September 19, 1904.]
It was reported by one of the passengers to Shanghai from Hankow by the Tuckwo on the 4th instant, that in consequence of the American China Development Company having passed into Belgian hands, the whole American staff on the north, or Hankow end of the Hankow- Canton railway, had been recalled.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
According to a Peking telegram in a northern contemporary the Ministers for England and Americs are protesting against Viceroy Wei's remarkable regulations for the opening of Changsha, to which we recently drew attention in our leader columns,
The Viceroy of the Liang-Kiang provinces has given permission to some wealthy native There is no sinister meaning of any kind in gentlemen at Canton to monopolise the sa'e of the closing of the Shanghai branch of the In-Government salt in Kwang-tung on condition spectorate-General of Customs; rather, the that the promoters find Tls. 5,000,000 as capital Shanghai Daily News assures us, it is a step for purchasing salt from the salt manufacturer. that has been foreseen for some time. It will be The monopoly is granted for ten years from the remembered that it was during the siege of the date of signature of the agreement, and out of Legations at Peking, when all communication the profit six parts must be given the Govern- between the Inspector-General of Customs, Sirment and the remainder to the promotors and Robert Hart, Bart., and the rest of the world shareholders. The head office is to be at Canton, was cut off, that the pressing business of his and the Viceroy is to appoint a responsible office was undertaken at Shanghai, the Viceroy officer to look after the interests of the Govern- at Nanking, H.E. Liu Kun-yi, appointing Mr. F. ment.-Peking Gosette. E. Taylor, a Commissioner and Statistical Secre. tary, to the post of Acting Inspector-General. As the Customs buildings, and the whole plant, so to speak, of the Inspectorate-General at Peking. were destroyed in the siege, it became necessary to have a temporary establishment where the work of the office could be carried on, and for this purpose the Deputy Inspector-General, Sir Robert E. Bredon, was sent down to Shang-! hai after the siege was raised. But when the Customs establishment at Peking was rebuilt, and the organisation of Sir Robert Hart's bureaux completed, and a diminution of the political work that had been forced upon him by the confusion in Peking enabled him to take again into his own hands the full direction of the great Service of which he may fairly be termed the creator, the inconvenience of having two Inspectorates-General was obvious, and the closing of the Shanghai branch, which was always intended, is the natural sequel. This is all the foundation there is for the sensational stories that have been current.
The incorporation in New York of the Southern Cotton Corporation, with a share capital of $20,000,000, is “all the talk" in circles connected with the industry on both sides of the Atlantic, several owners of mills in Great Britain being said to be interested in the undertaking. The intention is to establish throughout the whole of the South warehous's wherein farmers may, in times of excessive production, store their cotton, and secure for it negotiable warehouse receipts instead of forcing it on the market, and breaking prices. The growers will, it is claimed, effect the handsome saving of $20,000,000 per annum.
The shareholders in S. C. Farnham, Boyd & Co.. Ld., are summoned to an extraordinary general meeting to consider the proposal to sell the whole of their undertaking, lock, s ock, and barrel, to a London company which is to be formed to take it over and carry it on. It is proposed that the shareholders shall receive for each share of Tls. 100 in the present com. pany the sum of £12 10s., equal at 28. 6d exchange to Tls. 100, and shares in the new company to the value of £16 or Tls. 128. This is on the face of it a very favourable sale. Original shareholders in S. C. Farnham & Co., Ld., will thus receive the equivalent of Tls. 228 for their outlay of Tls. 33.33; those in Boyd & Co, Ld., will receive this sum for their Tls. 50; and those in the Shanghai E. S. & Dock Co., Ld., the third of the companies which were amalgamated in the present company, for their Tls. 100. What is to be the total capital of the London company is not stated; but the amount required to purchase the existing company, in cash and shares, amounts to £1,573,200. A large sum will also be required for working capital, and the very considerable extension of plant and building which is understood to be contemplated by the London company. A great revival of business is expected at Shanghai when the war is over; and it is suggested that the new company will install plant for the manufacture of rails and railway material, engines and machinery of all kinds, and will also undertake shipbuilding on s large scale. There is an undoubted opening in China for such works as it is supposed to be the intention of the company to inaugurate. The great question for the present shareholders in 8. C. Farnham, Boyd & Co., Ld., is the amount at which the capital of the London company is to be fixed, as on this depends the value of the £16 that they are to receive in shares. It would be well for them, before the meeting at which they are to be asked to accept the proposal now made, to study what happened to the original concessionaires of the Hongkong Low-Level Tramways. If Shang- hai is to become the Belfast of China it will doubtless be a good thing for the prosperity of the port as a whole, and it will interest a great! public company at Home in the conservancy of the Huangpu but the experience of having big industries in the East managed by a board of directors in London has not been uniformly | favourable.-N.-C. Daily News.
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HONGKONG.
211
The South African coolie emigrant steamer Inkum is being fitted up at the Kowloon Docks,
The new ferry Evening Star, being built at the Kowloon Docks, is having her engines fitted.
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The abattoir at Hunghom recently contained nothing but goats. The “venison'
was for the Indian troops.
Mr. John Jessiaman Ewing passed his master's Board of Trade examination on the 16th inst. Capt. R. Rodger, of the ss. Zafiro, and the King's Harbour Manter examined him.
