501
30
On the South Manchurian Railway there are 472 passenger and sundry cars and the following goods waggons :---
Refrigerator cars
Box cars
Gondola cars
Coal cars
Flat cars
Water waggons
Oil tanks
5
1,335 1,320
215
121
10
8
3,014
There are thus about two-and-a-half times as many goods waggons on the South Manchurian Railway as there are on the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway, while on the Shantung Railway, which is only 284 miles, there are 1,051 goods waggons as against 1,315 on the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway. Allowing for the fact that the average car capacity is slightly higher on the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway, the tonnage per mile It is not unfair, therefore, is considerably greater on both the Japanese-owned lines.
to conclude that if the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway were efficiently managed it might have provided itself, even under war conditions, with at least double its present amount of rolling-stock.
--
The situation is aggravated by the fact that what rolling-stock there is is not On the Shantung Railway the managed in an efficient and economical manner. freight trains run as regularly to schedule time as do the passenger trains, and goods never take more than twenty-four hours to cover the 220 miles between Tsinan and Tsinan to Tien-tsin is almost exactly the same distance, but goods Tsingtao, generally take about four days to do the journey. The goods trains keep to no sort of schedule time, but wander up and down the line in a state of utter and most wasteful confusion.
Another glaring evil on the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway is the large number of transportation companies which have obtained an altogether illegitimate hold upon the line. There are regulations forbidding railway officials from holding shares in transportation companies but, needless to say, such rules, by methods not unknown in western countries, are more or less openly evaded.
No one will be surprised to learn that these companies enjoy many unfair advantages in their dealings with the railway. They can get cars when none are available for the ordinary trader. At various points along the railway-some of them important centres such as Tsining, Suchoufu, Pengpu, &c.-they own the only available goods sheds and have monopolised all the land which the railway company should have taken up for that purpose, so that the merchant is obliged to store and Moreover, the railway ship his goods through the transportation company. authorities absolutely refuse to take any responsibility for cargo lost or stolen. This is a very serious matter. On the Shantung Railway, controlled by the Japanese, thefts are practically unknown. For example, a British firm which ships all its cargo from Shanghai to Tsinan via Tsingtao, though this is a cargo peculiarly liable to pilferage, shortages during the whole of 1920 have only amounted to 15 dollars. Claims for shortages are promptly settled by the Japanese, but although thieving is rampant on the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway such claims are not even entertained by the Chinese. The railway police are so inefficient that on the greater portion of the line merchants have to send an escort to guard their cargo. An escort has even to be sent with an empty oil tank car to prevent theft of parts of the car en route. When whole car-loads are shipped it is practicable to send an escort, but for smaller lots the cost is prohibitive, and in such cases the merchant is forced to ship through a transportation company.
In all these various ways the merchant is unable to deal direct with the railway company but is forced to employ the transportation companies, who use the power they possess in the most exorbitant and unmerciful manner. They are not content with making a legitimate profit out of the difference between picul rate and car-load rate, but charge their customers no less than two to three times the ordinary railway rates. Thus, if a merchant in Tsinanfu desired to send candles to Taianfu-a distance of 50 miles-he might, if he did not know local conditions, calculate that the total charges per picul would amount to 0-22456 dollars, made up as follows:--
Railway picul rate Railway loading
Railway likin
Railway discharging
31
Dollar.
-15456
·02000
·03000
·02000
Total
0-22456
The transportation company's charges, however, amount to 0 655 dollar per picul, and the merchant is forced to pay these exorbitant rates because, for the reasons which I have enumerated above. he finds it in practice impossible to deal with the railway company direct.
..
The following table shows the railway charges and the transportation companies' charges per picul on shipments of candles from Tsinan to various stations in Shantung. It will be observed that the transportation companies' charges vary from about treble the railway charges for short distances to about double for longer distances:-
Place.
Miles.
Railway Pirul Rate.
Railway Loading and Discharging.
Railway Likin.
Total Railway Charges.
Total Charges Transport. Companies.
Dollar.
Dollar.
Dollur.
Pellar.
Dollar.
Taianfu
45
· 15456
.04
-03
*22456
*655
Tawenkow
63
•21112
*04
03
-28112
+795
Yaotsun
A1
• 28504
-04
*03
*25504
-785
Yencboufu
98
-31584 ·
.04
-08
38584
-825
Tsiniugchow
118
-37744
·04
03
+44744
*935
Tsowhaien Tengbsien
110
-95588
135
-43288
04 +04
'03 -03
-42558
-988
+50288
+932
L
These facts suffice to show that the transportation companies constitute a serious handicap on trade and a hindrance to the efficient management of the railway. The evil varies in intensity on different sections of the railway. Between Techow and Linching traders can avoid the transportation companies for car-load shipments, and thefts are also less frequent on this section. But at Nanking the conditions are, or used to be, incredibly bad. I am informed that two years ago two big companies were absolutely in the power of the transportation companies through whom they were forced to make all shipments of their goods along the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway. On one occasion they agreed to break away and hire their cars direct from the railway, but the transportation companies actually bribed coolies along the line to get under the cars and pierce cargo through the floor of the car. consequence, very little of the cargo reached its destination, and after one trial the Whether companies abandoned the struggle and returned to bondage once more. conditions at Nanking have improved in the last two years I do not know.
CC
In
Another serious cause of complaint is the absence of through traffic facilities between the various railways, which involves much expense in coolie hire, damage
For
to cargo through extra handling and unnecessary delay to rolling-stock. example, there is a company which owns sidings connecting with both the Shantung Railway and the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway. The cars can be brought within a few feet of each other, but transferring cargo from one to the other costs 10 dollars. Firms who do not own sidings are mulcted much more heavily.
"There are, of course, political reasons which prevent through traffic arrange- ments between the Shantung Railway and the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway, but there is no valid reason why through traffic should not be allowed on the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway, the Peking-Mukden Railway and the Lung-Hai Railway, all of which are Chinese Government lines. It is difficult to say to what extent the bad conditions on the Tien-tsin-Pukow Railway are due to corruption and to what extent to more inefficiency, but it is alleged that a considerable amount of corruption exists. Some of it, indeed, seems inevitable. A station master, for example, is paid a salary of 85 dollars a month and 35 dollars entertainment allowance, but he is obliged to spend at least 100 dollars a month on providing tea and cigarettes for business callers and
1