88
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]
[August 2, 1902.
ashore at other ports, where they must be sub- ject to further handling, and often to infinite delays, before they can be fairly started toward their destination. Consumers receiving by this route will get the benefit of quicker deliveries and some small saving in cost, than by other ways. Chances for business will attract to this
commission houses. place
The Company
Officer attached to the China Expeditionary | CHINA FOR THE CHINESE. much less time than it takes to lighter cargoes Force, to free this place of malarial fever. Two hundred men of the Indian Regiment were detailed to carry out the necessary work under Dr. Young's supervision, the hills were cleared for a distance of 300 yards of all brushwood and undergrowth. several bogs were drained and the anopheles pools in the nullah were filled up. Notwithstanding all these measur s, however, fever was so pre-
valent there in the autumn months that the station had to be vacated by the Troops."
Appended is the following medical report apon Victoria Gaol by Dr. R. Lamort:-
C
ut
Chinwangtuo, July, 1902,
proposes to invite settlement of that nature, by offering land at low prices, preferring to sell close to the cost for the sake of expected returns in trade than to hold out for profits which might deter merchants from coming. I isposition in this regard, while not openly avowed, is believed to incline toward native settlement, of the merchant order, and therein may lie a menace to other ports as threatening as that provided by superior port accommodations. The movement reported from districts a little further Sonth, to establish native connections with foreign manufacturers, and cut into the business of foreign .commission houses, may
morality, and empty as may be the pl-asant Lax as may be the Chinese in political cutgivings from Peking concerning reform. foreign residents hereabouts have never had reason to be sceptical as to the keenness of in awe of the wealth that may be drawn upon native commercial insight. They speak almost occasion, and as often as desirable, from treasure stores that seem to replenish themselves like an inexhaustible well. If the instinct that has usually guided bright ventures for profit stil follows an unerring course, this port is destined to become one of the most important in the North. The investment now proceeding here began with money and under direction wholly native. Participation in it now by percons not Chinese indicates such eagerness to be in level- demand for shares, at 30 per cent. premium, at always had the interior connections, such a time when no dividend may be said to be in opposition to native schemes as may be met prospect, and when the outlook for plans for nland must come largely from natives in the attracting business must be content to be employ of foreign houses; and while blood and regarded as speculative. In order to become water are commonly supposed to be of about profitable as a port of general commerce, equal thickness in these parts, it seems probable Chinwangtao, mut enter into rivalry with ports that a developing tendency to encourage trade so well known as Chefoo, Tientsin, and New- operations wholly native will deprive that sort chwang, leaving out of account the ambitions of rivalry of acrid qualities early in the proceed-> of the Russian ports that are preparing to in-ngs. There may be such impulse to trade, duce trade by way of the Liaotung Peninsula.
iwhen natives shall become independently Trade in the North would seem already to have
iconcerned in it, as to extend the leaɛe of foreign houses for a long time, where connections are well fixed; but the process is an undermining one, and the prediction would not be far-fetched which foresaw for Fome of the foreign interests now represented in the North the
of working harder than ever - necessity before to gather fresh trade, if not something of a struggle to retain that which they think they own.
The health of the staff has been gecd in spite of the fact that the new (fficer's quarters have not yet been opened to them. The health of the inmates has also been satisfactory. Six lepers were sent to Canton, one of whom, how. ever, returned to the Colony and hed to be sent back again. There were a hundred and four- teen cases in which corporal punishment was inflicted during the year, fourteen by the Prison Authorities and a hundred from the headed company as to have created an active receive here strong impetns. As natives have sentence of the Courts, none required any medical after-treatment. Overcrowding of prisoners is still a serious question. Four and even five men have at times to be put in the same cell, thus reducing the space for each to some 250 cubic feet, whereas the Public Health Ordinance 13 of 1901, requires that the in dividual allotted space, should be of 400 cubic feet. The temporary hospital is also times overcrowded. The officer's quarters which were altered and fitted up some two years ago for the Gacl Hospital is yet unavailable for the proper accommodation or facilities for the pri soners, being still cccupied by the Indian Gaol Staff. The present temporary hospital is mest inadequate, offering no proper accommodation or facilities for the treatment of patients. The daily number of prisoners complaining sick is most variable from time to time, malingering fully accounting for these variations. In spite of the prevalence of dengue fever in the Colony -in November, no case occurred amongst the prisoners. There were prisoners discharged on medical grounds during the year. I ermission was obtained from His Excellency the Governor to transfer a pregnant female prisoner to the Government Civil Hospital, as she had suddenly become comatose; she was found to be suffering from malignant malaria and died shortly after, having given birth to a still-born child."
fairly well developed through the enterprise of ports long sought and highly favoured, and those ports feel quite confident to be able to take care of any growth (It improving conditions may foster. Yet plans go on with as much vigour and lavish outlay as if large returns were fully assured, and when the improvement i finished, the port will be equipped to give pier-room at all seasons to ships of as heavy draught as any that pass through Snez.
