The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-01-30
King Cotton In Asia
BY FRANK G. CARPENTER.

ana the Int is sometimes rebaled in pack
 ages of 300 pounds for export to the 1 United States and Europe. The nature
 of the native cotton makes it especially good for underwear, and some of 1t is sent to the United States for that pur-
 pose.
 Our cotton factories should send their
 agents here to study the market. These
 people dress in cotton instead of silk,
 and the most of the cloth used is spun and reeled by hand and woven at home With the new civilization wages will rise
 and the Chinese will wear more cotton
 than ever before. At present it Is safe to
 say that there are at least 400000.0o0 of
 them who dress in such goods all the year
 round. They wear only one or two thin
 garments in the summer, but in winter
 they have several suits well wadded to keep themselves warm, and in the north
 ern provinces they put on suit after suit as the weather grows colder. Indeed, some
 fieshy Chinese in full winter dress have trouble in getting through their own door
 ways. But even at one suit of 20 yards
 to each person per year the amount of cotton used Is so great that at least 5000 o00,000 yards are required. This amount is beyond comprehension. It would carpet i a pathway 60 feet wide from the earth to
 the moon, or cover one more than 20 miles
 wide from New York to Chicago. Our
 
 l countries is less than $33 000 GOO year. and
 all we send to Asia sells for less than s1S,- ] 100000. That which goes to China would
 hardly patch the knees of the Celestials, let alone make their clothes.
 How American oil Lights China. If our cotton interests could handle this market as the Standard Oil does the ex- ports from our southern states might run
 Into the hundreds of millions a year. The Standard oil company has its own agents In all the provinces and 1t Is pushing It's business in every city. Twenty years ago the oil was shipped here in tin cans It is now brought in tank steamers which carry 10000 tons at a load. The vessels start from San Francisco and land at half dozen different ports, where the oil Is pumped out into great storage tanks. l found such tanks at Hankow, 600 miles up the Yangtze Kiang, and saw the steamers unloaded by means of pump. The tanks there hold tens of thousands of barrels. They have factories connected with them, where the tin plate is made into hve-gallon cans. These are filled with oil and are distributed by the Yang tze and it's tributaries. The stuff is eco nomically handled, being sold in smaller
 and smaller packages as it gets farther
 away from the ports, and in some places
 almost by the spoonful. The Standard oil
 company has tanks at Tientsin and HonR-
 Kong. It does by far the biggest oil
 business in China, although the Burmese
 Russian and Sumatra companies com
 pete.
 Within the past year one of these latter
 companies has opened up a new oil ter
 rltory about 200 miles north of Pekin
 The oil Is carried in cans on wheelbar-
 rows over 100 miles to canal and thence
 hoated down to the capital The wheel
 barrow men go in caravans of 50 bar
 rows each. They are paid something like
 cents gold a day and other labor Is
 approximately cheap.
 Our Tobacco Trust.
 Another American institution which is
 doing big business in China is the to-
 bacco trust. It has its agents in all of
 the cities. and has established several
 big factories. There is one at Shanghai
 which employs 2000 girls in making and packing cigarettes. There is another at Mukden, and third at Hankow Indeed.
 the Americans are changing the Chinese rom pipe smokers to cigarette smokers, and machine-made cigarettes are now to be bought as far west as Tibet. The business Is done under the name of the standardization Tobacco company. and It has in its employ both British and American officers The chief manager is an American, who lives here at Shanghai He tells me the Chinese are a nation of tobacco smokers, and that they have been raising and using tobacco for over 300 years. The weed was introduced from Manila less than 50 years after Co., lumbus discovered America, and 1t has been in use ever since, although many of the Chinese Emperors have repeated ly tried to wipe it out. Much tobacco Is still smoked in pipes. two kinds of which 0r t. .~l.<~ 0x-- dry pipe. which may be of bamboo or clay or wood. Its bowl is small and sell dom holds more than a pinch of tobacco. The other pipe is metal box filled with water, through which the smoke is drawn before 1t enters the mouth. It has a tube about foot long, and this bends over at tho mouthpiece. This pipe is usually made of copper and silver, an alloy of copper, zinc, nickel and iron. It is used by both men and women.
 The natives make cigarettes of corn husks and bamboo leaves. They also roll tobacco in brown poper. Of late years, however. the rice paper cigarette has come Into vogue, and it is used more and | more every day by both men, women and children.
 Strike of Tobacco Girls. One of the Americans employed in the tobacco factory at Shanghai tells me they had big strike the other day. A thous- and-odd girls left the establishment and refused to return until their grievance was settled. The trouble, strange to say, came from coffin.
 The girls were in the habit of changing from one department to another without asking the manager, and they looked so much alike that the foreign officials could not tell if they were in their right places Thereupon a system of badges was insti- tuted, giving to each girl a pin labeled with characters indicating the name of the department to which she belonged Every girl had to have her own badge and wear it. The badges were round square or shaped like keystone accord ing to the rooms in which the girls worked It was the last badge which