Directory_and_Chronicle_1914 — Page 895

SHANGHAI

871

to the increased numbers of fires an independent brigade for the French Settlement was formed in April, 1908. There is now a Public Health Laboratory at which bacteriological investigations and chemical analyses are carried out, vaccine lymph prepared, and the Pasteur treatment of rabies undertaken. The Settlements are well provided with hospitals. In addition to the large General Hospital, recently rebuilt and formning a four-storied block on the northern bank of the Soochow Creek, to which an extension has recently been built, there is the Victoria Nursing Home, presented by the com- munity as a Jubilee Memorial, with 25 beds and a separate house for maternity cases, also mental wards and an efficient English nursing staff available for outside attendance, also a large isolation hospital for infectious cases, native and foreign, all these being directly under Municipal control. A bungalow to be used as a sanatorium in connection with the Nursing Home was purchased in 1907. There are likewise several private institutions under the control of the varions missionary bodies. The other public institutions may be enumerated as, the late Subscription Library containing about 12,000 volumes, which was taken under the control of the Council in 19'3 and is now a Public Library with free reading room, 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 thirteen Europeans and twenty-four Filipinos, paid by the Municipality, which gives concerts in the Public Gardens every day during the summer months, dance music in the Town Hall, and Sunday concerts, a Race Club, possessing a course of a mile and a quarter, 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 pierbeads, 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 56 › 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 Government has an Arsenal, Dock, and Shipbuilding establishment at Kao Ch'ang Miao, a short distance above the native city. It commenced as a small rifle factory in 1867. The Great Northern Telegraph Company's cable was laid to Shanghai in 1871, and that of the Eastern Exten- sion Company 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 Kiaochow, Weihaiwei, Chefoo, and Port Arthur. The first railway in China was constructed by a foreign company and opened from Shanghai 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. Twenty years afterwards it was reconstructed. There is railway communication now with Nanking via Soochow and Chinkiang on the north and Hangchow viâ Sunkiang and Kaching on the south. There are several locally-owned lines of steamers running on