While the management of the China En- gineering and Mining Co. which directs the present work would hardly underrate the facilities which the port must afford for increased output of coal, which the hills for iniles back contain, talk heard here just now subordinates that interest to expectations on broad commercial lines. The argument Dr. J. C. Thomson reports regarding the is that since coal might be shipped, in unlimited Tung Wah Hospital that the number of patients quantities, from a common harbour, there could in the wards at the beginning of the year was
be no good reason for superior accommodations, 125; 2,989 were admitted during 1901, making unless general trade could be captured and held. a total of 3,114 cases; 1,899 were discharged; Increase of capitalisation from £500,000 to 1,071 died; leaving 141 in the Hospital at the £1,100,000 could not have been urged for mining close of the year. Of the 2,9.9 admissions, development, for the reason that the mining 547 were transferred for treatment to other property was in hand lefore a suggestion of the institutions, as follows:-18 to Government increase, and in successful operation. Therefore Civil Hospital, 7 to the Lunatic Asylum, 130 to
the differetce between the two sums may be said Kennedy Town Infective Diseases Hospital, to represent native confidence in the trade and 392 to the Tung Wah Plague Branch growth of an already busy region. It is upon Hospital at Kennedy Town. Of the fatal cases, the prospect of such growth rather than upon 296 were in a dying condition at the time of expectation that other northern ports will admission. There remains a net total of 2,146 suffer in business activity materially, that actually treated in the Tung Wah Hospital, hope here is building. Considerations much of whom 632, i.e., 30.4 per cent. were under
more far-reaching than those beretofore European treatment, and 1,494, i... 696 per branght to public attention are involved in cent, under Chinese treatment. 43 dead bodies this movement. Enough has been written of were brought to the Hospital mortuary the advantages of Chinwangtao, as a port open to await burial. E4 of these, and also 63 for commerce all the year, on a coast where com. bodies of persons who died within the Hospital merce comes to a standstill for four cold months were sent to the Government Public Mortuary, because nearly every port is made unapproach for internal examination. Free burial was
able by ice, to render sufficient at this time a provided by the Hospital for 1,990 persons.
mere reminder of that advantage. Yet the The number of visits to the out-patient de- harbour remained open in other years without partment was 77,842. 449 destitute personserving as other than a convenience to shippers, were temporarily housed and fed. 1,952 per. belated elsewhere, who were driven here and sons were vaccinated at, and in connection had no alternative. The best that might be with, the Hospital. As in previous years, the said of this port was that ships might comé Tung Wah Hospital was used throughout the offshore in winter, and risk getting their plague epidemic of 1901 as a convenient centre
cargoes in over the ice, or through the breakers for the diagnosis and observation of plague that cover the shoals for some distance from cases, a large airy ward close to the receiving shore. Now there has been dredging, and two ward being set apart for this purpose.
piers, well advanced in construction, will project for 1,200 and 2,300 feet respectively and furnish moorings alongside where the depth of water will be twenty feet at low tide. Railroad tracks will be run out to the end of the piers, and as these tracks connect, a few miles inland, with the Imperial railway, it may be possible, with a single handling from the ships, to transport goods to any place in the interior reached by the Imperial lines in
A Seoul telegram to the Osaka Asahi, says that the negotiations which were in progress between the Japanese Minister and the Corean Government regarding the proposed station at Seoul for the Seoul-Fusan railway have been brought to a conclusion. Japan is to obtain 29,000 tsubo of land outside the South Gate it Seoul.
Chinwangtao promises in the future to become க centre for native energy in the contest for the trade of the North. By intui- tion, cs well as from necessity, the consuming masses of the North count, most carefully their outlays. No one can appreciate this condition
better than the native merchan's. Considera- tions of outlay apply in this region, quite as much as in any other part of the empire, to money in the very smallest denominations. As time hero has not yet acquired value to be weighed against copper cash, the expectation may be warranted that ability to undersell by money fractions so small as to seem almost inappre- ciable, by western standards, may turn custom over a very wide range of territory. Foreign houses always had to sell with reference to the season. Whatever precautions they may take to stock up heavily enough in the months of op n navigation to tide over the closed months, invariably heretofore scarcity has occurred in many quarters, and prices have advanced generally, in winter. If ships may visit a port never closed and load their cargoes directly
on cars, there will be a considerable diversion of trads in favour of houses that can keep supplies and prices reasonably constant, and that shall set out on a trade hunt with a declared policy of doing business on the smallest possible margin of profit. There is reason to believe that such a policy will be profitable. Wages are not increasing, except at commercial places where foreign houses have located. The native masses find it much more easy to get good pay for labour, or for their produce, among foreigners than among their own people. Since it is impossible that the great body of consumers should come within the area of this kind of benefit, trade in general is just now hampered rather than helped. The downward tendency of silver is responsible for the dition. Native reckoning bas not yet advanced to a real conception of the difference There is little between bullion and money. reason why the common understanding in this part of China should so advance, Encouraging as have been the trade returns in the North this year, they would have reached greater volume had not the decline in silver so advanced the silver price of goods as to shut off various large negotiations that had been pushed nearly to the contract point. Native mer- chants, accustomed to dealing in dollars, basing→
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