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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 5350 ***
+
+
+
+
+FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES
+
+OR
+
+PERMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA, KOREA AND JAPAN
+
+By
+
+F. H. KING, D. Sc.
+
+1911
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+
+
+By DR. L. H. BAILEY.
+
+We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind in the tilling
+of the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is the bottom condition
+of civilization. If we are to assemble all the forces and agencies
+that make for the final conquest of the planet, we must assuredly
+know how it is that all the peoples in all the places have met the
+problem of producing their sustenance out of the soil.
+
+We have had few great agricultural travelers and few books that
+describe the real and significant rural conditions. Of natural
+history travel we have had very much; and of accounts of sights and
+events perhaps we have had too many. There are, to be sure, famous
+books of study and travel in rural regions, and some of them, as
+Arthur Young's "Travels in France," have touched social and
+political history; but for the most part, authorship of agricultural
+travel is yet undeveloped. The spirit of scientific inquiry must now
+be taken into this field, and all earth-conquest must be compared
+and the results be given to the people that work.
+
+This was the point of view in which I read Professor King's
+manuscript. It is the writing of a well-trained observer who went
+forth not to find diversion or to depict scenery and common wonders,
+but to study the actual conditions of life of agricultural peoples.
+We in North America are wont to think that we may instruct all the
+world in agriculture, because our agricultural wealth is great and
+our exports to less favored peoples have been heavy; but this wealth
+is great because our soil is fertile and new, and in large acreage
+for every person. We have really only begun to farm well. The first
+condition of farming is to maintain fertility. This condition the
+oriental peoples have met, and they have solved it in their way. We
+may never adopt particular methods, but we can profit vastly by
+their experience. With the increase of personal wants in recent
+time. the newer countries may never reach such density of population
+as have Japan and China; but we must nevertheless learn the first
+lesson in the conservation of natural resources, which are the
+resources of the land. This is the message that Professor King
+brought home from the East.
+
+This book on agriculture should have good effect in establishing
+understanding between the West and the East. If there could be such
+an interchange of courtesies and inquiries on these themes as is
+suggested by Professor King, as well as the interchange of athletics
+and diplomacy and commerce, the common productive people on both
+sides should gain much that they could use; and the results in amity
+should be incalculable.
+
+It is a misfortune that Professor King could not have lived to write
+the concluding "Message of China and Japan to the World." It would
+have been a careful and forceful summary of his study of eastern
+conditions. At the moment when the work was going to the printer, he
+was called suddenly to the endless journey and his travel here was
+left incomplete. But he bequeathed us a new piece of literature, to
+add to his standard writings on soils and on the applications of
+physics and devices to agriculture. Whatever he touched he
+illuminated.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN
+
+GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA
+
+TO HONGKONG AND CANTON
+
+UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST RIVER
+
+EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS
+
+SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE
+
+THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS
+
+TRAMPS AFIELD
+
+THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE
+
+IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE
+
+ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE
+
+RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT
+
+SILK CULTURE
+
+THE TEA INDUSTRY
+
+ABOUT TIENTSIN
+
+MANCHURIA AND KOREA
+
+RETURN TO JAPAN
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+
+
+A word of introduction is needed to place the reader at the best
+view point from which to consider what is said in the following
+pages regarding the agricultural practices and customs of China,
+Korea and Japan. It should be borne in mind that the great factors
+which today characterize, dominate and determine the agricultural
+and other industrial operations of western nations were physical
+impossibilities to them one hundred years ago, and until then had
+been so to all people.
+
+It should be observed, too, that the United States as yet is a
+nation of but few people widely scattered over a broad virgin land
+with more than twenty acres to the support of every man, woman and
+child, while the people whose practices are to be considered are
+toiling in fields tilled more than three thousand years and who have
+scarcely more than two acres per capita,* more than one-half of
+which is uncultivable mountain land.
+
+*[Footnote: This figure was wrongly stated in the first edition as
+one acre, owing to a mistake in confusing the area of cultivated
+land with total area.]
+
+Again, the great movement of cargoes of feeding stuffs and mineral
+fertilizers to western Europe and to the eastern United States began
+less than a century ago and has never been possible as a means of
+maintaining soil fertility in China, Korea or Japan, nor can it be
+continued indefinitely in either Europe or America. These
+importations are for the time making tolerable the waste of plant
+food materials through our modern systems of sewage disposal and
+other faulty practices; but the Mongolian races have held all such
+wastes, both urban and rural, and many others which we ignore,
+sacred to agriculture, applying them to their fields.
+
+We are to consider some of the practices of a virile race of some
+five hundred millions of people who have an unimpaired inheritance
+moving with the momentum acquired through four thousand years; a
+people morally and intellectually strong, mechanically capable, who
+are awakening to a utilization of all the possibilities which
+science and invention during recent years have brought to western
+nations; and a people who have long dearly loved peace but who can
+and will fight in self defense if compelled to do so.
+
+We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese
+farmers; to walk through their fields and to learn by seeing some of
+their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress
+and experience have led these oldest farmers in the world to adopt.
+We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps
+thirty or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to
+produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense populations
+as are living now in these three countries. We have now had this
+opportunity and almost every day we were instructed, surprised and
+amazed at the conditions and practices which confronted us whichever
+way we turned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these
+nations for centuries have been and are conserving and utilizing
+their natural resources, surprised at the magnitude of the returns
+they are getting from their fields, and amazed at the amount of
+efficient human labor cheerfully given for a daily wage of five
+cents and their food, or for fifteen cents, United States currency,
+without food.
+
+The three main islands of Japan in 1907 had a population of
+46,977,003 maintained on 20,000 square miles of cultivated field.
+This is at the rate of more than three people to each acre, and of
+2,349 to each square mile; and yet the total agricultural imports
+into Japan in 1907 exceeded the agricultural exports by less than
+one dollar per capita. If the cultivated land of Holland is
+estimated at but one-third of her total area, the density of her
+population in 1905 was, on this basis, less than one-third that of
+Japan in her three main islands. At the same time Japan is feeding
+69 horses and 56 cattle, nearly all laboring animals, to each square
+mile of cultivated field, while we were feeding in 1900 but 30
+horses and mules per same area, these being our laboring animals.
+
+As coarse food transformers Japan was maintaining 16,500,000
+domestic fowl, 825 per square mile, but only one for almost three of
+her people. We were maintaining, in 1900, 250,600,000 poultry, but
+only 387 per square mile of cultivated field and yet more than three
+for each person. Japan's coarse food transformers in the form of
+swine, goats and sheep aggregated but 13 to the square mile and
+provided but one of these units for each 180 of her people while in
+the United States in 1900 there were being maintained, as
+transformers of grass and coarse grain into meat and milk, 95
+cattle, 99 sheep and 72 swine per each square mile of improved
+farms. In this reckoning each of the cattle should be counted as the
+equivalent of perhaps five of the sheep and swine, for the
+transforming power of the dairy cow is high. On this basis we are
+maintaining at the rate of more than 646 of the Japanese units per
+square mile, and more than five of these to every man, woman and
+child, instead of one to every 180 of the population, as is the case
+in Japan.
+
+Correspondingly accurate statistics are not accessible for China but
+in the Shantung province we talked with a farmer having 12 in his
+family and who kept one donkey, one cow, both exclusively laboring
+animals, and two pigs on 2.5 acres of cultivated land where he grew
+wheat, millet, sweet potatoes and beans. Here is a density of
+population equal to 3,072 people, 256 donkeys, 256 cattle and 512
+swine per square mile. In another instance where the holding was one
+and two-thirds acres the farmer had 10 in his family and was
+maintaining one donkey and one pig, giving to this farm land a
+maintenance capacity of 3,840 people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs to
+the square mile, or 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs to one of our
+forty-acre farms which our farmers regard too small for a single
+family. The average of seven Chinese holdings which we visited and
+where we obtained similar data indicates a maintenance capacity for
+those lands of 1,783 people, 212 cattle or donkeys and 399
+swine,--1,995 consumers and 399 rough food transformers per square
+mile of farm land. These statements for China represent strictly
+rural populations. The rural population of the United States in 1900
+was placed at the rate of 61 per square mile of improved farm land
+and there were 30 horses and mules. In Japan the rural population
+had a density in 1907 of 1,922 per square mile, and of horses and
+cattle together 125.
+
+The population of the large island of Chungming in the mouth of the
+Yangtse river, having an area of 270 square miles, possessed,
+according to the official census of 1902, a density of 3,700 per
+square mile and yet there was but one large city on the island,
+hence the population is largely rural.
+
+It could not be other than a matter of the highest industrial,
+educational and social importance to all nations if there might be
+brought to them a full and accurate account of all those conditions
+which have made it possible for such dense populations to be
+maintained so largely upon the products of Chinese, Korean and
+Japanese soils. Many of the steps, phases and practices through
+which this evolution has passed are irrevocably buried in the past
+but such remarkable maintenance efficiency attained centuries ago
+and projected into the present with little apparent decadence merits
+the most profound study and the time is fully ripe when it should be
+made. Living as we are in the morning of a century of transition
+from isolated to cosmopolitan national life when profound
+readjustments, industrial, educational and social, must result, such
+an investigation cannot be made too soon. It is high time for each
+nation to study the others and by mutual agreement and co-operative
+effort, the results of such studies should become available to all
+concerned, made so in the spirit that each should become coordinate
+and mutually helpful component factors in the world's progress.
+
+One very appropriate and immensely helpful means for attacking this
+problem, and which should prove mutually helpful to citizen and
+state, would be for the higher educational institutions of all
+nations, instead of exchanging courtesies through their baseball
+teams, to send select bodies of their best students under competent
+leadership and by international agreement, both east and west,
+organizing therefrom investigating bodies each containing components
+of the eastern and western civilization and whose purpose it should
+be to study specifically set problems. Such a movement well
+conceived and directed, manned by the most capable young men, should
+create an international acquaintance and spread broadcast a body of
+important knowledge which would develop as the young men mature and
+contribute immensely toward world peace and world progress. If some
+broad plan of international effort such as is here suggested were
+organized the expense of maintenance might well be met by diverting
+so much as is needful from the large sums set aside for the
+expansion of navies for such steps as these, taken in the interests
+of world uplift and world peace, could not fail to be more
+efficacious and less expensive than increase in fighting equipment.
+It would cultivate the spirit of pulling together and of a square
+deal rather than one of holding aloof and of striving to gain
+unneighborly advantage.
+
+Many factors and conditions conspire to give to the farms and
+farmers of the Far East their high maintenance efficiency and some
+of these may be succinctly stated. The portions of China, Korea and
+Japan where dense populations have developed and are being
+maintained occupy exceptionally favorable geographic positions so
+far as these influence agricultural production. Canton in the south
+of China has the latitude of Havana, Cuba, while Mukden in
+Manchuria, and northern Honshu in Japan are only as far north as New
+York city, Chicago and northern California. The United States lies
+mainly between 50 degrees and 30 degrees of latitude while these
+three countries lie between 40 degrees and 20 degrees, some seven
+hundred miles further south. This difference of position, giving
+them longer seasons, has made it possible for them to devise systems
+of agriculture whereby they grow two, three and even four crops on
+the same piece of ground each year. In southern China, in Formosa
+and in parts of Japan two crops of rice are grown; in the Chekiang
+province there may be a crop of rape, of wheat or barley or of
+windsor beans or clover which is followed in midsummer by another of
+cotton or of rice. In the Shantung province wheat or barley in the
+winter and spring may be followed in summer by large or small
+millet, sweet potatoes, soy beans or peanuts. At Tientsin, 39 deg
+north, in the latitude of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Springfield,
+Illinois, we talked with a farmer who followed his crop of wheat on
+his small holding with one of onions and the onions with cabbage,
+realizing from the three crops at the rate of $163, gold, per acre;
+and with another who planted Irish potatoes at the earliest
+opportunity in the spring, marketing them when small, and following
+these with radishes, the radishes with cabbage, realizing from the
+three crops at the rate of $203 per acre.
+
+Nearly 500,000,000 people are being maintained, chiefly upon the
+products of an area smaller than the improved farm lands of the
+United States. Complete a square on the lines drawn from Chicago
+southward to the Gulf and westward across Kansas, and there will be
+enclosed an area greater than the cultivated fields of China, Korea
+and Japan and from which five times our present population are fed.
+
+The rainfall in these countries is not only larger than that even in
+our Atlantic and Gulf states, but it falls more exclusively during
+the summer season when its efficiency in crop production may be
+highest. South China has a rainfall of some 80 inches with little of
+it during the winter, while in our southern states the rainfall is
+nearer 60 inches with less than one-half of it between June and
+September. Along a line drawn from Lake Superior through central
+Texas the yearly precipitation is about 30 inches but only 16 inches
+of this falls during the months May to September; while in the
+Shantung province, China, with an annual rainfall of little more
+than 24 inches, 17 of these fall during the months designated and
+most of this in July and August. When it is stated that under the
+best tillage and with no loss of water through percolation, most of
+our agricultural crops require 300 to 600 tons of water for each ton
+of dry substance brought to maturity, it can be readily understood
+that the right amount of available moisture, coming at the proper
+time, must be one of the prime factors of a high maintenance
+capacity for any soil, and hence that in the Far East, with their
+intensive methods, it is possible to make their soils yield large
+returns.
+
+The selection of rice and of the millets as the great staple food
+crops of these three nations, and the systems of agriculture they
+have evolved to realize the most from them, are to us remarkable and
+indicate a grasp of essentials and principles which may well cause
+western nations to pause and reflect.
+
+Notwithstanding the large and favorable rainfall of these countries,
+each of the nations have selected the one crop which permits them to
+utilize not only practically the entire amount of rain which falls
+upon their fields, but in addition enormous volumes of the run-off
+from adjacent uncultivable mountain country. Wherever paddy fields
+are practicable there rice is grown. In the three main islands of
+Japan 56 per cent of the cultivated fields, 11,000 square miles, is
+laid out for rice growing and is maintained under water from
+transplanting to near harvest time, after which the land is allowed
+to dry, to be devoted to dry land crops during the balance of the
+year, where the season permits.
+
+To anyone who studies the agricultural methods of the Far East in
+the field it is evident that these people, centuries ago, came to
+appreciate the value of water in crop production as no other nations
+have. They have adapted conditions to crops and crops to conditions
+until with rice they have a cereal which permits the most intense
+fertilization and at the same time the ensuring of maximum yields
+against both drought and flood. With the practice of western nations
+in all humid climates, no matter how completely and highly we
+fertilize, in more years than not yields are reduced by a deficiency
+or an excess of water.
+
+It is difficult to convey, by word or map, an adequate conception of
+the magnitude of the systems of canalization which contribute
+primarily to rice culture. A conservative estimate would place the
+miles of canals in China at fully 200,000 and there are probably
+more miles of canal in China, Korea and Japan than there are miles
+of railroad in the United States. China alone has as many acres in
+rice each year as the United States has in wheat and her annual
+product is more than double and probably threefold our annual wheat
+crop, and yet the whole of the rice area produces at least one and
+sometimes two other crops each year.
+
+The selection of the quick-maturing, drought-resisting millets as
+the great staple food crops to be grown wherever water is not
+available for irrigation, and the almost universal planting in hills
+or drills, permitting intertillage, thus adopting centuries ago the
+utilization of earth mulches in conserving soil moisture, has
+enabled these people to secure maximum returns in seasons of drought
+and where the rainfall is small. The millets thrive in the hot
+summer climates; they survive when the available soil moisture is
+reduced to a low limit, and they grow vigorously when the heavy
+rains come. Thus we find in the Far East, with more rainfall and a
+better distribution of it than occurs in the United States, and with
+warmer, longer seasons, that these people have with rare wisdom
+combined both irrigation and dry farming methods to an extent and
+with an intensity far beyond anything our people have ever dreamed,
+in order that they might maintain their dense populations.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that in each of these countries the soils
+are naturally more than ordinarily deep, inherently fertile and
+enduring, judicious and rational methods of fertilization are
+everywhere practiced; but not until recent years, and only in Japan,
+have mineral commercial fertilizers been used. For centuries,
+however, all cultivated lands, including adjacent hill and mountain
+sides, the canals, streams and the sea have been made to contribute
+what they could toward the fertilization of cultivated fields and
+these contributions in the aggregate have been large. In China, in
+Korea and in Japan all but the inaccessible portions of their vast
+extent of mountain and hill lands have long been taxed to their full
+capacity for fuel, lumber and herbage for green manure and compost
+material; and the ash of practically all of the fuel and of all of
+the lumber used at home finds its way ultimately to the fields as
+fertilizer.
+
+In China enormous quantities of canal mud are applied to the fields,
+sometimes at the rate of even 70 and more tons per acre. So, too,
+where there are no canals, both soil and subsoil are carried into
+the villages and there between the intervals when needed they are,
+at the expense of great labor, composted with organic refuse and
+often afterwards dried and pulverized before being carried back and
+used on the fields as home-made fertilizers. Manure of all kinds,
+human and animal, is religiously saved and applied to the fields in
+a manner which secures an efficiency far above our own practices.
+Statistics obtained through the Bureau of Agriculture, Japan, place
+the amount of human waste in that country in 1908 at 23,950,295
+tons, or 1.75 tons per acre of her cultivated land. The
+International Concession of the city of Shanghai, in 1908, sold to a
+Chinese contractor the privilege of entering residences and public
+places early in the morning of each day in the year and removing the
+night soil, receiving therefor more than $31,000, gold, for 78,000
+tons of waste. All of this we not only throw away but expend much
+larger sums in doing so.
+
+Japan's production of fertilizing material, regularly prepared and
+applied to the land annually, amounts to more than 4.5 tons per acre
+of cultivated field exclusive of the commercial fertilizers
+purchased. Between Shanhaikwan and Mukden in Manchuria we passed, on
+June 18th, thousands of tons of the dry highly nitrified compost
+soil recently carried into the fields and laid down in piles where
+it was waiting to be "fed to the crops."
+
+It was not until 1888, and then after a prolonged war of more than
+thirty years, generaled by the best scientists of all Europe, that
+it was finally conceded as demonstrated that leguminous plants
+acting as hosts for lower organisms living on their roots are
+largely responsible for the maintenance of soil nitrogen, drawing it
+directly from the air to which it is returned through the processes
+of decay. But centuries of practice had taught the Far East farmers
+that the culture and use of these crops are essential to enduring
+fertility, and so in each of the three countries the growing of
+legumes in rotation with other crops very extensively for the
+express purpose of fertilizing the soil is one of their old, fixed
+practices.
+
+Just before, or immediately after the rice crop is harvested, fields
+are often sowed to "clover" (Astragalus sinicus) which is allowed to
+grow until near the next transplanting time when it is either turned
+under directly, or more often stacked along the canals and saturated
+while doing so with soft mud dipped from the bottom of the canal.
+After fermenting twenty or thirty days it is applied to the field.
+And so it is literally true that these old world farmers whom we
+regard as ignorant, perhaps because they do not ride sulky plows as
+we do, have long included legumes in their crop rotation, regarding
+them as indispensable.
+
+Time is a function of every life process as it is of every physical,
+chemical and mental reaction. The husbandman is an industrial
+biologist and as such is compelled to shape his operations so as to
+conform with the time requirements of his crops. The oriental farmer
+is a time economizer beyond all others. He utilizes the first and
+last minute and all that are between. The foreigner accuses the
+Chinaman of being always long on time, never in a fret, never in a
+hurry. This is quite true and made possible for the reason that they
+are a people who definitely set their faces toward the future and
+lead time by the forelock. They have long realized that much time is
+required to transform organic matter into forms available for plant
+food and although they are the heaviest users in the world, the
+largest portion of this organic matter is predigested with soil or
+subsoil before it is applied to their fields, and at an enormous
+cost of human time and labor, but it practically lengthens their
+growing season and enables them to adopt a system of multiple
+cropping which would not otherwise be possible. By planting in hills
+and rows with intertillage it is very common to see three crops
+growing upon the same field at one time, but in different stages of
+maturity, one nearly ready to harvest one just coming up, and the
+other at the stage when it is drawing most heavily upon the soil. By
+such practice, with heavy fertilization, and by supplemental
+irrigation when needful, the soil is made to do full duty throughout
+the growing season.
+
+Then, notwithstanding the enormous acreage of rice planted each year
+in these countries, it is all set in hills and every spear is
+transplanted. Doing this, they save in many ways except in the
+matter of human labor, which is the one thing they have in excess.
+By thoroughly preparing the seed bed, fertilizing highly and giving
+the most careful attention, they are able to grow on one acre,
+during 30 to 50 days, enough plants to occupy ten acres and in the
+mean time on the other nine acres crops are maturing, being
+harvested and the fields being fitted to receive the rice when it is
+ready for transplanting, and in effect this interval of time is
+added to their growing season.
+
+Silk culture is a great and, in some ways, one of the most
+remarkable industries of the Orient. Remarkable for its magnitude;
+for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China at least
+2700 years B. C.; for having been laid on the domestication of a
+wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than
+4000 years, expanding until a million-dollar cargo of the product
+has been laid down on our western coast and rushed by special fast
+express to the cast for the Christmas trade.
+
+A low estimate of China's production of raw silk would be
+120,000,000 pounds annually, and this with the output of Japan,
+Korea and a small area of southern Manchuria, would probably exceed
+150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps
+$700,000,000, quite equaling in value the wheat crop of the United
+States, but produced on less than one-eighth the area of our wheat
+fields.
+
+The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great
+industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture if
+not above it in the important part it plays in the welfare of the
+people. There is little reason to doubt that this industry has its
+foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable
+for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water is universally
+adopted in these countries as an individually available and
+thoroughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly disease
+germs which thus far it has been impossible to exclude from the
+drinking water of any densely peopled country.
+
+Judged by the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus
+far instituted, and taking into consideration the inherent
+difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing
+populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods must
+ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety can
+be secured only in some manner having the equivalent effect of
+boiling drinking water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races.
+
+In the year 1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land in tea plantations,
+producing 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea. In China the volume
+annually produced is much larger than that of Japan, 40,000,000
+pounds going annually to Tibet alone from the Szechwan province and
+the direct export to foreign countries was, in 1905, 176,027,255
+pounds, and in 1906 it was 180,271,000, so that their annual export
+must exceed 200,000,000 pounds with a total annual output more than
+double this amount of cured tea.
+
+But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than all of them
+combined in contributing to the high maintenance efficiency attained
+in these countries must be placed the standard of living to which
+the industrial classes have been compelled to adjust themselves,
+combined with their remarkable industry and with the most intense
+economy they practice along every line of effort and of living.
+
+Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material for food,
+fuel or fabric. Everything which can be made edible serves as food
+for man or domestic animals. Whatever cannot be eaten or worn is
+used for fuel. The wastes of the body, of fuel and of fabric worn
+beyond other use are taken back to the field; before doing so they
+are housed against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence
+and forethought and patiently labored with through one, three or
+even six months, to bring them into the most efficient form to serve
+as manure for the soil or as feed for the crop. It seems to be a
+golden rule with these industrial classes, or if not golden, then an
+inviolable one, that whenever an extra hour or day of labor can
+promise even a little larger return then that shall be given, and
+neither a rainy day nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to
+cancel the obligation or defer its execution.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN
+
+
+
+
+
+We left the United States from Seattle for Shanghai, China, sailing
+by the northern route, at one P. M. February second, reaching
+Yokohama February 19th and Shanghai, March 1st. It was our aim
+throughout the journey to keep in close contact with the field and
+crop problems and to converse personally, through interpreters or
+otherwise, with the farmers, gardeners and fruit growers themselves;
+and we have taken pains in many cases to visit the same fields or
+the same region two, three or more times at different intervals
+during the season in order to observe different phases of the same
+cultural or fertilization methods as these changed or varied with
+the season.
+
+Our first near view of Japan came in the early morning of February
+19th when passing some three miles off the point where the Pacific
+passenger steamer Dakota was beached and wrecked in broad daylight
+without loss of life two years ago. The high rounded hills were
+clothed neither in the dense dark forest green of Washington and
+Vancouver, left sixteen days before, nor yet in the brilliant
+emerald such as Ireland's hills in June fling in unparalleled
+greeting to passengers surfeited with the dull grey of the rolling
+ocean. This lack of strong forest growth and even of shrubs and
+heavy herbage on hills covered with deep soil, neither cultivated
+nor suffering from serious erosion, yet surrounded by favorable
+climatic conditions, was our first great surprise.
+
+To the southward around the point, after turning northward into the
+deep bay, similar conditions prevailed, and at ten o'clock we stood
+off Uraga where Commodore Perry anchored on July 8th, 1853, bearing
+to the Shogun President Fillmore's letter which opened the doors of
+Japan to the commerce of the world and, it is to be hoped brought to
+her people, with their habits of frugality and industry so indelibly
+fixed by centuries of inheritance, better opportunities for
+development along those higher lines destined to make life still
+more worth living.
+
+As the Tosa Maru drew alongside the pier at Yokohama it was raining
+hard and this had attired an army after the manner of Robinson
+Crusoe, dressed as seen in Fig. 1, ready to carry you and yours to
+the Customs house and beyond for one, two, three or five cents.
+Strong was the contrast when the journey was reversed and we
+descended the gang plank at Seattle, where no one sought the
+opportunity of moving baggage.
+
+Through the kindness of Captain Harrison of the Tosa Maru in calling
+an interpreter by wireless to meet the steamer, it was possible to
+utilize the entire interval of stop in Yokohama to the best
+advantage in the fields and gardens spread over the eighteen miles
+of plain extending to Tokyo, traversed by both electric tram and
+railway lines, each running many trains making frequent stops; so
+that this wonderfully fertile and highly tilled district could be
+readily and easily reached at almost any point.
+
+We had left home in a memorable storm of snow, sleet and rain which
+cut out of service telegraph and telephone lines over a large part
+of the United States; we had sighted the Aleutian Islands, seeing
+and feeling nothing on the way which could suggest a warm soil and
+green fields, hence our surprise was great to find the jinricksha
+men with bare feet and legs naked to the thighs, and greater still
+when we found, before we were outside the city limits, that the
+electric tram was running between fields and gardens green with
+wheat, barley, onions, carrots, cabbage and other vegetables. We
+were rushing through the Orient with everything outside the car so
+strange and different from home that the shock came like a bolt of
+lightning out of a clear sky.
+
+In the car every man except myself and one other was smoking tobacco
+and that other was inhaling camphor through an ivory mouthpiece
+resembling a cigar holder closed at the end. Several women, tiring
+of sitting foreign style, slipped off--I cannot say out of--their
+shoes and sat facing the windows, with toes crossed behind them on
+the seat. The streets were muddy from the rain and everybody
+Japanese was on rainy-day wooden shoes, the soles carried three to
+four inches above the ground by two cross blocks, in the manner seen
+in Fig. 2. A mother, with baby on her back and a daughter of sixteen
+years came into the car. Notwithstanding her high shoes the mother
+had dipped one toe into the mud. Seated, she slipped her foot off.
+Without evident instructions the pretty black-eyed, glossy-haired,
+red-lipped lass, with cheeks made rosy, picked up the shoe, withdrew
+a piece of white tissue paper from the great pocket in her sleeve,
+deftly cleaned the otherwise spotless white cloth sock and then the
+shoe, threw the paper on the floor, looked to see that her fingers
+were not soiled, then set the shoe at her mother's foot, which found
+its place without effort or glance.
+
+Everything here was strange and the scenes shifted with the speed of
+the wildest dream. Now it was driving piles for the foundation of a
+bridge. A tripod of poles was erected above the pile and from it
+hung a pulley. Over the pulley passed a rope from the driving weight
+and from its end at the pulley ten cords extended to the ground. In
+a circle at the foot of the tripod stood ten agile Japanese women.
+They were the hoisting engine. They chanted in perfect rhythm,
+hauled and stepped, dropped the weight and hoisted again, making up
+for heavier hammer and higher drop by more blows per minute. When we
+reached Shanghai we saw the pile driver being worked from above.
+Fourteen Chinese men stood upon a raised staging, each with a
+separate cord passing direct from the hand to the weight below. A
+concerted, half-musical chant, modulated to relieve monotony, kept
+all hands together. What did the operation of this machine cost?
+Thirteen cents, gold, per man per day, which covered fuel and
+lubricant, both automatically served. Two additional men managed the
+piles, two directed the hammer, eighteen manned the outfit. Two
+dollars and thirty-four cents per day covered fuel, superintendence
+and repairs. There was almost no capital invested in machinery. Men
+were plenty and to spare. Rice was the fuel, cooked without salt,
+boiled stiff, reinforced with a hit of pork or fish, appetized with
+salted cabbage or turnip and perhaps two or three of forty and more
+other vegetable relishes. And are these men strong and happy? They
+certainly were strong. They are steadily increasing their millions,
+and as one stood and watched them at their work their faces were
+often wreathed in smiles and wore what seemed a look of satisfaction
+and contentment.
+
+Among the most common sights on our rides from Yokohama to Tokyo,
+both within the city and along the roads leading to the fields,
+starting early in the morning, were the loads of night soil carried
+on the shoulders of men and on the backs of animals, but most
+commonly on strong carts drawn by men, bearing six to ten tightly
+covered wooden containers holding forty, sixty or more pounds each.
+Strange as it may seem, there are not today and apparently never
+have been, even in the largest and oldest cities of Japan, China or
+Korea, anything corresponding to the hydraulic systems of sewage
+disposal used now by western nations. Provision is made for the
+removal of storm waters but when I asked my interpreter if it was
+not the custom of the city during the winter months to discharge its
+night soil into the sea, as a quicker and cheaper mode of disposal,
+his reply came quick and sharp, "No, that would be waste. We throw
+nothing away. It is worth too much money." In such public places as
+rail way stations provision is made for saving, not for wasting, and
+even along the country roads screens invite the traveler to stop,
+primarily for profit to the owner more than for personal
+convenience.
+
+Between Yokohama and Tokyo along the electric car line and not far
+distant from the seashore, there were to be seen in February very
+many long, fence-high screens extending east and west, strongly
+inclined to the north, and built out of rice straw, closely tied
+together and supported on bamboo poles carried upon posts of wood
+set in the ground. These screens, set in parallel series of five to
+ten or more in number and several hundred feet long, were used for
+the purpose of drying varieties of delicate seaweed, these being
+spread out in the manner shown in Fig. 3.
+
+The seaweed is first spread upon separate ten by twelve inch straw
+mats, forming a thin layer seven by eight inches. These mats are
+held by means of wooden skewers forced through the body of the
+screen, exposing the seaweed to the direct sunshine. After becoming
+dry the rectangles of seaweed are piled in bundles an inch thick,
+cut once in two, forming packages four by seven inches, which are
+neatly tied and thus exposed for sale as soup stock and for other
+purposes. To obtain this seaweed from the ocean small shrubs and the
+limbs of trees are set up in the bottom of shallow water, as seen in
+Fig. 4. To these limbs the seaweeds become attached, grow to
+maturity and are then gathered by hand. By this method of culture
+large amounts of important food stuff are grown for the support of
+the people on areas otherwise wholly unproductive.
+
+Another rural feature, best shown by photograph taken in February,
+is the method of training pear orchards in Japan, with their limbs
+tied down upon horizontal over-bead trellises at a height under
+which a man can readily walk erect and easily reach the fruit with
+the hand while standing upon the ground. Pear orchards thus form
+arbors of greater or less size, the trees being set in quincunx
+order about twelve feet apart in and between the rows. Bamboo poles
+are used overhead and these carried on posts of the same material
+1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter, to which they are tied. Such a pear
+orchard is shown in Fig. 5.
+
+The limbs of the pear trees are trained strictly in one plane, tying
+them down and pruning out those not desired. As a result the ground
+beneath is completely shaded and every pear is within reach, which
+is a great convenience when it becomes desirable to protect the
+fruit from insects, by tying paper bags over every pear as seen in
+Figs. 6 and 7. The orchard ground is kept free from weeds and not
+infrequently is covered with a layer of rice or other straw,
+extensively used in Japan as a ground cover with various crops and
+when so used is carefully laid in handfuls from bundles, the straws
+being kept parallel as when harvested.
+
+To one from a country of 160-acre farms, with roads four rods wide;
+of cities with broad streets and residences with green lawns and
+ample back yards; and where the cemeteries are large and beautiful
+parks, the first days of travel in these old countries force the
+over-crowding upon the attention as nothing else can. One feels that
+the cities are greatly over-crowded with houses and shops, and these
+with people and wares; that the country is over-crowded with fields
+and the fields with crops; and that in Japan the over-crowding is
+greatest of all in the cemeteries, gravestones almost touching and
+markers for families literally in bundles at a grave, while round
+about there may be no free country whatever, dwellings, gardens or
+rice paddies contesting the tiny allotted areas too closely to leave
+even foot-paths between.
+
+Unless recently modified through foreign influence the streets of
+villages and cities are narrow, as seen in Fig. 8, where however the
+street is unusually broad. This is a village in the Hakone district
+on a beautiful lake of the same name, where stands an Imperial
+summer palace, seen near the center of the view on a hill across the
+lake. The roofs of the houses here are typical of the neat, careful
+thatching with rice straw, very generally adopted in place of tile
+for the country villages throughout much of Japan. The shops and
+stores, open full width directly upon the street, are filled to
+overflowing, as seen in Fig. 9 and in Fig. 22.
