The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-06-24
CHINA'S UNEMPLOYED
HOW THE WORLDS GREATEST EN-
PRE- TAKES CARE OF ITS POOR.
The Wonderful Economies OF the Ce-
lestiafs - Chinese Beggars and
Their Horrible Practices.

copyrighted, 1894, by Frank G. Carpenter)
NANKING, China, May 20.-I understand
that many Americans are patting them
selves on the back at their success In
economizing during the present hard times.
They don't know what economy is. They
should take trip to China and learn
something of the science of saving. The
expense of living is here reduced to min
imum, and these Chinese millions would
grow fat on what the thrifty French and
Germans waste. The food for poor man
in Marking costs him more than cents
day, and at 81 a month a man will
support family and lay up money. met
a fat, joly-looking Chinaman this morn
ing, who told me he had a wife and five
children, and his income was sufficient for
all his wants. He earned about two gold
dollars a month as a carpenter, and his
wife makes dollar more by going out
TO work. 1t costs cents a day to feed
a patient in the Methodist Hospital here.
and a farmer may be hired for from ten
to twelve dollars year, provided he has
his rice, his head shaving and his tobacco.
1t costs about S. year to buy the ward
robe Of a common laborer, and a Chinaman
will put flesh on a dollar a month. The
majority of the people Of this part of China
are We'll 1ed ana we'll dressed. 1ney nave
good faces, and they are, / believe, far
happier than the average American labor
ers. They seem to enjoy their lives and
| their families and they are far above the
average of the world in their manners and
| culture 1 have mixed Unfortunately
| among them and find them polite and kind
| ly They crowd about we wherever / go.
| They finger my clothes, and when take a
photograph or stop to write a note they al
most block the street in their anxiety to
see what the foreign barbarian is doing.
| Their curiosity, however. is free from mall
| ice, and they are not the fierce foreign
| devil haters whom / met with further up
| the river 1 find much in them to admire,
| and / wonder every day at their wonderful
| economies.
THEIR ECONOMIES.
| Let me mention a few of them. In the
| first place in the way Of fuel. Nearly all
| of the fires in Marking are made of straw
| and reeds. Every whisp of dry grass rs
| cut and saved There are thousands OF peo-
| pie who do nothing else but reap the reeds
which grow along the banks of the Yangtse
| Kiang and bring them into the cities TO
| sell. These reeds are as thick as the base
| of a walking stick and are often fifteen
| feet long They are cut and stacked up
4
ried up and down the river in fiatJbottodned
boats. Such wood as is used is tied up in
| little punches and is sold by weight Char
| coal is sometimes found, and I see here
| and there little balls of coal dust of about
| the size of a baseball The powdered coal
Is mixed with mud and dried in this shape.
| No one in China, however, either rich or
| poor, thinks of keeping warm by means OF
fuel There are no furnaces nor baseburn-
| ers, and wadded clothing among the poor
| and fur garments among the rich keep out
the cold. A fire is never built by a poor
| man except when it is absolutely necessary.
| and the hot water used for the tea and rice
| in the early morning is sold by hot water
| stores. You can get a bucket of boiling
water for one-tenth Of a cent, and there is
| one such store in Shanghai to every twenty
! families A large amount of rice is cooked
at one time, and the breakfast rice is
warmed by the pouring of hot water or hot
| tea over Ii.
Speaking of tea, there are tea shops or
| restaurants all over China, and you get
very fair meals in these for small prices.
| The cooking ovens are at the entrance of
the tea house, and you have often to pass
| the cooks in going in to your meal. The
| tea is put into cups and hot water poured
| the contents the cup is filled with hot
water and one drawing Of tea is supposed
| to last one customer for a meal. After he
! leaves the tea grounds are gathered up and
| dried. They are sold later to poorer
| restaurants or to families. and nothing
| about the cook shop goes to waste Even
| the water in which the potatoes are boiled
| and the other vegetables cooked is saved
| and sold for the feeding of hogs, and the
| bones of the meat are bought by the max
| ers OF chop sticks. Mr.. Ferguson, the pres
| ident Of the Marking University, told me
| that he had for long time trouble in get
| ting any meat brought to his house with
| the bones in IT, and he found that butchers
| always cut out the bones and sold them
| separately from the meat itself. You see
| no empty cans or bottles lying about the
| houses of the foreigners of Marking. The
| Chinese take them. They sell the bottles.
| and the tin of the is used by the tin
ners. A large part Of The tin used in China
| comes from the petroleum cans of the STAN
| dard Oil Company, and every bit of iron
is worked up by the blacksmiths into knives
and farming implements. A large part of
| the razors of China are made of old horse
shoes. and these brought here by the
ship load from Europe, and are carried to
4 II
| Prussian war they were torn from the feet
Of the horses killed in battle and were
| brought here by the thousands of barrels.
THE OLD CLOTHES MAN
The old clothes of China does a big
ger business than his brothers of other
| parts of the world. There are streets of
secondhand clothiers in every Chinese city
and clothes are sold over and over again
until they get down to the beggars BY
this time they are shreds of rags. but their
end is not yet. After the beggars find Them
too poor for even their use they are sold
| as old rags and are bought by the makers
| of shoes. The shoes of the men and boys
| of China have soles nearly an inch thick,
| and these soles are made Of rags, which
have been washed and dried and then
pasted layer upon layer until they reach
the thickness required. They are cut then
into shape and are polished along the
edges that you would think them made
| Of leather or wood. The uppers are made
| Of different qualities of silk or fine cloth,
and the Chinaman's shoe If manufactured
In America would cost more than the kind
we use ourselves. In the making of the
rain boots for muddy weather and hard
| FRA yelling qoIaS IF iron ora of&an oddo1