Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1910-01-29
KING COTTON IN ASIA
..A.al corrospondence.l }


uANGHAI, 1s10-The growth OF
shanghai beats that of the gourd
~ Jonah. which sprane up In a
~ .toht 1t is now modern
city. 1t has business blocks
80 might be dropped down in New
london and not be out OF
OTIS md residences which would be
in washington or Pnris Along
&c pund. the wide road which faces
.-ic ,'.sr are a dozen or more banks
lie csnital runs into the tens cf
"MaSns "nv and whose managers are so
hinS hiI,oS that they can dip into the
u1'a,s Of the nations and draw out at
Pa,,re on the same street are club
''scs some of which have cost hun
n-.Ss of thousands of dollars TO build
Tr'arc are big hotels where you can live
Ill as at home. and shops. with
as alass windows, containing Euro
PSs P. goods Of every description,
pSLnnshai is the Paris OF the Far East.
:, 10 ono OF the richest cities OF Asia.
- ~ takes the best of all that Is go
ing.
IN THE BIG COTTON MILLS.
shanghai Is preparing to manufac-
,ure for the new China. 1t is putting
80 factories and foundries and start
tnr all sorts of new industries. II has
sIIk filatures which are producing bales
~ raw silk for our American weavers,
modern -four mills equipped with Mil
waukee machinery, and cigarette
factory owned by the American tobac-
"a trust which employees more than
-, COO hands. It has eight great cotton
Mills with several hundred thousand
spindles, and some which have $4,000 or
On 200 spindlcs in a single establish
ment. In these mills over 10000 Chi
nese men, women and children are en-
ployed, and they are spinning and
weaving cotton quite ms we'll as In any
NJ our American factories. The most
~ them are managed by Chinese fore
men and they give some idea of how
tho CeleStIals expect to make their own
cloth In the future.
During my stay here / have visited
some of tho biggest of the cotton fac
tories l went through the establish
ment of the Soy Chee Cotton Spinning
Company today. 1t lies on the Wham
nso river, the branch of the Yangtse
which gives Shanghai access to he sea,
and IL is so situated that the bales
can be landed right at the mills and
the goods shipped thousands of miles
into the interior by means of the riv-
ers. or to Japan or the United States.
The suburb connected with 1t is known |
as Hongkew. This Is a great factory
stream, running along its banks almost |
TO the Yangtse.
CHILD LABOR AT CENTS A DAY. |
The buildings OF the Soy Chee COM |
papy cover several acres. They are of |
fray brick and are shadowed' by a |
smokestack which rises to the height |
OF a 12-story fat. Entering them. 1 |
found over l 600 men, women and chill
dren at work. l went through room
after room filed with girls who wece
weaving and spinning, and l saw 200
children tending the machines. Some
OF them were little tots not higher than
my waist and many did not reach to
my shoulders. The smaller children
were pulling baskets filed with bobbin5
here and there about the rooms. The
larger ones were tending the spinning
mules and all were working so nard
that they scarcely looked up as 1 en-
tered
/ asked as to their wages. and found
that they were about of our cents
per day, and that the pay OF the older
hands ranged from that to 20 cents.
Think OF working 10 hours for cents.
and that In the dust of a spinning mill,
photographed some of the children.
the little ones almost to
ieath as | did so. The manager tells
ne that he has many whole families
employed In his factory-father, mother
md children all working. There are I,
no laws against child labor and the
oabies aid in keeping the wolf from the
door,
Speaking OF babies. there were sew
eral of these in the mill. Some were
still at the breast. and their mothers
had brought them along that they
might not lose work. remember
one girl of is spinning away with an
infant on her knees, and
another had a baby in a basket be-
side her. The child was quiet AS /
chucked 1t under the chin two yellow
dmples broke out in It's checks and 1t
smiled. In another place 1 saw a
three month old baby lying in a pile of
white cotton waste on the floor of the
mill.