+
+In the canalized regions of China the country villages crowd both
+banks of a canal, as is the case in Fig. 10. Here, too, often is a
+single street and it very narrow, very crowded and very busy. Stone
+steps lead from the houses down into the water where clothing,
+vegetables, rice and what not are conveniently washed. In this
+particular village two rows of houses stand on one side of the canal
+separated by a very narrow street, and a single row on the other.
+Between the bridge where the camera was exposed and one barely
+discernible in the background, crossing the canal a third of a mile
+distant, we counted upon one side, walking along the narrow street,
+eighty houses each with its family, usually of three generations and
+often of four. Thus in the narrow strip, 154 feet broad, including
+16 feet of street and 30 feet of canal, with its three lines of
+houses. lived no less than 240 families and more than 1200 and
+probably nearer 2000 people.
+
+When we turn to the crowding of fields in the country nothing except
+seeing can tell so forcibly the fact as such landscapes as those of
+Figs. 11, 12 and 13, one in Japan, one in Korea and one in China,
+not far from Nanking, looking from the hills across the fields to
+the broad Yangtse kiang, barely discernible as a band of light along
+the horizon.
+
+The average area of the rice field in Japan is less than five square
+rods and that of her upland fields only about twenty. In the case of
+the rice fields the small size is necessitated partly by the
+requirement of holding water on the sloping sides of the valley, as
+seen in Fig. 11. These small areas do not represent the amount of
+land worked by one family, the average for Japan being more nearly
+2.5 acres. But the lands worked by one family are seldom contiguous,
+they may even be widely scattered and very often rented.
+
+The people generally live in villages, going often considerable
+distances to their work. Recognizing the great disadvantage of
+scattered holdings broken into such small areas, the Japanese
+Government has passed laws for the adjustment of farm lands which
+have been in force since 1900. It provides for the exchange of
+lands; for changing boundaries; for changing or abolishing roads,
+embankments, ridges or canals and for alterations in irrigation and
+drainage which would ensure larger areas with channels and roads
+straightened, made less numerous and less wasteful of time, labor
+and land. Up to 1907 Japan had issued permits for the readjustment
+of over 240,000 acres, and Fig. 14 is a landscape in one of these
+readjusted districts. To provide capable experts for planning and
+supervising these changes the Government in 1905 intrusted the
+training of men to the higher agricultural school belonging to the
+Dai Nippon Agricultural Association and since 1906 the Agricultural
+College and the Kogyokusha have undertaken the same task and now
+there are men sufficient to push the work as rapidly as desired.
+
+It may be remembered, too, as showing how, along other fundamental
+lines, Japan is taking effective steps to improve the condition of
+her people, that she already has her Imperial highways extending
+from one province to another; her prefectural roads which connect
+the cities and villages within the prefecture; and those more local
+which serve the farms and villages. Each of the three systems of
+roads is maintained by a specific tax levied for the purpose which
+is expended under proper supervision, a designated section of road
+being kept in repair through the year by a specially appointed crew,
+as is the practice in railroad maintenance. The result is, Japan has
+roads maintained in excellent condition, always narrow, sacrificing
+the minimum of land, and everywhere without fences.
+
+How the fields are crowded with crops and all available land is made
+to do full duty in these old, long-tilled countries is evident in
+Fig. 15 where even the narrow dividing ridges but a foot wide, which
+retain the water on the rice paddies, are bearing a heavy crop of
+soy beans; and where may be seen the narrow pear orchard standing on
+the very slightest rise of ground, not a foot above the water all
+around, which could better be left in grading the paddies to proper
+level.
+
+How closely the ground itself may be crowded with plants is seen in
+Fig. 16, where a young peach orchard, whose tree tops were six feet
+through, planted in rows twenty-two feet apart, had also ten rows of
+cabbage, two rows of large windsor beans and a row of garden peas.
+Thirteen rows of vegetables in 22 feet, all luxuriant and strong,
+and note the judgment shown in placing the tallest plants, needing
+the most sun, in the center between the trees.
+
+But these old people, used to crowding and to being crowded, and
+long ago capable of making four blades of grass grow where Nature
+grew but one, have also learned how to double the acreage where a
+crop needs more elbow than it does standing room, as seen in Fig.
+17. This man's garden had an area of but 63 by 68 feet and two
+square rods of this was held sacred to the family grave mound, and
+yet his statement of yields, number of crops and prices made his
+earning $100 a year on less than one-tenth of an acre.
+
+His crop of cucumbers on less than .06 of an acre would bring him
+$20. He had already sold $5 worth of greens and a second crop would
+follow the cucumbers. He had just irrigated his garden from an
+adjoining canal, using a foot-power pump, and stated that until it
+rained he would repeat the watering once per week. It was his wife
+who stood in the garden and, although wearing trousers, her dress
+showed full regard for modesty.
+
+But crowding crops more closely in the field not only requires
+higher feeding to bring greater returns, but also relatively greater
+care, closer watchfulness in a hundred ways and a patience far
+beyond American measure; and so, before the crowding of the crops in
+the field and along with it, there came to these very old farmers a
+crowding of the grey matter in the brain with the evolution of
+effective texture. This is shown in his fields which crowd the
+landscape. It is seen in the crops which crowd his fields. You see
+it in the old man's face, Fig. 18, standing opposite his compeer,
+Prince Ching, Fig. 19, each clad in winter dress which is the
+embodiment of conversation, retaining the fires of the body for its
+own needs, to release the growth on mountain sides for other uses.
+And when one realizes how, nearly to the extreme limits,
+conservation along all important lines is being practiced as an
+inherited instinct, there need be no surprise when one reflects that
+the two men, one as feeder and the other as leader, are standing in
+the fore of a body of four hundred millions of people who have
+marched as a nation through perhaps forty centuries, and who now, in
+the light and great promise of unfolding science have their faces
+set toward a still more hopeful and longer future.
+
+On February 21st the Tosa Maru left Yokohama for Kobe at schedule
+time on the tick of the watch, as she had done from Seattle. All
+Japanese steamers appear to be moved with the promptness of a
+railway train. On reaching Kobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi Maru
+which sailed the following morning, to shorten the time of reaching
+Shanghai. This left but an afternoon for a trip into the country
+between Kobe and Osaka, where we found, if possible, even higher and
+more intensive culture practices than on the Tokyo plain, there
+being less land not carrying a winter crop. And Fig. 20 shows how
+closely the crops crowd the houses and shops. Here were very many
+cement lined cisterns or sheltered reservoirs for collecting manures
+and preparing fertilizers and the appearance of both soil and crops
+showed in a marked manner to what advantage. We passed a garden of
+nearly an acre entirely devoted to English violets just coming into
+full bloom. They were grown in long parallel east and west beds
+about three feet wide. On the north edge of each bed was erected a
+rice-straw screen four feet high which inclined to the south,
+overhanging the bed at an angle of some thirty-five degrees, thus
+forming a sort of bake-oven tent which reflected the sun, broke the
+force of the wind and checked the loss of heat absorbed by the soil.
+
+The voyage from Kobe to Moji was made between 10 in the morning,
+February 24th, and 5 .30 P. M. of February 25th over a quiet sea
+with an enjoyable ride. Being fogbound during the night gave us the
+whole of Japan's beautiful Inland Sea, enchanting beyond measure, in
+all its near and distant beauty but which no pen, no brush, no
+camera may attempt. Only the eye can convey. Before reaching harbor
+the tide had been rising and the strait separating Honshu from
+Kyushu island was running like a mighty swirling river between Moji
+and Shimonoseki, dangerous to attempt in the dark, so we waited
+until morning.
+
+There was cargo to take on board and the steamer must coal. No
+sooner had the anchor dropped and the steamer swung into the current
+than lighters came alongside with out-going freight. The small,
+strong, agile Japanese stevedores had this task completed by 8:30 P.
+M. and when we returned to the deck after supper another scene was
+on. The cargo lighters had gone and four large barges bearing 250
+tons of coal had taken their places on opposite sides of the
+steamer, each illuminated with buckets of blazing coal or by burning
+conical heaps on the surface. From the bottom of these pits in the
+darkness the illumination suggested huge decapitated ant heaps in
+the wildest frenzy, for the coal seemed covered and there was hurry
+in every direction. Men and women, boys and girls, bending to their
+tasks, were filling shallow saucer-shaped baskets with coal and
+stacking them eight to ten high in a semi-circle, like coin for
+delivery. Rising out of these pits sixteen feet up the side of the
+steamer and along her deck to the chutes leading to her bunkers were
+what seemed four endless human chains, in service the prototype of
+our modern conveyors, but here each link animated by its own power.
+Up these conveyors the loaded buckets passed, one following another
+at the rate of 40 to 60 per minute, to return empty by the
+descending line, and over the four chains one hundred tons per hour,
+for 250 tons of coal passed to the bunkers in two and a half hours.
+Both men and women stood in the line and at the upper turn of one of
+these, emptying the buckets down the chute, was a mother with her
+two-year-old child in the sling on back, where it rocked and swayed
+to and fro, happy the entire time. It was often necessary for the
+mother to adjust her baby in the sling whenever it was leaning
+uncomfortably too far to one side or the other, but she did it
+skillfully, always with a shrug of the shoulders, for both hands
+were full. The mother looked strong, was apparently accepting her
+lot as a matter of course and often, with a smile, turned her face
+to the child, who patted it and played with her ears and hair.
+Probably her husband was doing his part in a more strenuous place in
+the chain and neither had time to be troubled with affinities for it
+was 10:30 P. M. when the baskets stopped, and somewhere no doubt
+there was a home to be reached and perhaps supper to get. Shall we
+be able, when our numbers have vastly increased, to permit all
+needful earnings to be acquired in a better way?
+
+We left Moji in the early morning and late in the evening of the
+same day entered the beautiful harbor of Nagasaki, all on board
+waiting until morning for a launch to go ashore. We were to sail
+again at noon so available time for observation was short and we set
+out in a ricksha at once for our first near view of terraced
+gardening on the steep hillsides in Japan. In reaching them and in
+returning our course led through streets paved with long, thick and
+narrow stone blocks, having deep open gutters on one or both sides
+close along the houses, into which waste water was emptied and
+through which the storm waters found their way to the sea. Few of
+these streets were more than twelve feet wide and close watching,
+with much dodging, was required to make way through them. Here, too,
+the night soil of the city was being removed in closed receptacles
+on the shoulders of men, on the backs of horses and cattle and on
+carts drawn by either. Other men and women were hurrying along with
+baskets of vegetables well illustrated in Fig. 21, some with fresh
+cabbage, others with high stacks of crisp lettuce, some with
+monstrous white radishes or turnips, others with bundles of onions,
+all coming down from the terraced gardens to the markets. We passed
+loads of green bamboo poles just cut, three inches in diameter at
+the butt and twenty feet long, drawn on carts. Both men and women
+were carrying young children and older ones were playing and singing
+in the street. Very many old women, some feeble looking, moved,
+loaded, through the throng. Homely little dogs, an occasional lean
+cat, and hens and roosters scurried across the street from one low
+market or store to another. Back of the rows of small stores and
+shops fronting on the clean narrow streets were the dwellings whose
+exits seemed to open through the stores, few or no open courts of
+any size separating them from the market or shop. The opportunity
+which the oriental housewife may have in the choice of vegetables on
+going to the market, and the attractive manner of displaying such
+products in Japan, are seen in Fig. 22.
+
+We finally reached one of the terraced hillsides which rise five
+hundred to a thousand feet above the harbor with sides so steep that
+garden areas have a width of seldom more than twenty to thirty feet
+and often less, while the front of each terrace may be a stone wall,
+sometimes twelve feet high, often more than six, four and five feet
+being the most common height. One of these hillside slopes is seen
+in Fig. 23. These terraced gardens are both short and narrow and
+most of them bounded by stone walls on three sides, suggesting house
+foundations, the two end walls sloping down the hill from the height
+of the back terrace, dropping to the ground level in front, these
+forming foot-paths leading up the slope occasionally with one, two
+or three steps in places.
+
+Each terrace sloped slightly down the hill at a small angle and had
+a low ridge along the front. Around its entire border a narrow drain
+or furrow was arranged to collect surface water and direct it to
+drainage channels or into a catch basin where it might be put back
+on the garden or be used in preparing liquid fertilizer. At one
+corner of many of these small terraced gardens were cement lined
+pits, used both as catch basins for water and as receptacles for
+liquid manure or as places in which to prepare compost. Far up the
+steep paths, too, along either side, we saw many piles of stable
+manure awaiting application, all of which had been brought up the
+slopes in backets on bamboo poles, carried on the shoulders of men
+and women.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA
+
+
+
+
+
+The launch had returned the passengers to the steamer at 11:30; the
+captain was on the bridge; prompt to the minute at the call "Hoist
+away" the signal went below and the Yamaguchi's whistle filled the
+harbor and over-flowed the hills. The cable wound in, and at twelve,
+noon, we were leaving Nagasaki, now a city of 153,000 and the
+western doorway of a nation of fifty-one millions of people but of
+little importance before the sixteenth century when it became the
+chief mart of Portuguese trade. We were to pass the Koreans on our
+right and enter the portals of a third nation of four hundred
+millions. We had left a country which had added eighty-five millions
+to its population in one hundred years and which still has twenty
+acres for each man, woman and child, to pass through one which has
+but one and a half acres per capita, and were going to another whose
+allotment of acres, good and bad, is less than 2.4. We had gone from
+practices by which three generations had exhausted strong virgin
+fields, and were coming to others still fertile after thirty
+centuries of cropping. On January 30th we crossed the head waters of
+the Mississippi-Missouri, four thousand miles from its mouth, and on
+March 1st were in the mouth of the Yangtse river whose waters are
+gathered from a basin in which dwell two hundred millions of people.
+
+The Yamaguchi reached Woosung in the night and anchored to await
+morning and tide before ascending the Hwangpoo, believed by some
+geographers to be the middle of three earlier delta arms of the
+Yangtse kiang, the southern entering the sea at Hangchow 120 miles
+further south, the third being the present stream. As we wound
+through this great delta plain toward Shanghai, the city of foreign
+concessions to all nationalities, the first striking feature was the
+"graves of the fathers", of "the ancestors". At first the numerous
+grass-covered hillocks dotting the plain seemed to be stacks of
+grain or straw; then came the query whether they might not be huge
+compost heaps awaiting distribution in the fields, but as the river
+brought us nearer to them we seemed to be moving through a land of
+ancient mound builders and Fig. 24 shows, in its upper section,
+their appearance as seen in the distance.
+
+As the journey led on among the fields, so large were the mounds,
+often ten to twelve feet high and twenty or more feet at the base;
+so grass-covered and apparently neglected; so numerous and so
+irregularly scattered, without apparent regard for fields, that when
+we were told these were graves we could not give credence to the
+statement, but before the city was reached we saw places where, by
+the shifting of the channel, the river had cut into some of these
+mounds, exposing brick vaults, some so low as to be under water part
+of the time, and we wonder if the fact does not also record a slow
+subsidence of the delta plain under the ever increasing load of
+river silt.
+
+A closer view of these graves in the same delta plain is given in
+the lower section of Fig. 24, where they are seen in the midst of
+fields and to occupy not only large areas of valuable land but to be
+much in the way of agricultural operations. A still closer view of
+other groups, with a farm village in the background, is shown in the
+middle section of the same illustration, and here it is better seen
+how large is the space occupied by them. On the right in the same
+view may be seen a line of six graves surmounting a common lower
+base which is a type of the larger and higher ones so suggestive of
+buildings seen in the horizon of the upper section.
+
+Everywhere we went in China, about all of the very old and large
+cities, the proportion of grave land to cultivated fields is very
+large. In the vicinity of Canton Christian college, on Honam island,
+more than fifty per cent of the land was given over to graves and in
+many places they were so close that one could step from one to
+another. They are on the higher and dryer lands, the cultivated
+areas occupying ravines and the lower levels to which water may be
+more easily applied and which are the most productive. Hilly lands
+not so readily cultivated, and especially if within reach of cities,
+are largely so used, as seen in Fig. 25, where the graves are marked
+by excavated shelves rather than by mounds, as on the plains. These
+grave lands are not altogether unproductive for they are generally
+overgrown with herbage of one or another kind and used as pastures
+for geese, sheep, goats and cattle, and it is not at all uncommon,
+when riding along a canal, to see a huge water buffalo projected
+against the sky from the summit of one of the largest and highest
+grave mounds within reach. If the herbage is not fed off by animals
+it is usually cut for feed, for fuel, for green manure or for use in
+the production of compost to enrich the soil.
+
+Caskets may be placed directly upon the surface of a field, encased
+in brick vaults with tile roofs, forming such clusters as was seen
+on the bank of the Grand Canal in Chekiang province, represented in
+the lower section of Fig. 26, or they may stand singly in the midst
+of a garden, as in the upper section of the same figure; in a rice
+paddy entirely surrounded by water parts of the year, and indeed in
+almost any unexpected place. In Shanghai in 1898, 2,763 exposed
+coffined corpses were removed outside the International Settlement
+or buried by the authorities.
+
+Further north, in the Shantung province, where the dry season is
+more prolonged and where a severe drought had made grass short, the
+grave lands had become nearly naked soil, as seen in Fig. 27 where a
+Shantung farmer had just dug a temporary well to irrigate his little
+field of barley. Within the range of the camera, as held to take
+this view, more than forty grave mounds besides the seven near by,
+are near enough to be fixed on the negative and be discernible under
+a glass, indicating what extensive areas of land, in the aggregate,
+are given over to graves.
+
+Still further north, in Chihli, a like story is told in, if
+possible, more emphatic manner and fully vouched for in the next
+illustration, Fig. 28, which shows a typical family group, to be
+observed in so many places between Taku and Tientsin and beyond
+toward Peking. As we entered the mouth of the Pei-ho for Tientsin,
+far away to the vanishing horizon there stretched an almost naked
+plain except for the vast numbers of these "graves of the fathers",
+so strange, so naked, so regular in form and so numerous that more
+than an hour of our journey had passed before we realized that they
+were graves and that the country here was perhaps more densely
+peopled with the dead than with the living. In so many places there
+was the huge father grave, often capped with what in the distance
+suggested a chimney, and the many associated smaller ones, that it
+was difficult to realize in passing what they were.
+
+It is a common custom, even if the residence has been permanently
+changed to some distant province, to take the bodies back for
+interment in the family group; and it is this custom which leads to
+the practice of choosing a temporary location for the body, waiting
+for a favorable opportunity to remove it to the family group. This
+is often the occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen
+under a simple thatch of rice straw, as in Fig. 29; and the many
+small stone jars containing skeletons of the dead, or portions of
+them, standing singly or in rows in the most unexpected places least
+in the way in the crowded fields and gardens, awaiting removal to
+the final resting place. It is this custom, too, I am told, which
+has led to placing a large quantity of caustic lime in the bottom of
+the casket, on which the body rests, this acting as an effective
+absorbent.
+
+It is the custom in some parts of China, if not in all, to
+periodically restore the mounds, maintaining their height and size,
+as is seen in the next two illustrations, and to decorate these once
+in the year with flying streamers of colored paper, the remnants of
+which may be seen in both Figs. 30 and 31, set there as tokens that
+the paper money has been burned upon them and its essence sent up in
+the smoke for the maintenance of the spirits of their departed
+friends. We have our memorial day; they have for centuries observed
+theirs with religious fidelity.
+
+The usual expense of a burial among the working people is said to be
+$100, Mexican, an enormous burden when the day's wage or the yearly
+earning of the family is considered and when there is added to this
+the yearly expense of ancestor worship. How such voluntary burdens
+are assumed by people under such circumstances is hard to
+understand. Missionaries assert it is fear of evil consequences in
+this life and of punishment and neglect in the hereafter that leads
+to assuming them. Is it not far more likely that such is the price
+these people are willing to pay for a good name among the living and
+because of their deep and lasting friendship for the departed? Nor
+does it seem at all strange that a kindly, warm-hearted people with
+strong filial affection should have reached, carry in their long
+history, a belief in one spirit of the departed which hovers about
+the home, one which hovers about the grave and another which wanders
+abroad, for surely there are associations with each of these
+conditions which must long and forcefully awaken memories of friends
+gone. If this view is possible may not such ancestral worship be an
+index of qualities of character strongly fixed and of the highest
+worth which, when improvements come that may relieve the heavy
+burdens now carried, will only shine more brightly and count more
+for right living as well as comfort?
+
+Even in our own case it will hardly be maintained that our burial
+customs have reached their best and final solution, for in all
+civilized nations they are unnecessarily expensive and far too
+cumbersome. It is only necessary to mentally add the accumulation of
+a few centuries to our cemeteries to realize how impossible our
+practice must become. Clearly there is here a very important line
+for betterment which all nationalities should undertake.
+
+When the steamer anchored at Shanghai the day was pleasant and the
+rain coats which greeted us in Yokohama were not in evidence but the
+numbers who had met the steamer in the hope of an opportunity for
+earning a trifle was far greater and in many ways in strong contrast
+with the Japanese. We were much surprised to find the men of so
+large stature, much above the Chinese usually seen in the United
+States. They were fully the equal of large Americans in frame but
+quite without surplus flesh yet few appeared underfed. To realize
+that these are strong, hardy men it was only necessary to watch them
+carrying on their shoulders bales of cotton between them, supported
+by a strong bamboo; while the heavy loads they transport on
+wheel-barrows through the country over long distances, as seen in
+Fig. 32, prove their great endurance. This same type of vehicle,
+too, is one of the common means of transporting people, especially
+Chinese women, and four six and even eight may be seen riding
+together, propelled by a single wheelbarrow man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+TO HONGKONG AND CANTON
+
+
+
+
+
+We had come to learn how the old-world farmers bad been able to
+provide materials for food and clothing on such small areas for so
+many millions, at so low a price, during so many centuries, and were
+anxious to see them at the soil and among the crops. The sun was
+still south of the equator, coming north only about twelve miles per
+day, so, to save time, we booked on the next steamer for Hongkong to
+meet spring at Canton, beyond the Tropic of Cancer, six hundred
+miles farther south, and return with her.
+
+On the morning of March 4th the Tosa Maru steamed out into the
+Yangtse river, already flowing with the increased speed of ebb tide.
+The pilots were on the bridge to guide her course along the narrow
+south channel through waters seemingly as brown and turbid as the
+Potomac after a rain. It was some distance beyond Gutzlaff Island,
+seventy miles to sea, where there is a lighthouse and a telegraph
+station receiving six cables, that we crossed the front of the
+out-going tide, showing in a sharp line of contrast stretching in
+either direction farther than the eye could see, across the course
+of the ship and yet it was the season of low water in this river.
+During long ages this stream of mighty volume has been loading upon
+itself in far-away Tibet, without dredge, barge, fuel or human
+effort, unused and there unusable soils, bringing them down from
+inaccessible heights across two or three thousand miles, building up
+with them, from under the sea, at the gateways of commerce, miles
+upon miles of the world's most fertile fields and gardens. Today on
+this river, winding through six hundred miles of the most highly
+cultivated fields, laid out on river-built plains, go large ocean
+steamers to the city of Hankow-Wuchang-Hanyang where 1,770,000
+people live and trade within a radius less than four miles; while
+smaller steamers push on a thousand miles and are then but 130 feet
+above sea level.
+
+Even now, with the aid of current, tide and man, these brown turbid
+waters are rapidly adding fertile delta plains for new homes. During
+the last twenty-five years Chungming island has grown in length some
+1800 feet per year and today a million people are living and growing
+rice, wheat, cotton and sweet potatoes on 270 square miles of
+fertile plain where five hundred years ago were only submerged river
+sands and silt. Here 3700 people per square mile have acquired
+homes.
+
+The southward voyage was over a quiet sea and as we passed among and
+near the off-shore islands these, as seen in Japan, appeared
+destitute of vegetation other than the low herbaceous types with few
+shrubs and almost no forest growth and little else that gave the
+appearance of green. Captain Harrison informed me that at no time in
+the year are these islands possessed of the grass-green verdure so
+often seen in northern climates, and yet the islands lie in a region
+of abundant summer rain, making it hard to understand why there is
+not a more luxuriant growth.
+
+Sunday morning, March 7th, passing first extensive sugar refineries,
+found us entering the long, narrow and beautiful harbor of Hongkong.
+Here, lying at anchor in the ten square miles of water, were five
+battleships, several large ocean steamers, many coastwise vessels
+and a multitude of smaller craft whose yearly tonnage is twenty to
+thirty millions. But the harbor lies in the track of the terrible
+East Indian typhoon and, although sheltered on the north shore of a
+high island, one of these storms recently sunk nine vessels, sent
+twenty-three ashore, seriously damaged twenty-one others, wrought
+great destruction among the smaller craft and over a thousand dead
+were recovered. Such was the destruction wrought by the September
+storm of 1906.
+
+Our steamer did not go to dock but the Nippon Yusen Kaisha's launch
+transferred us to a city much resembling Seattle in possessing a
+scant footing between a long sea front and high steep mountain
+slopes behind. Here cliffs too steep to climb rise from the very
+sidewalk and are covered with a great profusion and variety of
+ferns, small bamboo, palms, vines, many flowering shrubs, all
+interspersed with pine and great banyan trees that do so much toward
+adding the beauty of northern landscapes to the tropical features
+which reach upward until hidden in a veil of fog that hung, all of
+the time we were there, over the city, over the harbor and stretched
+beyond Old and New Kowloon.
+
+Hongkong island is some eleven miles long and but two to five miles
+wide, while the peak carrying the signal staff rises 1,825 feet
+above the streets from which ascends the Peak tramway, where,
+hanging from opposite ends of a strong cable, one car rises up the
+slope and another descends every fifteen to twenty minutes,
+affording communication with business houses below and homes in
+beautiful surroundings and a tempered climate above. Extending along
+the slopes of the mountains, too, above the city, are very excellent
+roads, carefully graded, provided with concrete gutters and bridges,
+along which one may travel on foot, on horseback, by ricksha or
+sedan chair, but too narrow for carriages. Over one of these we
+ascended along one side of Happy Valley, around its head and down
+the other side. Only occasionally could we catch glimpses of the
+summit through the lifting fog but the views, looking down and
+across the city and beyond the harbor with its shipping, and up and
+down the many ravines from via-ducts, are among the choicest and
+rarest ever made accessible to the residents of any city. It was the
+beginning of the migratory season for birds, and trees and shrubbery
+thronged with many species.
+
+Many of the women in Hongkong were seen engaged in such heavy manual
+labor with the men as carrying crushed rock and sand, for concrete
+and macadam work, up the steep street slopes long distances from the
+dock, but they were neither tortured nor incapacitated by bound
+feet. Like the men, they were of smaller stature than most seen at
+Shanghai and closely resemble the Chinese in the United States. Both
+sexes are agile, wiry and strong. Here we first saw lumber sawing in
+the open streets after the manner shown in Fig. 33, where wide
+boards were being cut from camphor logs. In the damp, already warm
+weather the men were stripped to the waist, their limbs bare to
+above the knee, and each carried a large towel for wiping away the
+profuse perspiration.
+
+It was here, too, that we first met the remarkable staging for the
+erection of buildings of four and six stories, set up without saw,
+hammer or nail; without injury to or waste of lumber and with the
+minimum of labor in construction and removal. Poles and bamboo stems
+were lashed together with overlapping ends, permitting any interval
+or height to be secured without cutting or nailing, and admitting of
+ready removal with absolutely no waste, all parts being capable of
+repeated use unless it be some of the materials employed in tying
+members. Up inclined stairways, from staging to staging, in the
+erection of six-story granite buildings, mortar was being carried in
+baskets swinging from bamboo poles on the shoulders of men and
+women, as the cheapest hoists available in English Hongkong where
+there is willing human labor and to spare.
+
+The Singer sewing machine, manufactured in New Jersey, was seen in
+many Chinese shops in Hongkong and other cities, operated by Chinese
+men and women, purchased, freight prepaid, at two-thirds the retail
+price in the United States. Such are the indications of profit to
+manufacturers on the home sale of home-made goods while at the same
+time reaping good returns from a large trade in heathen lands, after
+paying the freight.
+
+Industrial China, Korea and Japan do not observe our weekly day of
+rest and during our walk around Happy Valley on Sunday afternoon,
+looking down upon its terraced gardens and tiny fields, we saw men
+and women busy fitting the soil for new crops, gathering vegetables
+for market, feeding plants with liquid manure and even irrigating
+certain crops, notwithstanding the damp, foggy, showery weather.
+Turning the head of the valley, attention was drawn to a walled
+enclosure and a detour down the slope brought us to a florist's
+garden within which were rows of large potted foliage plants of
+semi-shrubbery habit, seen in Fig. 35, trained in the form of
+life-size human figures with limbs, arms and trunk provided with
+highly glazed and colored porcelain feet, hands and head. These,
+with many other potted plants and trees, including dwarf varieties,
+are grown under out-door lattice shelters in different parts of
+China, for sale to the wealthy Chinese families.
+
+How thorough is the tillage, how efficient and painstaking the
+garden fitting, and how closely the ground is crowded to its upper
+limit of producing power are indicated in Fig. 36; and when one
+stops and studies the detail in such gardens he expects in its
+executor an orderly, careful, frugal and industrious man, getting
+not a little satisfaction out of his creations however arduous his
+task or prolonged his day. If he is in the garden or one meets him
+at the house, clad as the nature of his duties and compensation have
+determined, you may be disappointed or feel arising an unkind
+judgment. But who would risk a reputation so clad and so environed?
+Many were the times, during our walks in the fields and gardens
+among these old, much misunderstood, misrepresented and undervalued
+people, when the bond of common interest was recognized between us,
+that there showed through the face the spirit which put aside both
+dress and surroundings and the man stood forth who, with fortitude
+and rare wisdom, is feeding the millions and who has carried through
+centuries the terrible burden of taxes levied by dishonor and
+needless wars. Nay, more than this, the man stood forth who has kept
+alive the seeds of manhood and has nourished them into such sturdy
+stock as has held the stream of progress along the best interests of
+civilization in spite of the driftwood heaped upon it.
+
+Not only are these people extremely careful and painstaking in
+fitting their fields and gardens to receive the crop, but they are
+even more scrupulous in their care to make everything that can
+possibly serve as fertilizer for the soil, or food for the crop
+being grown, do so unless there is some more remunerative service it
+may render. Expense is incurred to provide such receptacles as are
+seen in Fig. 37 for receiving not only the night soil of the home
+and that which may be bought or otherwise procured, but in which may
+be stored any other fluid which can serve as plant food. On the
+right of these earthenware jars too is a pile of ashes and one of
+manure. All such materials are saved and used in the most
+advantageous ways to enrich the soil or to nourish the plants being
+grown.
+
+Generally the liquid manures must be diluted with water to a greater
+or less extent before they are "fed", as the Chinese say, to their
+plants, hence there is need of an abundant and convenient water
+supply. One of these is seen in Fig. 38, where the Chinaman has
+adopted the modern galvanized iron pipe to bring water from the
+mountain slope of Happy Valley to his garden. By the side of this
+tank are the covered pails in which the night soil was brought,
+perhaps more than a mile, to be first diluted and then applied. But
+the more general method for supplying water is that of leading it
+along the ground in channels or ditches to a small reservoir in one
+corner of a terraced field or garden, as seen in Fig. 39, where it
+is held and the surplus led down from terrace to terrace, giving
+each its permanent supply. At the upper right corner of the
+engraving may be seen two manure receptacles and a third stands near
+the reservoir. The plants on the lower terrace are water cress and
+those above the same. At this time of the year, on the terraced
+gardens of Happy Valley, this is one of the crops most extensively
+grown.
+
+Walking among these gardens and isolated homes, we passed a pig pen
+provided with a smooth, well-laid stone floor that had just been
+washed scrupulously clean, like the floor of a house. While I was
+not able to learn other facts regarding this case, I have little
+doubt that the washings from this floor had been carefully collected
+and taken to some receptacle to serve as a plant food.
+
+Looking backward as we left Hongkong for Canton on the cloudy
+evening of March 8th, the view was wonderfully beautiful. We were
+drawing away from three cities, one, electric-lighted Hongkong
+rising up the steep slopes, suggesting a section of sky set with a
+vast array of stars of all magnitudes up to triple Jupiters;
+another, old and new Kowloon on the opposite side of the harbor; and
+between these two, separated from either shore by wide reaches of
+wholly unoccupied water, lay the third, a mid-strait city of
+sampans, junks and coastwise craft of many kinds segregated, in
+obedience to police regulation, into blocks and streets with each
+setting sun, but only to scatter again with the coming morn. At
+night, after a fixed hour, no one is permitted to leave shore and
+cross the vacant water strip except from certain piers and with the
+permission of the police, who take the number of the sampan and the
+names of its occupants. Over the harbor three large search lights
+were sweeping and it was curious to see the junks and other craft
+suddenly burst into full blazes of light, like so many monstrous
+fire-flies, to disappear and reappear as the lights came and went.
+Thus is the mid-strait city lighted and policed and thus have steps
+been taken to lessen the number of cases of foul play where people
+have left the wharves at night for some vessel in the strait, never
+to be heard from again.
