The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-08-22
THE STORM CENTRE
 OF THE WORLD
(By Dr. R. Warren Conant.)
 ARTICLE VI. The Cornrnon People of China.

v
 The Common People of China. China is the land of contradictions according to our ideas. To himself, doubtless, John Chinaman is admira- bly consistent, but to us he Is psycho- logical puzzle and perversion. He could hardly seem more unearthly had he dropped upon this planet rom Mars. ..
 However well he may read and write he cannot spell, for there Is no alpha bet in Chinese; and he reads from right to left, and from the bottom of the page to the top. His writing is done, not with a pen, but with pointed stick. Though he Is devout be- l.lieyer in spirits. he thinks that they lfcannot turn a sharp corner or climb a hill.
 His badge of mourning Is not black, but white, and funerals are conducted, not with quiet and solemnity. but with festivities, cracker-fring and trumpet blowing. For widow or other bereav- ed female it is the proper thing to howl and grovel at the funeral. but no one is scandalized if she relieves the strain of grief occasionally by an aside gig gle with a friend. : John Chinaman is famous for his | flial piety To such an extreme is this carried that the wisest and great est man in the land remains in childish subjection to the caprices of his parents however wrong or foolish, so long as l they live. Even after they are gone. | the hand of the dead still rests heavy | upon the living and every effort must be made to propitiate their ill-will; for every one knows, in China, that the | spirits can ruin your business and ahenate your friends. So the bereaved son is very careful to select lucky spot" for his parents graves and to pay their memories high honors.
 l This explains why the face of the country is all broken out with little
 mortuary mounds, and why John be- | comes frantic at the mere suggestion of running a railroad in a straight line over those mounds.
 Some foreigners, observing this fiial l piety from a safe distance, have been so dazzled by its theoretical beauty as | to declare that the tremendous anti Quity of the Chinese empire is bright and shining example of Honor thy l father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" But to
 any one who has had opportunity to observe at close range the practical
 workings of this piety, such an infer
 ence seems much like a sorry joke.
 The fact is that few things have been
 done more to paralyze all progress I than this same ancestor worship. The 1 doctrine that it is sacrilege for the son
 to attempt any improvement on the
 ideas and methods of his father has
 crystalized through centuries into an
 impenetrable conservatism. Whatever
 mas been Is best. In such a topsy-turvy
 world does John Chinaman live, as
 incomprehensible to us as ours to him.
 On every hand, both in activity and inactivity, are the marks of arrested development. China is fossilized. They still place coin in the mouth of the corpse. just as the Greeks and Romans did two thousand years ago; they make a hole in the roof to let out the spirits Of the dying. and they burn imita ation paper money and offer food at the grave for the use of the dead. In all things, l they are childish. In war they think to Tighten their enemies by wearing hideous masks, firing off crackers, and | beating drums. Even so late as the at- tack on the legations in July and Au- gust, 1900, they not only squandered their ammunition by firing wholesale at nothing, but were silly enough to 1 let off string after string of fire-crack- CTS. Even as full-grown men, they never out-grow the childs love of mak- l ing a racket.
 Patriotism, as we understand 1t. scarcely exists in China. But John can hardly be blamed for that. Gov ernment means for him a terrible ar 1 bitrary power, cruel, greedy, ineXor- able in which he has no voice against which he has practically no appeal. Human life and rights are cheap. Tor | fIIr m TNif a means of punishment or extortion Theoretically, every citizen has the right of appeal to the Emperor, prac- tically he is at the mercy of officials. 1 There are few beggars in proportion to populat ation. few wealthy outside of the officials, and no great well-to do middle class. The overwhelming ma jority of the people manage to live where a white man would starve, but only by constant industry. They ex- hibit in actual operation certain eco- nomical conditions which with us are. so far. happily theoretical. There, for instance, we see population constantly erowding up to the limit of subsistence, and a strong argument for the Nal | thusian doctrine of the beneAcence of wars and pestilences. There, too, Is H. frustrated the extreme sociallstic doc | Urine of employment for the greatest | nunlDer, WlLnOuI regard 10 eHlcleHcy Of progress One reason why the Chinese are So stubbornly opposed to any i'm provement in mechanical processes is that it involves the throwing of thous- ends out of the only employment by which they are barely able to keep alive. They have no margin and no alternative. So they go on for centu- ries, effecting a minimum of produc- tion by a maximum of effort. an object lesson for all those who call machinery
 the pcor mans curse.
 But there are other req sons for the
 Industrial stagnation. of China. It is
 not safe for a private citizen to accu-
 mulate property, for the same reason
 as in Turkey If he does. straightwaS
 he becomes an object of malicious envN by his neighbors and of plunder by tho
 powerful. Therefore. every condition
 both of heredity and environment. is
 opposed to the spirit of progress and oi
 patriCtism My Country, lis oi
 Thee" would be incomprehensible to a
 Chinaman.
 And so we might 20 on indefinitely, rcint;ng out Johns faults and follies. for if is a large subject and 2 proper,