+2
380
RAILWAY EARNINGS IN SOUTH
CHINA.
(Daily Press, October 28th.)
are ex-
In view of the statement made by H. E. the GOVERNOR in his Budget speech that the receipts from a half-year's working of the Kowloon-Canton railway (British section) had been estimated at $20,000, it is interesting to learn what are the actual traffic receipts of other lines in the Canton district, and in order to draw comparisons we avail ourselves of the statistical information furnished by the Commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Customs at Canton in his Report for 1908. which has just reached us. The British section of the Kowloon-Canton railway will be twenty-two miles in length, while the Canton-Samshiu line is thirty miles. This line in 1908 carried 3,052,920 passengers and the gross earnings from all sources amounted to $582,005, of which sum passengers contributed $568,745, or decrease of $10,993 as compared with the 1907 figures, due, the Commissioner says, to floods and typhoon, failure of rice crop; shortage in the first silk crop, the national mourning and the generally depressed state of local business. Twenty thousand dollars as a half-year's receipts from the Kowloon line seems a very low estimate, but it has, of course, to be borne in mind that the territory through which this section passes is sparsely populated and that until it is connected up with the Canton section its chances of obtaining remunerative traffic ceedingly small. It is probable that. contrary to the experience of the Fatshan- Samshui line, it will draw as large a pro- portion of its receipts from freight as from passengers, but its earnings from either source are, unlikely to be large until the connection is made. A careful estimate, the Commissioner says, on the authority of the Engineer-in-Chief, antici- pates the opening to traffic of a 30- mile section (that is to say, a third) of the Chinese section, from Canton outwards in March, 1910, and a through connection with Kowloon in or about July, 1911. The Com- missioner mentions that the route adopted offers every prospect of considerable traffic. It is pointed out that from Canton to Shek- lung there are many large villages, and that the railway will provide ready access to the Hongkong and Canton markets for the lichees, sugar cane, oranges and other pro- ducts of these richly cultivated and pros- perous districts. Sheklung itself, he says, from its commanding position on the East River, is destined to be the principal distributing centre for the district. To the south of Shek, lung onwards to Samchun, a direct route has been obtained through a fine country with much arable land and prospects of rapid development. Pineapples and vegetables are produced in large quantities in the district. We can only hope that this is all to the good of the railway, but experience in China has shown that the development of the freight-carrying capacity of railways is extremely slow. It is the experience of the section of the trunk line of the Canton- Hankow line already opened, as well as of the branch line from Canton to Samshui. But there is some reason for hoping that the Canton-Kowloon railway will prove an exception to what appears to be a general rule in China, for the line for three-quarters of its length follows a route well away from the coast line and, therefore, for the trans- port of the local produce intended for the Hongkong and Canton markets the railway ought to appeal strongly to the farmers. If pending the opening of through traffic the British section of the line has to depend
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
on passenger traffic alone for ts receipts, then $20,000 for a period of six months will not strikethe reader as an under-estimate when he learns that on the forty-five English miles of the grand trunk line of the Yuch-Han Railway the earnings for twelve not amount to more than months did
$167,202, though over a million passengers
were carried.
HISTORICAL COMPARISON.