+
+Some ninety miles is the distance by water to Canton, and early the
+next morning our steamer dropped anchor off the foreign settlement
+of Shameen. Through the kindness of Consul-General Amos P. Wilder in
+sending a telegram to the Canton Christian College, their little
+steam launch met the boat and took us directly to the home of the
+college on Honam Island, lying in the great delta south of the city
+where sediments brought by the Si-kiang--west, Pei-kiang--north, and
+Tung-kiang--east--rivers through long centuries have been building
+the richest of land which, because of the density of population, are
+squared up everywhere to the water's edge and appropriated as fast
+as formed, and made to bring forth materials for food fuel and
+raiment in vast quantities.
+
+It was on Honam Island that we walked first among the grave lands
+and came to know them as such, for Canton Christian College stands
+in the midst of graves which, although very old, are not permitted
+to be disturbed and the development of the campus must wait to
+secure permission to remove graves, or erect its buildings in places
+not the most desirable. Cattle were grazing among the graves and
+with them a flock of some 250 of the brown Chinese geese, two-thirds
+grown, was watched by boys, gleaning their entire living from the
+grave lands and adjacent water. A mature goose sells in Canton for
+$1.20, Mexican, or less than 52 cents, gold, but even then how can
+the laborer whose day's wage is but ten or fifteen cents afford one
+for his family? Here, too, we saw the Chinese persistent,
+never-ending industry in keeping their land, their sunshine and
+their rain, with themselves, busy in producing something needful.
+Fields which had matured two crops of rice during the long summer,
+had been laboriously, and largely by hand labor, thrown into strong
+ridges as seen in Fig. 40, to permit still a third winter crop of
+some vegetable to be taken from the land.
+
+But this intensive, continuous cropping of the land spells soil
+exhaustion and creates demands for maintenance and restoration of
+available plant food or the adding of large quantities of something
+quickly convertible into it, and so here in the fields on Honam
+Island, as we had found in Happy Valley, there was abundant evidence
+of the most careful attention and laborious effort devoted to plant
+feeding. The boat standing in the canal in Fig. 41 had come from
+Canton in the early morning with two tons of human manure and men
+were busy applying it, in diluted form, to beds of leeks at the rate
+of 16,000 gallons per acre, all carried on the shoulders in such
+pails as stand in the foreground. The material is applied with
+long-handled dippers holding a gallon, dipping it from the pails,
+the men wading, with bare feet and trousers rolled above the knees,
+in the water of the furrows between the beds. This is one of their
+ways of "feeding the crop," and they have other methods of "manuring
+the soil."
+
+One of these we first met on Honam Island. Large amounts of canal
+mud are here collected in boats and brought to the fields to be
+treated and there left to drain and dry before distributing. Both
+the material used to feed the crop and that used for manuring the
+land are waste products, hindrances to the industry of the region,
+but the Chinese make them do essential duty in maintaining its life.
+The human waste must be disposed of. They return it to the soil. We
+turn it into the sea. Doing so, they save for plant feeding more
+than a ton of phosphorus (2712 pounds) and more than two tons of
+potassium (4488 pounds) per day for each million of adult
+population. The mud collects in their canals and obstructs movement.
+They must be kept open. The mud is highly charged with organic
+matter and would add humus to the soil if applied to the fields, at
+the same time raising their level above the river and canal, giving
+them better drainage; thus are they turning to use what is otherwise
+waste, causing the labor which must be expended in disposal to count
+in a remunerative way.
+
+During the early morning ride to Canton Christian College and three
+others which we were permitted to enjoy in the launch on the canal
+and river waters, everything was again strange, fascinating and full
+of human interest. The Cantonese water population was a surprise,
+not so much for its numbers as for the lithe, sinewy forms, bright
+eyes and cheerful faces, particularly among the women, young and
+old. Nearly always one or more women, mother and daughter oftenest,
+grandmother many times, wrinkled, sometimes grey, but strong, quick
+and vigorous in motion, were manning the oars of junks, houseboats
+and sampans. Sometimes husband and wife and many times the whole
+family were seen together when the craft was both home and business
+boat as well. Little children were gazing from most unexpected peek
+holes, or they toddled tethered from a waist belt at the end of as
+much rope as would arrest them above water, should they go
+overboard. And the cat was similarly tied. Through an overhanging
+latticed stern, too, hens craned their necks, longing for scenes
+they could not reach. With bare heads, bare feet, in short trousers
+and all dressed much alike, men, women, boys and girls showed equal
+mastery of the oar. Beginning so young, day and night in the open
+air on the tide-swept streams and canals, exposed to all of the
+sunshine the fogs and clouds will permit, and removed from the dust
+and filth of streets, it would seem that if the children survive at
+all they must develop strong. The appearance of the women somehow
+conveyed the impression that they were more vigorous and in better
+fettle than the men.
+
+Boats selling many kinds of steaming hot dishes were common. Among
+these was rice tied in green leaf wrappers, three small packets in a
+cluster suspended by a strand of some vegetable fiber, to be handed
+hot from the cooker to the purchaser, some one on a passing junk or
+on an in-coming or out-going boat. Another would buy hot water for a
+brew of tea, while still another, and for a single cash, might be
+handed a small square of cotton cloth, wrung hot from the water,
+with which to wipe his face and hands and then be returned.
+
+Perhaps nothing better measures the intensity of the maintenance
+struggle here, and better indicates the minute economies practiced,
+than the value of their smallest currency unit, the Cash, used in
+their daily retail transactions. On our Pacific coast, where less
+thought is given to little economies than perhaps anywhere else in
+the world, the nickel is the smallest coin in general use, twenty to
+the dollar. For the rest of the United States and in most English
+speaking countries one hundred cents or half pennies measure an
+equal value. In Russia 170 kopecks, in Mexico 200 centavos, in
+France 250 two-centime pieces, and in Austria-Hungary 250 two-heller
+coins equal the United States dollar; while in Germany 400 pfennigs,
+and in India 400 pie are required for an equal value. Again 500
+penni in Finland and of stotinki in Bulgaria, of centesimi in Italy
+and of half cents in Holland equal our dollar; but in China the
+small daily financial transactions are measured against a much
+smaller unit, their Cash, 1500 to 2000 of which are required to
+equal the United States dollar, their purchasing power fluctuating
+daily with the price of silver.
+
+In the Shantung province, when we inquired of the farmers the
+selling prices of their crops, their replies were given like this:
+"Thirty-five strings of cash for 420 catty of wheat and twelve to
+fourteen strings of cash for 1000 catty of wheat straw." At this
+time, according to my interpreter, the value of one string of cash
+was 40 cents Mexican, from which it appears that something like 250
+of these coins were threaded on a string. Twice we saw a wheelbarrow
+heavily loaded with strings of cash being transported through the
+streets of Shanghai, lying exposed on the frame, suggesting chains
+of copper more than money. At one of the go-downs or warehouses in
+Tsingtao, where freight was being transferred from a steamer, the
+carriers were receiving their pay in these coin. The pay-master
+stood in the doorway with half a bushel of loose cash in a grain
+sack at his feet. With one hand he received the bamboo tally-sticks
+from the stevedores and with the other paid the cash for service
+rendered.
+
+Reference has been made to buying hot water. In a sampan managed by
+a woman and her daughter, who took us ashore, the middle section of
+the boat was furnished in the manner of a tiny sitting-room, and on
+the sideboard sat the complete embodiment of our fireless cookers,
+keeping boiled water hot for making tea. This device and the custom
+are here centuries old and throughout these countries boiled water,
+as tea, is the universal drink, adopted no doubt as a preventive
+measure against typhoid fever and allied diseases. Few vegetables
+are eaten raw and nearly all foods are taken hot or recently cooked
+if not in some way pickled or salted. Houseboat meat shops move
+among the many junks on the canals. These were provided with a
+compartment communicating freely with the canal water where the fish
+were kept alive until sold. At the street markets too, fish are kept
+alive in large tubs of water systematically aerated by the water
+falling from an elevated receptacle in a thin stream. A live fish
+may even be sliced before the eyes of a purchaser and the unsold
+portion returned to the water. Poultry is largely retailed alive
+although we saw much of it dressed and cooked to a uniform rich
+brown, apparently roasted, hanging exposed in the markets of the
+very narrow streets in Canton, shaded from the hot sun under awnings
+admitting light overhead through translucent oyster-shell
+latticework. Perhaps these fowl had been cooked in hot oil and
+before serving would be similarly heated. At any rate it is
+perfectly clear that among these people many very fundamental
+sanitary practices are rigidly observed.
+
+One fact which we do not fully understand is that, wherever we went,
+house flies were very few. We never spent a summer with so little
+annoyance from them as this one in China, Korea and Japan. It may be
+that our experience was exceptional but, if so, it could not be
+ascribed to the season of our visit for we have found flies so
+numerous in southern Florida early in April as to make the use of
+the fly brush at the table very necessary. If the scrupulous
+husbanding of waste refuse so universally practiced in these
+countries reduces the fly nuisance and this menace to health to the
+extent which our experience suggests, here is one great gain. We
+breed flies in countless millions each year, until they become an
+intolerable nuisance, and then expend millions of dollars on screens
+and fly poison which only ineffectually lessen the intensity and
+danger of the evil.
+
+The mechanical appliances in use on the canals and in the shops of
+Canton demonstrate that the Chinese possess constructive ability of
+a high order, notwithstanding so many of these are of the simplest
+forms. This statement is well illustrated in the simple yet
+efficient foot-power seen in Fig. 42, where a father and his two
+sons are driving an irrigation pump, lifting water at the rate of
+seven and a half acre-inches per ten hours, and at a cost, including
+wage and food, of 36 to 45 cents, gold. Here, too, were large
+stern-wheel passenger boats, capable of carrying thirty to one
+hundred people, propelled by the same foot-power but laid crosswise
+of the stern, the men working in long single or double lines,
+depending on the size of the boat. On these the fare was one cent,
+gold, for a fifteen mile journey, a rate one-thirtieth our two-cent
+railway tariff. The dredging and clearing of the canals and water
+channels in and about Canton is likewise accomplished with the same
+foot-power, often by families living on the dredge boats. A dipper
+dredge is used, constructed of strong bamboo strips woven into the
+form of a sliding, two-horse road scraper, guided by a long bamboo
+handle. The dredge is drawn along the bottom by a rope winding about
+the projecting axle of the foot-power, propelled by three or more
+people. When the dipper reaches the axle and is raised from the
+water it is swung aboard, emptied and returned by means of a long
+arm like the old well sweep, operated by a cord depending from the
+lower end of the lever, the dipper swinging from the other. Much of
+the mud so collected from the canals and channels of the city is
+taken to the rice and mulberry fields, many square miles of which
+occupy the surrounding country. Thus the channels are kept open, the
+fields grow steadily higher above flood level, while their
+productive power is maintained by the plant food and organic matter
+carried in the sediment.
+
+The mechanical principle involved in the boy's button buzz was
+applied in Canton and in many other places for operating small
+drills as well as in grinding and polishing appliances used in the
+manufacture of ornamental ware. The drill, as used for boring metal,
+is set in a straight shaft, often of bamboo, on the upper end of
+which is mounted a circular weight. The drill is driven by a pair of
+strings with one end attached just beneath the momentum weight and
+the other fastened at the ends of a cross hand-bar, having a hole at
+its center through which the shaft carrying the drill passes.
+Holding the drill in position for work and turning the shaft, the
+two cords are wrapped about it in such a manner that simple downward
+pressure on the hand bar held in the two hands unwinds the cords and
+thus revolves the drill. Relieving the pressure at the proper time
+permits the momentum of the revolving weight to rewind the cords and
+the next downward pressure brings the drill again into service.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST RIVER
+
+
+
+
+
+On the morning of March 10th we took passage on the Nanning for
+Wuchow, in Kwangsi province, a journey of 220 miles up the West
+river, or Sikiang. The Nanning is one of two English steamers making
+regular trips between the two places, and it was the sister boat
+which in the summer of 1906 was attacked by pirates on one of her
+trips and all of the officers and first class passengers killed
+while at dinner. The cause of this attack, it is said, or the excuse
+for it, was threatened famine resulting from destructive floods
+which had ruined the rice and mulberry crops of the great delta
+region and had prevented the carrying of manure and bean cake as
+fertilizers to the tea fields in the hill lands beyond, thus
+bringing ruin to three of the great staple crops of the region. To
+avoid the recurrence of such tragedies the first class quarters on
+the Nanning had been separated from the rest of the ship by heavy
+iron gratings thrown across the decks and over the hatchways. Armed
+guards stood at the locked gateways, and swords were hanging from
+posts under the awnings of the first cabin quarters, much as saw and
+ax in our passenger coaches. Both British and Chinese gunboats were
+patrolling the river; all Chinese passengers were searched for
+concealed weapons as they came aboard, even though Government
+soldiers, and all arms taken into custody until the end of the
+journey. Several of the large Chinese merchant junks which were
+passed, carrying valuable cargoes on the river, were armed with
+small cannon and when riding by rail from Canton to Sam Shui, a
+government pirate detective was in our coach.
+
+The Sikiang is one of the great rivers of China and indeed of the
+world. Its width at Wuchow at low water was nearly a mile and our
+steamer anchored in twenty-four feet of water to a floating dock
+made fast by huge iron chains reaching three hundred feet up the
+slope to the city proper, thus providing for a rise of twenty-six
+feet in the river at its flood stage during the rainy season. In a
+narrow section of river where it winds through Shui Hing gorge, the
+water at low stage has a depth of more than twenty-five fathoms, too
+deep for anchorage, so in times of prospective fog, boats wait for
+clearing weather. Fluctuations in the height of the river limit
+vessels passing up to Wuchow to those drawing six and a half feet of
+water during the low stage, and at high stage to those drawing
+sixteen feet.
+
+When the West river emerges from the high lands, with its burden of
+silt, to join its waters with those of the North and East rivers, it
+has entered a vast delta plain some eighty miles from east to west
+and nearly as many from north to south, and this has been canalized,
+diked, drained and converted into the most productive of fields,
+bearing three or more crops each year. As we passed westward through
+this delta region the broad flat fields, surrounded by dikes to
+protect them against high water, were being plowed and fitted for
+the coming crop of rice. In many places the dikes which checked off
+the fields were planted with bananas and in the distance gave the
+appearance of extensive orchards completely occupying the ground.
+Except for the water and the dikes it was easy to imagine that we
+were traversing one of our western prairie sections in the early
+spring, at seeding time, the scattered farm villages here easily
+suggested distant farmsteads; but a nearer approach to the houses
+showed that the roofs and sides were thatched with rice straw and
+stacks were very numerous about the buildings. Many tide gates were
+set in the dikes, often with double trunks.
+
+At times we approached near enough to the fields to see how they
+were laid out. From the gates long canals, six to eight feet wide,
+led back sometimes eighty or a hundred rods. Across these and at
+right angles, head channels were cut and between them the fields
+were plowed in long straight lands some two rods wide, separated by
+water furrows. Many of the fields were bearing sugar cane standing
+eight feet high. The Chinese do no sugar refining but boil the sap
+until it will solidify, when it is run into cakes resembling
+chocolate or our brown maple sugar. Immense quantities of sugar
+cane, too, are exported to the northern provinces, in bundles
+wrapped with matting or other cover, for the retail markets where it
+is sold, the canes being cut in short sections and sometimes peeled,
+to be eaten from the hands as a confection.
+
+Much of the way this water-course was too broad to permit detailed
+study of field conditions and crops, even with a glass. In such
+sections the recent dikes often have the appearance of being built
+from limestone blocks but a closer view showed them constructed from
+blocks of the river silt cut and laid in walls with slightly sloping
+faces. In time however the blocks weather and the dikes become
+rounded earthen walls.
+
+We passed two men in a boat, in charge of a huge flock of some
+hundreds of yellow ducklings. Anchored to the bank was a large
+houseboat provided with an all-around, over-hanging rim and on board
+was a stack of rice straw and other things which constituted the
+floating home of the ducks. Both ducks and geese are reared in this
+manner in large numbers by the river population. When it is desired
+to move to another feeding ground a gang plank is put ashore and the
+flock come on board to remain for the night or to be landed at
+another place.
+
+About five hours journey westward in this delta plain, where the
+fields lie six to ten feet above the present water stage, we reached
+the mulberry district. Here the plants are cultivated in rows about
+four feet apart, having the habit of small shrubs rather than of
+trees, and so much resembling cotton that our first impression was
+that we were in an extensive cotton district. On the lower lying
+areas, surrounded by dikes, some fields were laid out in the manner
+of the old Italian or English water meadows, with a shallow
+irrigation furrow along the crest of the bed and much deeper
+drainage ditches along the division line between them. Mulberries
+were occupying the ground before the freshly cut trenches we saw
+were dug, and all the surface between the rows had been evenly
+overlaid with the fresh earth removed with the spade, the soil lying
+in blocks essentially unbroken. In Fig. 43 may be seen the mulberry
+crop on a similarly treated surface, between Canton and Samshui,
+with the earth removed from the trenches laid evenly over the entire
+surface between and around the plants, as it came from the spade.
+
+At frequent intervals along the river, paths and steps were seen
+leading to the water and within a distance of a quarter of a mile we
+counted thirty-one men and women carrying mud in baskets on bamboo
+poles swung across their shoulders, the mud being taken from just
+above the water line. The disposition of this material we could not
+see as it was carried beyond a rise in ground. We have little doubt
+that the mulberry fields were being covered with it. It was here
+that a rain set in and almost like magic the fields blossomed out
+with great numbers of giant rain hats and kittysols, where people
+had been unobserved before. From one o'clock until six in the
+afternoon we had traveled continuously through these mulberry fields
+stretching back miles from our line of travel on either hand, and
+the total acreage must have been very large. But we had now nearly
+reached the margin of the delta and the mulberries changed to fields
+of grain, beans, peas and vegetables.
+
+After leaving the delta region the balance of the journey to Wuchow
+was through a hill country, the slopes rising steeply from near the
+river bank, leaving relatively little tilled or readily tillable
+land. Rising usually five hundred to a thousand feet, the sides and
+summits of the rounded, soil-covered hills were generally clothed
+with a short herbaceous growth and small scattering trees, oftenest
+pine, four to sixteen feet high, Fig. 44 being a typical landscape
+of the region.
+
+In several sections along the course of this river there are limited
+areas of intense erosion where naked gulleys of no mean magnitude
+have developed but these were exceptions and we were continually
+surprised at the remarkable steepness of the slopes, with convexly
+rounded contours almost everywhere, well mantled with soil, devoid
+of gulleys and completely covered with herbaceous growth dotted with
+small trees. The absence of forest growth finds its explanation in
+human influence rather than natural conditions.
+
+Throughout the hill-land section of this mighty river the most
+characteristic and persistent human features were the stacks of
+brush-wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded
+upon boats and barges for the market. The brush-wood was largely
+made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked like
+grain. The stove wood was usually round, peeled and made from the
+limbs and trunks of trees two to five inches in diameter. All this
+fuel was coming to the river from the back country, sent down along
+steep slides which in the distance resemble paths leading over hills
+but too steep for travel. The fuel was loaded upon large barges, the
+boughs in the form of stacks to shed rain but with a tunnel leading
+into the house of the boat about which they were stacked, while the
+wood was similarly corded about the dwelling, as seen in Fig. 44.
+The wood was going to Canton and other delta cities while the pine
+boughs were taken to the lime and cement kilns, many of which were
+located along the river. Absolutely the whole tree, including the
+roots and the needles, is saved and burned; no waste is permitted.
+
+The up-river cargo of the Nanning was chiefly matting rush, taken on
+at Canton, tied in bundles like sheaves of wheat. It is grown upon
+the lower, newer delta lands by methods of culture similar to those
+applied to rice, Fig. 45 showing a field as seen in Japan.
+
+The rushes were being taken to one of the country villages on a
+tributary of the Sikiang and the steamer was met by a flotilla of
+junks from this village, some forty-five miles up the stream, where
+the families live who do the weaving. On the return trip the
+flotilla again met the steamer with a cargo of the woven matting. In
+keeping record of packages transferred the Chinese use a simple and
+unique method. Each carrier, with his two bundles, received a pair
+of tally sticks. At the gang-plank sat a man with a tally-case
+divided into twenty compartments, each of which could receive five,
+but no more, tallies. As the bundles left the steamer the tallies
+were placed in the tally-case until it contained one hundred, when
+it was exchanged for another.
+
+Wuchow is a city of some 65,000 inhabitants, standing back on the
+higher ground, not readily visible from the steamer landing nor from
+the approach on the river. On the foreground, across which stretched
+the anchor chains of the dock, was living a floating population,
+many in shelters less substantial than Indian wigwams, but engaged
+in a great variety of work, and many water buffalo had been tied for
+the night along the anchor chains. Before July much of this area
+would lie beneath the flood waters of the Sikiang.
+
+Here a ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace,
+boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, and
+another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow-brace
+consisted of a bamboo stalk carrying the bit at one end and a
+shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the
+shoulder, it was driven with the string of a long bow wrapped once
+around the stalk by drawing the bow back and forth, thus rapidly and
+readily revolving the bit.
+
+The bending of the long, heavy plank, four inches thick and eight
+inches wide, was more simple still, It was saturated with water and
+one end raised on a support four feet above the ground. A bundle of
+burning rice straw moved along the under side against the wet wood
+had the effect of steaming the wood and the weight of the plank
+caused it to gradually bend into the shape desired. Bamboo poles are
+commonly bent or straightened in this manner to suit any need and
+Fig. 46 shows a wooden fork shaped in the manner described from a
+small tree having three main branches. This fork is in the hands of
+my interpreter and was used by the woman standing at the right, in
+turning wheat.
+
+When the old ship builder had finished shaping his plank he sat down
+on the ground for a smoke. His pipe was one joint of bamboo stem a
+foot long, nearly two inches in diameter and open at one end. In the
+closed end, at one side, a small hole was bored for draft. A charge
+of tobacco was placed in the bottom, the lips pressed into the open
+end and the pipe lighted by suction, holding a lighted match at the
+small opening. To enjoy his pipe the bowl rested on the ground
+between his legs. With his lips in the bowl and a long breath, he
+would completely fill his lungs, retaining the smoke for a time,
+then slowly expire and fill the lungs again, after an interval of
+natural breathing.
+
+On returning to Canton we went by rail, with an interpreter, to
+Samshui, visiting fields along the way, and Fig. 47 is a view of one
+landscape. The woman was picking roses among tidy beds of garden
+vegetables. Beyond her and in front of the near building are two
+rows of waste receptacles. In the center background is a large
+"go-down", in function that of our cold storage warehouse and in
+part that of our grain elevator for rice. In them, too, the wealthy
+store their fur-lined winter garments for safe keeping. These are
+numerous in this portion of China and the rank of a city is
+indicated by their number. The conical hillock is a large near-by
+grave mound and many others serrate the sky line on the hill beyond.
+
+In the next landscape, Fig. 48, a crop of winter peas, trained to
+canes, are growing on ridges among the stubble of the second crop of
+rice, In front is one canal, the double ridge behind is another and
+a third canal extends in front of the houses. Already preparations
+were being made for the first crop of rice, fields were being
+flooded and fertilized. One such is seen in Fig. 49, where a laborer
+was engaged at the time in bringing stable manure, wading into the
+water to empty the baskets.
+
+Two crops of rice are commonly grown each year in southern China and
+during the winter and early spring, grain, cabbage, rape, peas,
+beans, leeks and ginger may occupy the fields as a third or even
+fourth crop, making the total year's product from the land very
+large; but the amount of thought, labor and fertilizers given to
+securing these is even greater and beyond anything Americans will
+endure. How great these efforts are will be appreciated from what is
+seen in Fig. 50, representing two fields thrown into high ridges,
+planted to ginger and covered with straw. All of this work is done
+by hand and when the time for rice planting comes every ridge will
+again be thrown down and the surface smoothed to a water level. Even
+when the ridges and beds are not thrown down for the crops of rice,
+the furrows and the beds will change places so that all the soil is
+worked over deeply and mainly through hand labor. The statement so
+often made, that these people only barely scratch the surface of
+their fields with the crudest of tools is very far from the truth,
+for their soils are worked deeply and often, notwithstanding the
+fact that their plowing, as such, may be shallow.
+
+Through Dr. John Blumann of the missionary hospital at Tungkun, east
+from Canton, we learned that the good rice lands there a few years
+ago sold at $75 to $130 per acre but that prices are rising rapidly.
+The holdings of the better class of farmers there are ten to fifteen
+mow--one and two-thirds to two and a half acres--upon which are
+maintained families numbering six to twelve. The day's wage of a
+carpenter or mason is eleven to thirteen cents of our currency, and
+board is not included, but a day's ration for a laboring man is
+counted worth fifteen cents, Mexican, or less than seven cents,
+gold.
+
+Fish culture is practiced in both deep and shallow basins, the deep
+permanent ones renting as high as $30 gold, per acre. The shallow
+basins which can be drained in the dry season are used for fish only
+during the rainy period, being later drained and planted to some
+crop. The permanent basins have often come to be ten or twelve feet
+deep, increasing with long usage, for they are periodically drained
+by pumping and the foot or two of mud which has accumulated, removed
+and sold as fertilizer to planters of rice and other crops. It is a
+common practice, too, among the fish growers, to fertilize the
+ponds, and in case a foot path leads alongside, screens are built
+over the water to provide accommodation for travelers. Fish reared
+in the better fertilized ponds bring a higher price in the market.
+The fertilizing of the water favors a stronger growth of food forms,
+both plant and animal, upon which the fish live and they are better
+nourished, making a more rapid growth, giving their flesh better
+qualities, as is the case with well fed animals.
+
+In the markets where fish are exposed for sale they are often sliced
+in halves lengthwise and the cut surface smeared with fresh blood.
+In talking with Dr. Blumann as to the reason for this practice he
+stated that the Chinese very much object to eating meat that is old
+or tainted and that he thought the treatment simply had the effect
+of making the fish look fresher. I question whether this treatment
+with fresh blood may not have a real antiseptic effect and very much
+doubt that people so shrewd as the Chinese would be misled by such a
+ruse.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND
+SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS
+
+
+
+
+
+On the evening of March 15th we left Canton for Hongkong and the
+following day embarked again on the Tosa Maru for Shanghai. Although
+our steamer stood so far to sea that we were generally out of sight
+of land except for some off-shore islands, the water was turbid most
+of the way after we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer off the mouth
+of the Han river at Swatow. Over a sea bottom measuring more than
+six hundred miles northward along the coast, and perhaps fifty miles
+to sea, unnumbered acre-feet of the richest soil of China are being
+borne beyond the reach of her four hundred millions of people and
+the children to follow them. Surely it must be one of the great
+tasks of future statesmanship, education and engineering skill to
+divert larger amounts of such sediments close along inshore in such
+manner as to add valuable new land annually to the public domain,
+not alone in China but in all countries where large resources of
+this type are going to waste.
+
+In the vast Cantonese delta plains which we had just left, in the
+still more extensive ones of the Yangtse kiang to which we were now
+going, and in those of the shifting Hwang ho further north,
+centuries of toiling millions have executed works of almost
+incalculable magnitude, fundamentally along such lines as those just
+suggested. They have accomplished an enormous share of these tasks
+by sheer force of body and will, building levees, digging canals,
+diverting the turbid waters of streams through them and then
+carrying the deposits of silt and organic growth out upon the
+fields, often borne upon the shoulders of men in the manner we have
+seen.
+
+It is well nigh impossible, by word or map, to convey an adequate
+idea of the magnitude of the systems of canalization and delta and
+other lowland reclamation work, or of the extent of surface fitting
+of fields which have been effected in China, Korea and Japan through
+the many centuries, and which are still in progress. The lands so
+reclaimed and fitted constitute their most enduring asset and they
+support their densest populations. In one of our journeys by
+houseboat on the delta canals between Shanghai and Hangchow, in
+China, over a distance of 117 miles, we made a careful record of the
+number and dimensions of lateral canals entering and leaving the
+main one along which our boat-train was traveling. This record shows
+that in 62 miles, beginning north of Kashing and extending south to
+Hangchow, there entered from the west 134 and there left on the
+coast side 190 canals. The average width of these canals, measured
+along the water line, we estimated at 22 and 19 feet respectively on
+the two sides. The height of the fields above the water level ranged
+from four to twelve feet, during the April and May stage of water.
+The depth of water, after we entered the Grand Canal, often exceeded
+six feet and our best judgment would place the average depth of all
+canals in this part of China at more than eight feet below the level
+of the fields.
+
+In Fig. 51, representing an area of 718 square miles in the region
+traversed, all lines shown are canals, but scarcely more than
+one-third of those present are shown on the map. Between A, where we
+began our records, before reaching Kashing, and B, near the left
+margin of the map, there were forty-three canals leading in from the
+up-country side, instead of the eight shown, and on the coast side
+there were eighty-six leading water out into the delta plain toward
+the coast, instead of the twelve shown. Again, on one of our trips
+by rail, from Shanghai to Nanking, we made a similar record of the
+number of canals seen from the train, close along the track, and the
+notes show, in a distance of 162 miles, 593 canals between Lungtan
+and Nansiang. This is an average of more than three canals per mile
+for this region and that between Shanghai and Hangchow.
+
+The extent, nature and purpose of these vast systems of internal
+improvement may be better realized through a study of the next two
+sketch maps. The first, Fig. 52, represents an area 175 by 160
+miles, of which the last illustration is the portion enclosed in the
+small rectangle. On this area there are shown 2,700 miles of canals
+and only about one-third of the canals shown in Fig. 51 are laid
+down on this map, and according to our personal observations there
+are three times as many canals as are shown on the map of which Fig.
+51 represents a part. It is probable, therefore, that there exists
+today in the area of Fig. 52 not less than 25,000 miles of canals.
+
+In the next illustration, Fig. 53, an area of northeast China, 600
+by 725 miles, is represented. The unshaded land area covers nearly
+200,000 square miles of alluvial plain. This plain is so level that
+at Ichang, nearly a thousand miles up the Yangtse, the elevation is
+only 130 feet above the sea. The tide is felt on the river to beyond
+Wuhu, 375 miles from the coast. During the summer the depth of water
+in the Yangtse is sufficient to permit ocean vessels drawing
+twenty-five feet of water to ascend six hundred miles to Hankow, and
+for smaller steamers to go on to Ichang, four hundred miles further.
+
+The location, in this vast low delta and coastal plain, of the
+system of canals already described, is indicated by the two
+rectangles in the south-east corner of the sketch map, Fig. 53. The
+heavy barred black line extending from Hangchow in the south to
+Tientsin in the north represents the Grand Canal which has a length
+of more than eight hundred miles. The plain, east of this canal, as
+far north as the mouth of the Hwang ho in 1852, is canalized much as
+is the area shown in Fig. 52. So, too, is a large area both sides of
+the present mouth of the same river in Shantung and Chihli, between
+the canal and the coast. Westward, up the Yangtse valley, the
+provinces of Anhwei, Kiangsi, Hunan and Hupeh have very extensive
+canalized tracts, probably exceeding 28,000 square miles in area,
+and Figs. 54 and 55 are two views in this more western region. Still
+further west, in Szechwan province, is the Chengtu plain, thirty by
+seventy miles, with what has been called "the most remarkable
+irrigation system in China."
+
+Westward beyond the limits of the sketch map, up the Hwang ho
+valley, there is a reach of 125 miles of irrigated lands about
+Ninghaifu, and others still farther west, at Lanchowfu and at Suchow
+where the river has attained an elevation of 5,000 feet, in Kansu
+province; and there is still to be named the great Canton delta
+region. A conservative estimate would place the miles of canals and
+leveed rivers in China, Korea and Japan equal to eight times the
+number represented in Fig. 52. Fully 200,000 miles in all. Forty
+canals across the United States from east to west and sixty from
+north to south would not equal, in number of miles those in these
+three countries today. Indeed, it is probable that this estimate is
+not too large for China alone.
+
+As adjuncts to these vast canalization works there have been
+enormous amounts of embankment, dike and levee construction. More
+than three hundred miles of sea wall alone exist in the area covered
+by the sketch map, Fig. 52. The east bank of the Grand Canal,
+between Yangchow and Hwaianfu, is itself a great levee, holding back
+the waters to the west above the eastern plain, diverting them
+south, into the Yangtse kiang. But it is also provided with
+spillways for use in times of excessive flood, permitting waters to
+discharge eastward. Such excess waters however are controlled by
+another dike with canal along its west side, some forty miles to the
+east, impounding the water in a series of large lakes until it may
+gradually drain away. This area is seen in Fig. 53, north of the
+Yangtse river.
+
+Along the banks of the Yangtse, and for many miles along the Hwang
+ho, great levees have been built, some-times in reinforcing series
+of two or three at different distances back from the channel where
+the stream bed is above the adjacent country, in order to prevent
+widespread disaster and to limit the inundated areas in times of
+unusual flood. In the province of Hupeh, where the Han river flows
+through two hundred miles of low country, this stream is diked on
+both sides throughout the whole distance, and in a portion of its
+course the height of the levees reaches thirty feet or more. Again,
+in the Canton delta region there are other hundreds of miles of sea
+wall and dikes, so that the aggregate mileage of this type of
+construction works in the Empire can only be measured in thousands
+of miles.
