The San Francisco call., 1898-07-24

as in the case where some China men were burned to death at Rock Springs from sheer wantonness. his government would step in to protect them. The whole power of a govern ment will be used to protect one sub ject of that government in his rights in foreign land.
 "The Chinese rulers are by no means a stupid set" continued Mr. Hit. Many years ago at Paris I talked one day with the Chinese Minister about railroads. It was just after his gov ernment had torn up six miles of rail- road which had been constructed from Shanghai. l asked him why this ob- ject lesson In the usefulness of travel by steam had been removed from the sight of the people when it might have done so much in educating them to a realization of the need of other and longer roads. Our people were inter ested at the time in seeing an opening for American investment and Ameri can labor in building roads in China.
 "I said to him: You know the value of the steam railroads?' He answered that he knew it quite as well as l. But, he said, we of the governing class have different task from that in America. With you the effort is continually to do something new, to excel Your pc Jple are always talking about doing so much more in this or that direction than was ever done before. Our one purpose is to keep the. people in order, coLtented and quiet. We do not want another Tae Ping rebellion. A rebellion m China means the loss of many million lives much more than your civil war cost you.
 '''When the six miles of railroad was laid no regard was paid to the burial places of the dead. In China the dead T t. laFT the tombs are scattered everywhere It is part of the religious feeling of my pople to believe that the dead can be disturbed, and that their spirits then disturb everybody else. It has been said in the lower classes that the dead were disturbed by this railroad, and that they were bringing on calamity. That impression had gone out quickly through district densely populated, until it had penetrated thirty or forty miles in all directions, creating fear and discontent missing hardly any one in it's progress.
 The ruling class, of course, has no belief in such things, which powerfully influence the lower classes, but 1t was necessary to quiet them and appease them So the matter was gravely in- vestigated, and the Sole High Priest of God-that is, the Emperor-having cast his eye on the railroad, decreed that it should be torn up and sent to the other end of the earth. As matter of fact, it was sold, but not to China. The iron was sent to New York.
 This Chinese statesman said that there was only one way In which the railroad could be introduced in China. The Chinese people resented the in troduction of foreign labor and es- pecially of a foreign contractor who bribed the officials and became wealthy. The Chinese railroads, he said, would have to be built by Chi nese, and they would have to be intro duced at time when it could be said that they were being built not to bring the enemy into the country, as the Chinese people thought they were then, but to enable the Emperor to get at the enemy.
 That was the way in which the tele- graph was introduced It was said that it was intended to bring the news to the Emperor. When the people un- derstood that this was the purpose, they raised no objection to it and now China has many telegraph wires. In the same way modern weapons were introduced, because 1t was said to the people that the Emperor had seized the enemy's weapon to use against him that gunpowder was originally Chin csc invention. The prediction which this Chinese Minister made has been verified and to-day Chinese labor is building railroads through China"
 I asked Mir. Hit if the Hawaiian people had acquired citizenship in the United States by the act of passing the resolutions of annexation and If we were hereafter responsible for the acts of the Hawaiian government. He said he did not understand this condition would fully exist until we had taken possession of the islands formally and raised our flag over them Even after that, it is expressly provided in the annexation resolution that the laws of the island should remain in force until new laws are made by Congress. He said it was a recognized principle in all countries that existing laws superseded by others. Merely be- cause we had voted to annex the isl ands they could not be without law until Congress should make laws to govern them.
 I asked him if he believed that there was any danger of the introduction of leprosy into this country from Hawaii
 Not at all," he said. We have a leper colony in Louisiana and there is another in Canada. l never heard of any one catching leprosy like smallpox ! being in the place where the lepers were or coming into passing contact with them. I suppose If man lived and associated closely with lepers and came in contact with them for a year he might get leprosy in his system, especially if predisposed by scrofulous affections or uncleanly in habits. l saw a colony Of lepers in Jerusalem years ago, and while there went many times to the places where they were. No one seemed to be afraid of the con- tagion of the disease It Is a dreadful malady and generally deemed incur able. But the leper is not so unhappy as most people think. He has no pain from it. When they were taken by charitable German ladies to a hospital just outside of Jerusalem they would watch to escape and return to the others"
 MT Hit probably does not welcome