18
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
JAPANESE MANUFACTURES IN
CHINA.
| July 2, 1898.
For the slow-coming foe was quick to make
friends,
What the Dowager Empress thinks of the
O call Port Arthur back to me,
I had but that alone;
My new ships come from o'er the sea,
Where is Port Arthur gone? The Japanese came rushing swift ·
Across my vessels' track;
I care not now to trace their flight,
O call Port Arthur back! He cannot bear thy voice fair dame,
He may not come to thee,. The bear hath clasped him to his breast;
In hug of ecstasy.
And has he left his fatherland,
of any great difficulty. The formation of a small committee of those interested would doubtless largely facilitate matters and dispose of many little difficulties that at present form a stumb The Japanese Consul at Tientsin recently re-recent Russian grab is seen by the following ling block to the realization of the idea of for- ported to the Government that the Chinese eigners protecting themselves against the ever have begun to regard Japanese manufactares growing native rapacity. The case of the cot- with serious distrust. Merchandise received ton mills is doubtless one of the most pressing from Japan, they allege, does not correspond for counter combination, the capital involved with sample, and packing is, in almost all cases, being so large, but at present, we are driven to miserably unsubstantial. The Consul expresses confess that the outlook for this industry is no- the deepest regret that Japanese merchants are thing like as roseate as when, after the Shimo- disposed to break faith without the slightest re- noseki Treaty, the first foreign prospectuses gard to honour. The sale of soap is a typical were published. This unhappy alteration in example. The fragrance and delicacy of Japan- their prospects is due to two causes, first the ese soap attracted the notice of the Chinese, and insatiable rapacity of the natives and their un- demand for the article increased considerably, willingness to be content with reasonable But the original fragrance, which constituted profite, which disposition is displayed in the the attraction, has now entirely disappeared and constant demand for higher wages, and the the market is. consequently, closed. The failure increasing exactions of the 'middlemen or to observe punctuality in the delivery of goods brokers who control the supplies of raw cotton. is alleged to be another deplorable defect of From various enquiries in the country we have Japanese manufacturers. Large orders from satisfied ourselves that the enhanced cost of raw Chinese customers are never executed at the ap- cotton has brought little or no increase in the pointed time and to the contracted amount, owing profits of the grower, but has been pocketed by simply to want of due attention. The utmost the rapacious class of middlemen who, as in indifference is shown to small orders. Porce everything else in China, at once fastened them-lain ordered in September last year has not yet selves like barnacles upon the new industry. been transmitted. The untrustworthiness of One of the results of this is that many if not the Japanese, the Consul adds, is almost pro- most of the cotton mills to-day are spinning verbial in many parts of China.-Japan Mail. imported American cotton for the higher counts because it is cheaper, even with dear American POETS OF THE PAST ON labour, heavy freights and duty, than the local grown article, with its so called cheap Chinese labour and small cost of transportation.
sooner or
THE
PROBLEMS OF THE PRESENT. "The most practical of all sciences is the science of life, and the most useful of all arts This must be our ex- the art of adaptation." cuse for placing before our readers some adapted opinions of the past on the problems which the presént is trying hard to work out. That there extricably mixed up in such an attempt is our misfortune, not our fault.
It is quite within the bounds of possibility, esqecially in these days of Psychical Societies and Mahatmas, that the spirit of Cooper in his Alexander Selkirk Frame of mind may lately have occupied a regal throne in the mind of his Imperial Majesty the Czar of all the Rus. sians, and that the following deligerance may have been the result:-
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute; From Port Arthur away out to sea,
I am lord both of man and of brute.
O Salisbury, where are the charms
The English have seen in thy face P Thanks to thee, and without war's alarms,
I reign in this snug little place,
And must I call in vain ? And through the long, long future years
Will he not come again ?
He may not. Yet there's comfort still
To shed one golden ray,
A kind, dear friend will watch him well
From rocky Weihaiwei.
Possibly no body of men are more fitted to represent public opinion in the Far East than the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, and we suggest that the following, with every apology to the late Rev. Charles Wolfe's memory, be known as
THE MERCHANT'S LAMENT. Not a drum was heard nor a funeral note, As our thoughts to Cathay's Court we hurried, Not a soldier discharged a farewell shot O'er the grave where our commerce we buried We buried it darkly at Talienwan, The turf our Conservatives turning, By Simple Salisbury's trust, poor mau, And our anger fiercely burning.
And unparliament'ry the sally, As we steadfastly watched the Manchurian raid, And feared for the fate of the valley. No useless treaties confine the Russ, (That's our sole part in the story.) For he lies like a warrior without any fuss, And our interest-just go to glory.
Recent blue books have given us some of the internal history of the past few months. Minis- ters may try to put a pleasant face upon the matter, and they may possibly have as many cards up their sleeve as the distinguished prestidigitateur at present with us. But for all that the people of England have of late been asking, in the words of Campbell, where the navy has been all this time, and the naval men have re-echoed-" Where indeed !"