+
+In addition to the canal and levee construction works there are
+numerous impounding reservoirs which are brought into requisition to
+control overflow waters from the great streams. Some of these
+reservoirs, like Tungting lake in Hupeh and Poyang in Hunan, have
+areas of 2,000 and 1,800 square miles respectively and during the
+heaviest rainy seasons each may rise through twenty to thirty feet,
+Then there are other large and small lakes in the coastal plain
+giving an aggregate reservoir area exceeding 13,000 square miles,
+all of which are brought into service in controlling flood waters,
+all of which are steadily filling with the sediments brought from
+the far away uncultivable mountain slopes and which are ultimately
+destined to become rich alluvial plains, doubtless to be canalized
+in the manner we have seen.
+
+There is still another phase of these vast construction works which
+has been of the greatest moment in increasing the maintenance
+capacity of the Empire,--the wresting from the flood waters of the
+enormous volumes of silt which they carry, depositing it over the
+flooded areas, in the canals and along the shores in such manner as
+to add to the habitable and cultivable land. Reference has been made
+to the rapid growth of Chungming island in the mouth of the Yangtse
+kiang, and the million people now finding homes on the 270 square
+miles of newly made land which now has its canals, as may be seen in
+the upper margin of Fig. 52. The city of Shanghai, as its name
+signifies, stood originally on the seashore, which has now grown
+twenty miles to the northward and to the eastward. In 220 B. C. the
+town of Putai in Shantung stood one-third of a mile from the sea,
+but in 1730 it was forty-seven miles inland, and is forty-eight
+miles from the shore today.
+
+Sienshuiku, on the Pei ho, stood upon the seashore in 500 A. D. We
+passed the city, on our way to Tientsin, eighteen miles inland. The
+dotted line laid in from the coast of the Gulf of Chihli in Fig. 53
+marks one historic shore line and indicates a general growth of land
+eighteen miles to seaward.
+
+Besides these actual extensions of the shore lines the centuries of
+flooding of lakes and low lying lands has so filled many depressions
+as to convert large areas of swamp into cultivated fields. Not only
+this, but the spreading of canal mud broadcast over the encircled
+fields has had two very important effects,--namely, raising the
+level of the low lying fields, giving them better drainage and so
+better physical condition, and adding new plant food in the form of
+virgin soil of the richest type, thus contributing to the
+maintenance of soil fertility, high maintenance capacity and
+permanent agriculture through all the centuries.
+
+These operations of maintenance and improvement had a very early
+inception; they appear to have persisted throughout the recorded
+history of the Empire and are in vogue today. Canals of the type
+illustrated in Figs. 51 and 52 have been built between 1886 and
+1901, both on the extensions of Chungming island and the newly
+formed main land to the north, as is shown by comparison of
+Stieler's atlas, revised in 1886, with the recent German survey.
+
+Earlier than 2255 B. C., more than 4100 years ago, Emperor Yao
+appointed "The Great" Yu "Superintendent of Works" and entrusted him
+with the work of draining off the waters of disastrous floods and of
+canalizing the rivers, and he devoted thirteen years to this work.
+This great engineer is said to have written several treatises on
+agriculture and drainage, and was finally called, much against his
+wishes, to serve as Emperor during the last seven years of his life.
+
+The history of the Hwang ho is one of disastrous floods and
+shiftings of its course, which have occurred many times in the years
+since before the time of the Great Yu, who perhaps began the works
+perpetuated today. Between 1300 A. D. and 1852 the Hwang ho emptied
+into the Yellow Sea south of the highlands of Shantung, but in that
+year, when in unusual flood, it broke through the north levees and
+finally took its present course, emptying again into the Gulf of
+Chihli, some three hundred miles further north. Some of these
+shiftings of course of the Hwang ho and of the Yangtse kiang are
+indicated in dotted lines on the sketch map, Fig. 53, where it may
+he seen that the Hwang ho during 146 years, poured its waters into
+the sea as far north as Tientsin, through the mouth of the Pei ho,
+four hundred miles to the northward of its mouth in 1852.
+
+This mighty river is said to carry at low stage, past the city of
+Tsinan in Shantung, no less than 4,000 cubic yards of water per
+second, and three times this volume when running at flood. This is
+water sufficient to inundate thirty-three square miles of level
+country ten feet deep in twenty-four hours. What must be said of the
+mental status of a people who for forty centuries have measured
+their strength against such a Titan racing past their homes above
+the level of their fields, confined only between walls of their own
+construction? While they have not always succeeded in controlling
+the river, they have never failed to try again. In 1877 this river
+broke its banks, inundating a vast. area, bringing death to a
+million people. Again, as late as 1898, fifteen hundred villages to
+the northeast of Tsinan and a much larger area to the southwest of
+the same city were devastated by it, and it is such events as these
+which have won for the river the names "China's Sorrow," "The
+Ungovernable" and "The Scourge of the Sons of Han."
+
+The building of the Grand Canal appears to have been a comparatively
+recent event in Chinese history. The middle section, between the
+Yangtse and Tsingkiangpu, is said to have been constructed about the
+sixth century B. C.; the southern section, between Chingkiang and
+Hangchow, during the years 605 to 617 A. D.; but the northern
+section, from the channel of the Hwang ho deserted in 1852, to
+Tientsin, was not built until the years 1280-1283.
+
+While this canal has been called by the Chinese Yu ho (Imperial
+river), Yun ho (Transport river) or Yunliang ho (Tribute bearing
+river) and while it has connected the great rivers coming down from
+the far interior into a great water-transport system, this feature
+of construction may have been but a by-product of the great
+dominating purpose which led to the vast internal improvements in
+the form of canals, dikes, levees and impounding reservoirs so
+widely scattered, so fully developed and so effectively utilized.
+Rather the master purpose must have been maintenance for the
+increasing flood of humanity. And I am willing to grant to the Great
+Yu, with his finger on the pulse of the nation, the power to project
+his vision four thousand years into the future of his race and to
+formulate some of the measures which might he inaugurated to grow
+with the years and make certain perpetual maintenance for those to
+follow.
+
+The exhaustion of cultivated fields must always have been the most
+fundamental, vital and difficult problem of all civilized people and
+it appears clear that such canalization as is illustrated in Figs.
+51 and 52 may have been primarily initial steps in the reclamation
+of delta and overflow lands. At any rate, whether deliberately so
+planned or not, the canalization of the delta and overflow plains of
+China has been one of the most fundamental and fruitful measures for
+the conservation of her national resources that they could have
+taken, for we are convinced that this oldest nation in the world has
+thus greatly augmented the extension of its coastal plains,
+conserving and building out of the waste of erosion wrested from the
+great streams, hundreds of square miles of the richest and most
+enduring of soils, and we have little doubt that were a full and
+accurate account given of human influence upon the changes in this
+remarkable region during the last four thousand years it would show
+that these gigantic systems of canalization have been matters of
+slow, gradual growth, often initiated and always profoundly
+influenced by the labors of the strong, patient, persevering,
+thoughtful but ever silent husband-men in their efforts to acquire
+homes and to maintain the productive power of their fields.
+
+Nothing appears more clear than that the greatest material problem
+which can engage the best thought of China today is that of
+perfecting, extending and perpetuating the means for controlling her
+flood waters, for better draining of her vast areas of low land, and
+for utilizing the tremendous loads of silt borne by her streams more
+effectively in fertilizing existing fields and in building and
+reclaiming new land. With her millions of people needing homes and
+anxious for work; who have done so much in land building, in
+reclamation and in the maintenance of soil fertility, the government
+should give serious thought to the possibility of putting large
+numbers of them at work, effectively directed by the best
+engineering skill. It must now be entirely practicable, with
+engineering skill and mechanical appliances, to put the Hwang ho,
+and other rivers of China subject to overflow, completely under
+control. With the Hwang ho confined to its channel, the adjacent low
+lands can be better drained by canalization and freed from the
+accumulating saline deposits which are rendering them sterile.
+Warping may be resorted to during the flood season to raise the
+level of adjacent low-lying fields, rendering them at the same time
+more fertile. Where the river is running above the adjacent plains
+there is no difficulty in drawing off the turbid water by gravity,
+under controlled conditions, into diked basins, and even in
+compelling the river to buttress its own levees. There is certainly
+great need and great opportunity for China to make still better and
+more efficient her already wonderful transportation canals and those
+devoted to drainage, irrigation and fertilization.
+
+In the United States, along the same lines, now that we are
+considering the development of inland waterways, the subject should
+be surveyed broadly and much careful study may well be given to the
+works these old people have developed and found serviceable through
+so many centuries. The Mississippi is annually bearing to the sea
+nearly 225,000 acre-feet of the most fertile sediment, and between
+levees along a raised bed through two hundred miles of country
+subject to inundation. The time is here when there should he
+undertaken a systematic diversion of a large part of this fertile
+soil over the swamp areas, building them into well drained,
+cultivable, fertile fields provided with waterways to serve for
+drainage, irrigation, fertilization and transportation. These great
+areas of swamp land may thus be converted into the most productive
+rice and sugar plantations to be found anywhere in the world, and
+the area made capable of maintaining many millions of people as long
+as the Mississippi endures, bearing its burden of fertile sediment.
+
+But the conservation and utilization of the wastes of soil erosion,
+as applied in the delta plain of China, stupendous as this work has
+been, is nevertheless small when measured by the savings which
+accrue from the careful and extensive fitting of fields so largely
+practiced, which both lessens soil erosion and permits a large
+amount of soluble and suspended matter in the run-off to be applied
+to, and retained upon, the fields through their extensive systems of
+irrigation. Mountainous and hilly as are the lands of Japan, 11,000
+square miles of her cultivated fields in the main islands of Honshu,
+Kyushu and Shikoku have been carefully graded to water level areas
+bounded by narrow raised rims upon which sixteen or more inches of
+run-off water, with its suspended and soluble matters, may be
+applied, a large part of which is retained on the fields or utilized
+by the crop, while surface erosion is almost completely prevented.
+The illustrations, Figs. 11, 12 and 13 show the application of the
+principle to the larger and more level fields, and in Figs. 151, 152
+and 225 may be seen the practice on steep slopes.
+
+If the total area of fields graded practically to a water level in
+Japan aggregates 11,000 square miles, the total area thus surface
+fitted in China must be eight or tenfold this amount. Such enormous
+field erosion as is tolerated at the present time in our southern
+and south Atlantic states is permitted nowhere in the Far East, so
+far as we observed, not even where the topography is much steeper.
+The tea orchards as we saw them on the steeper slopes, not
+level-terraced, are often heavily mulched with straw which makes
+erosion, even by heavy rains impossible, while the treatment retains
+the rain where it falls, giving the soil opportunity to receive it
+under the impulse of both capillarity and gravity, and with it the
+soluble ash ingredients leached from the straw. The straw mulches we
+saw used in this manner were often six to eight inches deep, thus
+constituting a dressing of not less than six tons per acre, carrying
+140 pounds of soluble potassium and 12 pounds of phosphorus. The
+practice, therefore, gives at once a good fertilizing, the highest
+conservation and utilization of rainfall, and a complete protection
+against soil erosion. It is a multum in parvo treatment which
+characterizes so many of the practices of these people, which have
+crystallized from twenty centuries of high tension experience.
+
+In the Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces as elsewhere in the densely
+populated portions of the Far East, we found almost all of the
+cultivated fields very nearly level or made so by grading. Instances
+showing the type of this grading in a comparatively level country
+are seen in Figs. 56 and 57. By this preliminary surface fitting of
+the fields these people have reduced to the lowest possible limit
+the waste of soil fertility by erosion and surface leaching. At the
+same time they are able to retain upon the field, uniformly
+distributed over it, the largest part of the rainfall practicable,
+and to compel a much larger proportion of the necessary run off to
+leave by under-drainage than would be possible otherwise, conveying
+the plant food developed in the surface soil to the roots of the
+crops, while they make possible a more complete absorption and
+retention by the soil of the soluble plant food materials not taken
+up. This same treatment also furnishes the best possible conditions
+for the application of water to the fields when supplemental
+irrigation would be helpful, and for the withdrawal of surplus
+rainfall by surface drainage, should this be necessary.
+
+Besides this surface fitting of fields there is a wide application
+of additional methods aiming to conserve both rainfall and soil
+fertility, one of which is illustrated in Fig. 58, showing one end
+of a collecting reservoir. There were three of these reservoirs in
+tandem, connected with each other by surface ditches and with an
+adjoining canal. About the reservoir the level field is seen to be
+thrown into beds with shallow furrows between the long narrow
+ridges. The furrows are connected by a head drain around the margin
+of the reservoir and separated from it by a narrow raised rim. Such
+a reservoir may be six to ten feet deep but can be completely
+drained only by pumping or by evaporation during the dry season.
+Into such reservoirs the excess surface water is drained where all
+suspended matter carried from the field collects and is returned,
+either directly as an application of mud or as material used in
+composts. In the preparation of composts, pits are dug near the
+margin of the reservoir, as seen in the illustration, and into them
+are thrown coarse manure and any roughage in the form of stubble or
+other refuse which may be available, these materials being saturated
+with the soft mud dipped from the bottom of the reservoir.
+
+In all of the provinces where canals are abundant they also serve as
+reservoirs for collecting surface washings and along their banks
+great numbers of compost pits are maintained and repeatedly filled
+during the season, for use on the fields as the crops are changed.
+Fig. 59 shows two such pits on the bank of a canal, already filled.
+
+In other cases, as in the Shantung province, illustrated in Fig. 60,
+the surface of the field may be thrown into broad leveled lands
+separated and bounded by deep and wide trenches into which the
+excess water of very heavy rains may collect. As we saw them there
+was no provision for draining the trenches and the water thus
+collected either seeps away or evaporates, or it may be returned in
+part by underflow and capillary rise to the soil from which it was
+collected, or be applied directly for irrigation by pumping. In this
+province the rains may often be heavy but the total fall for the
+year is small, being little more than twenty-four inches hence there
+is the greatest need for its conservation, and this is carefully
+practiced.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON
+PEOPLE
+
+
+
+
+
+The Tosa Maru brought us again into Shanghai March 20th, just in
+time for the first letters from home. A ricksha man carried us and
+our heavy valise at a smart trot from the dock to the Astor House
+more than a mile, for 8.6 cents, U. S. currency, and more than the
+conventional price for the service rendered. On our way we passed
+several loaded carryalls of the type seen in Fig. 61, on which women
+were riding for a fare one-tenth that we had paid, but at a slower
+pace and with many a jolt.
+
+The ringing chorus which came loud and clear when yet half a block
+away announced that the pile drivers were still at work on the
+foundation for an annex to the Astor House, and so were they on May
+27th when we returned from the Shantung province, 88 days after we
+saw them first, but with the task then practically completed. Had
+the eighteen men labored continuously through this interval, the
+cost of their services to the contractor would have been but
+$205.92. With these conditions the engine-driven pile driver could
+not compete. All ordinary labor here receives a low wage. In the
+Chekiang province farm labor employed by the year received $30 and
+board, ten years ago, but now is receiving $50. This is at the rate
+of about $12.90 and $21.50, gold, materially less than there is paid
+per month in the United States. At Tsingtao in the Shantung province
+a missionary was paying a Chinese cook ten dollars per month, a man
+for general work nine dollars per month, and the cook's wife, for
+doing the mending and other family service, two dollars per month,
+all living at home and feeding themselves. This service rendered for
+$9.03, gold, per month covers the marketing, all care of the garden
+and lawn as well as all the work in the house. Missionaries in China
+find such servants reliable and satisfactory, and trust them with
+the purse and the marketing for the table, finding them not only
+honest but far better at a bargain and at economical selection than
+themselves.
+
+We had a soil tube made in the shops of a large English ship
+building and repair firm, employing many hundred Chinese as
+mechanics, using the most modern and complex machinery, and the
+foreman stated that as soon as the men could understand well enough
+to take orders they were even better shop hands than the average in
+Scotland and England. An educated Chinese booking clerk at the
+Soochow railway station in Kiangsu province was receiving a salary
+of $10.75, gold, per month. We had inquired the way to the Elizabeth
+Blake hospital and he volunteered to escort us and did so, the
+distance being over a mile.
+
+He would accept no compensation, and yet I was an entire stranger,
+without introduction of any kind. Everywhere we went in China, the
+laboring people appeared generally happy and contented if they have
+something to do, and showed clearly that they were well nourished.
+The industrial classes are thoroughly organized, having had their
+guilds or labor unions for centuries and it is not at all uncommon
+for a laborer who is known to have violated the rules of his guild
+to be summarily dealt with or even to disappear without questions
+being asked. In going among the people, away from the lines of
+tourist travel, one gets the impression that everybody is busy or is
+in the harness ready to be busy. Tramps of our hobo type have few
+opportunities here and we doubt if one exists in either of these
+countries. There are people physically disabled who are asking alms
+and there are organized charities to help them, but in proportion to
+the total population these appear to be fewer than in America or
+Europe. The gathering of unfortunates and habitual beggars about
+public places frequented by people of leisure and means naturally
+leads tourists to a wrong judgment regarding the extent of these
+social conditions. Nowhere among these densely crowded people,
+either Chinese, Japanese or Korean, did we see one intoxicated, but
+among Americans and Europeans many instances were observed. All
+classes and both sexes use tobacco and the British-American Tobacco
+Company does a business in China amounting to millions of dollars
+annually.
+
+During five months among these people we saw but two children in a
+quarrel. The two little boys were having their trouble on Nanking
+road, Shanghai, where, grasping each other's pigtails, they tussled
+with a vengeance until the mother of one came and parted their ways.
+
+Among the most frequent sights in the city streets are the itinerant
+vendors of hot foods and confections. Stove, fuel, supplies and
+appliances may all be carried on the shoulders, swinging from a
+bamboo pole. The mother in Fig. 63 was quite likely thus supporting
+her family and the children are seen at lunch, dressed in the blue
+and white calico prints so generally worn by the young. The printing
+of this calico by the very ancient, simple yet effective method we
+witnessed in the farm village along the canal seen in Fig. 10. This
+art, as with so many others in China, was the inheritance of the
+family we saw at work, handed down to them through many generations.
+The printer was standing at a rough work bench upon which a large
+heavy stone in cubical form served as a weight to hold in place a
+thoroughly lacquered sheet of tough cardboard in which was cut the
+pattern to appear in white on the cloth. Beside the stone stood a
+pot of thick paste prepared from a mixture of lime and soy bean
+flour. The soy beans were being ground in one corner of the same
+room by a diminutive edition of such an outfit as seen in Fig. 64.
+The donkey was working in his permanent abode and whenever off duty
+he halted before manger and feed. At the operator's right lay a bolt
+of white cotton cloth fixed to unroll and pass under the stencil,
+held stationary by the heavy weight. To print, the stencil was
+raised and the cloth brought to place under it. The paste was then
+deftly spread with a paddle over the surface and thus upon the cloth
+beneath wherever exposed through the openings in the stencil. This
+completes the printing of the pattern on one section of the bolt of
+cloth. The free end of the stencil is then raised, the cloth passed
+along the proper distance by hand and the stencil dropped in place
+for the next application. The paste is permitted to dry upon the
+cloth and when the bolt has been dipped into the blue dye the
+portions protected by the paste remain white. In this simple manner
+has the printing of calico been done for centuries for the garments
+of millions of children. From the ceiling of the drying room in this
+printery of olden times were hanging some hundreds of stencils
+bearing different patterns. In our great calico mills, printing
+hundreds of yards per minute, the mechanics and the chemistry differ
+only in detail of application and in dispatch, not in fundamental
+principle.
+
+In almost any direction we traveled outside the city, in the
+pleasant mornings when the air was still, the laying of warp for
+cotton cloth could be seen, to be woven later in the country homes.
+We saw this work in progress many times and in many places in the
+early morning, usually along some roadside or open place, as seen in
+Fig. 65, but never later in the day. When the warp is laid each will
+be rolled upon its stretcher and removed to the house to be woven.
+
+In many places in Kiangsu province batteries of the large dye pits
+were seen sunk in the fields and lined with cement. These were six
+to eight feet in diameter and four to five feet deep. In one case
+observed there were nine pits in the set. Some of the pits were
+neatly sheltered beneath live arbors, as represented in Fig. 66. But
+much of this spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing of late years is
+being displaced by the cheaper calicos of foreign make and most of
+the dye pits we saw were not now used for this purpose, the two in
+the illustration serving as manure receptacles. Our interpreter
+stated however that there is a growing dissatisfaction with foreign
+goods on account of their lack of durability; and we saw many cases
+where the cloth dyed blue was being dried in large quantities on the
+grave lands.
+
+In another home for nearly an hour we observed a method of beating
+cotton and of laying it to serve as the body for mattresses and the
+coverlets for beds. This we could do without intrusion because the
+home was also the work shop and opened full width directly upon the
+narrow street. The heavy wooden shutters which closed the home at
+night were serving as a work bench about seven feet square, laid
+upon movable supports. There was barely room to work between it and
+the sidewalk without impeding traffic, and on the three other sides
+there was a floor space three or four feet wide. In the rear sat
+grandmother and wife while in and out the four younger children were
+playing. Occupying the two sides of the room were receptacles filled
+with raw cotton and appliances for the work. There may have been a
+kitchen and sleeping room behind but no door, as such, was visible.
+The finished mattresses, carefully rolled and wrapped in paper, were
+suspended from the ceiling. On the improvised work table, with its
+top two feet above the floor, there had been laid in the morning
+before our visit, a mass of soft white cotton more than six feet
+square and fully twelve inches deep. On opposite sides of this table
+the father and his son, of twelve years, each twanged the string of
+their heavy bamboo bows, snapping the lint from the wads of cotton
+and flinging it broadcast in an even layer over the surface of the
+growing mattress, the two strings the while emitting tones pitched
+far below the hum of the bumblebee. The heavy bow was steadied by a
+cord secured around the body of the operator, allowing him to manage
+it with one hand and to move readily around his work in a manner
+different from the custom of the Japanese seen in Fig. 67. By this
+means the lint was expeditiously plucked and skillfully and
+uniformly laid, the twanging being effected by an appliance similar
+to that used in Japan.
+
+Repeatedly, taken in small bits from the barrel of cotton, the lint
+was distributed over the entire surface with great dexterity and
+uniformity, the mattress growing upward with perfectly vertical
+sides, straight edges and square corners. In this manner a
+thoroughly uniform texture is secured which compresses into a body
+of even thickness, free from hard places.
+
+The next step in building the mattress is even more simple and
+expeditious. A basket of long bobbins of roughly spun cotton was
+near the grandmother and probably her handiwork. The father took
+from the wall a slender bamboo rod like a fish-pole, six feet long,
+and selecting one of the spools, threaded the strand through an eye
+in the small end. With the pole and spool in one hand and the free
+end of the thread, passing through the eye, in the other, the father
+reached the thread across the mattress to the boy who hooked his
+finger over it, carrying it to one edge of the bed of cotton. While
+this was doing the father had whipped the pole back to his side and
+caught the thread over his own finger, bringing this down upon the
+cotton opposite his son. There was thus laid a double strand, but
+the pole continued whipping hack and forth across the bed, father
+and son catching the threads and bringing them to place on the
+cotton at the rate of forty to fifty courses per minute, and in a
+very short time the entire surface of the mattress had been laid
+with double strands. A heavy bamboo roller was next laid across the
+strands at the middle, passed carefully to one side, back again to
+the middle and then to the other edge. Another layer of threads was
+then laid diagonally and this similarly pressed with the same
+roller; then another diagonally the other way and finally straight
+across in both directions. A similar network of strands had been
+laid upon the table before spreading the cotton. Next a flat
+bottomed, circular, shallow basket-like form two feet in diameter
+was used to gently compress the material from twelve to six inches
+in thickness. The woven threads were now turned over the edge of the
+mattress on all sides and sewed down, after which, by means of two
+heavy solid wooden disks eighteen inches in diameter, father and son
+compressed the cotton until the thickness was reduced to three
+inches. There remained the task of carefully folding and wrapping
+the finished piece in oiled paper and of suspending it from the
+ceiling.
+
+On March 20th, when visiting the Boone Road and Nanking Road markets
+in Shanghai, we had our first surprise regarding the extent to which
+vegetables enter into the daily diet of the Chinese. We had observed
+long processions of wheelbarrow men moving from the canals through
+the streets carrying large loads of the green tips of rape in
+bundles a foot long and five inches in diameter. These had come from
+the country on boats each carrying tons of the succulent leaves and
+stems. We had counted as many as fifty wheelbarrow men passing a
+given point on the street in quick succession, each carrying 300 to
+500 pounds of the green rape and moving so rapidly that it was not
+easy to keep pace with them, as we learned in following one of the
+trains during twenty minutes to its destination. During this time
+not a man in the train halted or slackened his pace.
+
+This rape is very extensively grown in the fields, the tips of the
+stems cut when tender and eaten, after being boiled or steamed,
+after the manner of cabbage. Very large quantities are also packed
+with salt in the proportion of about twenty pounds of salt to one
+hundred pounds of the rape. This, Fig. 68, and many other vegetables
+are sold thus pickled and used as relishes with rice, which
+invariably is cooked and served without salt or other seasoning.
+
+Another field crop very extensively grown for human food, and partly
+as a source of soil nitrogen, is closely allied to our alfalfa. This
+is the Medicago astragalus, two beds of which are seen in Fig. 69.
+Tender tips of the stems are gathered before the stage of blossoming
+is reached and served as food after boiling or steaming. It is known
+among the foreigners as Chinese "clover." The stems are also cooked
+and then dried for use when the crop is out of season. When picked
+very young, wealthy Chinese families pay an extra high price for the
+tender shoots, sometimes as much as 20 to 28 cents, our currency,
+per pound.
+
+The markets are thronged with people making their purchases in the
+early mornings, and the congested condition, with the great variety
+of vegetables, makes it almost as impressive a sight as Billingsgate
+fish market in London. In the following table we give a list of
+vegetables observed there and the prices at which they were selling.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------
+LIST OF VEGETABLES DISPLAYED FOR SALE IN BOONE ROAD MARKET,
+   SHANGHAI, APRIL 6TH, 1900, WITH PRICES EXPRESSED
+                  IN U. S. CURRENCY.--
+---------------------------------------------------------
+                                       Cents
+   Lotus roots, per lb.                 1.60
+   Bamboo sprouts, per lb.              6.40
+   English cabbage, per lb.             1.33
+   Olive greens, per lb.                 .67
+   White greens, per lb.                 .33
+   Tee Tsai, per lb.                     .53
+   Chinese celery, per lb.               .67
+   Chinese clover, per lb.               .58
+   Chinese clover, very young, lb.     21.33
+   Oblong white cabbage, per lb.        2.00
+   Red beans, per lb.                   1.33
+   Yellow beans, per lb.                1.87
+   Peanuts, per lb.                     2.49
+   Ground nuts, per lb.                 2.96
+   Cucumbers, per lb.                   2.58
+   Green pumpkin, per lb.               1.62
+   Maize, shelled, per lb.              1.00
+   Windsor beans, dry, per lb.          1.72
+   French lettuce, per head              .44
+   Hau Tsai, per head                    .87
+   Cabbage lettuce, per head             .22
+   Kale, per lb.                        1.60
+   Rape, per lb.                         .23
+   Portuguese water cress, basket       2.15
+   Shang tsor, basket                   8.60
+   Carrots, per lb.                      .97
+   String beans; per lb.                1.60
+   Irish potatoes, per lb.              1.60
+   Red onions, per lb.                  4.96
+   Long white turnips, per lb.           .44
+   Flat string beans, per lb.           4.80
+   Small white turnips, bunch            .44
+   Onion stems, per lb.                 1.29
+   Lima beans, green, shelled, lb.      6.45
+   Egg plants, per lb.                  4.30
+   Tomatoes, per lb.                    5.16
+   Small flat turnips, per lb.           .86
+   Small red beets, per lb.             1.29
+   Artichokes, per lb.                  1.29
+   White beans, dry, per lb.            4.80
+   Radishes, per lb.                    1.29
+   Garlic, per lb.                      2.15
+   Kohl rabi, per lb.                   2.15
+   Mint, per lb.                        4.30
+   Leeks, per lb.                       2.18
+   Large celery, bleached, bunch        2.10
+   Sprouted peas, per lb.                .80
+   Sprouted beans, per lb.               .93
+   Parsnips, per lb.                    1.29
+   Ginger roots, per lb.                1.60
+   Water chestnuts, per lb.             1.33
+   Large sweet potatoes, per lb.        1.33
+   Small sweet potatoes, per lb.        1.00
+   Onion sprouts, per lb.               2.13
+   Spinach, per lb.                     1.00
+   Fleshy stemmed lettuce, peeled,
+     per lb.                            2.00
+   Fleshy stemmed lettuce, unpeeled,
+     per lb.                             .67
+   Bean curd, per lb.                   3.93
+   Shantung walnuts, per lb.            4.30
+   Duck eggs, dozen                     8.34
+   Hen's eggs, dozen                    7.30
+   Goat's meat, per lb.                 6.45
+   Pork, per lb.                        6.88
+   Hens, live weight, per lb.           6.45
+   Ducks, live weight, per lb.          5.59
+   Cockerels, live weight, per lb.      5.59--
+---------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+This long list, made up chiefly of fresh vegetables displayed for
+sale on one market day, is by no means complete. The record is only
+such as was made in passing down one side and across one end of the
+market occupying nearly one city block. Nearly everything is sold by
+weight and the problem of correct weights is effectively solved by
+each purchaser carrying his own scales, which he unhesitatingly uses
+in the presence of the dealer. These scales are made on the pattern
+of the old time steelyards but from slender rods of wood or bamboo
+provided with a scale and sliding poise, the suspensions all being
+made with strings.
+
+We stood by through the purchasing of two cockerels and the
+dickering over their weight. A dozen live birds were under cover in
+a large, open-work basket. The customer took out the birds one by
+one, examining them by touch, finally selecting two, the price being
+named. These the dealer tied together by their feet and weighed
+them, announcing the result; whereupon the customer checked the
+statement with his own scales. An animated dialogue followed,
+punctuated with many gesticulations and with the customer tossing
+the birds into the basket and turning to go away while the dealer
+grew more earnest. The purchaser finally turned back, and again
+balancing the roosters upon his scales, called a bystander to read
+the weight, and then flung them in apparent disdain at the dealer,
+who caught them and placed them in the customer's basket. The storm
+subsided and the dealer accepted 92c, Mexican, for the two birds.
+They were good sized roosters and must have dressed more than three
+pounds each, yet for the two he paid less than 40 cents in our
+currency.
+
+Bamboo sprouts are very generally used in China, Korea and Japan and
+when one sees them growing they suggest giant stalks of asparagus,
+some of them being three and even five inches in diameter and a foot
+in height at the stage for cutting. They are shipped in large
+quantities from province to province where they do not grow or when
+they are out of season. Those we saw in Nagasaki referred to in Fig.
+22, had come from Canton or Swatow or possibly Formosa. The form,
+foliage and bloom of the bamboo give the most beautiful effects in
+the landscape, especially when grouped with tree forms. They are
+usually cultivated in small clumps about dwellings in places not
+otherwise readily utilized, as seen in Fig. 66. Like the asparagus
+bud, the bamboo sprout grows to its full height between April and
+August, even when it exceeds thirty or even sixty feet in height.
+The buds spring from fleshy underground stems or roots whose stored
+nourishment permits this rapid growth, which in its earlier stages
+may exceed twelve inches in twenty-four hours. But while the full
+size of the plant is attained the first season, three or four years
+are required to ripen and harden the wood sufficiently to make it
+suitable for the many uses to which the stems are put. It would seem
+that the time must come when some of the many forms of bamboo will
+be introduced and largely grown in many parts of this country.
+
+Lotus roots form another article of diet largely used and widely
+cultivated from Canton to Tokyo. These are seen in the lower section
+of Fig. 70, and the plants in bloom in Fig. 71, growing in water,
+their natural habitat. The lotus is grown in permanent ponds not
+readily drained for rice or other crops, and the roots are widely
+shipped.
+
+Sprouted beans and peas of many kinds and the sprouts of other
+vegetables, such as onions, are very generally seen in the markets
+of both China and Japan, at least during the late winter and early
+spring, and are sold as foods, having different flavors and
+digestive qualities, and no doubt with important advantageous
+effects in nutrition.
+
+Ginger is another. crop which is very widely and extensively
+cultivated. It is generally displayed in the market in the root
+form. No one thing was more generally hawked about the streets of
+China than the water chestnut. This is a small corm or fleshy bulb
+having the shape and size of a small onion. Boys pare them and sell
+a dozen spitted together on slender sticks the length of a knitting
+needle. Then there are the water caltropes, grown in the canals
+producing a fruit resembling a horny nut having a shape which
+suggests for them the name "buffalo-horn". Still another plant,
+known as water-grass (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu
+province where the land is too wet for rice. The plant has a tender
+succulent crown of leaves and the peeling of the outer coarser ones
+away suggests the husking of an ear of green corn. The portion eaten
+is the central tender new growth, and when cooked forms a delicate
+savory dish. The farmers' selling price is three to four dollars,
+Mexican, per hundred catty, or $.97 to $1.29 per hundredweight, and
+the return per acre is from $13 to $20.
