Directory_and_Chronicle_1930 — Page 959

HANKOW

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though unfortunately on the old lines, all the laudable plans for modernising the city having fallen through, owing to difficulties in obtaining the necessary funds. During 1919 large tracts of land in the back of the native city were reclaimed and several new roads were constructed. A scheme for the development of a Greater Hankow was started with the backing of the Government.

Cotton cloth mills established by the Viceroy Chang Chih-tung commenced run- ning in 1892, and the ironworks at Hanyang have developed into a large and import- ant enterprise employing about 4,500 men. Hangyang iron has been placed on the American market at a price which enabled it to hold its own against the Steel Trust product.

The local manufacturing industries include, besides the Government ironworks and arsenals, cotton and silk weaving and there are tanneries, flour mills, bean oil mills, paper mills and many others.

The Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company have a large tobacco factory. The Yang- tsze Engineering Works have blast-furnace at Seven Mile Creek. The Government Mining Bureau of Hupeh formally opened the new and valuable iron mines at Siang- peishan, near Hwangshihkang, on September 3rd, 1920. These mines rival the well- known Tayeh mines and form the security for the note issue of the Hupeh Provincial Bank. The Sui Hua Match Factory is the largest match factory in Central China and its products have, to a great extent, taken the place of the Japan matches which formerly held the market in this neighbourhood. A large foreign style modern hos- pital for 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 and exported. A large business is done by albumen factories. Several miles below the Foreign Concessions the Shell Transport Company, Ltd., of London, have oil tanks for storing bulk oil, to be tinned on the premises. Two tanks have a capacity of 2,500 tons of oil each. During the low-water season small tank-steamers bring the oil from 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.

The question of conserving the Yangtsze and deepening the various so-called "crossings" to enable ocean-going steamers to visit Hankow during the winter or low-water season has often been mooted. Mr. Maze, the Commissioner of Customs, wrote as follows on the subject in the course of a review of the trade of the Yangtsze Valley for the year 1921 :-"The first official, but indirect, recognition of the important 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 the Whangpoo Conservancy Board. In order to obtain full knowledge of the approach channels to the port of Shanghai a general investigation of the condition of the entire estuary was made by the Board in 1914-17. Later, the Board undertook the Shanghai Harbour investigation, which has been recently concluded by the conference of experts in Shanghai, in November, 1921, and in the report issued the question of how the approaches to Shanghai through the estuary of the Yangtsze should be improved is dealt with. The 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."