Directory_and_Chronicle_1926 — Page 890

834

HANKOW

established in the port. Paper mills, much damaged during the Revolution, are n working again, under Government auspices. Since the Great War a large number workshops and factories have been established to meet the ever-increasing lo -demands. In Hankow itself three soap factories, 70 or 80 cotton-spinning sho 20 sock-inaking concerns, six egg factories (for export) and three flour mills have sta ed operations. The number of native banks increased from 10 before the war to 19 1919. The Provincial, Agricultural and Industrial Bank of Hupeh, the Wu-H Agricultural and Industrial Bank, and the Huang Pi Bank of Commerce were ina gurated in 1920.

The Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company have a large tobacco factory. The Yan tsze Engineering Works have completed a large new blast-furance at Seven Mile Cree The Government Mining Bureau of Hupeh formally opened the new and valua iron mines at Siangpeishan, near Hwangshihkang, on September 3rd, 1920. The mnines are expected to rival the well-known Tayeh mines and form the security for t note issue of the Hupeh Provincial Bank. The Sui Hua Match Factory is the large match factory in Central China and its products have, to a great extent, taken t place of the Japan matches which formerly held the market in this neighbourhood. T Chinese Telegraph Administration have opened new offices, built of slag bricks man factured by the Hanyang Ironworks. A large foreign-style modern hospital f Chinese, built by subscription, was completed in June, 1920, in the native city.

Antimony, lead and zinc ores are crushed by machinery on the Wuchang side ar exported. A large business is done by albumen factories. Several miles below th Foreign Concessions the Shell Transport Company, Ltd., of London, have oil tanks fo storing bulk oil, to be tinned on the premises. Two tanks have a capacity of 2,50 tons of oil each. During the low-water season small tank-steamers bring the oil fro Shanghai. The Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, Langkat, also has an installation The Standard Oil Co. had three large tanks erected at the end of 1904. Each installa tion added another tank in 1906. An English Company commenced an export trac in frozen pork, eggs, poultry and game in 1909, the refrigerating plant costing upward of £30,000.

The question of conserving the Yangtsze and deepening the various so-calle "crossings" to enable ocean-going steamers to visit Hankow during the winter d low-water season is under consideration. Mr. Maze, the Commissioner of Custom wrote as follows on the subject in the course of a review of the trade of the Yangtsz Valley for the year 1921 "The first official, but indirect, recognition of the importan and far-reaching question of the conservancy of the Yangtsze with a view to improv ing navigational facilities on a general scale may be said to have been made by th Whangpoo Conservancy Board. In order to obtain full knowledge of the approac channels to the port of Shanghai a general investigation of the condition of the entir estuary was inade by the Board in 1914-17. Later, the Board undertook the Shangha Harbour investigation, which has been recently concluded by the conference of experts i Shanghai, in November, 1921, and in the report issued the question of how the approache to Shanghai through the estuary of the Yangtsze should be improved is dealt with. Thi activities of this Board, however, have been necessarily of a local character and restrict ed to schemes directly connected with the shipping interests of Shanghai itself. The larger question of the Yangtsze conservancy as a whole has hitherto been left in abeyance, but has come into prominence of late through the medium of the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, and at a recent conference there the matter was discussed at some length, as is well known, and a resolution was passed suggesting that a technical commission should be appointed to make a preliminary study of the whole question with a view to formulating general proposals in connection with the ultimate appointment of a Yangtsze Conservancy Board. The extensive silting at Chinkiang moreover, has been the subject of further representations during the past few years from public bodies urging the necessity of adopting measures to save the waterfront etc., at that important centre, and while largely a local question immediately con cerning the port of Chinkiang, it is, nevertheless, connected to some extent with the general regimen of the river as a whole. But notwithstanding the magnitude of the trade, shipping, and revenue interests involved, the possibility of facilitating business by im proving the communications and rendering navigable for deep-draught steamers at all seasons of the year a considerable part of the waterway draining some 750,000 square miles of territory, with a population approaching 180 millions, nothing of a tangible! nature has hitherto been done to tackle the question seriously, and, indeed, until the last few years it has aroused little or no public interest. It may be mentioned however, that Mr. F. Palmer, one of the eminent engineers who served recently on the