+
+The small number of animal products which are included in the market
+list given should not be taken as indicating the proportion of
+animal to vegetable foods in the dietaries of these people. It is
+nevertheless true that they are vegetarians to a far higher degree
+than are most western nations, and the high maintenance efficiency
+of the agriculture of China, Korea and Japan is in great measure
+rendered possible by the adoption of a diet so largely vegetarian.
+Hopkins, in his Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture, page 234,
+makes this pointed statement of fact: "1000 bushels of grain has at
+least five times as much food value and will support five times as
+many people as will the meat or milk that can be made from it". He
+also calls attention to the results of many Rothamsted feeding
+experiments with growing and fattening cattle, sheep and swine,
+showing that the cattle destroyed outright, in every 100 pounds of
+dry substance eaten, 57.3 pounds, this passing off into the air, as
+does all of wood except the ashes, when burned in the stove; they
+left in the excrements 36.5 pounds, and stored as increase but 6.2
+pounds of the 100. With sheep the corresponding figures were 60.1
+pounds; 31.9 pounds and 8 pounds; and with swine they were 65.7
+pounds; 16.7 pounds and 17.6 pounds. But less than two-thirds of the
+substance stored in the animal can become food for man and hence we
+get but four pounds in one hundred of the dry substances eaten by
+cattle in the form of human food; but five pounds from the sheep and
+eleven pounds from swine.
+
+In view of these relations, only recently established as scientific
+facts by rigid research, it is remarkable that these very ancient
+people came long ago to discard cattle as milk and meat producers;
+to use sheep more for their pelts and wool than for food; while
+swine are the one kind of the three classes which they did retain in
+the role of middleman as transformers of coarse substances into
+human food.
+
+It is clear that in the adoption of the succulent forms of
+vegetables as human food important advantages are gained. At this
+stage of maturity they have a higher digestibility, thus making the
+elimination of the animal less difficult. Their nitrogen content is
+relatively higher and this in a measure compensates for loss of
+meat. By devoting the soil to growing vegetation which man can
+directly digest they have saved 60 pounds per 100 of absolute waste
+by the animal, returning their own wastes to the field for the
+maintenance of fertility. In using these immature forms of
+vegetation so largely as food they are able to produce an immense
+amount that would otherwise be impossible, for this is grown in a
+shorter time, permitting the same soil to produce more crops. It is
+also produced late in the fall and early in the spring when the
+season is too cold and the hours of sunshine too few each day to
+permit of ripening crops.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND
+TEXTILE MATERIALS
+
+
+
+
+
+With the vast and ever increasing demands made upon materials which
+are the products of cultivated fields, for food, for apparel, for
+furnishings and for cordage, better soil management must grow more
+important as populations multiply. With the increasing cost and
+ultimate exhaustion of mineral fuel; with our timber vanishing
+rapidly before the ever growing demands for lumber and paper; with
+the inevitably slow growth of trees and the very limited areas which
+the world can ever afford to devote to forestry, the time must
+surely come when, in short period rotations, there will be grown
+upon the farm materials from which to manufacture not only paper and
+the substitutes for lumber, but fuels as well. The complete
+utilization of every stream which reaches the sea, reinforced by the
+force of the winds and the energy of the waves which may be
+transformed along the coast lines, cannot fully meet the demands of
+the future for power and heat; hence only in the event of science
+and engineering skill becoming able to devise means for transforming
+the unlimited energy of space through which we are ever whirled,
+with an economy approximating that which crops now exhibit, can good
+soil management be relieved of the task of meeting a portion of the
+world's demand for power and heat.
+
+When these statements were made in 1905 we did not know that for
+centuries there had existed in China, Korea and Japan a density of
+population such as to require the extensive cultivation of crops for
+fuel and building material, as well as for fabrics, by the ordinary
+methods of tillage, and hence another of the many surprises we had
+was the solution these people had reached of their fuel problem and
+of how to keep warm. Their solution has been direct and the simplest
+possible. Dress to make fuel for warmth of body unnecessary, and
+burn the coarser stems of crops, such as cannot be eaten, fed to
+animals or otherwise made useful. These people still use what wood
+can be grown on the untillable land within transporting distance,
+and convert much wood into charcoal, making transportation over
+longer distances easier. The general use of mineral fuels, such as
+coal, coke, oils and gas, had been impossible to these as to every
+other people until within the last one hundred years. Coal, coke,
+oil and natural gas, however, have been locally used by the Chinese
+from very ancient times. For more than two thousand years brine from
+many deep wells in Szechwan province has been evaporated with heat
+generated by the burning of natural gas from wells, conveyed through
+bamboo stems to the pans and burned from iron terminals. In other
+sections of the same province much brine is evaporated over coal
+fires. Alexander Hosie estimates the production of salt in Szechwan
+province at more than 600 million pounds annually.
+
+Coal is here used also to some extent for warming the houses, burned
+in pits sunk in the floor, the smoke escaping where it may. The same
+method of heating we saw in use in the post office at Yokohama
+during February. The fires were in large iron braziers more than two
+feet across the top, simply set about the room, three being in
+operation. Stoves for house warming are not used in dwellings in
+these countries.
+
+In both China and Japan we saw coal dust put into the form and size
+of medium oranges by mixing it with a thin paste of clay. Charcoal
+is similarly molded, as seen in Fig. 72, using a by-product from the
+manufacture of rice syrup for cementing. In Nanking we watched with
+much interest the manufacture of charcoal briquets by another
+method. A Chinese workman was seated upon the earth floor of a shop.
+By his side was a pile of powdered charcoal, a dish of rice syrup
+by-product and a basin of the moistened charcoal powder. Between his
+legs was a heavy mass of iron containing a slightly conical mold two
+inches deep, two and a half inches across at the top and a heavy
+iron hammer weighing several pounds. In his left hand he held a
+short heavy ramming tool and with his right placed in the mold a
+pinch of the moistened charcoal; then followed three well directed
+blows from the hammer upon the ramming tool, compressing the charge
+of moistened, sticky charcoal into a very compact layer. Another
+pinch of charcoal was added and the process repeated until the mold
+was filled, when the briquet was forced out.
+
+By this simplest possible mechanism, the man, utilizing but a small
+part of his available energy, was subjecting the charcoal to an
+enormous pressure such as we attain only with the best hydraulic
+presses, and he was using the principle of repeated small charges
+recently patented and applied in our large and most efficient cotton
+and hay presses, which permit much denser bales to be made than is
+possible when large charges are added, and the Chinese is here, as
+in a thousand other ways, thoroughly sound in his application of
+mechanical principles. His output for the day was small but his
+patience seemed unlimited. His arms and body, bared to the waist,
+showed vigor and good feeding, while his face wore the look of
+contentment.
+
+With forty centuries of such inheritance coursing in the veins of
+four hundred millions of people, in a country possessed of such
+marvelous wealth of coal and water power, of forest and of
+agricultural possibilities, there should be a future speedily
+blossoming and ripening into all that is highest and best for such a
+nation. If they will retain their economies and their industry and
+use their energies to develop, direct and utilize the power in their
+streams and in their coal fields along the lines which science has
+now made possible to them, at the same time walking in paths of
+peace and virtue, there is little worth while which may not come to
+such a people.
+
+A Shantung farmer in winter dress, Fig. 18, and the Kiangsu woman
+portrayed in Fig. 73, in corresponding costume, are typical
+illustrations of the manner in which food for body warmth is
+minimized and of the way the heat generated in the body is
+conserved. Observe his wadded and quilted frock, his trousers of
+similar goods tied about the ankle, with his feet clad in multiple
+socks and cloth shoes provided with thick felted soles. These types
+of dress, with the wadding, quilting, belting and tying, incorporate
+and confine as part of the effective material a large volume of air,
+thus securing without cost, much additional warmth without
+increasing the weight of the garments. Beneath these outer garments
+several under pieces of different weights are worn which greatly
+conserve the warmth during the coldest weather and make possible a
+wide range of adjustment to suit varying changes in temperature. It
+is doubtful if there could he devised a wardrobe suited to the
+conditions of these people at a smaller first cost and maintenance
+expense. Rev. E. A. Evans, of the China Inland Mission, for many
+years residing at Sunking in Szechwan, estimated that a farmer's
+wardrobe, once it was procured, could be maintained with an annual
+expenditure of $2.25 of our currency, this sum procuring the
+materials for both repairs and renewals.
+
+The intense individual economy, extending to the smallest matters,
+so universally practiced by these people, has sustained the massive
+strength of the Mongolian nations through their long history and
+this trait is seen in their handling of the fuel problem, as it is
+in all other lines. In the home of Mrs. Wu, owner and manager of a
+25-acre rice farm in Chekiang province, there was a masonry kang
+seven by seven feet, about twenty-eight inches high, which could be
+warmed in winter by building a fire within. The top was fitted for
+mats to serve as couch by day and as a place upon which to spread
+the bed at night. In the Shantung province we visited the home of a
+prosperous farmer and here found two kangs in separate sleeping
+apartments, both warmed by the waste heat from the kitchen whose
+chimney flue passed horizontally under the kangs before rising
+through the roof. These kangs were wide enough to spread the beds
+upon, about thirty inches high, and had been constructed from brick
+twelve inches square and four inches thick, made from the clay
+subsoil taken from the fields and worked into a plastic mass, mixed
+with chaff and short straw, dried in the sun and then laid in a
+mortar of the same material. These massive kangs are thus capable of
+absorbing large amounts of the waste heat from the kitchen during
+the day and of imparting congenial warmth to the couches by day and
+to the beds and sleeping apartments during the night. In some
+Manchurian inns large compound kangs are so arranged that the guests
+sleep heads together in double rows, separated only by low dividing
+rails, securing the greatest economy of fuel, providing the guests
+with places where they may sit upon the moderately warmed fireplace,
+and spread their beds when they retire.
+
+The economy of the chimney beds does not end with the warmth
+conserved. The earth and straw brick, through the processes of
+fermentation and through shrinkage, become open and porous after
+three or four years of service, so that the draft is defective,
+giving annoyance from smoke, which requires their renewal. But the
+heat, the fermentation and the absorption of products of combustion
+have together transformed the comparatively infertile subsoil into
+what they regard as a valuable fertilizer and these discarded brick
+are used in the preparation of compost fertilizers for the fields.
+On account of this value of the discarded brick the large amount of
+labor involved in removing and rebuilding the kangs is not regarded
+altogether as labor lost.
+
+Our own observations have shown that heating soils to dryness at a
+temperature of 110 deg C. greatly increases the freedom with which
+plant food may be recovered from them by the solvent power of water,
+and the same heating doubtless improves the physical and biological
+conditions of the soil as well. Nitrogen combined as ammonia, and
+phosphorus, potash and lime are all carried with the smoke or soot,
+mechanically in the draft and arrested upon the inner walls of the
+kangs or filter into the porous brick with the smoke, and thus add
+plant food directly to the soil. Soot from wood has been found to
+contain, as an average, 1.36 per cent of nitrogen; .51 per cent of
+phosphorus and 5.34 per cent of potassium. We practice burning straw
+and corn stalks in enormous quantities, to get them easily out of
+the way, thus scattering on the winds valuable plant food,
+thoughtlessly and lazily wasting where these people laboriously and
+religiously save. These are gains in addition to those which result
+from the formation of nitrates, soluble potash and other plant foods
+through fermentation. We saw many instances where these discarded
+brick were being used, both in Shantung and Chihli provinces, and it
+was common in walking through the streets of country villages to see
+piles of them, evidently recently removed.
+
+The fuel grown on the farms consists of the stems of all
+agricultural crops which are to any extent woody, unless they can be
+put to some better use. Rice straw, cotton stems pulled by the roots
+after the seed has been gathered, the stems of windsor beans, those
+of rape and the millets, all pulled by the roots, and many other
+kinds, are brought to the market tied in bundles in the manner seen
+in Figs. 74, 75 and 76. These fuels are used for domestic purposes
+and for the burning of lime, brick, roofing tile and earthenware as
+well as in the manufacture of oil, tea, bean-curd and many other
+processes. In the home, when the meals are cooked with these light
+bulky fuels, it is the duty of some one, often one of the children,
+to sit on the floor and feed the fire with one hand while with the
+other a bellows is worked to secure sufficient draft. The
+manufacture of cotton seed oil and cotton seed cake is one of the
+common family industries in China, and in one of these homes we saw
+rice hulls and rice straw being used as fuel. In the large low,
+one-story, tile-roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory
+and dwelling, a family of four generations were at work, the
+grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother leading in
+the home and store where the cotton seed oil was being. retailed for
+22 cents per pound and the cotton seed cake at 33 cents, gold, per
+hundredweight. Back of the store and living rooms, in the mill
+compartment, three blindfolded water buffalo, each working a granite
+mill, were crushing and grinding the cotton seed. Three other
+buffalo, for relay service, were lying at rest or eating, awaiting
+their turn at the ten-hour working day. Two of the mills were
+horizontal granite burrs more than four feet in diameter, the upper
+one revolving once with each circuit made by the cow. The third mill
+was a pair of massive granite rollers, each five feet in diameter
+and two feet thick, joined on a very short horizontal axle which
+revolved on a circular stone plate about a vertical axis once with
+each circuit of the buffalo. Two men tended the three mills. After
+the cotton seed had been twice passed through the mills it was
+steamed to render the oil fluid and more readily expressed. The
+steamer consisted of two covered wooden hoops not unlike that seen
+in Fig. 77, provided with screen bottoms, and in these the meal was
+placed over openings in the top of an iron kettle of boiling water
+from which the steam was forced through the charge of meal. Each
+charge was weighed in a scoop balanced on the arm of a bamboo scale,
+thus securing a uniform weight for the cakes.
+
+On the ground in front of the furnace sat a boy of twelve years
+steadily feeding rice chaff into the fire with his left hand at the
+rate of about thirty charges per minute, while with his right hand,
+and in perfect rhythm, he drew back and forth the long plunger of a
+rectangular box bellows, maintaining a forced draft for the fire. At
+intervals the man who was bringing fuel fed into the furnace a
+bundle of rice straw, thus giving the boy's left arm a moment's
+respite. When the steaming has rendered the oil sufficiently fluid
+the meal is transferred, hot, to ten-inch hoops two inches deep,
+made of braided bamboo strands, and is deftly tramped with the bare
+feet, while hot, the operator steadying himself by a pair of hand
+bars. After a stack of sixteen hoops, divided by a slight sifting of
+chaff or short straw to separate the cakes, had been completed these
+were taken to one of four pressmen, who were kept busy in expressing
+the oil.
+
+The presses consisted of two parallel timbers framed together, long
+enough to receive the sixteen hoops on edge above a gap between
+them. These cheeses of meal are subjected to an enormous pressure
+secured by means of three parallel lines of wedges forced against
+the follower each by an iron-bound master wedge, driven home with a
+heavy beetle weighing some twenty-five or thirty pounds. The lines
+of wedges were tightened in succession, the loosened line receiving
+an additional wedge to take up the slack after drawing back the
+master wedge, which was then driven home. To keep good the supply of
+wedges which are often crushed under the pressure a second boy,
+older than the one at the furnace, was working on the floor, shaping
+new ones, the broken wedges and the chips going to the furnace for
+fuel.
+
+By this very simple, readily constructed and inexpensive mechanism
+enormous pressures were secured and when the operator had obtained
+the desired compression he lighted his pipe and sat down to smoke
+until the oil ceased dripping into the pit sunk in the floor beneath
+the press. In this interval the next series of cakes went to another
+press and the work thus kept up during the day.
+
+Six hundred and forty cakes was the average daily output of this
+family of eight men and two boys, with their six water buffalo. The
+cotton seed cakes were being sold as feed, and a near-by Chinese
+dairyman was using them for his herd of forty water buffalo, seen in
+Fig. 78, producing milk for the foreign trade in Shanghai. This herd
+of forty cows one of which was an albino, was giving an average of
+but 200 catty of milk per day, or at the rate of six and two-thirds
+pounds per head! The cows have extremely small udders but the milk
+is very rich, as indicated by an analysis made in the office of the
+Shanghai Board of Health and obtained through the kindness of Dr.
+Arthur Stanley. The milk showed a specific gravity of 1.028 and
+contained 20.1 per cent total solids; 7.5 per cent fat; 4.2 per cent
+milk sugar and .8 per cent ash. In the family of Rev. W. H. Hudson,
+of the Southern Presbyterian Mission, Kashing, whose very gracious
+hospitality we enjoyed on two different occasions, the butter made
+from the milk of two of these cows, one of which, with her calf, is
+seen in Fig. 79, was used on the family table. It was as white as
+lard or cottolene but the texture and flavor were normal and far
+better than the Danish and New Zealand products served at the
+hotels.
+
+The milk produced at the Chinese dairy in Shanghai was being sold in
+bottles holding two pounds, at the rate of one dollar a bottle, or
+43 cents, gold. This seems high and there may have been
+misunderstanding on the part of my interpreter but his answer to my
+question was that the milk was being sold at one Shanghai dollar per
+bottle holding one and a half catty, which, interpreted, is the
+value given above.
+
+But fuel from the stems of cultivated plants which are in part
+otherwise useful, is not sufficient to meet the needs of country and
+village, notwithstanding the intense economies practiced. Large
+areas of hill and mountain land are made to contribute their share,
+as we have seen in the south of China, where pine boughs were being
+used for firing the lime and cement kilns. At Tsingtao we saw the
+pine bough fuel on the backs of mules, Fig. 80, coming from the
+hills in Shantung province. Similar fuels were being used in Korea
+and we have photographs of large pine bough fuel stacks, taken in
+Japan at Funabashi, east from Tokyo.
+
+The hill and mountain lands, wherever accessible to the densely
+peopled plains, have long been cut over and as regularly has
+afforestation been encouraged and deliberately secured even through
+the transplanting of nursery stock grown expressly for that purpose.
+We had read so much regarding the reckless destruction of forests in
+China and Japan and had seen so few old forest trees except where
+these had been protected about temples, graves or houses, that when
+Rev. R. A. Haden, of the Elizabeth Blake hospital, near Soochow
+insisted that the Chinese were deliberate foresters and that they
+regularly grow trees for fuel, transplanting them when necessary to
+secure a close and early stand, after the area had been cleared, we
+were so much surprised that he generously volunteered to accompany
+us westward on a two days journey into the hill country where the
+practice could be seen.
+
+A family owning a houseboat and living upon it was engaged for the
+journey. This family consisted of a recently widowed father, his two
+sons, newly married, and a helper. They were to transport us and
+provide sleeping quarters for myself, Mr. Haden and a cook for the
+consideration of $3.00, Mexican, per day and to continue the journey
+through the night, leaving the day for observation in the hills.
+
+The recent funeral had cost the father $100 and the wedding of the
+two sons $50 each, while the remodeling of the houseboat to meet the
+needs of the new family relations cost still another $100. To meet
+these expenses it had been necessary to borrow the full amount,
+$300. On $100 the father was paying 20 per cent interest; on $50 he
+was compelled to pay 50 per cent interest. The balance he had
+borrowed from friends without interest but with the understanding
+that he would return the favor should occasion be required.
+
+Rev. A. E. Evans informed us that it is a common practice in China
+for neighbors to help one another in times of great financial
+stress. This is one of the methods:
+
+A neighbor may need 8000 cash. He prepares a feast and sends
+invitations to a hundred friends. They know there has been no death
+in his family and that there is no wedding, still it is understood
+that he is in need of money. The feast is prepared at a small
+expense. The invited guests come, each bringing eighty cash as a
+present. The recipient is expected to keep a careful record of
+contributing friends and to repay the sum. Another method is like
+this: For some reason a man needs to borrow 20,000 cash. He proposes
+to twenty of his friends that they organize a club to raise this
+sum. If the friends agree each pays 1000 cash to the organizing
+member. The balance of the club draw lots as to which member shall
+be number two, three, four, five, etc., designating the order in
+which payments shall be made. The man borrowing the money is then
+under obligation to see that these payments are met in full at the
+times agreed upon. Not infrequently a small rate of interest is
+charged.
+
+Rates of interest are very high in China, especially on small sums
+where securities are not the best. Mr. Evans informs me that two per
+cent per month is low and thirty per cent per annum is very commonly
+collected. Such obligations are often never met but they do not
+outlaw and may descend from father to son.
+
+The boat cost $292.40 in U. S. currency; the yearly earning was
+$107.50 to $120.40. The funeral cost $43 and $43 more was required
+for the wedding of the two sons. They were receiving for the
+services of six people $1.29 per day. An engagement for two weeks or
+a month could have been made for materially lower rates and their
+average daily earning, on the basis of three hundred days service in
+the year, and the $120.40 total earning, would be only 40.13 cents,
+less than seven cents each, hence their trip with us was two of
+their banner days. Foreigners in Shanghai and other cities
+frequently engage such houseboat service for two weeks or a month of
+travel on the canals and rivers, finding it a very enjoyable as well
+as inexpensive way of having a picnic outing.
+
+On reaching the hill lands the next morning there were such scenes
+as shown in Fig. 82, where the strips of tree growth, varying from
+two to ten years, stretched directly up the slope, often in strong
+contrast on account of the straight boundaries and different ages of
+the timber. Some of these long narrow holdings were less than two
+rods wide and on one of these only recently cut, up which we walked
+for considerable distance, the young pine were springing up in
+goodly numbers. As many as eighteen young trees were counted on a
+width of six feet across the strip of thirty feet wide. On this area
+everything had been recently cut clean. Even stumps and the large
+roots were dug and saved for fuel.
+
+In Fig. 83 are seen bundles of fuel from such a strip, just brought
+into the village, the boughs retaining the leaves although the fuel
+had been dried. The roots, too, are tied in with the limbs so that
+everything is saved. On our walk to the hills we passed many people
+bringing their loads of fuel swinging from carrying poles on their
+shoulders. Inquiries regarding the afforestation of these strips of
+hillside showed that the extensive digging necessitated by the
+recovery of the roots usually caused new trees to spring up quickly
+as volunteers from scattered seed and from the roots, so that
+planting was not generally required. Talking with a group of people
+as to where we could see some of the trees used for replanting the
+hillsides, a lad of seven years was first to understand and
+volunteered to conduct us to a planting. This he did and was
+overjoyed on receipt of a trifle for his services. One of these
+little pine nurseries is seen in Fig. 84, many being planted in
+suitable places through the woods. The lad led us to two such
+locations with whose whereabouts he was evidently very familiar,
+although they were considerable distance from the path and far from
+home. These small trees are used in filling in places where the
+volunteer growth has not been sufficiently close. A strong
+herbaceous growth usually springs up quickly on these newly cleared
+lands and this too is cut for fuel or for use in making compost or
+as green manure.
+
+The grass which grows on the grave lands, if not fed off, is also
+cut and saved for fuel. We saw several instances of this outside of
+Shanghai, one where a mother with her daughter, provided with rake,
+sickle, basket and bag, were gathering the dry stubble and grass of
+the previous season, from the grave lands where there was less than
+could be found on our closely mowed meadows. In Fig. 85 may be seen
+a man who has just returned with such a load, and in his hand is the
+typical rake of the Far East, made by simply bending bamboo splints,
+claw-shape, and securing them as seen in the engraving.
+
+In the Shantung province, in Chihli and in Manchuria, millet stems,
+especially those of the great kaoliang or sorghum, are extensively
+used for fuel and for building as well as for screens, fences and
+matting. At Mukden the kaoliang was selling as fuel at $2.70 to
+$3.00, Mexican, for a 100-bundle load of stalks, weighing seven
+catty to the bundle. The yield per acre of kaoliang fuel amounts to
+5600 pounds and the stalks are eight to twelve feet long, so that
+when carried on the backs of mules or horses the animals are nearly
+hidden by the load. The price paid for plant stem fuel from
+agricultural crops, in different parts of China and Japan, ranged
+from $1.30 to $2.85, U. S. currency, per ton. The price of
+anthracite coal at Nanking was $7.76 per ton. Taking the weight of
+dry oak wood at 3500 pounds per cord, the plant stem fuel, for equal
+weight, was selling at $2.28 to $5.00.
+
+Large amounts of wood are converted into charcoal in these countries
+and sent to market baled in rough matting or in basketwork cases
+woven from small brush and holding two to two and a half bushels.
+When such wood is not converted into charcoal it is sawed into one
+or two-foot lengths, split and marketed tied in bundles, as seen in
+Fig. 77.
+
+Along the Mukden-Antung railway in Manchuria fuel was also being
+shipped in four-foot lengths, in the form of cordwood. In Korea
+cattle were provided with a peculiar saddle for carrying wood in
+four-foot sticks laid blanket-fashion over the animal, extending far
+down on their sides. Thus was it brought from the hills to the
+railway station. This wood, as in Manchuria, was cut from small
+trees. In Korea, as in most parts of China where we visited, the
+tree growth over the hills was generally scattering and thin on the
+ground wherever there was not individual ownership in small
+holdings. Under and among the scattering pine there were oak in many
+cases, but these were always small, evidently not more than two or
+three years standing, and appearing to have been repeatedly cut
+back. It was in Korea that we saw so many instances of young leafy
+oak boughs brought to the rice fields and used as green manure.
+
+There was abundant evidence of periodic cutting between Mukden and
+Antung in Manchuria; between Wiju and Fusan in Korea; and throughout
+most of our journey in Japan; from Nagasaki to Moji and from
+Shimonoseki to Yokohama. In all of these countries afforestation
+takes place quickly and the cuttings on private holdings are made
+once in ten, twenty or twenty-five years. When the wood is sold to
+those coming for it the takers pay at the rate of 40 sen per one
+horse load of forty kan, or 330 pounds, such as is seen in Fig. 87.
+Director Ono, of the Akashi Experiment station, informed us that
+such fuel loads in that prefecture, where the wood is cut once in
+ten years, bring returns amounting to about $40 per acre for the
+ten-year crop. This land was worth $40 per acre but when they are
+suitable for orange groves they sell for $600 per acre. Mushroom
+culture is extensively practiced under the shade of some of these
+wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of
+$100 per acre.
+
+The forest covered area in Japan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto,
+amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, less than twenty millions of
+which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state
+and to the Imperial Crown.
+
+In all of these countries there has been an extensive general use of
+materials other than wood for building purposes and very many of the
+substitutes for lumber are products grown on the cultivated fields.
+The use of rice straw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village,
+Fig. 8, is very general throughout the rice growing districts, and
+even the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was observed
+in the Canton delta region, such a construction being warm for
+winter and cool for summer. The life of these thatched roofs,
+however, is short and they must be renewed as often as every three
+to five years but the old straw is highly prized as fertilizer for
+the fields on which it is grown, or it may serve as fuel, the ashes
+only going to the fields.
+
+Burned clay tile, especially for the cities and public buildings,
+are very extensively used for roofing, clay being abundant and near
+at hand. In Chihli and in Manchuria millet and sorghum stems, used
+alone or plastered, as in Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes
+mixed with lime, cover the roofs of vast numbers of the dwellings
+outside the larger cities.
+
+At Chiao Tou in Manchuria we saw the building of the thatched millet
+roofs and the use of kaoliang stems as lumber. Rafters were set in
+the usual way and covered with a layer about two inches thick of the
+long kaoliang stems stripped of their leaves and tops. These were
+tied together and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sort of
+matting. A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the
+surface and well trowelled until it began to show on the under side.
+Over this was applied a thatch of small millet stems bound in
+bundles eight inches thick, cut square across the butts to eighteen
+inches in length. They were dipped in water and laid in courses
+after the manner of shingles but the butts of the stems are driven
+forward to a slope which obliterates the shoulder, making the
+courses invisible. In the better houses this thatching may be
+plastered with earth mortar or with an earth-lime mortar, which is
+less liable to wash in heavy rain.
+
+The walls of the house we saw building were also sided with the
+long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary frame with posts and girts
+about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates
+carrying the roof. Standing vertically against the girts and tied to
+them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were
+plastered outside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A
+similar layer of stems, set up on the inside of the girts and
+similarly plastered, formed the inner face of the wall of the house,
+leaving dead air spaces between the girts.
+
+Brick made from earth are very extensively used for house building,
+chaff and short straw being used as a binding material, the brick
+being simply dried in the sun, as seen in Fig. 89. A house in the
+process of building, where the brick were being used, is seen in
+Fig. 90. The foundation of the dwelling, it will be observed, was
+laid with well-formed hard-burned brick, these being necessary to
+prevent capillary moisture from the ground being drawn up and soften
+the earth brick, making the wall unsafe.
+
+Several kilns for burning brick, built of clay and earth, were
+passed in our journey up the Pei ho, and stacked about them,
+covering an area of more than eight hundred feet back from the river
+were bundles of the kaoliang stems to serve as fuel in the kilns.
+
+The extensive use of the unburned brick is necessitated by the
+difficulty of obtaining fuel, and various methods are adopted to
+reduce the number of burned brick required in construction. One of
+these devices is shown in Fig. 79, where the city wall surrounding
+Kashing is constructed of alternate courses of four layers of burned
+brick separated by layers of simple earth concrete.
+
+In addition to the multiple-function, farm-gown crops used for food,
+fuel and building material, there is a large acreage devoted to the
+growing of textile and fiber products and enormous quantities of
+these are produced annually. In Japan, where some fifty millions of
+people are chiefly fed on the produce of little more than 21,000
+square miles of cultivated land, there was grown in 1906 more than
+75,500,000 pounds of cotton, hemp, flax and China grass textile
+stock, occupying 76,700 acres of the cultivated land. On 141,000
+other acres there grew 115,000,000 pounds of paper mulberry and
+Mitsumata, materials used in the manufacture of paper. From still
+another 14,000 acres were taken 92,000,000 pounds of matting stuff,
+while more than 957,000 acres were occupied by mulberry trees for
+the feeding of silkworms, yielding to Japan 22,389,798 pounds of
+silk. Here are more than 300,000,000 pounds of fiber and textile
+stuff taken from 1860 square miles of the cultivated land, cutting
+down the food producing area to 19,263 square miles and this area is
+made still smaller by devoting 123,000 acres to tea, these producing
+in 1906 58,900,000 pounds, worth nearly five million dollars. Nor do
+these statements express the full measure of the producing power of
+the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, for, in addition to the
+food and other materials named, there were also made $2,365,000
+worth of braid from straw and wood shavings; $6,000,000 worth of
+rice straw bags, packing cases and matting; and $1,085,000 worth of
+wares from bamboo, willow and vine. As illustrating the intense home
+industry of these people we may consider the fact that the 5,453,309
+households of farmers in Japan produced in 1906, in their homes as
+subsidiary work, $20,527,000 worth of manufactured articles. If
+correspondingly exact statistical data were available from China and
+Korea a similarity full utilization of cultural possibilities would
+be revealed there.
+
+This marvelous heritage of economy, industry and thrift, bred of the
+stress of centuries, must not be permitted to lose virility through
+contact with western wasteful practices, now exalted to seeming
+virtues through the dazzling brilliancy of mechanical achievements.
+More and more must labor be dignified in all homes alike, and
+economy, industry and thrift become inherited impulses compelling
+and satisfying.
+
+Cheap, rapid, long distance transportation, already well started in
+these countries, will bring with it a fuller utilization of the
+large stores of coal and mineral wealth and of the enormous
+available water power, and as a result there will come some
+temporary lessening of the stress for fuel and with better forest
+management some relief along the lines of building materials. But
+the time is not a century distant when, throughout the world, a
+fuller, better development must take place along the lines of these
+most far-reaching and fundamental practices so long and so
+effectively followed by the Mongolian races in China, Korea and
+Japan. When the enormous water-power of these countries has been
+harnessed and brought into the foot-hills and down upon the margins
+of the valleys and plains in the form of electric current, let it,
+if possible, be in a large measure so distributed as to become
+available in the country village homes to lighten the burden and
+lessen the human drudgery and yet increase the efficiency of the
+human effort now so well bestowed upon subsidiary manufactures under
+the guidance and initiative of the home, where there may be room to
+breathe and for children to come up to manhood and womanhood in the
+best conditions possible, rather than in enormous congested
+factories.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+TRAMPS AFIELD
+
+
+
+
+
+On March 31st we took the 8 A. M. train on the Shanghai-Nanking
+railway for Kunshan, situated thirty-two miles west from Shanghai,
+to spend the day walking in the fields. The fare, second class, was
+eighty cents, Mexican. A third class ticket would have been forty
+cents and a first class, $1.60, practically two cents, one cent and
+half a cent, our currency, per mile. The second class fare to
+Nanking, a distance of 193 miles, was $1.72, U. S. currency, or a
+little less than one cent per mile. While the car seats were not
+upholstered, the service was good. Meals were served on the train in
+either foreign or Chinese style, and tea, coffee or hot water to
+drink. Hot, wet face cloths were regularly passed and many Chinese
+daily newspapers were sold on the train, a traveler often buying
+two.
+
+In the vicinity of Kunshan a large area of farm land had been
+acquired by the French catholic mission at a purchase price of $40,
+Mexican, per mow, or at the rate of $103.20 per acre. This they
+rented to the Chinese.
