464
PRESS.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND CHANG CHIH-TUNG carried his objections | THE PUBLIC SERVICES AND THE much further. He could not bear the idea of the permanent way being constructed of foreign rails, so he erected. at an enormous and ruinous cost, ironworks at Hanyang for making rails from Chinese steel, for which he had after all to import a vast amount of material and even coal to smelt it. In the result he drained the treasury of the Hukwang dry, and was still unable to supply the rails. Whether he will be able, when the line from Wuchang to Canton comes to be made, to furnish rails for that section, is more than we can predict, but we think it is, to say the least, exceedingly problematical. But all the same he has gratified his anti-foreign feeling, even if the indulgence has proved expensive.
At Shanghai a rather bad outbreak of the same feeling has just taken place. After steadily declining for many years to take the water supplied by the Shanghai Water works Company, Limited, for the use of the dirty native city, the Native Authorities have decided to build water- works for themselves, and are reported by a contemporary to have selected a large piece of groud
in the rear of the Arsenal battery for the purpose of erecting the neces- sary machinery, which has been ordered from Europe. If the machinery could by any possibility have been made of Chinese material no doubt the promoters of the enterprise would have been ready to wait a few decades for it, but there seemed no chance of this, and so the waterworks are to be made
to compete with those already in existence. It will be remembered that when, some eight or ten years ago, the Waterworks Company sent to the then Taotai a sample of the purified liquid, he is reported to have gravely tasted it and then to have remarked that it was certainly very clear, but for his part he preferred water with some substance in it. That intelligen connoisseur has disappeared from the scene, but his successors are still apparently quite as loth as he to allow a foreign company the opportunity to turn an honest cash. is stated that the direction of the new enter prise is to be under a Board consisting of Taotais YANG and TANG, the Shanghai Magistrate HUANG, and three directors of as many local charitable institutions, whose endowment funds are to be utilised for the erection of the waterworks. Evidently there is a difficulty in procuring funds for this proposed mandarin-managed company. The native capitalist is sure to fight shy of a venture so conducted, and rightly so, as experince has proved the folly of investing in any concern with which the officials are connected. The idea of appropriating. charity endowments for the purpose is a brilliant one worthy of the noble SHENG. There will be no one to ask unpleasant questions in the continued absence of divi- dends, no one to take objection to the way of management. Meantime, we suppose the public who have their habitat in the extremely dirty Shanghai city are to be congratulated upon the prospect of obtain ing water purged of the mainfold contami nating substances with which it is impre- guated when drawn from the river. Per haps even the persons provided for out of the annexed charities may profit indirectly by being saved from typhoid.
It
Mr. J. P. Joaquim, a Singapore barrister, has been appointed an unofficial member of the Straits Legislative Council, pending the return of Mr. Burkinshaw and as a result of the departure of Mr. Napier. Mr. Joaquim some few years ago acted on the Council with much acceptance.
[Jane 17, 1897.
in place of the old hard and fast rule that no information was to be given to the Press by officials, public interest in the various branches of Her Majesty's Service, civil and military, is now for the most part welcomed. The change is a wholesome one and cannot fail to contribute to the efficiency and wel- fare of the Services.
