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can be employed for the harvest season at 40 to 70 cents (silver currency) per day with board (16 to 28 cents gold). In the Sungari River region of North Manchuria labour is much more costly, and transient labour from the southern provinces receives 60 to 90 cents (silver currency) per day with board (24 to 36 cents gold). The Shantung labour does not flow into the north unless high wages are offered, and the problem of labour is a pressing one to the grain farmer of North Manchuria.
10. Manufacturing Industries depending upon Agriculture.
Native grist mills may be found in all Chinese towns of any size in Manchuria, which turn kaoliang, millet, and wheat into flour for local use. The distilling of samshu from kaoliang is also a widespread industry. The native mills are very crude, consisting of a convex stone 8 to 10 feet in diameter, in the centre of which a pivot is constructed to which a cylindrical stone is attached that is moved around and revolved over the convex surface of the lower stone with horse-power. The grain is crushed in these rolls and then sifted in coarse silks, yielding a wheat flour of low grade. The rolling and sifting are so imperfectly done as to leave large amounts of waste flour in the bran. The Chinese demand for wheat flour calls for a cheap strong flour, and these mills can grind, therefore, with little competition from American or Japanese flour, as the better grades are not used by any but the well-to-do people. At Kirin there is a steam flour-mill owned and operated by Chinese that is quite an advance over the ordinary native mill, the machinery being old-fashioned American type. This firm is contemplating the erection of a modern 125-barrel mill. At Tic-ling the Japanese have put up (1908) a modern 400-barrel mill with the most modern types of American rolls and sifters. The demands of this mill will undoubtedly stimulate wheat produc- tion in the region about Tie-ling, but it remains to be seen if this mill can operate successfully without a good market for by-products and without a large local demand for high-grade flour. Cheap wheat will do it and nothing else. The Russian flour- mills at Harbin are not successful and profitable. Five mills only are now in operation out of a total of twelve that were grinding during the late war, and it is reported that they are in financial difficulties and that the demand for Harbin flour is not large. The Russian mill at Kuan-cheng-tzu has been closed. At Ninguta the Chinese own and operate a steam flour-mill that is reported to be doing a successful local business.
The chief manufacturing industry of Manchuria relating to agriculture is the expressing of oil from the soy-bean. Small mills are engaged in this work at many points in the interior, but the largest mills are located at Newchwang and Dalny. For the first six months of 1908, ending the 30th June, the export of bean-cake from Newchwang amounted to 140,000 tons, and bean-oil to 3,500 tons.
About 90 per cent. of the bean-cake was consigned to Japan. Dalny, by reason of its superior railway facilities, is rapidly securing control of the bean-cake industry. The methods used in expressing the bean-oil are very crude, the presses being worked with hand labour instead of steam-power or hydraulic-power. With the native methods now in use the beans give a 10 per cent. return of oil.
11. Transportation of Agricultural Products.
The primary cost of transporting agricultural products in Manchuria is so great that it would absolutely bankrupt the farmer of any other grain-producing region of the world where commercial agriculture is practised. But the cash income of the Manchurian farmer is small, and as he exchanges only a small part of his crop for cash, he does not feel the burden of excessive freight cost, as would the farmer who exchanges all of his products for cash and buys back his staples. Ilis labour and other costs of operation are relatively very low, and thus he exists in the face of the worst primary transportation facilities imaginable. The interior commerce of Manchuria is almost entirely handled by the two-wheeled Manchurian cart drawn by five to eight mules, and having a maximum carrying capacity under ordinary condi tions of about 1,000 lbs. The cash cost of transporting a ton of freight from Kirin to Kuan-cheng-tzu is from 40 to 50 dollars (silver currency), or 16 to 18 dollars (gold) -a distance of 80 miles. A load of lumber on a Manchurian cart with seven or eight mules is 800 to 900 board feet-a small load for one horse on a good road. Manchurian cart is necessary to the existing roads, and the cause of these high freight costs is therefore not to be laid at the door of the cart, but rather at the door of the uncared-for roads. Freight is often stalled for days and weeks for the lack of,
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50 dollars worth of coolie labour intelligently directed to repair a bad place in the road. Only in winter when the roads are frozen is it possible to transport freight with any ease. In the face of these odds the distance to which freight is hauled is truly remarkable. Wheat is hauled into Tie-ling from the mountain regions around Ilai-lung-fu for a distance of 150 miles, and beans, tobacco, and hemp are also hauled for equally great distances.
The Liao-ho and Sungari Rivers are capable of transporting large amounts of agricultural products to the centres of trade, and while Chinese junks are already engaged in this trade, the number is comparatively small, and their carrying capacity
very low.
The South Manchurian Railway has undoubtedly done much to build up the markets for agricultural products in Manchuria, and its effectiveness in this respect will undoubtedly increase as the years pass.
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12. Agricultural Development in Manchuria.
It is the opinion of the writer that the chief problems of agricultural develop- ment in Manchuria at the present time are economic, social, and political problems, rather than scientific problems relative to the stimulation of greater productiveness in the soil. The vast areas of uncultivated land in the north are capable of producing a surplus crop for export even with crude methods of soil tillage, if transportation facilities could be developed to bring the farmer in touch with world markets. The agricultural problem of Manchuria is not so much the problem of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before, as to change the existing economic and social conditions of farm life into an advanced condition of commercial agriculture in which the farmer can produce a surplus of food above local demands, and find a ready cash market for that surplus. While improved methods of agriculture are undoubtedly necessary if the Manchurian farmer is to produce a large surplus for export, it is still more necessary that there be a market and a means for reaching that market with the surplus crop. If good roads could connect with railways and waterways in Manchuria, and if capital could organize the facilities for storing and shipping staple agricultural products, thus bringing relatively high cash prices for agricultural products into every community, there is little doubt but that Manchuria would produce a large surplus crop for export, and in striving to produce a surplus the farmer would be quickened The and fully awake to the advantages of improved methods of agriculture. Manchurian farmer is not so much in need of the agricultural teachings of European and American applied science as he is in need of the far-sighted genius of such men as James J. Hill in the United States and O'Shaughnessy in Canada, who built the steel paths of commerce into the fertile fields of North America, and were content to wait for dividends until the settlers came in and opened the soil. To-day every farming community in America is in touch with the world markets, and, being in possession of the market, the agricultural problem of America is to increase production by the application of science to the art of agriculture. One hundred years ago the American farmer produced his food, fuel, and clothing on the land, and exchanged very little of his crop for cash; then as transportation facilities developed, and the inventive genius of the American applied mechanical principles to agriculture, the old system of "produce-and-consume-what-you-produce" farming passed away, and crop products are now exchanged for cash and the farmer buys coal for fuel and factory goods for his clothes. The Manchurian farmer of to-day is in a stage of civili- zation more remote from the highest modern civilization than the American farmer of 100 years ago, and this fact must be realized in considering any Government policy for the improvement of agriculture.
A logical and evolutionary plan of improvement would be to develop a Govern. ment policy of road improvement on the main arteries of travel in the interior of Manchuria, together with additional railroad facilities, that would bring the wheat of the Sungari region, the beans of South Manchuria, and the cattle of Mongolia to the sea, where they could be condensed into flour, oil, and frozen beef and put on the world's markets. Hand in hand with such Government fostering and development should go the introduction of such simple machines as a two-horse plough, a one- horse steel planting machine, and scythes, cradles, and similar simple machines, to cuable the labourer to increase his efficiency as a producer. Education and development by such a programme would bring results far quicker than through the medium of a college for instructing a few students in the science related to agri- culture, especially as the farming class at the present time have almost no chance to
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