+
+It was here that we first saw, at close range, the details of using
+canal mud as a fertilizer, so extensively applied in China. Walking
+through the fields we came upon the scene in the middle section of
+Fig. 92 where, close on the right was such a reservoir as seen in
+Fig. 58. Men were in it, dipping up the mud which had accumulated
+over its bottom, pouring it on the bank in a field of windsor beans,
+and the thin mud was then over two feet deep at that side and
+flowing into the beans where it had already spread two rods, burying
+the plants as the engraving shows. When sufficiently dry to be
+readily handled this would be spread among the beans as we found it
+being done in another field, shown in the upper section of the
+illustration. Here four men were distributing such mud, which had
+dried, between the rows, not to fertilize the beans, but for a
+succeeding crop of cotton soon to be planted between the rows,
+before they were harvested. The owner of this piece of land, with
+whom we talked and who was superintending the work, stated that his
+usual yield of these beans was three hundred catty per mow and that
+they sold them green, shelled, at two cents, Mexican, per catty. At
+this price and yield his return would be $15.48, gold, per acre. If
+there was need of nitrogen and organic matter in the soil the vines
+would be pulled green, after picking the beans, and composted with
+the wet mud. If not so needed the dried stems would be tied in
+bundles and sold as fuel or used at home, the ashes being returned
+to the fields. The windsor beans are thus an early crop grown for
+fertilizer, fuel and food.
+
+This farmer was paying his laborers one hundred cash per day and
+providing their meals, which he estimated worth two hundred cash
+more, making twelve cents, gold, for a ten-hour day. Judging from
+what we saw and from the amount of mud carried per load, we
+estimated the men would distribute not less than eighty-four loads
+of eighty pounds each per day, an average distance of five hundred
+feet, making the cost 3.57 cents, gold, per ton for distribution.
+
+The lower section of Fig. 92 shows another instance where mud was
+being used on a narrow strip bordering the path along which we
+walked, the amount there seen having been brought more than four
+hundred feet, by one man before 10 A. M. on the morning the
+photograph was taken. He was getting it from the bottom of a canal
+ten feet deep, laid bare by the out-going tide. Already he had
+brought more than a ton to his field.
+
+The carrying baskets used for this work were in the form of huge
+dustpans suspended from the carrying poles by two cords attached to
+the side rims, and steadied by the hand grasping a handle provided
+in the back for this purpose and for emptying the baskets by
+tipping. With this construction the earth was readily raked upon the
+basket and very easily emptied from it by simply raising the hands
+when the destination was reached. No arrangement could be more
+simple, expeditious or inexpensive for this man with his small
+holding. In this simple manner has nearly all of the earth been
+moved in digging the miles of canal and in building the long sea
+walls. In Shanghai the mud carried through the storm sewers into
+Soochow creek we saw being removed in the same manner during the
+intervals when the tide was out.
+
+In still another field, seen in Fig. 93, the upper portion shows
+where canal mud had been applied at a rate exceeding seventy tons
+per acre, and we were told that such dressings may be repeated as
+often as every two years though usually at longer intervals, if
+other and cheaper fertilizers could be obtained. In the lower
+portion of the same illustration may be seen the section of canal
+from which this mud was taken up the three earthen stairways built
+of the mud itself and permitted to dry before using. Many such lines
+of stairway were seen during our trips along the canals, only
+recently made or in the process of building to be in readiness when
+the time for applying the mud should arrive. To facilitate
+collecting the mud from the shallow canals temporary dams may be
+thrown across them at two places and the water between either
+scooped or pumped out, laying the bottom bare, as is often done also
+for fishing. The earth of the large grave mound seen across a canal
+in the center background of the upper portion of the engraving had
+been collected in a similar manner.
+
+In the Chekiang province canal mud is extensively used in the
+mulberry orchards as a surface dressing. We have referred to this
+practice in southern China, and Fig. 94 is a view taken south of
+Kashing early in April. The boat anchored in front of the mulberry
+orchard is the home of a family coming from a distance, seeking
+employment during the season for picking mulberry leaves to feed
+silkworms. We were much surprised, on looking back at the boat after
+closing the camera, to see the head of the family standing erect in
+the center, having shoved back a section of the matting roof.
+
+The dressing of mud applied to this field formed a loose layer more
+than two inches deep and when compacted by the rains which would
+follow would add not less than a full inch of soil over the entire
+orchard, and the weight per acre could not be less than 120 tons.
+
+Another equally, or even more, laborious practice followed by the
+Chinese farmers in this province is the periodic exchange of soil
+between mulberry orchards and the rice fields, their experience
+being that soil long used in the mulberry orchards improves the
+rice, while soil from the rice fields is very helpful when applied
+to the mulberry orchards. We saw many instances, when traveling by
+boat-train between Shanghai, Kashing and Hangchow, of soil being
+carried from rice fields and either stacked on the banks or dropped
+into the canal. Such soil was oftenest taken from narrow trenches
+leading through the fields, laying them off in beds. It is our
+judgment that the soil thrown into the canals undergoes important
+changes, perhaps through the absorption of soluble plant food
+substances such as lime, phosphoric acid and potash withdrawn from
+the water, or through some growth or fermentation, which, in the
+judgment of the farmer, makes the large labor involved in this
+procedure worth while. The stacking of soil along the banks was
+probably in preparation for its removal by boat to some of the
+mulberry orchards.
+
+It is clearly recognized by the farmers that mud collected from
+those sections of the canal leading through country villages, such
+as that seen in Fig. 10, is both inherently more fertile and in
+better physical condition than that collected in the open country.
+They attribute this difference to the effect of the village washing
+in the canal, where soap is extensively used. The storm waters of
+the city doubtless carry some fertilizing material also, although
+sewage, as such, never finds its way into the canals. The washing
+would be very likely to have a decided flocculating effect and so
+render this material more friable when applied to the field.
+
+One very important advantage which comes to the fields when heavily
+dressed with such mud is that resulting from the addition of lime
+which has become incorporated with the silts through their
+flocculation and precipitation, and that which is added in the form
+of snail shells abounding in the canals. The amount of these may be
+realized from the large numbers contained in the mud recently thrown
+out, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 95, where the pebbly
+appearance of the surface is caused by snail shells. In the lower
+section of the same illustration the white spots are snail shells
+exposed in the soil of a recently spaded field. The shells are by no
+means as numerous generally as here seen but yet sufficient to
+maintain the supply of lime.
+
+Several species of these snails are collected in quantities and used
+as food. Piles containing bushels of the empty shells were seen
+along the canals outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the
+shell and often sold by measure to be eaten from the hand, as we buy
+roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips
+the spiral point from each shell with a pair of small shears. This
+admits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by suction
+when the lips are applied to the shell. In the canals there are also
+large numbers of fresh water eel, shrimp and crabs as well as fish,
+all of which are collected and used for human food. It is common,
+when walking through the canal country, to come upon groups of
+gleaners busy in the bottoms of the shallow agricultural canals,
+gathering anything which may serve as food, even including small
+bulbs or the fleshy roots of edible aquatic plants. To facilitate
+the collection of such food materials sections of the canal are
+often drained in the manner already described, so that gleaning may
+be done by hand, wading in the mud. Families living in houseboats
+make a business of fishing for shrimp. They trail behind the
+houseboat one or two other boats carrying hundreds of shrimp traps
+cleverly constructed in such manner that when they are trailed along
+the bottom and disturb the shrimps they dart into the holes in the
+trap, mistaking them for safe hiding places.
+
+On the streets, especially during festival days, one may see young
+people and others in social intercourse, busying their fingers and
+their teeth eating cooked snails or often watermelon seeds, which
+are extensively sold and thus eaten. This custom we saw first in the
+streets of a city south of Kashing on the line of the new railway
+between Hangchow and Shanghai. The first passenger train over the
+line had been run the day before our visit, which was a festival day
+and throngs of people were visiting the nine-story pagoda standing
+on a high hill a mile outside the city limits. The day was one of
+great surprises to these people who had never before seen a
+passenger train, and my own person appeared to be a great curiosity
+to many. No boy ever scrutinized the face of a caged chimpanzee
+closer, with purer curiosity, or with less consideration for his
+feelings than did a woman of fifty scrutinize mine, standing close
+in front, not two feet distant, even bending forward as I sat upon a
+bench writing at the railway station. People would pass their hands
+along my coat sleeve to judge the cloth, and a boy felt of my shoes.
+Walking through the street we passed many groups gathered about
+tables and upon seats, visiting or in business conference, their
+fingers occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked
+snails. Along the pathway leading to the pagoda beggars had
+distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three
+hundred feet, asking alms, most of them infirm with age or in some
+other way physically disabled. We saw but one who appeared capable
+of earning a living.
+
+Travel between Shanghai and Hangchow at this time was heavy. Three
+companies were running trains, of six or more houseboats, each towed
+by a steam launch, and these were daily crowded with passengers. Our
+train left Shanghai at 4:30 P. M., reaching Hangchow at 5:30 P. M.
+the following day, covering a distance along the canal of something
+more than 117 miles. We paid $5.16, gold, for the exclusive use of a
+first-cabin, five-berth stateroom for myself and interpreter. It
+occupied the full width of the boat, lacking about fourteen inches
+of footway, and could be entered from either side down a flight of
+five steps. The berths were flat, naked wooden shelves thirty inches
+wide, separated by a partition headboard six inches high and without
+railing in front. Each traveler provided his own bedding. A small
+table upon which meals were served, a mirror on one side and a lamp
+on the other, set in an opening in the partition, permitting it to
+serve two staterooms, completed the furnishings. The roof of the
+staterooms was covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two
+tiers of berths, each thirty inches wide, by board partitions six
+inches high. In these sections passengers spread their beds,
+sleeping heads together, separated only by a headboard six inches
+high. The awning was only sufficiently high to permit passengers to
+sit erect. Ventilation was ample but privacy was nil. Curtains could
+be dropped around the sides in stormy weather.
+
+Meals were served to each passenger wherever he might be. Dinner
+consisted of hot steamed rice brought in very heavy porcelain bowls
+set inside a covered, wet, steaming hot wooden case. With the rice
+were tiny dishes, butterchip size, of green clover, nicely cooked
+and seasoned; of cooked bean curd served with shredded bamboo
+sprouts; of tiny pork strips with bean curd; of small bits of liver
+with bamboo sprouts; of greens, and hot water for tea. If the
+appetite is good one may have a second helping of rice and as much
+hot water for tea as desired. There was no table linen, no napkins
+and everything but the tea had to be negotiated with chop sticks,
+or, these failing, with the fingers. When the meal was finished the
+table was cleared and water, hot if desired, was brought for your
+hand basin, which with tea, teacup and bedding, constitute part of
+the traveler's outfit. At frequent intervals, up to ten P. M., a
+crier walked about the deck with hot water for those who might
+desire an extra cup of tea, and again in the early morning.
+
+At this season of the year Chinese incubators were being run to
+their full capacity and it was our good fortune to visit one of
+these, escorted by Rev. R. A. Haden, who also acted as interpreter.
+The art of incubation is very old and very extensively practiced in
+China. An interior view of one of these establishments is shown in
+Fig. 96, where the family were hatching the eggs of hens, ducks and
+geese, purchasing the eggs and selling the young as hatched. As in
+the case of so many trades in China, this family was the last
+generation of a long line whose lives had been spent in the same
+work. We entered through their store, opening on the street of the
+narrow village seen in Fig. 10. In the store the eggs were purchased
+and the chicks were sold, this work being in charge of the women of
+the family. It was in the extreme rear of the home that thirty
+incubators were installed, all doing duty and each having a capacity
+of 1,200 hens' eggs. Four of these may be seen in the illustration
+and one of the baskets which, when two-thirds filled with eggs, is
+set inside of each incubator.
+
+Each incubator consists of a large earthenware jar having a door cut
+in one side through which live charcoal may be introduced and the
+fire partly smothered under a layer of ashes, this serving as the
+source of heat. The jar is thoroughly insulated, cased in basketwork
+and provided with a cover, as seen in the illustration. Inside the
+outer jar rests a second of nearly the same size, as one teacup may
+in another. Into this is lowered the large basket with its 600 hens'
+eggs, 400 ducks' eggs or 175 geese' eggs, as the case may be. Thirty
+of these incubators were arranged in two parallel rows of fifteen
+each. Immediately above each row, and utilizing the warmth of the
+air rising from them, was a continuous line of finishing hatchers
+and brooders in the form of woven shallow trays with sides warmly
+padded with cotton and with the tops covered with sets of quilts of
+different thickness.
+
+After a basket of hens' eggs has been incubated four days it is
+removed and the eggs examined by lighting, to remove those which are
+infertile before they have been rendered unsalable. The infertile
+eggs go to the store and the basket is returned to the incubator.
+Ducks' eggs are similarly examined after two days and again after
+five days incubation; and geese' eggs after six days and again after
+fourteen days. Through these precautions practically all loss from
+infertile eggs is avoided and from 95 to 98 per cent of the fertile
+eggs are hatched, the infertile eggs ranging from 5 to 25 per cent.
+
+After the fourth day in the incubator all eggs are turned five times
+in twenty-four hours. Hens' eggs are kept in the lower incubator
+eleven days; ducks' eggs thirteen days, and geese' eggs sixteen
+days, after which they are transferred to the trays. Throughout the
+incubation period the most careful watch and control is kept over
+the temperature. No thermometer is used but the operator raises the
+lid or quilt, removes an egg, pressing the large end into the eye
+socket. In this way a large contact is made where the skin is
+sensitive, nearly constant in temperature, but little below blood
+heat and from which the air is excluded for the time. Long practice
+permits them thus to judge small differences of temperature
+expeditiously and with great accuracy; and they maintain different
+temperatures during different stages of the incubation. The men
+sleep in the room and some one is on duty continuously, making the
+rounds of the incubators and brooders, examining and regulating each
+according to its individual needs, through the management of the
+doors or the shifting of the quilts over the eggs in the brooder
+trays where the chicks leave the eggs and remain until they go to
+the store. In the finishing trays the eggs form rather more than one
+continuous layer but the second layer does not cover more than a
+fifth or a quarter of the area. Hens' eggs are in these trays ten
+days, ducks' and geese' eggs, fourteen days.
+
+After the chickens have been hatched sufficiently long to require
+feeding they are ready for market and are then sorted according to
+sex and placed in separate shallow woven trays thirty inches in
+diameter. The sorting is done rapidly and accurately through the
+sense of touch, the operator recognizing the sex by gently pinching
+the anus. Four trays of young chickens were in the store fronting on
+the street as we entered and several women were making purchases,
+taking five to a dozen each. Dr. Haden informed me that nearly every
+family in the cities, and in the country villages raise a few, but
+only a few, chickens and it is a common sight to see grown chickens
+walking about the narrow streets, in and out of the open stores,
+dodging the feet of the occupants and passers-by. At the time of our
+visit this family was paying at the rate of ten cents, Mexican, for
+nine hens' and eight ducks' eggs, and were selling their largest
+strong chickens at three cents each. These figures, translated into
+our currency, make the purchase price for eggs nearly 48 cents, and
+the selling price for the young chicks $1.29, per hundred, or
+thirteen eggs for six cents and seven chickens for nine cents.
+
+It is difficult even to conceive, not to say measure, the vast
+import of this solution of how to maintain, in the millions of
+homes, a constantly accessible supply of absolutely fresh and
+thoroughly sanitary animal food in the form of meat and eggs. The
+great density of population in these countries makes the problem of
+supplying eggs to the people very different from that in the United
+States. Our 250,600,000 fowl in 1900 was at the rate of three to
+each person but in Japan, with her 16,500,000 fowl, she had in 1906
+but one for every three people. Her number per square mile of
+cultivated land however was 825, while in the United States, in
+1900, the number of fowls per square mile of improved farm land was
+but 387. To give to Japan three fowls to each person there would
+needs be an average of about nine to each acre of her cultivated
+land, whereas in the United States there were in 1900 nearly two
+acres of improved farm land for each fowl. We have no statistics
+regarding the number of fowl in China or the number of eggs produced
+but the total is very large and she exports to Japan. The large boat
+load of eggs seen in Fig. 97 had just arrived from the country,
+coming into Shanghai in one of her canals.
+
+Besides applying canal mud directly to the fields in the ways
+described there are other very extensive practices of composting it
+with organic matter of one or another kind and of then using the
+compost on the fields. The next three illustrations show some of the
+steps and something of the tremendous labor of body, willingly and
+cheerfully incurred, and something of the forethought practiced,
+that homes may be maintained and that grandparents, parents, wives
+and children need neither starve nor beg. We had reached a place
+seen in Fig. 98, where eight bearers were moving winter compost to a
+recently excavated pit in an adjoining field shown in Fig. 99.
+
+Four months before the camera fixed the activity shown, men had
+brought waste from the stables of Shanghai fifteen miles by water,
+depositing it upon the canal bank between layers of thin mud dipped
+from the canal, and left it to ferment. The eight men were removing
+this compost to the pit seen in Fig. 99, then nearly filled. Near by
+in the same field was a second pit seen in Fig. 100, excavated three
+feet deep and rimmed about with the earth removed, making it two
+feet deeper.
+
+After these pits had been filled the clover which was in blossom
+beyond the pits would be cut and stacked upon them to a height of
+five to eight feet and this also saturated, layer by layer, with mud
+brought from the canal, and allowed to ferment twenty to thirty days
+until the juices set free had been absorbed by the winter compost
+beneath, helping to carry the ripening of that still further, and
+until the time had arrived for fitting the ground for the next crop.
+This organic matter, fermented with the canal mud, would then be
+distributed by the men over the field, carried a third time on their
+shoulders, notwithstanding its weight was many tons.
+
+This manure had been collected, loaded and carried fifteen miles by
+water; it had been unloaded upon the bank and saturated with canal
+mud; the field had been fitted for clover the previous fall and
+seeded; the pits had been dug in the fields; the winter compost had
+been carried and placed in the pits; the clover was to be cut,
+carried by the men on their shoulders, stacked layer by layer and
+saturated with mud dipped from the canal; the whole would later be
+distributed over the field and finally the earth removed from the
+pits would be returned to them, that the service of no ground upon
+which a crop might grow should be lost.
+
+Such are the tasks to which Chinese farmers hold themselves, because
+they are convinced desired results will follow, because their
+holdings are so small and their families so large. These practices
+are so extensive in China and so fundamental in the part they play
+in the maintenance of high productive power in their soils that we
+made special effort to follow them through different phases. In Fig.
+101 we saw the preparation being made to build one of the clover
+compost stacks saturated with canal mud. On the left the thin mud
+had been dipped from the canal; way-farers in the center were
+crossing the foot-bridge of the country by-way; and beyond rises the
+conical thatch to shelter the water buffalo when pumping for
+irrigating the rice crop to be fed with this plant food in
+preparation. On the right were two large piles of green clover
+freshly cut and a woman of the family at one of them was spreading
+it to receive the mud, while the men-folk were coming from the field
+with more clover on their carrying poles. We came upon this scene
+just before the dinner hour and after the workers had left another
+photograph was taken at closer range and from a different side,
+giving the view seen in Fig. 102. The mud had been removed some days
+and become too stiff to spread, so water was being brought from the
+canal in the pails at the right for reducing its consistency to that
+of a thin porridge, permitting it to more completely smear and
+saturate the clover. The stack grew, layer by layer, each saturated
+with the mud, tramped solid with the bare feet, trousers rolled
+high. Provision had been made here for building four other stacks.
+
+Further along we came upon the scene in Fig. 103 where the building
+of the stack of compost and the gathering of the mud from the canal
+were simultaneous. On one side of the canal the son, using a
+clam-shell form of dipper made of basket-work, which could be opened
+and shut with a pair of bamboo handles, had nearly filled the middle
+section of his boat with the thin ooze, while on the other side,
+against the stack which was building, the mother was emptying a
+similar boat, using a large dipper, also provided with a bamboo
+handle. The man on the stack is a good scale for judging its size.
+
+We came next upon a finished stack on the bank of another canal,
+shown in Fig. 104, where our umbrella was set to serve as a scale.
+This stack measured ten by ten feet on the ground, was six feet high
+and must have contained more than twenty tons of the green compost.
+At the same place, two other stacks had been started, each about
+fourteen by fourteen feet, and foundations were laid for six others,
+nine in all.
+
+During twenty or more days this green nitrogenous organic matter is
+permitted to lie fermenting in contact with the fine soil particles
+of the ooze with which it had been charged. This is a remarkable
+practice in that it is a very old, intensive application of an
+important fundamental principle only recently understood and added
+to the science of agriculture, namely, the power of organic matter,
+decaying rapidly in contact with soil, to liberate from it soluble
+plant food; and so it would be a great mistake to say that these
+laborious practices are the result of ignorance, of a lack of
+capacity for accurate thinking or of power to grasp and utilize. If
+the agricultural lands of the United States are ever called upon to
+feed even 1200 millions of people, a number proportionately less
+than one-half that being fed in Japan today, very different
+practices from those we are now following will have been adopted. We
+can believe they will require less human bodily effort and be more
+efficient. But the knowledge which can make them so is not yet in
+the possession of our farmers, much less the conviction that plant
+feeding and more persistent and better directed soil management are
+necessary to such yields as will then be required.
+
+Later, just before the time for transplanting rice, we returned to
+the same district to observe the manner of applying this compost to
+the field, and Fig. 105 is prepared from photographs taken then,
+illustrating the activities of one family, as seen during the
+morning of May 28th. Their home was in a near-by village and their
+holding was divided into four nearly rectangular paddies, graded to
+water level, separated by raised rims, and having an area of nearly
+two acres. Three of these little fields are partly shown in the
+illustration, and the fourth in Fig. 160. In the background of the
+upper section of Fig. 105, and under the thatched shelter, was a
+native Chinese cow, blindfolded and hitched to the power-wheel of a
+large wooden-chain pump, lifting water from the canal and flooding
+the field in the foreground, to soften the soil for plowing. Riding
+on the power-wheel was a girl of some twelve years, another of seven
+and a baby. They were there for entertainment and to see that the
+cow kept at work. The ground had been sufficiently softened so that
+the father had begun plowing, the cow sinking to her knees as she
+walked. In the same paddy, but shown in the section below, a boy was
+spreading the clover compost with his hands, taking care that it was
+finely divided and evenly scattered. He had been once around before
+the plowing began. This compost had been brought from a stack by the
+side of a canal, and two other men were busy still bringing the
+material to one of the other paddies, one of whom, with his baskets
+on the carrying pole appears in the third section. Between these two
+paddies was the one seen at the bottom of the illustration, which
+had matured a crop of rape that had been pulled and was lying in
+swaths ready to be moved. Two other men were busy here, gathering
+the rape into large bundles and carrying it to the village home,
+where the women were threshing out the seed, taking care not to
+break the stems which, after threshing, were tied into bundles for
+fuel. The seed would be ground and from it an oil expressed, while
+the cake would be used as a fertilizer.
+
+This crop of rape is remarkable for the way it fits into the
+economies of these people. It is a near relative of mustard and
+cabbage; it grows rapidly during the cooler portions of the season,
+the spring crop ripening before the planting of rice and cotton; its
+young shoots and leaves are succulent, nutritious, readily digested
+and extensively used as human food, boiled and eaten fresh, or
+salted for winter use, to be served with rice; the mature stems,
+being woody, make good fuel; and it bears a heavy crop of seed, rich
+in oil, which has been extensively used for lights and in cooking,
+while the rape seed cake is highly prized as a manure and very
+extensively so used.
+
+In the early spring the country is luxuriantly green with the large
+acreage of rape, later changing to a sea of most brilliant yellow
+and finally to an ashy grey when the leaves fall and the stems and
+pods ripen. Like the dairy cow, rape produces a fat, in the ratio of
+about forty pounds of oil to a hundred pounds of seed, which may be
+eaten, burned or sold without materially robbing the soil of its
+fertility if the cake and the ashes from the stems are returned to
+the fields, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of which the oil is
+almost wholly composed coming from the atmosphere rather than from
+the soil.
+
+In Japan rape is grown as a second crop on both the upland and paddy
+fields, and in 1906 she produced more than 5,547,000 bushels of the
+seed; $1,845,000 worth of rape seed cake, importing enough more to
+equal a total value of $2,575,000, all of which was used as a
+fertilizer, the oil being exported. The yield of seed per acre in
+Japan ranges between thirteen and sixteen bushels, and the farmer
+whose field was photographed estimated that his returns from the
+crop would be at the rate of 640 pounds of seed per acre, worth
+$6.19, and 8,000 pounds of stems worth as fuel $5.16 per acre.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE
+
+
+
+
+
+One of the most remarkable agricultural practices adopted by any
+civilized people is the centuries-long and well nigh universal
+conservation and utilization of all human waste in China, Korea and
+Japan, turning it to marvelous account in the maintenance of soil
+fertility and in the production of food. To understand this
+evolution it must be recognized that mineral fertilizers so
+extensively employed in modern western agriculture, like the
+extensive use of mineral coal, had been a physical impossibility to
+all people alike until within very recent years. With this fact must
+be associated the very long unbroken life of these nations and the
+vast numbers their farmers have been compelled to feed.
+
+When we reflect upon the depleted fertility of our own older farm
+lands, comparatively few of which have seen a century's service, and
+upon the enormous quantity of mineral fertilizers which are being
+applied annually to them in order to secure paying yields, it
+becomes evident that the time is here when profound consideration
+should be given to the practices the Mongolian race has maintained
+through many centuries, which permit it to be said of China that
+one-sixth of an acre of good land is ample for the maintenance of
+one person, and which are feeding an average of three people per
+acre of farm land in the three southernmost of the four main islands
+of Japan.
+
+From the analyses of mixed human excreta made by Wolff in Europe and
+by Kellner in Japan it appears that, as an average, these carry in
+every 2000 pounds 12.7 pounds of nitrogen, 4 pounds of potassium and
+1.7 pounds of phosphorus. On this basis and that of Carpenter, who
+estimates the average amount of excreta per day for the adult at 40
+ounces, the average annual production per million of adult
+population is 5,794,300 pounds of nitrogen; 1,825,000 pounds of
+potassium, and 775,600 pounds of phosphorus carried in 456,250 tons
+of excreta. The figures which Hall cites in Fertilizers and Manures,
+would make these amounts 7,940,000 pounds of nitrogen; 3,070,500
+pounds of potassium, and 1,965,600 pounds of phosphorus, but the
+figures he takes and calls high averages give 12,000,000 of
+nitrogen; 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and 3,057,600 pounds of
+phosphorus.
+
+In 1908 the International Concessions of the city of Shanghai sold
+to one Chinese contractor for $31,000, gold, the privilege of
+collecting 78,000 tons of human waste, under stipulated regulations,
+and of removing it to the country for sale to farmers. The flotilla
+of boats seen in Fig. 106 is one of several engaged daily in
+Shanghai throughout the year in this service.
+
+Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and
+Commerce, taking his data from their records, informed us that the
+human manure saved and applied to the fields of Japan in 1908
+amounted to 23,850,295 tons, which is an average of 1.75 tons per
+acre of their 21,321 square miles of cultivated land in their four
+main islands.
+
+On the basis of the data of Wolff, Kellner and Carpenter, or of
+Hall, the people of the United States and of Europe are pouring into
+the sea, lakes or rivers and into the underground waters from
+5,794,300 to 12,000,000 pounds of nitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000
+pounds of potassium, and 777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus
+per million of adult population annually, and this waste we esteem
+one of the great achievements of our civilization. In the Far East,
+for more than thirty centuries, these enormous wastes have been
+religiously saved and today the four hundred million of adult
+population send back to their fields annually 150,000 tons of
+phosphorus; 376,000 tons of potassium, and 1,158,000 tons of
+nitrogen comprised in a gross weight exceeding 182 million tons,
+gathered from every home, from the country villages and from the
+great cities like Hankow-Wuchang-Hanyang with its 1,770,000 people
+swarming on a land area delimited by a radius of four miles.
+
+Man is the most extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever
+endured. His withering blight has fallen upon every living thing
+within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction
+in the uncontrolled hands of a generation has swept into the sea
+soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate, and
+yet this fertility is the substratum of all that is living. It must
+be recognized that the phosphate deposits which we are beginning to
+return to our fields are but measures of fertility lost from older
+soils, and indices of processes still in progress. The rivers of
+North America are estimated to carry to the sea more than 500 tons
+of phosphorus with each cubic mile of water. To such loss modern
+civilization is adding that of hydraulic sewage disposal through
+which the waste of five hundred millions of people might be more
+than 194,300 tons of phosphorus annually, which could not be
+replaced by 1,295,000 tons of rock phosphate, 75 per cent pure. The
+Mongolian races, with a population now approaching the figure named;
+occupying an area little more than one-half that of the United
+States, tilling less than 800,000 square miles of land, and much of
+this during twenty, thirty or perhaps forty centuries; unable to
+avail themselves of mineral fertilizers, could not survive and
+tolerate such waste. Compelled to solve the problem of avoiding such
+wastes, and exercising the faculty which is characteristic of the
+race, they "cast down their buckets where they were", as
+
+*A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly
+vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal,
+"Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly
+vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A
+second time the signal, "Water, water; Send us water!" ran up from
+the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket
+where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was
+answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the
+distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his
+bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth
+of the Amazon river. *Booker T. Washington, Atlanta address.
+
+Not even in great cities like Canton, built in the meshes of
+tideswept rivers and canals; like Hankow on the banks of one of the
+largest rivers in the world; nor yet in modern Shanghai, Yokohama or
+Tokyo, is such waste permitted. To them such a practice has meant
+race suicide and they have resisted the temptation so long that it
+has ceased to exist.
+
+Dr. Arthur Stanley, Health officer of the city of Shanghai, in his
+annual report for 1899, considering this subject as a municipal
+problem, wrote:
+
+"Regarding the bearing on the sanitation of Shanghai of the
+relationship between Eastern and Western hygiene, it may be said,
+that if prolonged national life is indicative of sound sanitation,
+the Chinese are a race worthy of study by all who concern themselves
+with Public Health. Even without the returns of a Registrar-General
+it is evident that in China the birth rate must very considerably
+exceed the death rate, and have done so in an average way during the
+three or four thousand years that the Chinese nation has existed.
+Chinese hygiene, when compared with medieval English, appears to
+advantage. The main problem of sanitation is to cleanse the dwelling
+day by day, and if this can be done at a profit so much the better.
+While the ultra-civilized Western elaborates destructors for burning
+garbage at a financial loss and turns sewage into the sea, the
+Chinaman uses both for manure. He wastes nothing while the sacred
+duty of agriculture is uppermost in his mind. And in reality recent
+bacterial work has shown that faecal matter and house refuse are
+best destroyed by returning them to clean soil, where natural
+purification takes place. The question of destroying garbage can, I
+think, under present conditions in Shanghai, be answered in a
+decided negative. While to adopt the water-carriage system for
+sewage and turn it into the river, whence the water supply is
+derived, would be an act of sanitary suicide. It is best, therefore,
+to make use of what is good in Chinese hygiene, which demands
+respect, being, as it is, the product of an evolution extending from
+more than a thousand years before the Christian era."
+
+The storage of such waste in China is largely in stoneware
+receptacles such as are seen in Fig. 109, which are hard-burned,
+glazed terra-cotta urns, having capacities ranging from 500 to 1000
+pounds. Japan more often uses sheltered cement-lined pits such as
+are seen in Fig. 110.
+
+In the three countries the carrying to the fields is oftenest in
+some form of pail, as seen in Fig. 111, a pair of which are borne
+swinging from the carrying pole. In applying the liquid to the field
+or garden the long handle dipper is used, seen in Fig. 112.
+
+We are beginning to husband with some economy the waste from our
+domestic animals but in this we do not approach that of China, Korea
+and Japan. People in China regularly search for and collect
+droppings along the country and caravan roads. Repeatedly, when
+walking through city streets, we observed such materials quickly and
+apparently eagerly gathered, to be carefully stored under conditions
+which ensure small loss from either leaching or unfavorable
+fermentation. In some mulberry orchards visited the earth had been
+carefully hoed back about the trunks of trees to a depth of three or
+four inches from a circle having a diameter of six to eight feet,
+and upon these areas were placed the droppings of silkworms, the
+moulted skins, together with the bits of leaves and stem left after
+feeding. Some disposition of such waste must be made. They return at
+once to the orchard all but the silk produced from the leaves;
+unnecessary loss is thus avoided and the material enters at once the
+service of forcing the next crop of leaves.
+
+On the farm of Mrs. Wu, near Kashing, while studying the operation
+of two irrigation pumps driven by two cows, lifting water to flood
+her twenty-five acres of rice field preparatory to transplanting, we
+were surprised to observe that one of the duties of the lad who had
+charge of the animals was to use a six-quart wooden dipper with a
+bamboo handle six feet long to collect all excreta, before they fell
+upon the ground, and transfer them to a receptacle provided for the
+purpose. There came a flash of resentment that such a task was set
+for the lad, for we were only beginning to realize to what lengths
+the practice of economy may go, but there was nothing irksome
+suggested in the boy's face. He performed the duty as a matter of
+course and as we thought it through there was no reason why it
+should have been otherwise. In fact, the only right course was being
+taken. Conditions would have been worse if the collection had not
+been made. It made possible more rice. Character of substantial
+quality was building in the lad which meant thrift in the growing
+man and continued life for the nation.
