The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-08-03


 hundred steel cars and a steam engine or two Of European make at the time l entered the yard. The cars were loaded with machinery. and were be- ing hauled to, the rolling mill in the rear.
 followed one of the trains. We first came to eight large boilers. near which were what looked like vast hay stacks. but which were sheds of mats, in which the coke was stored. Be- yond these there were two massive furnaces for the smelting Of the ore, Each was one hundred feet high. and l climbed to the top of one of them by the spiral steps on It's outside. Below me l could see the roof of the vast ma chine shops. which are now being filled with expensive works These shops cover at least twenty-five acres and there are here many acres under the Iron roof. A railroad runs by their side. and 6 smokestack one hun dred and fifty feet high rises in the air behind them. Beyond them, in the distance you see the buildings of the viceroy's arsenal, where he is making modern rifles and other guns. and near this Is brick works. where bricks are being made with the latest of improved European machinery. entered the machine shops. The din of an im- mense boiler factory greeted my cars, and found myself in the midst of hun dreds of Chinese machinists, who were working in putting up all sorts of roll ing mills and machinery. A large part or the works is already up. but 1t takes time to build shop of this magnitude anywhere. and in China things go very slowly. The viceroy has been spend- Ing so much that he has reached the end of his pile. and he Is now waiting to get an advance from Pekin. The government, however. is getting ready Tor the celebration of the sixtieth an- niversary of the birthday of the em- press dowager, and upon this will be spent enough to build a road from Pe- kin to Canton. and the people will be taxed In consequence. It Is not 80 easy. however. to overtax the China men, as 1t is in other so-called savage countries, and the government is try ing to economize in every way. There Is railroad being built in the north- ern part of the empire, and the regular appropriation set aside for this has been two million dollars a year. I see by to-day's translation of the "Pekin Gazette" that 1t has been decided by the board of revenue of the emperor to omit the appropriation this year in or der to use the money to whoop 1t up for the old dowager. It will put the road back ten months. but this makes no difference to the Chinese.
 This northern railway is the only working road in China. I expect to go to Tientsin and travel over 1t. I un- derstand that 1t has been pushed rap idly within the past year or so toward the Manchurian frontier and that 1t was of service to the government in the recent rebellion there. It Is for the purpose of defense that the Chinese will build railroads. The best thing that could happen to the country would be first-clas war with the foreign powers This would lead to the pushing out of enterprise in every direction, Roads would be built, and their buttonhole eyelids would be stretched far enough apart for them to see that China is by no means the center of the earth, as they suppose. This northern road was first built to take coal from the mines to theTaku. forts and the naval ships. When was in China i've years ago it was only about eighty miles long. It has, am told, now about reached the great wall, and will soon penetrate Mongolia. There are now two factions here in favor of railways One wants them as a means of defense, and the other wants them for, commercial pur- poses. Neither, however, would ad- wise the bringing of foreign capital to build them; and their motto is: China for the Chinese.