The Indian constable who recently allowed a prisoner to escape from the waiting room ut the Magistracy has been dismissed from the force.
European dwelling-houses are now in course of construction at the back of the Kowloon Dispensary and the corner of Observation and Des Voeux Roads. Kowloon as a residential quarter is still popular.
'I he attention of the P.W.D. is desired on the road in front of the glass works at Hunghom, where the Hongkong Land Reclamation Co.'s little railway crosses. It is in a shocking condition.
The visitors to the City Hall Library and Museum for the week ending 11th September, 1904, were 220 non-Chinese and 71 Chinese to the former, and 79 non-Chinese and 1,915 Chinese to the latter institution.
In the early hours of the 17th inst. In his report on the for ign trade of Corea burglary took place at 129, Wanchai Road, for the year 1903, the British Vic:-Consul at occupied by Mr. W. Wolfe and Mr. J. Seoul states that it was a record year both for Davenport, of the Naval Yard. The burglars imports and exports. The value of the trade gained entrance by climbing up the verandah amounted to £2,827,381, of which £1,859,976 while the occupants were asleep. They represents imports and £967,505 exports (prac-evidently robbed Mr. Davenport's house first, tically all to Japan). To this must be added because they searched the clothing and left it the gold export, amounting to £517,000, in Mr. Wolfe's place. From Mr. Davenport's making a grand total of £3,384,387. Customs house they made off with a silver watch duties amounted to £146,255. The foreign trade and gold chain and 86 in money which of Cores has gone on increasing rapidly during they took out of 8 purse, leaving the the past few years. This continued growth, in purse on the verandah as being of no value. spi's of political unrest and the lamentable Mr. Wolfe came off better, as he lost only 25 condition of the currency, shows the possibilities cents, which had been left lying on the dressing- of expansion under a reformed and stable system. table. Neither of the occupants of the house The soil is fertile and, properly developed, the heard anything suspicious during the night. resources would yield abundant profit. Nothing is further from the truth than that Corea is a poor country. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Osaka Shosen Kaisha improved their services to Corean ports during the year, putting larger steamers on the run. Japan takes prac'ically all the gold that Cores produces for export (£556,985 worth in 1903), and in return sends a large quantity of cotton goods, matches, silk piece-goods, saké and tobacco to the Peninsula. For the development of new industries the first essential is that the currency system should be reformed and placed upon a sound basis, but the re ponsible Corean officials are slow to grasp elementary economic facts; advice and assistance from without would appear to be necessary before any effective legislative or monetary improvements can be instituted.
Mr. Consul Liddell in the course of his re- port on the trade of the Consular district of Lyons for the year 1903, writes on the Lyons Silk market:-
The vaunted monopoly that Lyons once claimed through the skill and cleverness of her weavers has disappeared before the growth of foreign competition. Ftunately, however, the economic evolution has caused an increase in production. The cause of the decline in the culture of silkworms is of long standing. It
is
In the Emigration Camp at Laichikok on the 15th inst. there were some 750 coolies awaiting shipment for South Africa, and it is expected that they will sail shortly. It appears that all difficulties with regard to the despatch of coolies from Hongkong have been smoothed over. Under the British-Chinese Convention no coolies could be shipped to a British possession from China except from a Treaty port. Hongkong of course is not a Treaty port, and the Viceroy reading the Convention literally, put objections in the way of the sending of coolies from here. Now His Excellency has been instructed from Poking that no further objections are to be taken. It is a noteworthy fact that in Hong- kong the system of registration of the coolfes is far more efficient and far more calculated to give every protection to them than that in vogue in Tientsin, Chefoo and other Northern ports.
The
It was reported on the 15th inst, thatabout half- past eight o'clock on the previous night some of the villagers of the small village of Wong Uk, near Laichikok smigration camp, arrested two of the coolies from the camp on a charge of stealing vegetables from a garden. villagers were taking the alleged thieves to the public station when they met two Indian con- stables on patrol and handed the prisoners over to them. The whole crowd then proceeded towards the station, and had almost reached Samsuipo when they were overtaken by a crowd of coolies to the number of about one hundred from the emigration camp, who set upon the con stables with bamboo pols and iron bars and rescued the two prisoners. On the alarm being given at Bamsnipo the rest of the Indians rushed out and gave chase to the retreating coolles. They could not come up with the main body, howreer, and only succeeded in capturing two who had tailed off from the gang. Both of the Indians who were attacked were badly bruised, one of them so severely as to necessitate his removal to hospital.” The two coolies who were captured as having taken part in the rescue were taken before the Magistrates and were
firstly organic, that is to the worms were attacked by disease which it was found most difficult to cope with. Pasteur did, however, find an antidote to this disease, and it was applied with a large measure of suc- cass in the Cevennes. Silkworm culture seemed after all likely to succeed, when in 1892 cocoons began to arrive from China and Japan which were offered at such extraordinarily low prices that the French cocoons were quite unable to compete. The centre of silk production changed from Europe to Asia, from France and Italy to China and Japan. Japan, in 1880, exported only 17,900 bales of silk; in 1900 this amount had risen to 56,190 bales, and in 1903 to 76,000 | bales. The values were estimated at £2,906,876, £6,463,180 and £9,000,000 respectively. There was the same progress in the case of China. remanded.
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