The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1909-11-23
HlNA'SlRONBACKBONE
A Hna' in'efes'of'ne fehowEmpre Discussed by One on the sceneI
By Frank G.. arpente
THE GREAT RAILWAY FROM Pc
KING TO CANTON, WHICH
THE CHINESE ARE Ex-

BY Frank G. Carpenter.

The Cal. Brice Concession. and How
it Melted Our Capitalists 900 Per
Cent-The New Construction Re
tween Canton n Wuchane-A
Talk With a Chinese Railway Di-
rector-HOw an American Educaf-
ed Chinese Built a RaiIroad-The
Line to Picking and Its Great Bridge
Over the yellow River-ExamD!es
of Cheap Railway Construction.
copyright, 1909, by Frank G. Car
penter.)
Wuchange.
I have Just had a talk with a di-
rector of q great railway which is to
be built from here to Canton. 1t will
form the Southern half of the great
C~anton-Peking system, which has
been rightly called the iron backbone
OF the empire. The division from Han
kOw to Picking is already in operation.
/ came over it this week. The south
ern section is that known in America
as the Canton-Hankow railway. 1t
Will begin here at Wuchang on the
Eang-Tse-Kiang, opposite Hankow
and will go on opposite HankoW, and
will so on south to the mighty city of
Canton. This part of the line is some
what known to the United States. It
was surveyed by American engineers
under a concession that was granted
TO Calvin Brice and others Of our ia
nous capitlists about eleven years
ago. AS far as / can learn the Amer
leans did little more than so Over the
line and begin it's construction. They
shilly-shallieG and dil1y-dallied until
the Chinese grew tired and then sold
back their concession at a profit of al
most 1000 per cent The Chinese are
glad to again have hold of their prop
efty, and they expect to put the line
through. Mr.. Tsou, the railway man
with uFhnno I talked iC q nJ1Shnr He
is a live. u~p-to-date capitalist, and is
business from start to finish. He has
been educated along western lines,
and speaks fluently half a dozen Ian
euages. Our conversation was al Eng
lish. He said:
we nave gone owe the route and
made new surveys, and we already
OF raising the money practically COM
pleted.
The road now planned is to con-
sist of -four great divisions, one for
each of the provinces through which
it runs. All told, the line will be about
500 miles long, and will pass through
the richest and most populous parts
Of the umpire. The northern section
egins here at Hankow, and runs for
40 miles southwark through the pro-
vince of Hupeh. This is the section
with which [ am connected. Hupeh
WIZ oA1N - II hioliSy ~ W
raised here and the road will be man
aged from Wuchang until the entire
line is completed. The next section
goes south from Hupeh to Human, and
the third through northern kWang-
tung, joining there the fourth, which
runs south through southern Kwang-
tung to Canton. Each of these pro-
vinces will handle its division, just as
Hupeh Will do"
A Costly Railroad.
""Will the line be easy to build?"
No, it Will not. According to the
first estimates made by your Ameri-
can engineers, the cost was put at
about twenty million dollars, or at
something like twenty-five thousand
dollars a mile. The probability is that
it will be twice that. The country is
either mountainous or rolling, and
there will be curve almost all the
way. Our route will be longer than
that surveyed by the Americans. They
followed the custom Of the United
States in such matters, forgetting that
our conditions are different. In your
country most Of the big roads have