The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-13
GREAT PROBLEM
 FOR TIE CHINESE Far-Reaching Superstition is
 Bar to Progress REFORM MUST BE GRADUAL
  Change in Diet Necessary To Raise Physical Efficlenoy-New Indus tries Must Be Developed for
 Dense Populations.
REFORM MUST BE GRADUAL

F. M Freedman. in the Chicago News.
 A change in the food eaten by my peo- pie is absolutely necessary if we are to raise their physical efficiency" said the intelligent Chinese merchant whom l met on the steamship Siberia. I've eat alto gether too much rice and altogether too little neat" he went on to say, when asked him for particulars.
 For the scholar and the abstract thinker, a light diet not interfering with the intellectual processes, may or may not be a requisite. As to that I am not prepared to speak. But certainly for the physical worker 1t is detriment Any way. the age for mental abstraction has passed for too many centuries has China lost itself in the mists of meditation"
 How can better diet be secured un- less the earning capacity of your coun- tymen is increased?" I inquired. T un- derstand that they are beset with terrible poverty"
 My answer to that" he said, lis that we must develop our industries. We must 1 introduce factories and open avenues for employment by installing machinery Of 1 course the revolution would be grave and | fraught with serious consequences unless 1t were to come about gradually; for in country that is as densely populated as 1 China you cannot substitute machine for hand labor without displacing thousands temporarily and causing infinite suffering for the time being. But that change is coming about, and it may be fortunate that 1t is coming slowly.
 Japan Too Rash.
 Japan swung over to the occidental base too quickly, and I think it is suffer ing today from its rashness. Japan did in a decade what it might better and more wisely have extended over century. It's development has been too sudden to be healthy or normal. China, on the other hand, is slow, cautious and conservative. In the long run 1t may be far better off for it's caution and conservatism. Still I sometimes fear that the change is too slow-that we have delayed so long in starting that now 1t may all be too late"
 He paused something evidently passing through his mind that he preferred to keep to himself then he went on, deliber- ately weighing his words:
 T said that China is densely populated. That Is so; but China is not overpopu- lated. Think of our 1initless territoryi
 We are one-third of all Asia. You can put Great Britain inside of us fifty times
 If the United States, Alaska and your
 island acquisitions were to be planted
 down in China, they would leave room and to spare for Italy, Spain and France.
 But vast stretches of this land, compris- ing, maybe 60 per cent of the whole. are inhabited by less than 2 per cent of all our people. What we need is redistri- button of our population. Relief of con- gestion In some parts and development of others will solve to a certain degree our awful problem of poverty"
 Building of Railroads.
 "The building of railroads" I suggest. ed, would assist that process"
 He nodded.
 Tt may work out that way. But the progress of railroads in China necessarily Is more or less slow. For it Is one of the ineradicable beliefs of our people that
 the steam devil passing the fields where
 the dead are buried, disturbs the sleep of 1! their ancestors. In southern China, where | lilis Dtllcl IS bliOHBs we Hl4BHl never have had railroads at all but for the fact that so many of its denizens had been in America and elsewhere and thus come into contact with European civiliza-
 tion, learning in this way the folly and stupidity of objections to improvements" With the education of your masses this superstition must disappear" I said. Surely" he returned. "Our ancestor worship is so complicated with superstl-
 tions handed down from generation to generation that 1t is hard to tell where the one begins and the other leaves off. It isn't so much that we reverence our ancestors as that we fear if we neglect
 them their averaging spirits will bring bad luck to everything to which the living turn their hands. The fengshui or dragon, whose countless minions infest earth and air may cause, if angered all sorts of cosnic isturbances-earthquak foods, unreasonable and crop-destroying wealth. CT, eclipses, and what not
 Evils of Ancestor Worship. Tn all matters pertaining to building, Fengshui plays a most important part and must always be consulted through one of those quack astrologers, claiming kl to be in constant communication with him, that infest China. The good will of Fengshui must be gained before a burial takes place, and the construction of tele- graph lines, railroads and canals is se- rious thing, since the number of disturb ances that they may visit on the earth, according to the dragon are without num- Der. The telegraph poles between Tientsin and Pekin were pulled down again and again. Why? Because the shadows they cast over the graves of the ancestors were fraught with serious consequences" Tt is this mass of superstitions that stands like another great wall against the entrance of progress into China?' l Lust so-and quite naturally" he an- 4 swered "In ignorance of the physical laws that govern natural phenomena our people are at loss to account for their working. They are logical and intelli. gent enough in their reasoning, but they have not the facts whereon to reason that are now the property of the schoolboys 1 of Europe and America. Education will uofc nd ,f s