EUROPEAN EDUCATION AT KOWLOON,
to
con- not re-
Addressing the British Chamber of Com- merce at Paris recently Sir E. MONSON, the British Ambassador, affirmed his belief that the Press really helped diplomacy, especially by compelling diplomatists to be more frank than a generation ago it was their custom to be. The recent history of British diplomacy in China affords, we think, an illustration of the correctness of the belief unfair to assume that it was the complaints loon will receive a valuable stimulus from The cause of European education at Kow- expressed by Sir E. MONBON. It is not of the Press, both in China and at home, of the generous donation of $2,000 which the the decadence of British influence under the firm of Messrs. JOHN D. HUMPHREYS AND regimes of the two last Ministers to Peking SoN have offered to give in support of that stimulated Lord SALISBURY to diverge the Kowloon School as their contribution from the beaten track of routine promotion to the memorial of the Diamond Jubilee. and to appoint a man like Sir CLAUDE With the growing European population MACDONALD to restore to our representa- on the peninsula the need of eductional tion its former vigour, Also it may be facilities has been increasingly felt for some assumed that Sir CLAUDE MACDONALD'S years past. To meet this want steps were desire to place himself en rapport with the taken to establish a school, which was British communities at the Treaty Ports and known as Kowloon College, and which, Hongkong, to make himself acquainted with during its existence, did good work. Some their requirements and to afford explana- fifteen hundred dollars were subscribed for tions in reference to the course of diplomacy the erection of a mat-shed for the accommo- in its bearing upon questions of trade, is in dation of the school, but unfortunately the It structure was blown away in last year's some measure due to the same cause. must be admitted, however, that there is a typhoon and the fifteen hundred dollars reverse to the shield. The continual harping subscribed was therefore entirely lost. A of the British Press upon the decadence of house was rented for the completion of the British influence at Peking induced our term, but the rent in addition to the other coufrères of the vernacular Press in Japan expenses of the school proved too great a to believe that the decadence was due to strain on the resources of the limited com-
and be continued, an actual loss of national vigour, instead munity of to its true and simple cause, the placing of sequently the institution was rouud men in square holes. The consequence opened after its breaking-up in December was that Great Britain was referred to not last. In the meantime the question has been only in terms of dislike-which must be taken under anxious consideration by the residents, as a matter of course in the Press of all for the journey across the harbour places countries--but also in terms of contempt, the schools on this side out of the reach of which in course of time might have had a the younger children and is for various mischievous influence on the national temper reasons undesirable even for the older ones. in Japan and led to some catastrophe. The Government has been communicated However, with the appointment of the with and, recognising the justice of Kowloon's right man to Peking the rehabilitation of claim for educational facilities, it has pro- British influence in the Far East has not mised to grant a site and spend $8,000 on a taken long, and on a review of the whole permanent building to be used as a school, which is a more liberal offer than was made A condition of the circumstances the Press has little
on a previous occasion. reproach itself with in the matter and a good deal on which it may congratulate grant, however, is that the Committee itself. On the general question of the guarantee the maintenance of the teaching! influence of the Press on diplomacy, how staff. The generous donation of Messrs. ever, it may possibly be argued that the JOHN D. HUMPHREYS & SON will en beneficence of that influence is not proved, courage the Committee to accept this because Russian diplomacy has a history of responsibility, for it will form a substantial nucleus for an endowment fund, which will remarkable and almost continuous success to show although it is practically exempt from criticism at the hands of the Russian Press. That is true, but the circumstances of the two cases are radically different. The Govern- ment of Russia is autocratic, that of Great Britain democratic, and whereas under an autocratic Government the will of the sovereign and his councillors for good or for evil imposes itself directly on the officials of the country, in an enlightened democracy is through the Press that the will of the people declares itself, and it is in proportion to its adequacy as a channel for the ex- pression of that will that a journal achieves or falls short of individual success. If we look to other public departments for in- stances of the success of Press criticism the Navy at once suggests itself. It was by the urging of the Press that the Government was led to enter some years ago on a policy of naval expansion answering to the increase in the demands made upon the Navy by the expansion of the Empire. On the other side we find that the public depart- ments recognise more fully than formerly the value of the Press as a connecting link between themselves and the public, and that
to
it
no doubt be added to from other sources. With the income from this fund and the school fees the finances of the proposed school ought to give no further cause of anxiety.
EASTERN COMPETITION WITH
LANCASHIRE.
Whatever may be the effect of Eastern competition with Lancashire in the pro- duction of cotton goods in the future, it is evident that the day of that competition being seriously felt is very near at hand. The cotton mills at Shanghai are not the only ones in operation or to be erected. Cthers have been erected by officials or at their instigation in the towns of the Yangtze Valley and are said to be turning out highly successful. At Wusieh, near Soochow, a mill with 25,000 spindles has been erected by a native syndicate under the director ship of a retired taotai and is doing a large business, supplying the markets of Chang chow, Kiangyin, and Chinkiang, and other towns in the district. The demand, how- ever, far exceeds the supply and the pro-
;
1