The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-21
Chif1a'S s Iron Backbone
BY FRANK G. CARPENTER.

Copyright. 1909. by Frank G. Carpenter)
 wUCHANG. \ HAVE just had a talk with director
 of the great railway which Is to be \ built from here to Canton. It VIII form the southern half of the great can ton-Pekin system, which has been right ly called the iron backbone of the em- pire The division from Hankow to Pekin Is already in operation. l came over it this week The southern section Is that known in America as the canton Hankow railway. It will begin here at Wuchang, on the Yang-T -Tse-Kiang. opposite Hankow and will go on south to the mighty city of Canton. This part of the line Is somewhat known to the United States. It was surveyed by Amer lean engineers under a concession that was granted to Calvin Brice and others of our famous capitalists about Il years ago. As far as 1 can learn the Amer leans did little more than go over the line and begin it's construction They shilly-shallied and dilly-dallied until the Chinese grew tired and then sold back their concession to them at a profit of almust 1000 per cent. The Chinese are glad to again have hold of their prop erty, and they expect to put the line through. MT. Tsou, the railway man with whom 1 talked, is a pusher. He is 8 live, up-to-date capitalist, and is business from start to finish. He has been educated along western lines. and speaks fuently a half dozen languages Our conversation was in English. He said:
 I've have gone over the route and made new surveys, and we already have the schemes of organization and of rais- ing the money practically completed
 The road now planned Is to consist of four great divisions one for each of the provinces through which 1t runs. All told the line will be about 800 miles long, and will pass through the richest and most populous parts of the empire The northern section begins here at Han kow, and runs for 120 miles southward through the province of Hupeh- This Is the section with which I am connected. Hupeh will control it. The money will be 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 Kwangtung, join ing there to the fourth, which runs south through southern Kwangtung to Canton. Each of these provinces will handle its own division, just as Hupeh will do'
 A Costly Railroad.
 will the line be easy to build?''
 ''No, 1t will not. According to the first estimates made by your American en- gineers, the cost was put at about s2O000.- 0O0 or at something like $25.000 mile. The probability is that 1t will be twice that The country is either mountainous or rolling, and there will be curves al- most all the way. Our route will be longer than that surveyed by the Amer jeans. They followed the custom of the United States as to such matters forget ting that our conditions are different In your country most of the big roads have been pioneer lines. They have been laid out through the wilds, and the traffic has grown up to them. China is already de- veloped- We have many large cities. and the road should be built to join these to- gether. Your engineers planned the road without regard to these cities, making it more or less straight. We are building the road for the people and the traffic and are diverging a little here and there to connect the great centers. The moment the road is completed we shall have an enormous business"
 One Hundred Million People.
 Gan you give me some idea of the pop ulation the road will tap?"
 Not in actual figures replied MT. Tsou. We are backward in statistics, and I can only estimate the possibilities. The three provinces through which the road runs have a population of about 100,- O00,000 There are many large cities. Here at Hankow we have between 100000 and 100000. Canton Is as big as Chicago and there are other large towns all along the way. The road will be the chief trunk line of interior China, connecting the cap ital with Canton and running from there to the port of Kowloon, opposite Hong kong. According to the estimates of MT.