SHANGHAI
647
Hongkew is 400 feet long and 18 feet deep at spring tides; the New Dock at Pootung, at the lower end of the harbour, measures 450 feet on the blocks, 50 feet wide at bottom, and 134 at top, is 80 feet wide at entrance between pierheads, with a depth at high-water springs of 22 feet; the works connected with this dock cover an area of 16 acres; the Cosmopolitan Dock, on the Pootung side about a mile below harbour limits, is 560 feet long on blocks, and 82 feet wide at entrance. The International Dock is a new and larger dock. All steamers and most sailing vessels now discharge and load at the various public and private wharves. The premises of the Associated Wharf Companies have a frontage of about three-quarters of a mile. The Chinese Government has an Arsenal, Dock, and Shipbuilding establishment at Kao Ch'ang Miao, a short distance above the native city. It commenced as a small rifle factory in 1867. The Great Northern Telegraph Company's cable was laid to Shanghai in 1871, and that of the Eastern Exten- sion Company in 1884, and in 1906 was opened a German cable line connecting Shanghai with the American Trans-Pacific line at Manila: there being now three distinct lines of communication with Europe. An overland line to Tientsin was opened in December, 1881, subsequently extended to Peking, and in 1894 connected with the Russian land lines through Siberia to Europe. There is also a line west to Kashgar and south as far as Laokay on the Yunnan border, there connecting with the French Tonkin lines and to Bhamo, connecting with the Burmal line. During the operations in 1900, the Allied Powers found it necessary to be independent of the Chinese landlines, and submarine cables were laid connecting Shanghai with Kiaochow, Weihaiwei, Chefoo, and Port Arthur. The first railway in China was constructed by a foreign company and opened from Shanghai to Woosung in June, 1876, but after running for sixteen months it was purchased and taken up by the Chinese Authorities. During the short time it was running the passenger traffic alone covered the working expenses, leaving sufficient profit to pay a small dividend. Twenty years afterwards it was reconstructed. There is railway communication now with Nanking via Soochow and Chinkiang on the north and Hangchow viâ Sunkiang and Kaching on the south. Rapid progress has been made towards the reorganisation of the Kiangsu-Chekiang railway under the control of the directorate of the Shanghai- Nanking railway. This line received no small damage at the hands of the rebels during the disturbances in 1913. General plans for the linking up of this railway with the Kiangsu line have already been formulated and negotiations for the purchase of the necessary land are proceeding apace. There are several locally-owned lines of steamers running on the coast and the river Yangtsze. Many manufactories under both native and foreign auspices have sprung up of late years, and would have done so in large numbers long ago had it not been that the native authorities offered strong opposition to any manu- factories under the control of foreigners and tried to strangle the importation of foreign machinery. Although the right under the Treaty to import machinery is quite clear, the British Government hesitated to enforce it; but the Japanese, in the Treaty of 1895 which closed the war, obtained the insertion of a clause specially authorising its importation. With the number of mills working and others in course of construction, the place is rapidly assuming the appearance of a thriving district in Lancashire. Indeed, Shanghai bids fair to become the principal centre of the cotton industry in the Far East. There are also a number of ginning factories, foreign and native owned. Of Silk Filatures Shanghai has 25, with a total of 8,000 basins, of which five foreign-managed. These Filatures, which give employment to 20,000 natives, scattered over the Hongkew and the Sinza districts, with the exception of a large one of 300 basins at Jessfield-the Hing Chong Filature. Of other industries we may note Hydraulic Packing Factories, foreign and native-owned Paper Mills, two Chinese-owned Match Factories, turning out between them some 80 cases, containing each 100 gross of boxes, per day. There are also large foreign Flour Mills (for grinding native wheat, which, it is said, makes excellent flour), two Kerosene Tank Oil and Tinning establish ments and works, and various other industries which are fast increasing in number.
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No notice of the important place taken by Shanghai in the industrial progress of the East would be complete without a reference to the large engineering and shipbuilding establishments which now form a conspicuous feature in the business of the place. Already in the early 'fifties, Mr. William Muirhead, engineer officer in the service of the P. & O. S. N. Co., had conceived the idea of starting a repairing shop. With the exception of the P. & O., which then ran a fortnightly mail service from Hongkong, there was no regular line of steamers trading with the port, and the visits of coasting steamers were few and far between. Still, as the northern terminal port in China, occasional jobs came
in. After the opening of Tientsin and the northern ports, and more especially after the opening