742
SHANGHAI
Metford and the new short rifles. A separate Company of Volunteers, under the order of the French Consul-General, was formed in May, 1897. The Fire Brigade consisted until 919 of 42 foreign volunteers under chief officer M. W. Pett with a paid depart- mental engineer, and a staff of 187 native assistants, and was equipped with three motor Fire Engines and one Hook and Ladder Companies, with six motor pumps, a spare fire engine and steam fire float, three escapes, 117 ladders and 37,375 feet of hose. It was pronounced to be one of the most efficient volunteer brigades in the world. In 1919, however, owing to a misunderstanding, the volunteer members tendered their resignations, which were accepted, and as from April the Brigade became a purely professional organisation. Owing to the increased number of fires an independent brigade for the French Settlement was formed in April, 1908. Stimulated by these examples, no doubt, the Shanghai native city fire- brigade was reorganised in 1920. A substantial new building on the Nantao Road was inaugurated as a fire-station in December, and modern engines and equipment were purchased by public subscription. There is a Public Health Laboratory at which bacteriological investigations and chemical analyses are carried out, vaccine lymph is prepared, and the Pasteur treatment of rabies undertaken. The Settlements are well provided with hospitals. In addition to the large General Hospital, recently rebuilt and forming a four-storied block on the northern bank of the Soochow Creek, to which an extension has now been built, there is the Victoria Nursing Home, presented by the com- munity as a Jubilee Memorial, and enlarged in 1913, with a separate house for maternity cases, and mental wards and an efficient English nursing staff available for outside attendance; and also a large isolation hospital for infectious cases, native and foreign, all these being directly under Municipal control. In 1917 further extensions to the General Hospital were commenced and have now been completed. A bungalow to be used as a sanatorium in connection with the Nursing Home was pur- chased in 1907. There are likewise several private institutions under the control of the various missionary bodies. The other public institutions may be enumerated as the late Subscription Library, containing about 12,650 volumes, which was taken under the control of the Council in 1913 and is now a Public Library with free reading room; a branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, with the nucleus of a Museum; a Masonic Club, a Sailors' Home, a Polytechnic Institution for Chinese, a Seamen's Library and Museum; a Wind Instrument Band of 8 Europeans and 29 Filipinos, paid by the Municipality, which gives concerts in the Public Gardens every day during the summer months, dance music in the Town Hall once a week, and Sunday concerts during the winter; a Race Club, possessing a course of a mile and a quarter, which holds race meetings in May and November; a Country Club on the Bubbling Well Road; Parsee, Portuguese, and Customs Clubs; also Pony Paper Hunt, Cricket, Rifle, Yacht, Baseball, Racquet, Golf, Skating, Football, Swimming and various other Clubs, Philharmonic and Choral Societies, English and French Amateur Dramatic Societies, and other institutions for amusement and recreation. There are sixteen Masonic bodies; with over 700 members. In 1876 a District Grand Lodge for North China was constituted under the Grand Lodge of England; and in 1902 the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts also erected a China Province with a District Grand Lodge under a District Deputy Grand Master, both having their headquarters in Shanghai.
INDUSTRIES
There are five Docks at Shanghai. The one at Tungkadoo, opposite the city, has a length of 380 feet over all, with a depth at spring tides of 21 feet; the Old Dock at 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