Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1886-07-30

that was required for use in the agri-
culture or manufactures of the coun-
try. But the limit was early reached.
Hence the lack through many ages
past of industrial advancement which
has given to the arts of China the al
most steteotyped character manifest in
her social and political institutions.
could only attain excellence through
the highest development of mechani-
cal skill; and their reward could only
be obtained through the cultivation of
| certain faculties and these not separ-
ately but together, which may be
briefly enumerated as accuracy OF per-
ception, closeness Of calculation, INIT
ativeness in rare degree, and un-
wearying patience. The conditions of
existence, from the time of the build
ing of the first mud cabins on the
banks of the great rivers, had devel-
opcd these qualities with an intensity
not cquallcd elsewhere in the world;
and thus Il symmetry, perfect OF Its
kind, in the nature of the people en-
abled them to excel to the utmost
| within the narrow boundaries assigned
| by policy, by usage and tradition.
This excellence and others akin to it,
which constitute an indefeasible merit
so far as concerns the Chinese in their
own country, is standing menace as
an element i'll the relations of China
with the rest of the world.
In any employment where the
qualities referred to are essential to
success the Chinaman, their inheritor
through hundred generations, is to
be esteemed for his skill and feared
for his rivalry. The Chinese water
man will hold the sheet of his sail
with one hand and steer the craft
with the other, while with his foot he
feathers an oar to aid the work of
propulsion. The Chinese farmer, in
the working of titled fields, fits the
ground for the seed by causing one
laborer to dig the stubble with hoe,
another to shake off the earth and lay
the haulm in little bundles, while a
! third stirs the untouched soil be-
tween this manual labor rendering the
ground suitable to be further broken
by a plow drawn by men and women
yoked thereto, or, if the ground be
tough from the presence of clay, by a
single buffalo The Chinese colorist
uses the pigments common in Europe,
but secures higher brilliancy by
longer and more careful levigation in
their production. What the China
man has once seen done he can do
himself, with refinements of execution
due to his close perceptions and
habits of accurate work. Once taught,
he works as an automaton, but as an
automaton endowed with conscious
ness. l shall never forget my first
sight, years ago in San Francisco, of a
Chinese artisan at his work. 1t was
only the making of cigars, but the
tawny fingers moved as if directed by
the regular stroke of steam, and with
an accuracy that no mechanism could
have surpassed. Making no haste
and no pause, impassive to the cur
ious gaze of an onlooker, his horizon
apparently bounded by the space of
the bench before him, stunted in figure,
and with the dull and animalized vis-
age peculiar to his race, he stood, a
being trained to manual dexterity by
forty centuries of labor, but devoid of
the wants, the aspirations, the high
humanity with all its attendant needs
which forty centuries of intellectual,
emotional, and physical advancement
have given to the races with which
time and circumstance had brought
him face to face.
The conditions of soil, climate, and
geographical position which have
moulded the industries of China, have
furnished the basis, of her government
tai policy. Extending over many de-
grees of latitude, the climate permit
ing the growth of widely varying pro-
ducts. The general contour of the
surface being low and level, watered
by great streams, and favorable to the
construction of canals, the productions
of one part of the country supplies the
needs Of others, and an internal COM
merce served at once to provide occu-
patton and livelihood to a large pro-
portion of the people, and to supply
all actual necessities of the whole.
Many articles, both agricultural and
manufactured, and produced in their
greatest excellence, in but few locali-
tiles, from which they are, and for
many centuries have been, distributed
to other parts of the country. For
instance, from its northern portions
have been drawn its supplies of salt
and in less degree of coal, iron, por-
phyry, copper and gold,-musk from
the mountains of Kansuh, and strange
drugs from the plain OF Thanturg.
From Kansuh, also tobacco, milder
than ours, but none the less esteemed.
From the Eastern provinces, the most
fertile, healthful, and productive of the
whole kingdom, and containing near
ly half its population, are derived the
woven silks of Soochoo, and the wildly
colored grapes and fine embroideries
of its rhyming neighbor, Hoochoo.
| y;trocs ,1eo tho ROW o;llys of K,,r