Directory_and_Chronicle_1908 — Page 856

SHANGHAI

741

Engineer, 6 paid assistants and 69 Natives, a total strength of 131, and is composed of four Fire Engine and one Hook and Ladder Companies, a spare fire engine and a fire float. It attended 144 fires in 1906. It is pronounced to be one of the most efficient volunteer brigades in the world. There is now a Public Health Laboratory at which bacteriological investigations and chemical analyses are carried out, vaccine lymph prepared, and the Pasteurtreatment 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, there is the Victoria Nursing Home, presented by the community as a Jubilee Memorial, with 25 beds and an efficient English nursing staff available for outside attendance, and a large isolation hospital for infectious cases, native and foreign, all these being directly under Municipal control. There are likewise several private institutions under the control of the various missionary bodies. The other public institutions may be enumerated as, a Subscription Library containing about 25,000 volumes, 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 eight European and thirty-five Manila men, paid by the Municipality, which gives concerts in the Public Gardens every day during the summer months, a Race Club, possessing a course of a mile and a quarter, and 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 500 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 springs; 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 Governinent has an Arsenal, Dock, and Shipbuilding establishment at Kaoch'ang Miao, a short distance above the native city. It com- menced as a small rifle factory in 1867. The Great Northern Telegraph Com- pany's cable was laid to Shanghai in 1871, and that of the Eastern Extension Com- pany 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 communication with Europe. An overland line to Tientsin was opened in December, 1881, subsequently extended to Peking, and in 1894 connected with the Russian land lines through Siberia to Europe. There is also a line west to Kashgar and south as far as Laokay on the Yunnan border, there connecting with the French Tonkin lines and to Bhamo, connecting with the Burmah line. During the operations in 1900, the Allied Powers found it necessary to be independent of the Chinese landlines, and submarine cables were laid connecting Shanghai with Kiao- chow, Weihaiwei, Chefoo, and Port Arthur. A railway constructed by a foreign company was opened to Woosung in June, 1876, but after running for sixteen months it was purchased and taken up by the Chinese Authorities. During the short time it was running the passenger traffic alone covered the working expenses, leaving sufficient profit to pay a small dividend. Towards the close of 1895 consent was given by the Throne for the construction by the provincial authorities of a line of railway from Shanghai to Soochow, a distance of about eighty miles. This is now in course of construction, the portion between Shanghai and Woosung having been opened to traffic on 1st September 1898. On 9th October, 1904, the control of the line was taken over by the Chinese Imperial Railway Administration and vested in the Board of Commissioners of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway. The Shanghai terminus is too far from the Settlement to permit of the lines being of any use in handling cargo

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