+
+We have adverted to the very small number of flies observed anywhere
+in the course of our travel, but its significance we did not realize
+until near the end of our stay. Indeed, for some reason, flies were
+more in evidence during the first two days on the steamship, out
+from Yokohama on our return trip to America, than at any time before
+on our journey. It is to be expected that the eternal vigilance
+which seizes every waste, once it has become such, putting it in
+places of usefulness, must contribute much toward the destruction of
+breeding places, and it may be these nations have been mindful of
+the wholesomeness of their practice and that many phases of the
+evolution of their waste disposal system have been dictated by and
+held fast to through a clear conception of sanitary needs.
+
+Much intelligence and the highest skill are exhibited by these
+old-world farmers in the use of their wastes. In Fig. 113 is one of
+many examples which might be cited. The man walking down the row
+with his manure pails swinging from his shoulders informed us on his
+return that in his household there were twenty to be fed; that from
+this garden of half an acre of land he usually sold a product
+bringing in $400, Mexican,--$172, gold. The crop was cucumbers in
+groups of two rows thirty inches apart and twenty-four inches
+between the groups. The plants were eight to ten inches apart in the
+row. He had just marketed the last of a crop of greens which
+occupied the space between the rows of cucumbers seen under the
+strong, durable, light and very readily removable trellises. On May
+28 the vines were beginning to run, so not a minute had been lost in
+the change of crop. On the contrary this man had added a month to
+his growing season by over-lapping his crops, and the trellises
+enabled him to feed more plants of this type than there was room for
+vines on the ground. With ingenuity and much labor he had made his
+half acre for cucumbers equivalent to more than two. He had removed
+the vines entirely from the ground; had provided a travel space two
+feet wide, down which he was walking, and he had made it possible to
+work about the roots of every plant for the purpose of hoeing and
+feeding. Four acres of cucumbers handled by American field methods
+would not yield more than this man's one, and he grows besides two
+other crops the same season.
+
+The difference is not so much in activity of muscle as it is in
+alertness and efficiency of the grey matter of the brain. He sees
+and treats each plant individually, he loosens the ground so that
+his liquid manure drops immediately beneath the surface within reach
+of the active roots. If the rainfall has been scanty and the soil is
+dry he may use ten of water to two of night soil, not to supply
+water but to make certain sufficiently deep penetration. If the
+weather is rainy and the soil over wet, the food is applied more
+concentrated, not to lighten the burden but to avoid waste by
+leaching and over saturation. While ever crowding growth he never
+overfeeds. Forethought, after-thought and the mind focused on the
+work in hand are characteristic of these people. We do not recall to
+have seen a man smoking while at work. They enjoy smoking, but
+prefer to do this also with the attention undivided and thus get
+more for their money.
+
+On another date earlier in May we were walking in the fields without
+an interpreter. For half an hour we stood watching an old gardener
+fitting the soil with his spading hoe in the manner seen in Fig. 26,
+where the graves of his ancestors occupy a part of the land.
+Angleworms were extremely numerous, as large around as an ordinary
+lead pencil and, when not extended, two-thirds as long, decidedly
+greenish in color. Nearly every stroke of the spade exposed two to
+five of these worms but so far as we observed, and we watched the
+man closely, pulverizing the soil, he neither injured nor left
+uncovered a single worm. While he seemed to make no effort to avoid
+injuring them or to cover them with earth, and while we could not
+talk with him, we are convinced that his action was continually
+guarded against injuring the worms.
+
+They certainly were subsoiling his garden deeply and making possible
+a freer circulation of air far below the surface. Their great
+abundance proved a high content of organic matter present in the
+soil and, as the worms ate their way through it, passing the soil
+through their bodies, the yearly volume of work done by them was
+very great. In the fields flooded preparatory to fitting them for
+rice these worms are forced to the surface in enormous numbers and
+large flocks of ducks are taken to such fields to feed upon them.
+
+In another field a crop of barley was nearing maturity. An adjacent
+strip of land was to be fitted and planted. The leaning barley heads
+were in the way. Not one must be lost and every inch of ground must
+be put to use. The grain along the margin, for a breadth of sixteen
+inches, had been gathered into handfuls and skillfully tied, each
+with an unpulled barley stem, without breaking the straw, thus
+permitting even the grains in that head to fill and be gathered with
+the rest, while the tying set all straws well aslant, out of the
+way, and permitted the last inch of naked ground to be fitted
+without injuring the grain.
+
+In still another instance a man was growing Irish potatoes to market
+when yet small. He had enriched his soil; he would apply water if
+the rains were not timely and sufficient, and had fed the plants. He
+had planted in rows only twelve to fourteen inches apart with a hill
+every eight inches in the row. The vines stood strong, straight,
+fourteen inches high and as even as a trimmed hedge. The leaves and
+stems were turgid, the deepest green and as prime and glossy as a
+prize steer. So close were the plants that there was leaf surface to
+intercept the sunshine falling on every square inch of the patch.
+There were no potato beetles and we saw no signs of injury but the
+gardener was scanning the patch with the eye of a robin. He spied
+the slightest first drooping of leaves in a stem; went after the
+difficulty and brought and placed in our hand a cutworm, a young
+tuber the size of a marble and a stem cut half off, which he was
+willing to sacrifice because of our evident interest. But the two
+friends who had met were held apart by the babel of tongues.
+
+Nothing is costing the world more; has made so many enemies, and has
+so much hindered the forming of friendships as the inability to
+fully understand; hence the dove that brings world peace must fly on
+the wings of a common language, and the bright star in the east is
+world commerce, rising on rapidly developing railway and steamship
+lines, heralded and directed by electric communication. With world
+commerce must come mutual confidence and friendship requiring a full
+understanding and therefore a common tongue. Then world peace will
+be permanently assured. It is coming inevitably and faster than we
+think. Once this desired end is seriously sought, the carrying of
+three generations of children through the public schools where the
+world language is taught together with the mother tongue, and the
+passing of the parents and grandparents, would effect the change.
+
+The important point regarding these Far East people, to which
+attention should be directed, is that effective thinking, clear and
+strong, prevails among the farmers who have fed and are still
+feeding the dense populations from the products of their limited
+areas. This is further indicated in the universal and extensive use
+of plant ashes derived from fuel grown upon cultivated fields and
+upon the adjacent hill and mountain lands.
+
+We were unable to secure exact data regarding the amount of fuel
+burned annually in these countries, and of ashes used as fertilizer,
+but a cord of dry oak wood weighs about 3500 pounds, and the weight
+of fuel used in the home and in manufactures must exceed that of two
+cords per household. Japan has an average of 5.563 people per
+family. If we allow but 1300 pounds of fuel per capita, Japan's
+consumption would be 31,200,000 tons. In view of the fact that a
+very large share of the fuel used in these countries is either
+agricultural plant stems, with an average ash content of 5 per cent,
+or the twigs and even leaves of trees, as in the case of pine bough
+fuel, 4.5 per cent of ash may be taken as a fair estimate. On this
+basis, and with a content of phosphorus equal to .5 per cent, and of
+potassium equal to 5 per cent, the fuel ash for Japan would amount
+to 1,404,000 tons annually, carrying 7020 tons of phosphorus and
+70,200 tons of potassium, together with more than 400,000 tons of
+limestone, which is returned annually to less than 21,321 square
+miles of cultivated land.
+
+In China, with her more than four hundred millions of people, a
+similar rate of fuel consumption would make the phosphorus and
+potassium returned to her fields more than eight times the amounts
+computed for Japan. On the basis of these statements Japan's annual
+saving of phosphorus from the waste of her fuel would be equivalent
+to more than 46,800 tons of rock phosphate having a purity of 75 per
+cent, or in the neighborhood of seven pounds per acre. If this
+amount, even with the potash and limestone added, appears like a
+trifling addition of fertility it is important for Americans to
+remember that even if this is so, these people have felt compelled
+to make the saving.
+
+In the matter of returning soluble potassium to the cultivated
+fields Japan would be applying with her ashes the equivalent of no
+less than 156,600 tons of pure potassium sulphate, equal to 23
+pounds per acre; while the lime carbonate so applied annually would
+be some 62 pounds per acre.
+
+In addition to the forest lands, which have long been made to
+contribute plant food to the cultivated fields through fuel ashes,
+there are large areas which contribute green manure and compost
+material. These are chiefly hill lands, aggregating some twenty per
+cent of the cultivated fields, which bear mostly herbaceous growth.
+Some 2,552,741 acres of these lands may be cut over three times each
+season, yielding, in 1903, an average of 7980 pounds per acre. The
+first cutting of this hill herbage is mainly used on the rice fields
+as green manure, it being tramped into the mud between the rows
+after the manner seen in Fig. 114.
+
+This man had been with basket and sickle to gather green herbage
+wherever he could and had brought it to his rice paddy. The day in
+July was extremely sultry. We came upon him wading in the water half
+way to his knees, carefully laying the herbage he had gathered
+between alternate rows of his rice, one handful in a place, with
+tips overlapping. This done he took the attitude seen in the
+illustration and, gathering the materials into a compact bunch,
+pressed it beneath the surface with his foot. The two hands smoothed
+the soft mud over the grass and righted the disturbed spears of rice
+in the two adjacent hills. Thus, foot following foot, one bare
+length ahead, the succeeding bunches of herbage were submerged until
+the last had been reached, following between alternate rows only a
+foot apart, there being a hill every nine to ten inches in the row
+and the hands grasping and being drawn over every one in the paddy.
+
+He was renting the land, paying therefor forty kan of rice per tan,
+and his usual yield was eighty kan. This is forty-four bushels of
+sixty pounds per acre. In unfavorable seasons his yield might be
+less but still his rent would be forty kan per tan unless it was
+clear that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him
+in securing the crop. It is difficult for Americans to understand
+how it is possible for the will of man, even when spurred by the
+love of home and family, to hold flesh to tasks like these.
+
+The second and third cuttings of herbage from the genya lands in
+Japan are used for the preparation of compost applied on the
+dry-land fields in the fall or in the spring of the following
+season. Some of these lands are pastured, but approximately
+10,185,500 tons of green herbage grown and gathered from the hills
+contributes much of its organic matter and all of its ash to enrich
+the cultivated fields. Such wild growth areas in Japan are the
+commons of the near by villages, to which the people are freely
+admitted for the purpose of cutting the herbage. A fixed time may be
+set for cutting and a limit placed upon the amount which may be
+carried away, which is done in the manner seen in Fig. 115. It is
+well recognized by the people that this constant cutting and removal
+of growth from the hill lands, with no return, depletes the soils
+and reduces the amount of green herbage they are able to secure.
+
+Through the kindness of Dr. Daikuhara of the Imperial Agricultural
+Experiment Station at Tokyo we are able to give the average
+composition of the green leaves and young stems of five of the most
+common wild species of plants cut for green manure in June. In each
+1000 pounds the amount of water is 562.18 pounds; of organic matter,
+382.68 pounds; of ash, 55.14 pounds; nitrogen, 4.78 pounds;
+potassium, 2.407 pounds, and phosphorus, .34 pound. On the basis of
+this composition and an aggregate yield of 10,185,500 tons, there
+would be annually applied to the cultivated fields 3463 tons of
+phosphorus and 24,516 tons of potassium derived from the genya
+lands.
+
+In addition to this the run-off from both the mountain and the genya
+lands is largely used upon the rice fields, more than sixteen inches
+of water being applied annually to them in some prefectures. If such
+waters have the composition of river waters in North America, twelve
+inches of water applied to the rice fields of the three main islands
+would contribute no less than 1200 tons of phosphorus and 19,000
+tons of potassium annually.
+
+Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and
+Commerce, informed us that in 1908 Japanese farmers prepared and
+applied to their fields 22,812,787 tons of compost manufactured from
+the wastes of cattle, horses, swine and poultry, combined with
+herbage, straw and other similar wastes and with soil, sod or mud
+from ditches and canals. The amount of this compost is sufficient to
+apply 1.78 tons per acre of cultivated land of the southern three
+main islands.
+
+From data obtained at the Nara Experiment Station, the composition
+of compost as there prepared shows it to contain, in each 2000
+pounds, 550 pounds of organic matter; 15.6 pounds of nitrogen; 8.3
+pounds of potassium, and 5.24 pounds of phosphorus. On this basis
+22,800,000 tons of compost will carry 59,700 tons of phosphorus and
+94,600 tons of potassium. The construction of compost houses is
+illustrated in Fig. 116, reproduced from a large circular sent to
+farmers from the Nara Experiment Station, and an exterior of one at
+the Nara Station is given in Fig. 117.
+
+This compost house is designed to serve two and a half acres. Its
+floor is twelve by eighteen feet, rendered watertight by a mixture
+of clay, lime and sand. The walls are of earth, one foot thick, and
+the roof is thatched with straw. Its capacity is sixteen to twenty
+tons, having a cash value of 60 yen, or $30. In preparing the stack,
+materials are brought daily and, spread over one side of the compost
+floor until the pile has attained a height of five feet. After one
+foot in depth has been laid and firmed, 1.2 inches of soil or mud is
+spread over the surface and the process repeated until full height
+has been attained. Water is added sufficient to keep the whole
+saturated and to maintain the temperature below that of the body.
+After the compost stacks have been completed they are permitted to
+stand five weeks in summer, seven weeks in winter, when they are
+forked over and transferred to the opposite side of the house.
+
+If we state in round numbers the total nitrogen, phosphorus and
+potassium thus far enumerated which Japanese farmers apply or return
+annually to their twenty or twenty-one thousand square miles of
+cultivated fields, the case stands 385,214 tons of nitrogen, 91,656
+tons of phosphorus and 255,778 tons of potassium. These values are
+only approximations and do not include the large volume and variety
+of fertilizers prepared from fish, which have long been used.
+Neither do they include the very large amount of nitrogen derived
+directly from the atmosphere through their long, extensive and
+persistent cultivation of soy beans and other legumes. Indeed, from
+1903 to 1906 the average area of paddy field upon which was grown a
+second crop of green manure in the form of some legume was 6.8 per
+cent of the total area of such fields aggregating 11,000 square
+miles. In 1906 over 18 per cent of the upland fields also produced
+some leguminous crop, these fields aggregating between 9,000 and
+10,000 square miles.
+
+While the values which have been given above, expressing the sum
+total of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium applied annually to the
+cultivated fields of Japan may be somewhat too high for some of the
+sources named, there is little doubt that Japanese farmers apply to
+their fields more of these three plant food elements annually than
+has been computed. The amounts which have been given are sufficient
+to provide annually, for each acre of the 21,321 square miles of
+cultivated land, an application of not less than 56 pounds of
+nitrogen, 13 pounds of phosphorus and 37 pounds of potassium. Or, if
+we omit the large northern island of Hokkaido, still new in its
+agriculture and lacking the intensive practices of the older farm
+land, the quantities are sufficient for a mean application of 60, 14
+and 40 pounds respectively of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium per
+acre, and yet the maturing of 1000 pounds of wheat crop, covering
+grain and straw as water-free substance, removes from the soil but
+13.9 pounds of nitrogen, 2.3 pounds of phosphorus and 8.4 pounds of
+potassium, from which it may be computed that the 60 pounds of
+nitrogen added is sufficient for a crop yielding 31 bushels of
+wheat; the phosphorus is sufficient for a crop of 44 bushels, and
+the potassium for a crop of 35 bushels per acre. Dr. Hopkins, in his
+recent valuable work on "Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture"
+gives, on page 154, a table from which we abstract the following
+data:
+
+
+ APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM REMOVABLE
+                         PER ACRE ANNUALLY BY
+                                   Nitrogen,  Phosphorus,  Potassium,
+                                    pounds.     pounds.      pounds.
+ 100 bush. crop of corn              148          23           71
+ 100 bush. crop of oats               97          16           68
+  50 bush. crop of wheat              96          16           58
+  25 bush. crop of soy beans         159          21           73
+ 100 bush. crop of rice              155          18           95
+   3 ton crop of timothy hay          72           9           71
+   4 ton crop of clover hay          160          20          120
+   3 ton crop of cow pea hay         130          14           98
+   8 ton crop of alfalfa hay         400          36          192
+7000 lb. crop of cotton              168          29.4         82
+ 400 bush. crop of potatoes           84          17.3        120
+  20 ton crop of sugar beets         100          18          157
+Annually applied in Japan, more than  60          14           40
+
+
+We have inserted in this table, for comparison, the crop of rice,
+and have increased the crop of potatoes from three hundred bushels
+to four hundred bushels per acre, because such a yield, like all of
+those named, is quite practicable under good management and
+favorable seasons, notwithstanding the fact that much smaller yields
+are generally attained through lack of sufficient plant food or
+water. From this table, assuming that a crop of matured grain
+contains 11 per cent of water and the straw 15 per cent, while
+potatoes contain 79 per cent and beets 87 per cent, the amounts of
+the three plant food elements removable annually by 1000 pounds of
+crop have been calculated and stated in the next table.
+
+
+  APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM
+  REMOVABLE ANNUALLY PER 1,0000 POUNDS OF DRY CROP SUBSTANCE
+                       Nitrogen,  Phosphorus,   Potassium,
+                        pounds.     pounds.       pounds.
+               Cereals.
+Wheat                   13.873      2.312         8.382
+Oats                    13.666      2.254         9.580
+Corn                    13.719      2.149         6.676
+               Legumes.
+Soy beans               30.807      4.070        14.147
+Cow peas                25.490      2.745        19.216
+Clover                  23.529      2.941        17.647
+Alfalfa                 29.411      2.647        14.118
+               Roots.
+Beets                   19.213      3.462        30.192
+Potatoes                15.556      3.210        22.222
+               Grass.
+Timothy                 14.117      1.765        13.922
+Rice                     9.949      1.129         6.089
+
+
+From the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium applied
+annually to the cultivated fields of Japan and from the data in
+these two tables it may be readily seen that these people are now
+and probably long have been applying quite as much of these three
+plant food elements to their fields with each planting as are
+removed with the crop, and if this is true in Japan it must also be
+true in China. Moreover there is nothing in American agricultural
+practice which indicates that we shall not ultimately be compelled
+to do likewise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE
+
+
+
+
+
+On May 15th we left Shanghai by one of the coastwise steamers for
+Tsingtao, some three hundred miles farther north, in the Shantung
+Province, our object being to keep in touch with methods of tillage
+and fertilization, corresponding phases of which would occur later
+in the season there.
+
+The Shantung province is in the latitude of North Carolina and
+Kentucky, or lies between that of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It
+has an area of nearly 56,000 square miles, about that of Wisconsin.
+Less than one-half of this area is cultivated land yet it is at the
+present time supporting a population exceeding 38,000,000 of people.
+New York state has today less than ten millions and more than half
+of these are in New York city.
+
+It was in this province that Confucius was born 2461 years ago, and
+that Mencius, his disciple, lived. Here, too, seventeen hundred
+years before Confucius' time, after one of the great floods of the
+Yellow river, 2297 B. C., and more than 4100 years ago, the Great Yu
+was appointed "Superintendent of Public Works" and entrusted with
+draining off the flood waters and canalizing the rivers.
+
+Here also was the beginning of the Boxer uprising. Tsingtao sits at
+the entrance of Kiaochow Bay. Following the war of Japan with China
+this was seized by Germany, November 14, 1897, nominally to
+indemnify for the murder of two German missionaries which had
+occurred in Shantung, and March 6th, 1898, this bay, to the high
+water line, its islands and a "Sphere of Influence" extending thirty
+miles in all directions from the boundary, together with Tsingtao,
+was leased to Germany for ninety-nine years. Russia demanded and
+secured a lease of Port Arthur at the same time. Great Britain
+obtained a similar lease of Weihaiwei in Shantung, while to France
+Kwangchow-wan in southern China, was leased. But the "encroachments"
+of European powers did not stop with these leases and during the
+latter part of 1898 the "Policy of Spheres of Influence" culminated
+in the international rivalry for railway concessions and mining.
+These greatly alarmed China and uprisings broke out very naturally
+first in Shantung, among the people nearest of kin to the founders
+of the Empire. As might have been expected of a patriotic, even
+though naturally peaceful people, they determined to defend their
+country against such encroachments and the Boxer troubles followed.
+
+Tsingtao has a deep, commodious harbor always free from ice and
+Germany is constructing here very extensive and substantial harbor
+improvements which will be of lasting benefit to the province and
+the Empire. A pier four miles in length encloses the inner wharf,
+and a second wharf is nearing completion. Germany is also
+maintaining a meteorological observatory here and has established a
+large, comprehensive Forest Garden, under excellent management,
+which is showing remarkable developments for so short a time.
+
+Our steamer entered the harbor during the night and, on going
+ashore, we soon found that only Chinese and German were generally
+spoken; but through the kind assistance of Rev. W. H. Scott, of the
+American Presbyterian Mission, an interpreter promised to call at my
+hotel in the evening, although he failed to appear. The afternoon
+was spent at the Forest Garden and on the reforestation tract, which
+are under the supervision of Mr. Haas. The Forest Garden covers two
+hundred and seventy acres and the reforestation tract three thousand
+acres more. In the garden a great variety of forest and fruit trees
+and small fruits are being tried out with high promise of the most
+valuable results.
+
+It was in the steep hills about Tsingtao that we first saw at close
+range serious soil erosion in China; and the returning of forest
+growth on hills nearly devoid of soil was here remarkable, in view
+of the long dry seasons which prevail from November to June, and
+Fig. 118 shows how destitute of soil the crests of granite hills may
+become and yet how the coming back of the forest growth may hasten
+as soon as it is no longer cut away. The rock going into decay,
+where this view was taken, is an extremely coarse crystalline
+granite, as may be seen in contrast with the watch, and it is
+falling into decay at a marvelous rate. Disintegration has
+penetrated the rock far below the surface and the large crystals are
+held together with but little more tenacity than prevails in a bed
+of gravel. Moisture and even roots penetrate it deeply and readily
+and the crystals fall apart with thrusts of the knife blade, the
+rock crumbling with the greatest freedom. Roadways have been
+extensively carved along the sides of the hills with the aid of only
+pick and shovel. Close examination of the rock shows that layers of
+sediment exist between the crystal faces, either washed down by
+percolating rain or formed through decomposition of the crystals in
+place. The next illustration, Fig. 119, shows how large the growth
+on such soils may be, and in Fig. 120 the vegetation and forest
+growth are seen coming back, closely covering just such soil
+surfaces and rock structure as are indicated in Figs. 118 and 119.
+
+These views are taken on the reforestation tract at Tsingtao but
+most of the growth is volunteer, standing now protected by the
+German government in their effort to see what may be possible under
+careful supervision.
+
+The loads of pine bough fuel represented in Fig. 80 were gathered
+from such hills and from such forest growth as are here represented,
+but on lands more distant from the city. But Tsingtao, with its
+forty thousand Chinese, and Kiaochow across the bay, with its one
+hundred and twenty thousand more, and other villages dotting the
+narrow plains, maintain a very great demand for such growth on the
+hill lands. The wonder is that forest growth has persisted at all
+and has contributed so much in the way of fuel.
+
+Growing in the Forest Garden was a most beautiful wild yellow rose,
+native to Shantung, being used for landscape effect in the parking,
+and it ought to be widely introduced into other countries wherever
+it will thrive. It was growing as heavy borders and massive clumps
+six to eight feet high, giving a most wonderful effect, with its
+brilliant, dense cloud of the richest yellow bloom. The blossoms are
+single, fully as large as the Rosa rugosa, with the tips of the
+petals shading into the most dainty light straw yellow, while the
+center is a deep orange, the contrast being sufficient to show in
+the photograph from which Fig. 121 was prepared. Another beautiful
+and striking feature of this rose is the clustering of the blossoms
+in one-sided wreath-like sprays, sometimes twelve to eighteen inches
+long, the flowers standing close enough to even overlap.
+
+The interpreter engaged for us failed to appear as per agreement so
+the next morning we took the early train for Tsinan to obtain a
+general view of the country and to note the places most favorable as
+points for field study. We had resolved also to make an effort to
+secure an interpreter through the American Presbyterian College at
+Tsinan. Leaving Tsingtao, the train skirts around the Kiaochow bay
+for a distance of nearly fifty miles, where we pass the city of the
+same name with its population of 120,000, which had an import and
+export trade in 1905 valued at over $24,000,000. At Sochen we passed
+through a coal mining district where coal was being brought to the
+cars in baskets carried by men. The coal on the loaded open cars was
+sprinkled with whitewash, serving as a seal to safe-guard against
+stealing during transit, making it so that none could be removed
+without the fact being revealed by breaking the seal. This practice
+is general in China and is applied to many commodities handled in
+bulk. We saw baskets of milled rice carried by coolies sealed with a
+pattern laid over the surface by sprinkling some colored powder upon
+it. Cut stone, corded for the market, was whitewashed in the same
+manner as the coal.
+
+As we were approaching Weihsien, another city of 100,000 people, we
+identified one of the deeply depressed, centuries-old roadways, worn
+eight to ten feet deep, by chancing to see half a dozen teams
+passing along it as the train crossed. We had passed several and
+were puzzling to account for such peculiar erosion. The teams gave
+the explanation and thus connected our earlier reading with the
+concrete. Along these deep-cut roadways caravans may pass, winding
+through the fields, entirely unobserved unless one chances to be
+close along the line or the movement is discovered by clouds of
+dust, one of the methods that has produced them, and we would not be
+surprised if gathering manure from them has played a large part
+also.
+
+Weihsien is near one of the great commercial highways of China and
+in the center of one of the coal mining regions of the province.
+Still further along towards Tsinan we passed Tsingchowfu, another of
+the large cities of the province, with 150,000 population. All day
+we rode through fields of wheat, always planted in rows, and in
+hills in the row east of Kaumi, but in single or double continuous
+drills westward from here to Tsinan. Thousands of wells used for
+irrigation, of the type seen in Fig. 123, were passed during the
+day, many of them recently dug to supply water for the barley
+suffering from the severe drought which was threatening the crop at
+the time.
+
+It was 6:30 P. M. before our train pulled into the station at
+Tsinan; 7:30 when we had finished supper and engaged a ricksha to
+take us to the American Presbyterian College in quest of an
+interpreter. We could not speak Chinese, the ricksha boy could
+neither speak nor understand a word of English, but the hotel
+proprietor had instructed him where to go. We plunged into the
+narrow streets of a great Chinese city, the boy running wherever he
+could, walking where he must on account of the density of the crowds
+or the roughness of the stone paving. We had turned many corners,
+crossed bridges and passed through tunneled archways in sections of
+the massive city walls, until it was getting dusk and the ricksha
+man purchased and lighted a lantern. We were to reach the college in
+thirty minutes but had been out a full hour. A little later the boy
+drew up to and held conference with a policeman. The curious of the
+street gathered about and it dawned upon us that we were lost in the
+night in the narrow streets of a Chinese city of a hundred thousand
+people. To go further would be useless for the gates of the mission
+compound would be locked. We could only indicate by motions our
+desire to return, but these were not understood. On the train a
+thoughtful, kindly old German had recognized a stranger in a foreign
+land and volunteered useful information, cutting from his daily
+paper an advertisement describing a good hotel. This gave the name
+of the hotel in German, English and in Chinese characters. We handed
+this to the policeman, pointing to the name of the hotel, indicating
+by motions the desire to return, but apparently he was unable to
+read in either language and seemed to think we were assuming to
+direct the way to the college. A man and boy in the crowd apparently
+volunteered to act as escort for us. The throng parted and we left
+them, turned more corners into more unlighted narrow alleyways, one
+of which was too difficult to permit us to ride. The escorts, if
+such they were, finally left us, but the dark alley led on until it
+terminated at the blank face, probably of some other portion of the
+massive city wall we had thrice threaded through lighted tunnels.
+Here the ricksha boy stopped and turned about but the light from his
+lantern was too feeble to permit reading the workings of his mind
+through his face, and our tongues were both utterly useless in this
+emergency, so we motioned for him to turn back and by some route we
+reached the hotel at 11 P. M.
+
+We abandoned the effort to visit the college, for the purpose of
+securing an interpreter, and took the early train back to Tsingtao,
+reaching there in time to secure the very satisfactory service of
+Mr. Chu Wei Yung, through the further kind offices of Mr. Scott. We
+had been twice over the road between the two cities, obtaining a
+general idea of the country and of the crops and field operations at
+this season. The next morning we took an early train to Tsangkau and
+were ready to walk through the fields and to talk with the last
+generations of more than forty unbroken centuries of farmers who,
+with brain and brawn, have successfully and continuously sustained
+large families on small areas without impoverishing their soil. The
+next illustration is from a photograph taken in one of these fields.
+We astonished the old farmer by asking the privilege of holding his
+plow through one round in his little field, but he granted the
+privilege readily. Our furrow was not as well turned as his, nor as
+well as we could have done with a two-handled Oliver or John Deere,
+but it was better than the old man had expected and won his respect.
+
+This plow had a good steel point, as a separate, blunt, V-shaped
+piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a good twist which turned
+the soil well. The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of
+the beam was a block for gauging the depth of furrow. The cost of
+this plow, to the farmer, was $2.15, gold, and when the day's work
+is done it is taken home on the shoulders, even though the distance
+may be a mile or more, and carefully housed. Chinese history states
+that the plow was invented by Shennung, who lived 2737-2697 B. C.
+and "taught the art of agriculture and the medical use of herbs". He
+is honored as the "God of Agriculture and Medicine."
+
+Through my interpreter we learned that there were twelve in this
+man's family, which he maintained on fifteen mow of land, or 2.5
+acres, together with his team, consisting of a cow and small donkey,
+besides feeding two pigs. This is at the rate of 192 people, 16
+cows, 16 donkeys and 32 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and of a
+population density equivalent to 3072 people, 256 cows, 256 donkeys
+and 512 swine per square mile of cultivated field.
+
+On another small holding we talked with the farmer standing at the
+well in Fig. 27, where he was irrigating a little piece of barley 30
+feet wide and 138 feet long. He owned and was cultivating but one
+and two-thirds acres of land and yet there were ten in his family
+and he kept one donkey and usually one pig. Here is a maintenance
+capacity at the rate of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs on a
+forty-acre farm; and a population density of 3840 people, 384
+donkeys and 384 pigs per square mile. His usual annual sales in good
+seasons were equivalent in value to $73, gold.
+
+In both of these cases the crops grown were wheat, barley, large and
+small millet, sweet potatoes and soy beans or peanuts. Much straw
+braid is manufactured in the province by the women and children in
+their homes, and the cargo of the steamer on which we returned to
+Shanghai consisted almost entirely of shelled peanuts in gunny sacks
+and huge bales of straw braid destined for the manufacture of hats
+in Europe and America.
+
+Shantung has only moderate rainfall, little more than 24 inches
+annually, and this fact has played an important part in determining
+the agricultural practices of these very old people. In Fig. 123 is
+a closer view than Fig. 27 of the farmer watering his little field
+of barley. The well had just been dug over eight feet deep,
+expressly and solely to water this one piece of grain once, after
+which it would be filled and the ground planted.
+
+The season had been unusually dry, as had been the one before, and
+the people were fearing famine. Only 2.44 inches of rain had fallen
+at Tsingtao between the end of the preceding October and our visit,
+May 21st, and hundreds of such temporary wells had been or were
+being dug all along both sides of the two hundred and fifty miles of
+railway, and nearly all to be filled when the crop on the ground was
+irrigated, to release the land for one to follow. The homes are in
+villages a mile or more apart and often the holdings or rentals are
+scattered, separated by considerable distances, hence easy
+portability is the key-note in the construction of this irrigating
+outfit. The bucket is very light, simply a woven basket waterproofed
+with a paste of bean flour. The windlass turns like a long spool on
+a single pin and the standard is a tripod with removable legs. Some
+wells we saw were sixteen or twenty feet deep and in these the water
+was raised by a cow walking straight away at the end of a rope.
+
+The amount and distribution of rainfall in this province, as
+indicated by the mean of ten years' records at Tsingtao, obtained at
+the German Meteorological Observatory through the courtesy of Dr. B.
+Meyermanns, are given in the table in which the rainfall of Madison,
+Wisconsin, is inserted for comparison.
+
+
+    Mean monthly rainfall. Mean rainfall In 10 days.
+         Tsingtao, Madison, Tsingtao,  Madison,
+          Inches.   Inches.  Inches.   Inches.
+January    .394     1.56      .131      .520
+February   .240     1.50      .080      .500
+March      .892     2.12      .297      .707
+April     1.240     2.62      .413      .840
+May       1.636     3.62      .545     1.207
+June      2.702     4.10      .901     1.866
+July      6.637     3.90     2.212     1.300
+August    5.157     3.21     1.719     1.070
+September 2.448     3.15      .816     1.050
+October   2.258     2.42      .753      .807
+November   .398     1.78      .132      .593
+December   .682     1.77      .227      .590
+         ------------
+Total    24.682    31.65
+
+
+While Shantung receives less than 25 inches of rain during the year,
+against Wisconsin's more than 31 inches, the rainfall during June,
+July and August in Shantung is nearly 14.5 inches, while Wisconsin
+receives but 11.2 inches. This greater summer rainfall, with
+persistent fertilization and intense management, in a warm latitude,
+are some of the elements permitting Shantung today to feed
+38,247,900 people from an area equal to that upon which Wisconsin is
+yet feeding but 2,333,860. Must American agriculture ultimately feed
+sixteen people where it is now feeding but one? If so,
+correspondingly more intense and effective practices must follow,
+and we can neither know too well nor too early what these Old World
+people have been driven to do; how they have succeeded, and how we
+and they may improve upon their practices and lighten the human
+burdens by more fully utilizing physical forces and mechanical
+appliances.
