The San Francisco call., 1895-05-19

for all kinds of machinery for the making
of arms and the munitions of war. There
are now more than 1000 men at work in
the shops at Shanghai. An equal number
are probably employed in the gunworks at
Tientsin, and the Foochow shipyards will
be pushed to their utmost capacity. The
Chinese have seen the necessity for rail-
roads, and their lack of ability to move
their troops without them. The first road
to be built will probably be one from Tient-
sin to Hankow, and thence to Canton. This
has been planned for years, and it will tap
a territory containing hundreds of millions
of people. The work of getting such con-
cessions will be slow, and it is very doubt
full whether foreigners will be allowed to
build railroads. If they should be permit
ted to do so the field for electricity and
steam is practically unlimited, and such
revolution in railroad building and manu-
featuring will take place as will turn the
remainder of the industrial world upside
down. 1 don't believe the Chinese will do
this at present. They move slowly. but it
will come eventually. They will, however,
have a great trouble in raising the money
to pay Japan, and there is no telling what
may be squeezed out of the government at
this time. Think of cities of 100000
500, 900 and ,00O, 900 within a few miles of
each other.
Think of country as big as the United
States, and containing about eight times as
many people, with no railroads whatever
and no decent wagon roads-a country in
most places as fiat as floor and well fitted
for railroads without grading, and you
have something of the condition of China
to-day. 1t is a country which has 1000
walled cities and countless villages. A
country where locomotion is expensive,
and where the people squeeze money
harder than they do anywhere else in the
world. There is no land on the globe
where cheap transportation would pay bet
ter. The harvest is ripe for the speculator
and the investor, if the fence of Chinese
conservatism and exclusion can be torn
away. Take Peking, with its million and a
half of people. 1t has not a line of street.
cars. Tientsin, eighty miles away, has a
million of people, and is one of the great
trading centers of the empire. Those who
ride go about in chairs, carried on the
shoulders of men, and all goods are carted
around on wheelbarrows. Tientsin sup
plies Peking with goods, and there is no
railroad between them. 1t is the same all
over China.
The Chinese are beginning to make their
own cotton. They have number of large
factories and Ii Hung Chang proposes to
build others. In these they have modern
machinery. A great part of the cotton
used is made by hand, not more than one
fifteenth being imported. Our cotton
or the native cottons, but they cost too
much, and hence we send but little manu-
factured cotton to China. The market
however, is enormous. One of the Consuls
made an estimate of it not long ago. He
said that the Chinese are clothed princi-
pally in cotton. There are at least AGO.
100000 of them, and they use about %
a consumption of 5000 900, 600 yards year.
Take your pencil now and see what that
means. Eight billion yards are "a 900 00O,-
600 feet, or strip of cotton yard wide
24000, 100000 feet long. AT 5000 feet
to the mile this would be more than
100000 miles long, or enough to
reach one hundred and sixty times
feet makes very wide city street. If you
could have three such streets running clear
around the world and could patch the
cotton used by the Chinese into one vast
crazy quilt, it would be more than enough
to carpet them. Of this enormous amount
more than seven and half bill on yards
are made by the Chinese, being woven by
the women on hand-looms. If we could
get low freight rates we ought to be able to
supply large part of these cottons. The
Chinese want a good cotton, and they
need heavy, strong and closely woven
goods for winter. In the future they will
probably make the greater part of their
which might be created for our raw cotton
is almost inestimable. There would be no
limit to production if we had it, and with
the opening of the Nicaraguan canal the
great part of it ought to come to US. The
kinds of cottons used by the Chinese are
generally blue in color. They use large
amount of drills, and the sails for their
vessels are made of this cloth.
The Chinese are now using quite lot of
American lumber. The lumber comes
from Oregon and Washington, and it goes
as far north as Peking. I saw American
pine in the lumber-yards of Japan, and l
met man who was trying to introduce it
into Eastern Siberia. During my stay in
Vladivostock an American ship loaded
wharves. and quite good deal of our -four
is now used in China. Strange as it may
seem to many, rice is an expensive form of
food there, and in the north MANY of the
people are too poor to eat it. There are no
big fiouring-mills in China, and even in
the city of Canton, which, you know, con-
tains about 100000 people, | saw oxen
grinding -four by dragging one stone about
on the top of another.
1t is impossible to appreciate the for
tunes which are sure to come sooner or
later to some one out of Chinese cheap
labor. l saw locomotive which they
built at the gun works near Shanghai.
WHICH lOOheu d5 Well as any turned out IN
our shops, and Chinese engineer was
operating it. He got about 25 cents day.
| saw men making everything under the
sun for wages about tenth of what the
same class of labor receives in the United
States, and the Englishman in charge told
me that it required only few months to
make a good mechanic out of an ordinary
Chinaman.
When the Chinese appreciate that they
can manufacture for the world The coolies
and the men who are now working on the
roads could be put into the factories and
the people will become a nation of me-
chanics and manufacturers. At present
they toll from ten to twelve hours dav
for wages which would hardly support
dog in this country. l have before me
list of wages given by DR.. Bedloe when a
Consul at Annoy. Here are some of them:
BARRIERS get So month, boatmen 81. brick
layers $5, masons Sc, laundrymen S4 and
PAYERS "a so per month. The plumber is a
rich man in America, but he is glad to re-
celye $6 25 month in China. Printers re-
ceive So month, tanners $6 month,
telegraph operators $24 month, ordinary
laborers 81 a month and ciger-makers
about SIS per month. 1t is the same all
over the empire and the wages may be di-
vided in half, as they are paid in silver.
which is worth only half the value of our