and uninviting is its
appearance. But when it comes to the South Manchurian Railway, also
under the control of the Japanese Government (five sixths of the
investment held by the government and one {86} sixth by individual
Japanese), one finds an entirely different policy in force. Handsome
stations, built to accommodate traffic for fifty years to come, have
been erected. In Dairen, "virtually the property of the railway
company," the system has built a magnificent modern city--street
railways, waterworks, electric light plants, macadamized roads, and
beautiful public parks. More than this, the railway company, not
content with the best of equipment for every phase of legitimate
railway work, including handsome stations and railway offices, such as
Japan proper never sees, has also erected hotels which, for the
Orient, may well be styled sumptuous, in five leading cities of
Manchuria. Comparatively few travellers go to Mukden, and yet the
hotel which the South Manchurian Railway has erected there, for
example, is perhaps not excelled in point of furnishing and equipment
anywhere in the Far East.
In buying back the railroads, therefore, China will be expected not
only to pay for the railways themselves but for all the irrelevant
enterprises--hotels, parks, cities--in which the railway companies
have embarked; for lines "improved" beyond recognition, and for lines
built not even with a view to ultimate profit, but for their strategic
importance to a rival and possibly antagonist nation! As an Englishman
said to me: "It's much the same as if I, a poor man, should rent you a
$1000 house, agreeing to stand the expense of some improvements when
taking it back, and you should spend $10,000 in improving my $1000
house--and largely to suit your own peculiar business and purposes."
More than this, Japan, as I have said, is determined to keep her
absolute monopoly on South Manchurian railway facilities. In Article
IV of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Japan and Russia reciprocally
engaged not to "obstruct any general measures, common to all
countries, which China may take for the development of the commerce
and industry of Manchuria," but in December of the same year Japan
caused China to yield a secret agreement prohibiting any new line "in
the {87} neighborhood of and parallel to" the South Manchurian Railway
or any branch line that "might be prejudicial" to it. Japan, under
threat of arms, forced China to abandon the plan for the
Hsinmintun-Fakumen line after arrangements had been made with an
English syndicate, and later Japan and Russia on the same pretext
prevented the proposed Chinchow-Aigun line across Mongolia and
Manchuria, although a hundred miles or more away from the South
Manchurian line.
V
That Japan, then, holds the whip hand in Manchuria, and expects to
continue to hold it, is very clear. With China as yet too weak to
protect herself, Japan is virtually master of the situation. Let us
ask then--since this is in an American book--whether the Open Door
policy is being enforced even now; to ask it of any one in Manchuria
is to be laughed at. I tried it once in a Standard Oil office and the
man in front of me roared, and an unnoticed clerk at my back,
overhearing so absurd a question, was also unable to contain his
merriment. It is not a question of the fact of the shutting-up policy,
Chinese and foreigners in Manchuria will tell you; it is only a
question as to the extent of that condition.
The truth is that the ink was hardly dry on the early treaties before
the discriminations began. The military railroads, which Japan was in
honor bound to all the world to use only for war purposes, were used
for transporting Japanese goods before the military restrictions with
regard to the admission of other foreign goods were removed. The
Chinese merchant and his patrons were famishing for cotton "piece
goods" and other manufactured products, and the Japanese goods coming
over were quickly taken up and a market for these particular "chops"
or "trademarks" (the Chinaman relies largely on the chop) was
established. By the time European and American goods came back their
market in many cases {88} had already been taken away. In some cases,
too, their trademark rights had been virtually ruined by the closeness
of Japanese imitation. Even on my recent tour, among consuls of three
nations, at Manchurian points, I did not find one who did not mention
some recent case of trademark infringement.
Then came the period of freight discriminations and rebates, when the
Japanese (principally the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, the one great octopus
of Japanese business and commerce) secured freight rates that
practically stifled foreign business competitors. The railway company
now asserts that rebates (formerly allowed, it alleges, because of
heavy shipments) are no longer given; but in many cases the evil
effects of the former rebating policy remain in that Japanese traders
were thus allowed to rush in during a formative period and establish
permanent trade connections.
Meanwhile, too, the relations between the Japanese Government and the
Mitsui Bussan Kaisha are so close that competitors are virtually in
the plight of having to ship goods over a line owned by a
rival--without any higher tribunal to guarantee equality of treatment.
As was recently declared:
"Two directors of the South Manchurian Railway are also directors of
Mitsui Bussan Kaisha. The traffic manager of the railway is an
ex-employee of Mitsui. The customs force at Dalny is not only
entirely Japanese--no other foreigner in charge of a Chinese customs
office employs exclusively assistants of his own nationality--but a
number of the customs inspectors are ex-employees of Mitsui. The
Mitsui company also maintains branches all through Manchuria in and
out of treaty ports. In this way they escape the payment of Chinese
likin, or toll taxes. The Chinese have agreed that these taxes--2
per cent, on the value of the goods each time they pass to a new
inland town--shall not be paid so long as they remain in the hands
of the foreigner. American piece goods often pay likin tax, two,
three, or four times, while the Japanese--sometimes legitimately by
reason of their branch houses, sometimes illegally by bluffing
Chinese officials or smuggling through their military areas--manage
to escape likin almost altogether."
It may not be true that the Japanese customs officials at Dairen (the
treaty provides that China shall appoint a Japanese {89} collector at
this port), ignorantly or knowingly, allow Japanese goods to be
smuggled through to Manchuria--although consuls of three nations a few
months ago thought the matter serious enough to suggest an
investigation--but the evasion of likin taxes in the interior is an
admitted fact.
More flagrant still is another violation of international treaty
rights. Under Chinese regulations foreign merchants are not allowed to
do business in the Manchurian interior away from the twenty-four open
marts, but it has been shown that several thousand Japanese are now
stationed within the prohibited area, and Japan's reply to the Chinese
Viceroy's protest is that he should have objected sooner and that it
is now too late. Meanwhile, many Chinese merchants both in the
interior and along the South Manchurian Railway, themselves paying the
regular likin and consumption taxes, are finding themselves unable to
compete with the Japanese, who refuse to pay these taxes. Thus Japan
is gradually rooting out the natives who stand in her way, and, day by
day, tightening her grip on the country.
She is advancing step by step as she did in Korea.