The star-progress. (Opelousas, La.) 1917-1921, 1919-11-29

preserve for another hour the lowell
ness of moment. But the making of
hair nets enables whole villages of
wrinkled old women of Shantung to
put little more food into ever-hun-
CRY stomachs.
when the American male emerged
from the wooden of former conven-
ton and donned the dapper suit OF
cool pongee, all the silkworms IN
Shantung had to work overtime, and
their masters added to strip of pork
to the family dish. A pongee-clad
crowd at Bar Harbor means better
fed population in Wei-hai-wel'
can American woman wears some
Chefoo lace, and thanks to her and
the purchases of her friends, almond
eyed girls are being trained in mission
schools 5000 miles away.
'The dougboy back from the war
is also booster for Shantung, though
perhaps he doesn't know it. As ne
tells of the ever-smiling Chinese
whom he saw making roads in France,
he testifies to the fine qualities OF
some of the worlds best laborers.
"The Shantung coolies did his talr
share of the war work. A hundred
and fifty thousand Of him went out
70 better living conditions and
wider outlook when the British
troopships steamed away from his
peninsular home. Hundreds of him
dropped shovel and seized gun or
fought with clubs and axes when the
breach at Chateau-Thierry yawned.
"Now some of those Shantung COO
lies are being returned to their homes
with new thoughts and ideals, spak-
ing Pidgin-French. Pidgin-English,
and what-not, but with wonderful
tales to tell of the men by whose
sides they fought.
"When China wants railways built
or canals dug, here are the boys who
showed the best Allied engineers what
loyal labor really was.
'Nor will they have to wait long.
An American corporation is only
waiting for better transportation IA
cilities before beginning. to dredge
once more the Grand canal, which
was binding China into an empire
two centuries vetore the Great Wall
began to shut out the rest of the
world and 400 years before the birth
in Bethlehem manager of Him who
was to affect China in degree sec
ond only to Standings great sage.
when 3O,O00,OOO people whose
idea of a days work is 16 hours are
crowded into a province the size of
Iowa, there must either be industrial
development in silk, lace and hair or
periodic migrations of labor to less
thickly settled parts of the world.
ain summer the Shantung coolie is
north along the Amur, mining gold or
harvesting soy beans in Manchuria.
have seen him carrying Hardin
flour aboard the Sungari steamers,
and he laid hundreds of miles of ties
on the Trans-Siberian. / have seen
him juggling gaily-painted sticks at
the Mimi Novgorod fair, and COM
panies of Shantung coolies fought for
the Bolsheviks beside the Kremlin
and against them near Tchita. In
ruined Van, Shantung coolie, heav-
lily dressed against the bitter cold of |
the Armenian plateau, rolled into
town ahead of twenty of his compat-
riots who brought flour to that starv-
ing city.
"Soon the Japanese will be laying
the rails for their new railway con-
cession from Kaomi, near Tsing-tau,
to Hauchifowfu, whence Trans-Asi-
attic trunk line, which will be to the
Trans-Siberian what the Union Pa
cific is to the Canadian Pacific, is
some day to link Lanchow and Kash-
gar with Picking and Russian Turk
estan. Another japanese line viii run
from Tsinan to cut the Picking Can
ION line at Shantung.
''In building these railways the
coolie will have his rightful
place, and skill gained in France viii
stand him in good stead in linking his
nome province to the capitals of Eu-
rasia from Madrid to Tsinin. Nat
onal Geographic Magazine.