(Daily Press, October 29th.) A Gentleman who recently returned to England after an uninterrupted residence of
some fifteen or sixteen years in the Far East, and who had during that period but little communication with Home, and in China had taken little part in public affairs, on his arrival put up for a short period in a hotel on the Strand. He thus describes his first experience
So far, I cannot say I am aimpressed with my visit to the old country People are lazy, youngsters cheeky, and one sees crowds waiting for some hours outside theatre and music-hall doors on the pave ment to get a good seat-boys, girls, and grown-up folk: where they get the money, God only knows! The Government does not seem to be improving matters by its socialistic legislation. I fear the country will experience a serious shock ere long." The description is not unlike what might have been said of Rome in the latter days of the Empire, when the most serious business of the day was panem et circences. Like the once proud Romans of the Republic, the proletariat of England has come down to be a mere body of pensioners, whom it has become the aim of the Government of the day to feed and amuse, for the mere sake of gaining their votes at the polls; and the main business of Parliament is to provide ways and means to save the proletary the responsibility of providing for its own off- spring. Naturally to the pensionaries who in these latter days fill the ranks of the administration, there is ever present the temptation of an army and navy formed by a wiser generation for the defence of the country, but which costs considerable sums of money to maintain in efficiency; and as one of the first measures of the Roman pro- letary when the reins of government fell into its hands was to starve the legions; so in England one of the first acts of a Govern- ment put into office by a proletarian vote, and largely composed of men dependent on their salaries, is, under the pretence of promoting peace, to attempt to reduce to inefficiency both army and navy. It requires but little talent to drop one's insurance. A fool can see that he thereby increases his momentary income, What has insurance ever done for me," and "why should I support a useless army of directors and secretaries? For nearly a hundred years we have had no benefit from army or navy that we can see; why should we stint our- selves to support an army of aristocrats? says tlie proletary. "There is so and so living in a palace with lots of coin at his command, whilst we toil and moil, for bare sustenance; why should he be possessed of all the luxuries, while we have nothing but the labour of our hands to support us? Let us plunder him-plunder in such a case is surely no crime."
Such an argument on first sight, no doubt, looks specious enough, but there is another side to the question. It is not the way that nature sets to work; perhaps it is only a case of perversity, but nature certainly seems to avoid uniformity, and has implant- ed in the human breast much of her own distaste. A fertile plain has its uses; but
[October 30, 1909,
what should we think of an artist who in his drawing of a landscape sought to maintain throughout a rigid monotony? In the economy of nature the rugged hill plays as important a part as the teeming vale. We can imagine a level marsh through which, here and there, a languid well comes to the surface, but were there no rising ground to
induce a circulation of the water. We know the result; so far from being a fertile and smiling plain, the marsh would quickly become a fetid morass, unfit for the habita- tion of man; and the few human beings who penetrated its recesses would be nothing more than a batch of fever-stricken wretches unable to help themselves, much less to increase the prosperity of their neighbours. It is not the actual amount of gold distri- buted through its population that makes a country wealthy, as it is not the actual
amount of rain that makes it fertile; in both cases there must be some apparatus for setting the capital in motion. This in the one case is provided by the, itself unfruitful, mountain range; in the other by the aggrega- tion of capital in heaps, whence the action of gravity forces it to descend and distribute itself over the lower grounds. The man of wealth can consume no more actual food than his poorer neighbour, for what further luxuries he may enjoy he is entirely de- pendent on his fellow-men, and to obtain their assistance he must set his capital in circulation; each member of the community
through whose hands it passes becomes, as it were, a partner of the original possessor. Suppose the original capital were to be divided equally between "all there could be no circulation, and the very utmost each could contrive to obtain from it would be the barest of sustenance-no clothing, even butter for his bread-for these would res quire the services of others. This is, of course, the extreme, but we can imagine any number of intermediate steps, comfort increasing with the increase of circulation.
In the case of a well-watered and fertile region, supplied from an elevated range of hills, we can imagine the result were a huge roller to be passed over the hills, and the monotonous flat. whole reduced to Physically the land would be ruined, and reduced to a profitless Sahara. This is what the socialistic reformer would do with the finances of the land; he would, if he could, entirely withdraw the power of circulation. The actual gold might remain, but it might as well be returned to its original rock, as there would be possibility of making use of it. Bank notes would long ere this have gone out circulation, in fact paper and printing would be alike impossible and the multitudes who live by their industries would have to perish, or migrate elsewhere. Of course it is quite true that the proposed Budget does not propose to go to this extreme: at the most it proposes to withdraw one-fifth of the circulating capital. The principle is the same identically; we can suppose the head of water in our mountain range reduced from, say, five thousand feet to four thou- sand-Will the plain be equally well- watered, and will it be able to support an equal population? These are things as capable of proof as any simple mathematical problem; it might be supposed that with the growth of (so-called) education they would quickly disappear. It is unfortunate- ly the fact that our modern education, of the school board type, at least, just excludes the one useful point of a real education- the drawing out of the faculties. To learn that p en spells pen, at Great Britain is an island, and contains rivers-some large and some small, and also has towns, some of which are large, and some of them small -may be an exercise of the memory, but is