Ye mariners of England
Who roam the Eastern seas, Whose flag has waved full many a day
In many an ocean breeze, Your glorious pennants pack again
You're not to face the foe;
But this phase of the difficulty will evidently work its own cure, as soon as the native harpies olearly realize that their game is cutting their own throats though our experience of the man ner in which the China tea trade has been strau- gled by much the same tactics, may raise a doubt is much plagiarism and not a little parody in- Few and short the remarks we made, whether the end in China will turn out as it would in other countries, where the love to squeeze every orange dry is not so devel. oped to the destruction of all other and more permanent interests. The higher price of coal, as compared with 1895 is no doubt also telling upon the mill industries, but this is only a temporary question, which will later disappear. The greatest difficulty is the constant demand for higher pay by the work people and, as it looks now, we are likely to hear less and less of the "cheap labour of China's millions as factors in the competition of the industrial world. Taken at the outset and regarding Chinese labour in its original conditions, before it has been vitiated by the knowledge of how easily the artless "foreign devils" may be squeezed, it is certainly as cheap as any in the world. Cheap doubtless, but terribly careless, scamping and ineffective; but transplant it to a place like Shanghai and see how soon the quality of cheap- ness disappears. We are informed by one ac- quainted with the work that in the local mills the average cost frame is $1 a day for labour, while in England a woman for 18s. (or $9 a week) will attend to four frames and turu out infinitely more even and honest work. Thus the cost per frame in Shanghai works out to $7 a week, while in England it amounts to $2.25. As compared with India, another land of the vaunted cheap Asiatic labour, native will there attend to two frames for the same wages as is paid for one in Shanghai. This entirely leaves out the question of waste, which is ter- ribly heavy in most mills in Shanghai, where the same trouble is being found in this respect as was encountered in the early days of the cotton spinning in Bombay. Is it then any wonder that we hear that the Wa Sing Chong mill on the Yangisepoo Road is losing Tls. 600 a day, or that another Chinese owned mill in the same vicinity is making a loss of Tls. 3 on every bale of cotton? But only in too many instances has the real working of the local mills passed from the hands of the nominal foreign mana- gers into those of the No. 1 Chinaman who controls all the labour, and until this is remedied we fear the glowing hopes with which the mills started will never be realized.
per
According to the Shanghai Daily Press "Billy" Waters, ex man-of-warsman, torpedo instructor, saloon keeper, pugilist, generalis. si mo and Prime Minister to the short-lived Formosan Republic, is on his way to join the Insurgents under Aguinaldo in the Philippines.
I am out of thy naval meu's reach, I can finish my journey alone; It's amusing to hear thy bold speech So directly opposed to my own. There are leases in many a place,
And leases-encouraging thought- May save some of Britain's lost fate,
And reconcile her to her lot.
It is still a moot point whether or no there was an understanding between the Germans who opened the ball at Kiaochow and the Czar, who was thus enabled to take up his present point of vantage. But one thing is certain, the position is the direct outcome of the seizure of Kiaochow Bay.
:
The Teutou came down like a wolf on the fold, All burnished iu steel, and all glittering with
gold,
And the fame of his fleet spread like foam on
the seu,
Where was never so mighty a sailor as he! Like the trees of the forest when summer is
green
Their masts with their banners at daylight
were seen;
Like to extinct rolcanoes all smokeless and cold, Their funnels at sunset stood strange to behold. For there lay the Deutschland with a roll to
each side,
And there lay her consort in cruiserly pride Her songs were all silent, her flag drooped alope, Her rails were unlifted, her trumpets unblown. King Coal had refused for the nonce to assist In the hurry and haste of the mighty mailed
tist; Yet Destiny deigned to make more than
amends;
Though you sweep through the deep
While stormy tempests blow; While anger rages loud and long,
And wordy tempests blow, Britannia's many bulwarks,
And towers along the steep; She marches still over mountain waves,
Her home's still on the deep. Then why, O ocean warriors,
O why did she not go With the fame of your name,
Where war's fierce tempests blow. Where the battle rages loud and long,
And war's fierce tempests blow. The general public is not one whit behind in condemnation of the policy of shilly-shally which has characterised Lord Salisbury's con- duct of the Far Eastern crisis. In borrowing from Young's “Night Thoughts" to illustrate this general feeling, we might remark that the ideas here expressed are not confined to the darker hours, but are dominant throughout the whole twenty-four, and might appropriately be described as the "Day and Night Thoughts” of the Britishers of the Far East :-
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer; Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till China is pushed out of life; Pro-Russianation is the thief this time. Year after year it steals till all is
gone, And to the tender mercies of a Cossack leaves The vast concerns of all Britannia's trade.
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