+
+As we passed on to other fields we found a mother and daughter
+transplanting sweet potatoes on carefully fitted ridges of nearly
+air-dry soil in a little field, the remnant of a table on a deeply
+eroded hillside, Fig. 124. The husband was bringing water for
+moistening the soil from a deep ravine a quarter of a mile distant,
+carrying it on his shoulder in two buckets, Fig. 125, across an
+intervening gulch. He had excavated four holes at intervals up the
+gulch and from these, with a broken gourd dipper mended with
+stitches, he filled his pails, bailing in succession from one to the
+other in regular rotation.
+
+The daughter was transplanting. Holding the slip with its tip
+between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke plowed a furrow
+in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a
+downward thrust, planted the slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving
+a depression in which the mother poured about a pint of water from
+another gourd dipper. After this water had soaked away, dry earth
+was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earth drawn over
+this, the only tools being the naked hands and dipper.
+
+The father and mother were dressed in coarse garb but the daughter
+was neatly clad, with delicate hands decorated with rings and a
+bracelet. Neither of the women had bound feet. There were ten in his
+family; and on adjacent similar areas they had small patches of
+wheat nearly ready for the harvest, all planted in hills, hoed, and
+in astonishingly vigorous condition considering the extreme drought
+which prevailed. The potatoes were being planted under these extreme
+conditions in anticipation of the rainy season which then was fully
+due. The summer before had been one of unusual drought, and famine
+was threatened. The government had recently issued an edict that no
+sheep should be sold from the province, fearing they might be needed
+for food. An old woman in one of the villages came out, as we walked
+through, and inquired of my interpreter if we had come to make it
+rain. Such was the stress under which we found these people.
+
+One of the large farmers, owning ten acres, stated that his usual
+yield of wheat in good season was 160 catty per mow, equivalent to
+21.3 bushels per acre. He was expecting the current season not more
+than one half this amount. As a fertilizer he used a prepared earth
+compost which we shall describe later, mixing it with the grain and
+sowing in the hills with the seed, applying about 5333 pounds per
+acre, which he valued, in our currency, at $8.60, or $3.22 per ton.
+A pile of such prepared compost is seen in Fig. 126, ready to be
+transferred to the field. The views show with what cleanliness the
+yard is kept and with what care all animal waste is saved. The cow
+and donkey are the work team, such as was being used by the plowman
+referred to in Fig. 122. The mounds in the background of the lower
+view are graves; the fence behind the animals is made from the stems
+of the large millet, kaoliang, while that at the right of the donkey
+is made of earth, both indicative of the scarcity of lumber. The
+buildings, too, are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered
+with an earthen mortar worked up with chaff.
+
+In another field a man plowing and fertilizing for sweet potatoes
+had brought to the field and laid down in piles the finely
+pulverized dry compost. The father was plowing; his son of sixteen
+years was following and scattering, from a basket, the pulverized
+dry compost in the bottom of the furrow. The next furrow covered the
+fertilizer, four turned together forming a ridge upon which the
+potatoes were to be planted after a second and older son had
+smoothed and fitted the crest with a heavy hand rake. The fertilizer
+was thus applied directly beneath the row, at the rate of 7400
+pounds per acre, valued at $7.15, our currency, or $1.93 per ton.
+
+We were astonished at the moist condition of the soil turned, which
+was such as to pack in the hand notwithstanding the extreme drought
+prevailing and the fact that standing water in the ground was more
+than eight feet below the surface. The field had been without crop
+and cultivated. To the question, "What yield of sweet potatoes do
+you expect from this piece of land?" he replied, "About 4000 catty,"
+which is 440 bushels of 56 pounds per acre. The usual market price
+was stated to be $1.00, Mexican, per one hundred catty, making the
+gross value of the crop $79.49, gold, per acre. His land was valued
+at $60, Mexican, per mow, or $154.80 per acre, gold.
+
+My interpreter informed me that the average well-to-do farmers in
+this part of Shantung own from fifteen to twenty mow of land and
+this amount is quite ample to provide for eight people. Such farmers
+usually keep two cows, two donkeys and eight or ten pigs. The less
+well-to-do or small farmers own two to five mow and act as
+superintendents for the larger farmers. Taking the largest holding,
+of twenty mow per family of eight people, as a basis, the density
+per square mile would be 1536 people, and an area of farm land equal
+to the state of Wisconsin would have 86,000,000 people; 21,500,000
+cows; 21,500,000 donkeys and 86,000,000 swine. These observations
+apply to one of the most productive sections of the province, but
+very large areas of land in the province are not cultivable and the
+last census showed the total population nearly one-half of this
+amount. It is clear, therefore, that either very effective
+agricultural methods are practiced or else extreme economy is
+exercised. Both are true.
+
+On this day in the fields our interpreter procured his dinner at a
+farm house, bringing us four boiled eggs, for which he paid at the
+rate of 8.3 cents of our money, but his dinner was probably included
+in the price. The next table gives the prices for some articles
+obtained by inquiry at the Tsingtao market, May 23rd, 1909, reduced
+to our currency.
+
+
+                                   Cents
+Old potatoes, per lb                2.18
+New potatoes, per lb                2.87
+Salted turnip, per lb                .86
+Onions, per lb                      4.10
+Radishes, bunch of 10               1.29
+String beans, per lb               11.46
+Cucumbers, per lb                   5.78
+Pears, per lb                       5.73
+Apricots, per lb                    8.60
+Pork, fresh, per lb                10.33
+Fish, per lb                        5.73
+Eggs, per dozen                     5.16
+
+
+The only items which are low compared with our own prices are salted
+turnips, radishes and eggs. Most of the articles listed were out of
+season for the locality and were imported for the foreigners,
+turnips, radishes, pork, fish and eggs being the exceptions. Prof.
+Ross informs us that he found eggs selling in Shensi at four for one
+cent of our money.
+
+Our interpreter asked a compensation of one dollar, Mexican, or 43
+cents, U. S. currency, per day, he furnishing his own meals. The
+usual wage for farm labor here was $8.60, per year, with board and
+lodging. We have referred to the wages paid by missionaries for
+domestic service. As servants the Chinese are considered efficient,
+faithful and trustworthy. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. League
+to intrust them with the purse for marketing, feeling that they
+could be depended upon for the closest bargaining. Commonly, when
+instructed to procure a certain article, if they found the price one
+or two cash higher than usual they would select a cheaper
+substitute. If questioned as to why instructions were not followed
+the reply would be "Too high, no can afford."
+
+Mrs. League recited her experience with her cook regarding his use
+of our kitchen appliances. After fitting the kitchen with a modern
+range and cooking utensils, and working with him to familiarize him
+with their use, she was surprised, on going into the kitchen a few
+days later, to find that the old Chinese stove had been set on the
+range and the cooking being done with the usual Chinese furniture.
+When asked why he was not using the stove his reply was "Take too
+much fire." Nothing jars on the nerves of these people more than
+incurring of needless expense, extravagance in any form, or poor
+judgment in making purchases.
+
+Daily we became more and more impressed by the evidence of the
+intense and incessant stress imposed by the dense populations of
+centuries, and how, under it, the laws of heredity have wrought upon
+the people, affecting constitution, habits and character. Even the
+cattle and sheep have not escaped its irresistible power. Many times
+in this province we saw men herding flocks of twenty to thirty sheep
+along the narrow unfenced pathways winding through the fields, and
+on the grave lands. The prevailing drought had left very little
+green to be had from these places and yet sheep were literally
+brushing their sides against fresh green wheat and barley, never
+molesting them. Time and again the flocks were stampeded into the
+grain by an approaching train, but immediately they returned to
+their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and
+an occasional well aimed lump of earth only being required to bring
+them back to their uninviting pastures.
+
+In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces a line of half a dozen white goats
+were often seen feeding single file along the pathways, held by a
+cord like a string of beads, sometimes led by a child. Here, too,
+one of the most common sights was the water buffalo grazing
+unattended among the fields along the paths and canal banks, with
+crops all about, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in
+Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at
+the shifting landscape from the doorway of our low-down Chinese
+houseboat. Something in the sky and the vegetation along the canal
+bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we
+looked aslant up the bank with its fringe of grass, that we were
+gliding along Whitewater creek through familiar meadows and that
+standing up would bring the old home in sight. That instant there
+glided into view, framed in the doorway and projected high against
+the tinted sky above the setting sun, a giant water buffalo standing
+motionless as a statue on the summit of a huge grave mound, lifted
+fully ten feet above the field. But in a flash this was replaced by
+a companion scene, and with all its beautiful setting, which had
+been as suddenly fixed on the memory fourteen years before in the
+far away Trossachs when our coach, hurriedly rounding a sharp turn
+in the hills, suddenly exposed a wild ox of Scotland similarly
+thrust against the sky from a small but isolated rocky summit, and
+then, outspeeding the wireless, recollection crossed two oceans and
+an intervening continent, bringing us back to China before a speed
+of five miles, per hour could move the first picture across the
+narrow doorway.
+
+It was through the fields about Tsangkow that the stalwart
+freighters referred to, Fig. 32, passed us on one of the paths
+leading from Kiaochow through unnumbered country villages, already
+eleven miles on their way with their wheelbarrows loaded with
+matches made in Japan. Many of the wheelbarrow men seen in Shanghai
+and other cities are from Shantung families, away for employment,
+expecting to return. During the harvest season, too, many of these
+people go west and north into Manchuria seeking employment,
+returning to their homes in winter. Alexander Hosie, in his book on
+Manchuria, states that from Chefoo alone more than 20,000 Chinese
+laborers cross to Newchwang every spring by steamer, others finding
+their way there by junks or other means, so that after the harvest
+season 8,000 more return by steamer to Chefoo than left that way in
+the spring, from which he concludes that Shantung annually supplies
+Manchuria with agricultural labor to the extent of 30,000 men.
+
+About the average condition of wheat in Shantung during this dry
+season, and nearing maturity, is seen in Fig. 127, standing rather
+more than three feet high, as indicated by our umbrella between the
+rows. Beyond the wheat and to the right, grave mounds serrate the
+sky line, no hills being in sight, for we were in the broad plain
+built up from the sea between the two mountain islands forming the
+highlands of Shantung.
+
+On May 22nd we were in the fields north of Kiaochow, some sixty
+miles by rail west from Tsingtao, but within the neutral zone
+extending thirty miles back from the high water line of the bay of
+the same name. Here the Germans had built a broad macadam road after
+the best European type but over it were passing the vehicles of
+forty centuries seen in Figs. 128 and 129. It is doubtful if the
+resistance to travel experienced by these men on the better road was
+enough less than that on the old paths they had left to convince
+them that the cost of construction and maintenance would be worth
+while until vehicles and the price of labor change. It may appear
+strange that with a nation of so many millions and with so long a
+history, roads have persisted as little more than beaten foot-paths;
+but modern methods of transportation have remained physical
+impossibilities to every people until the science of the last
+century opened the way. Throughout their history the burdens of
+these people have been carried largely on foot, mostly on the feet
+of men, and of single men wherever the load could be advantageously
+divided. Animals have been supplemental burden bearers but, as with
+the men, they have carried the load directly on their own feet, the
+mode least disturbed by inequalities of road surface.
+
+For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle equals the
+wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel and two feet. No vehicle is
+used more in China, if the carrying pole is excepted, and no
+wheelbarrow in the world permits so high an efficiency of human
+power as the Chinese, as must be clear from Figs. 32 and 61, where
+nearly the whole load is balanced on the axle of a high, massive
+wheel with broad tire. A shoulder band from the handles of the
+barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the load or the
+road is heavy, men or animals may aid in drawing, or even, when the
+wind is favorable, it is not unusual to hoist a sail to gain
+propelling power. It is only in northern China, and then in the more
+level portions, where there are few or no canals, that carts have
+been extensively used, but are more difficult to manage on bad
+roads. Most of the heavy carts, especially those in Manchuria, seen
+in Fig. 203, have the wheels framed rigidly to the axle which
+revolves with them, the bearing being in the bed of the cart. But
+new carts of modern type are being introduced.
+
+In the extent of development and utilization of inland waterways no
+people have approached the Chinese. In the matter of land
+transportation they have clearly followed the line of least
+resistance for individual initiative, so characteristic of
+industrial China.
+
+There are Government courier or postal roads which connect Peking
+with the most distant parts of the Empire, some twenty-one being
+usually enumerated. These, as far as practicable, take the shortest
+course, are often cut into the mountain sides and even pass through
+tunnels. In the plains regions these roads may be sixty to
+seventy-five feet wide, paved and occasionally bordered by rows of
+trees. In some cases, too, signal towers are erected at intervals of
+three miles and there are inns along the way, relay posts and
+stations for soldiers.
+
+We have spoken of planting grain in rows and in hills in the row. In
+Fig. 130 is a field with the rows planted in pairs, the members
+being 16 inches apart, and together occupying 30 inches. The space
+between each pair is also 30 inches, making five feet in all. This
+makes frequent hoeing practicable, which is begun early in the
+spring and is repeated after every rain. It also makes it possible
+to feed the plants when they can utilize food to the best advantage
+and to repeat the feeding if desirable. Besides, the ground in the
+wider space may be fitted, fertilized and another crop planted
+before the first is removed. The hills alternate in the rows and are
+24 to 26 inches from center to center.
+
+The planting may be done by hand or with a drill such as that in
+Fig. 131, ingenious in the simple mechanism which permits planting
+in hills. The husbandman had just returned from the field with the
+drill on his shoulder when we met at the door of his village home,
+where he explained to us the construction and operation of the drill
+and permitted the photograph to be taken, but turning his face
+aside, not wishing to represent a specific character, in the view.
+In the drill there was a heavy leaden weight swinging free from a
+point above the space between the openings leading to the respective
+drill feet. When planting, the operator rocks the drill from side to
+side, causing the weight to hang first over one and then over the
+other opening, thus securing alternation of hills in each pair of
+rows.
+
+Counting the heads of wheat in the hill in a number of fields showed
+them ranging between 20 and 100, the distance between the rows and
+between the hills as stated above. There were always a larger number
+of stalks per hill where the water capacity of the soil was large,
+where the ground water was near the surface, and where the soil was
+evidently of good quality. This may have been partly the result of
+stooling but we have little doubt that judgment was exercised in
+planting, sowing less seed on the lighter soils where less moisture
+was available. In the piece just referred to, in the illustration,
+an average hill contained 46 stalks and the number of kernels in a
+head varied between 20 and 30. Taking Richardson's estimate of
+12,000 kernels of wheat to the pound, this field would yield about
+twelve bushels of wheat per acre this unusually dry season. Our
+interpreter, whose parents lived near Kaomi, four stations further
+west, stated that in 1901, one of their best seasons, farmers there
+secured yields as high as 875 catty per legal mow, which is at the
+rate of 116 bushels per acre. Such a yield on small areas highly
+fertilized and carefully tilled, when the rainfall is ample or where
+irrigation is practiced, is quite possible and in the Kiangsu
+province we observed individual small fields which would certainly
+approach close to this figure.
+
+Further along in our journey of the day we came upon a field where
+three, one of them a boy of fourteen years, were hoeing and thinning
+millet and maize. In China, during the hot weather, the only garment
+worn by the men in the field, was their trousers, and the boy had
+found these unnecessary, although he slipped into them while we were
+talking with his father. The usual yield of maize was set at 420 to
+480 catty per mow, and that of millet at 600 catty, or 60 to 68.5
+bushels of maize and 96 bushels of millet, of fifty pounds, per
+acre, and the usual price would make the gross earnings $23.48 to
+$26.83 per acre for the maize, and $30.96, gold, for the millet.
+
+It was evident when walking through these fields that the fall-sowed
+grain was standing the drought far better than the barley planted in
+the spring, quite likely because of the deeper and stronger
+development of root system made possible by the longer period of
+growth, and partly because the wheat had made much of its growth
+utilizing water that had fallen before the barley was planted and
+which would have been lost from the soil through percolation and
+surface evaporation. Farmers here are very particular to hoe their
+grain, beginning in the early spring, and always after rains,
+thoroughly appreciating the efficiency of earth mulches. Their hoe,
+seen in Fig. 132, is peculiarly well adapted to its purpose, the
+broad blade being so hung that it draws nearly parallel with the
+surface, cutting shallow and permitting the soil to drop practically
+upon the place from which it was loosened. These hoes are made in
+three parts; a wooden handle, a long, strong and heavy iron socket
+shank, and a blade of steel. The blade is detachable and different
+forms and sizes of blades may be used on the same shank. The
+mulch-producing blades may have a cutting edge thirteen inches long
+and a width of nine inches.
+
+At short intervals on either hand, along the two hundred and fifty
+miles of railway between Tsingtao and Tsinan, were observed many
+piles of earth compost distributed in the fields. One of these piles
+is seen in Fig. 133. They were sometimes on unplanted fields, in
+other cases they occurred among the growing crops soon to be
+harvested, or where another crop was to be planted between the rows
+of one already on the ground. Some of these piles were six feet
+high. All were built in cubical form with flat top and carefully
+plastered with a layer of earth mortar which sometimes cracked on
+drying, as seen in the illustration. The purpose of this careful
+shaping and plastering we did not learn although our interpreter
+stated it was to prevent the compost from being appropriated for use
+on adjacent fields. Such a finish would have the effect of a seal,
+showing if the pile had been disturbed, but we suspect other
+advantages are sought by the treatment, which involves so large an
+amount of labor.
+
+The amount of this earth compost prepared and used annually in
+Shantung is large, as indicated by the cases cited, where more than
+five thousand pounds, in one instance, and seven thousand pounds in
+another, were applied per acre for one crop. When two or more crops
+are grown the same year on the same ground, each is fertilized,
+hence from three to six or more tons may be applied to each
+cultivated acre. The methods of preparing compost and of fertilizing
+in Kiangsu, Chekiang and Kwangtung provinces have been described. In
+this part of Shantung, in Chihli and north in Manchuria as far as
+Mukden, the methods are materially different and if possible even
+more laborious, but clearly rational and effective. Here nearly if
+not all fertilizer compost is prepared in the villages and carried
+to the fields, however distant these may be.
+
+Rev. T. J. League very kindly accompanied us to Chengyang on the
+railway, from which we walked some two miles, back to a prosperous
+rural village to see their methods of preparing this compost
+fertilizer. It was toward the close of the afternoon before we
+reached the village, and from all directions husbandmen were
+returning from the fields, some with hoes, some with plows, some
+with drills over their shoulders and others leading donkeys or
+cattle, and similar customs obtain in Japan, as seen in Fig. 134.
+These were mostly the younger men. When we reached the village
+streets the older men, all bareheaded, as were those returning from
+the fields, and usually with their queues tied about the crown, were
+visiting, enjoying their pipes of tobacco.
+
+Opium is no longer used openly in China, unless it be permitted to
+some well along in years with the habit confirmed, and the growing
+of the poppy is prohibited. The penalties for violating the law are
+heavy and enforcement is said to be rigid and effective. For the
+first violation a fine is imposed. If convicted of a second
+violation the fine is heavier with imprisonment added to help the
+victim acquire self control, and a third conviction may bring the
+death penalty. The eradication of the opium scourge must prove a
+great blessing to China. But with the passing of this most
+formidable evil, for whose infliction upon China England was largely
+responsible, it is a great misfortune that through the pitiless
+efforts of the British-American Tobacco Company her people are
+rapidly becoming addicted to the western tobacco habit, selfish
+beyond excuse, filthy beyond measure, and unsanitary in its
+polluting and oxygen-destroying effect upon the air all are
+compelled to breathe. It has already become a greater and more
+inexcusable burden upon mankind than opium ever was.
+
+China, with her already overtaxed fields, can ill afford to give
+over an acre to the cultivation of this crop and she should prohibit
+the growing of tobacco as she has that of the poppy. Let her take
+the wise step now when she readily may, for all civilized nations
+will ultimately be compelled to adopt such a measure. The United
+States in 1902 had more than a million acres growing tobacco, and
+harvested 821,000,000 pounds of leaf. This leaf depleted those soils
+to the extent of more than twenty eight million pounds of nitrogen,
+twenty-nine million pounds of potassium and nearly two and a half
+million pounds of phosphorus, all so irrecoverably lost that even
+China, with her remarkable skill in saving and her infinite patience
+with little things, could not recover them for her soils. On a like
+area of field might as readily be grown twenty million bushels of
+wheat and if the twelve hundred million pounds of grain were all
+exported it would deplete the soil less than the tobacco crop in
+everything but phosphorus, and in this about the same. Used at home,
+China would return it all to one or another field. The home
+consumption of tobacco in the United States averaged seven pounds
+per capita in 1902. A like consumption for China's four hundred
+millions would call for 2800 million pounds of leaf. If she grew it
+on her fields two million acres would not suffice. Her soils would
+be proportionately depleted and she would be short forty million
+bushels of wheat; but if China continues to import her tobacco the
+vast sum expended can neither fertilize her fields nor feed, clothe
+or educate her people, yet a like sum expended in the importation of
+wheat would feed her hungry and enrich her soils.
+
+In the matter of conservation of national resources here is one of
+the greatest opportunities open to all civilized nations. What might
+not be done in the United States with a fund of $57,000,000
+annually, the market price of the raw tobacco leaf, and the land,
+the labor and the capital expended in getting the product to the men
+who puff, breathe and perspire the noxious product into the air
+everyone must breathe, and who bespatter the streets, sidewalks, the
+floor of every public place and conveyance, and befoul the million
+spittoons, smoking rooms and smoking cars, all unnecessary and
+should be uncalled for, but whose installation and up-keep the
+non-user as well as the user is forced to pay, and this in a country
+of, for and by the people. This costly, filthy, selfish tobacco
+habit should be outgrown. Let it begin in every new home, where the
+mother helps the father in refusing to set the example, and let its
+indulgence be absolutely prohibited to everyone while in public
+school and to all in educational institutions.
+
+Mr. League had been given a letter of introduction to one of the
+leading farmers of the village and it chanced that as we reached the
+entrance way to big home we were met by his son, just returning from
+the fields with his drill on his shoulder, and it is he standing in
+the illustration, Fig. 131, holding the letter of introduction in
+his hand. After we had taken this photograph and another one looking
+down the narrow street from the same point, we were led to the small
+open court of the home, perhaps forty by eighty feet, upon which all
+doors of the one-storied structures opened. It was dry and bare of
+everything green, but a row of very tall handsome trees, close
+relatives of our cottonwood, with trunks thirty feet to the limbs,
+looked down into the court over the roofs of the low thatched
+houses. Here we met the father and grandfather of the man with the
+drill, so that, with the boy carrying the baby in his arms, who had
+met his father in the street gateway, there were four generations of
+males at our conference. There were women and girls in the household
+but custom requires them to remain in retirement on such occasions.
+
+A low narrow four-legged bench, not unlike our carpenter's sawhorse,
+five feet long, was brought into the court as a seat, which our host
+and we occupied in common. We had been similarly received at the
+home of Mrs. Wu in Chekiang province. On our right was the open
+doorway to the kitchen in which stood, erect and straight, the tall
+spare figure of the patriarch of the household, his eyes still
+shining black but with hair and long thin straggling beard a uniform
+dull ashen gray. No Chinese hair, it seems, ever becomes white with
+age. He seemed to have assumed the duties of cook for while we were
+there be lighted the fire in the kitchen and was busy, but was
+always the final oracle on any matter of difference of opinion
+between the younger men regarding answers to questions. Two sleeping
+apartments adjoining the kitchen, through whose wide kang beds the
+waste heat from the cooking was conveyed, as described on page 142,
+completed this side of the court. On our left was the main street
+completely shut off by a solid earth wall as high as the eaves of
+the house, while in front of us, adjoining the street, was the
+manure midden, a compost pit six feet deep and some eight feet
+square. A low opening in the street wall permitted the pit to be
+emptied and to receive earth and stubble or refuse from the fields
+for composting, Against the pit and without partition, but cut off
+from the court, was the home of the pigs, both under a common roof
+continuous with a closed structure joining with the sleeping
+apartments, while behind us and along the alley-way by which we had
+entered were other dwelling and storage compartments. Thus was the
+large family of four generations provided with a peculiarly private
+open court where they could work and come out for sun and air, both,
+from our standards, too meagerly provided in the houses.
+
+We had come to learn more of the methods of fertilizing practiced by
+these people. The manure midden was before us and the piles of earth
+brought in from the fields, for use in the process, were stacked in
+the street, where we had photographed them at the entrance, as seen
+in Fig. 135. There a father, with his pipe, and two boys stand at
+the extreme left; beyond them is a large pile of earth brought into
+the village and carefully stacked in the narrow street; on the other
+side of the street, at the corner of the first building, is a pile
+of partly fermented compost thrown from a pit behind the walls.
+Further along in the street, on the same side, is a second large
+stack of soil where two boys are standing at either end and another
+little boy was in a near-by doorway. In front of the tree, on the
+left side of the street, stands a third boy, near him a small donkey
+and still another boy. Beyond this boy stands a third large stack of
+soil, while still beyond and across the way is another pile partly
+composted. Notwithstanding the cattle in the preceding illustration,
+the donkey, the men, the boys, the three long high stacks of soil
+and the two piles of compost, the ten rods of narrow street
+possessed a width of available travelway and a cleanliness which
+would appear impossible. Each farmer's household had its stack of
+soil in the street, and in walking through the village we passed
+dozens of men turning and mixing the soil and compost, preparing it
+for the field.
+
+The compost pit in front of where we sat was two-thirds filled. In
+it had been placed all of the manure and waste of the household and
+street, all stubble and waste roughage from the field, all ashes not
+to be applied directly and some of the soil stacked in the street.
+Sufficient water was added at intervals to keep the contents
+completely saturated and nearly submerged, the object being to
+control the character of fermentation taking place.
+
+The capacity of these compost pits is determined by the amount of
+land served, and the period of composting is made as long as
+possible, the aim being to have the fiber of all organic material
+completely broken down, the result being a product of the
+consistency of mortar.
+
+When it is near the time for applying the compost to the field, or
+of feeding it to the crop, the fermented product is removed in
+waterproof carrying baskets to the floor of the court, to the yard,
+such as seen in Fig. 126, or to the street, where it is spread to
+dry, to be mixed with fresh soil, more ashes, and repeatedly turned
+and stirred to bring about complete aeration and to hasten the
+processes of nitrification. During all of these treatments, whether
+in the compost pit or on the nitrification floor, the fermenting
+organic matter in contact with the soil is converting plant food
+elements into soluble plant food substances in the form of
+potassium, calcium and magnesium nitrates and soluble phosphates of
+one or another form, perhaps of the same bases and possibly others
+of organic type. If there is time and favorable temperature and
+moisture conditions for these fermentations to take place in the
+soil of the field before the crop will need it, the compost may be
+carried direct from the pit to the field and spread broadcast, to be
+plowed under. Otherwise the material is worked and reworked, with
+more water added if necessary, until it becomes a rich complete
+fertilizer, allowed to become dry and then finely pulverized,
+sometimes using stone rollers drawn over it by cattle, the donkey or
+by hand. The large numbers of stacks of compost seen in the fields
+between Tsingtao and Tsinan were of this type and thus laboriously
+prepared in the villages and then transported to the fields, stacked
+and plastered to be ready for use at next planting.
+
+In the early days of European history, before modern chemistry had
+provided the cheaper and more expeditious method of producing
+potassium nitrate for the manufacture of gunpowder and fireworks,
+much land and effort were devoted to niter-farming which was no
+other than a specific application of this most ancient Chinese
+practice and probably imported from China. While it was not until
+1877 to 1879 that men of science came to know that the processes of
+nitrification, so indispensable to agriculture, are due to germ
+life, in simple justice to the plain farmers of the world, to those
+who through all the ages from Adam down, living close to Nature and
+working through her and with her, have fed the world, it should be
+recognized that there have been those among them who have grasped
+such essential, vital truths and have kept them alive in the
+practices of their day. And so we find it recorded in history as far
+back as 1686 that Judge Samuel Lewell copied upon the cover of his
+journal a practical man's recipe for making saltpeter beds, in which
+it was directed, among other things, that there should be added to
+it "mother of petre", meaning, in Judge Lewell's understanding,
+simply soil from an old niter bed, but in the mind of the man who
+applied the maternity prefix,--mother,--it must have meant a vital
+germ contained in the soil, carried with it, capable of reproducing
+its kind and of perpetuating its characteristic work, belonging to
+the same category with the old, familiar, homely germ, "mother" of
+vinegar. So, too, with the old cheesemaker who grasped the
+conception which led to the long time practice of washing the walls
+of a new cheese factory with water from an old factory of the same
+type, he must have been led by analogies of experience with things
+seen to realize that he was here dealing with a vital factor.
+Hundreds, of course, have practiced empyrically, but some one
+preceded with the essential thought and we feel it is small credit
+to men of our time who, after ten or twenty years of technical
+training, having their attention directed to a something to be seen,
+and armed with compound microscopes which permit them to see with
+the physical eye the "mother of petre", arrogate to themselves the
+discovery of a great truth. Much more modest would it be and much
+more in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due to admit
+that, after long doubting the existence of such an entity, we have
+succeeded in confirming in fullness the truth of a great discovery
+which belongs to an unnamed genius of the past, or perhaps to a
+hundred of them who, working with life's processes and familiar with
+them through long intimate association, saw in these invisible
+processes analogies that revealed to them the essential truth in
+such fullness as to enable them to build upon it an unfailing
+practice.
+
+There is another practice followed by the Chinese, connected with
+the formation of nitrates in soils, which again emphasizes the
+national trait of saving and turning to use any and every thing
+worth while. Our attention was called to this practice by Rev. A. E.
+Evans of Shunking, Szechwan province. It rests upon the tendency of
+the earth floors of dwellings to become heavily charged with calcium
+nitrate through the natural processes of nitrification. Calcium
+nitrate being deliquescent absorbs moisture sufficiently to dissolve
+and make the floor wet and sticky. Dr. Evans' attention was drawn to
+the wet floor in his own house, which be at first ascribed to
+insufficient ventilation, but which be was unable to remedy by
+improving that. The father of one of his assistants, whose business
+consisted in purchasing the soil of such floors for producing
+potassium nitrate, used so much in China in the manufacture of
+fireworks and gunpowder, explained his difficulty and suggested the
+remedy.
+
+This man goes from house to house through the village, purchasing
+the soil of floors which have thus become overcharged. He procures a
+sample, tests it and announces what he will pay for the surface two,
+three or four inches, the price sometimes being as high as fifty
+cents for the privilege of removing the top layer of the floor,
+which the proprietors must replace. He leaches the soil removed, to
+recover the calcium nitrate, and then pours the leachings through
+plant ashes containing potassium carbonate, for the purpose of
+transforming the calcium nitrate into the potassium nitrate or
+saltpeter. Dr. Evans learned that during the four months preceding
+our interview this man had produced sufficient potassium nitrate to
+bring his sales up to $80, Mexican. It was necessary for him to make
+a two-days journey to market his product. In addition he paid a
+license fee of 80 cents per month. He must purchase his fuel ashes
+and hire the services of two men.
+
+When the nitrates which accumulate in the floors of dwellings are
+not collected for this purpose the soil goes to the fields to be
+used directly as a fertilizer, or it may be worked into compost. In
+the course of time the earth used in the village walls and even in
+the construction of the houses may disintegrate so as to require
+removal, but in all such cases, as with the earth brick used in the
+kangs, the value of the soil has improved for composting and is
+generally so used. This improvement of the soil will not appear
+strange when it is stated that such materials are usually from the
+subsoil, whose physical condition would improve when exposed to the
+weather, converting it in fact into an uncropped virgin soil.
+
+We were unable to secure definite data as to the chemical
+composition of these composts and cannot say what amounts of
+available plant food the Shantung farmers are annually returning to
+their fields. There can be little doubt, however, that the amounts
+are quite equal to those removed by the crops. The soils appeared
+well supplied with organic matter and the color of the foliage and
+the general aspect of crops indicated good feeding.
+
+The family with whom we talked in the village place their usual
+yields of wheat at 420 catty of grain and 1000 catty of straw per
+mow,--their mow was four-thirds of the legal standard mow--the grain
+being worth 35 strings of cash and the straw 12 to 14 strings, a
+string of cash being 40 cents, Mexican, at this time. Their yields
+of beans were such as to give them a return of 30 strings of cash
+for the grain and 8 to 10 strings for the straw. Small millet
+usually yielded 450 catty of grain, worth 25 strings of cash, per
+mow, and 800 catty of straw worth 10 to 11 strings of cash; while
+the yields of large millet they placed at 400 catty per mow, worth
+25 strings of cash, and 1000 catty of straw worth 12 to 14 strings
+of cash. Stating these amounts in bushels per acre and in our
+currency, the yield of wheat was 42 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds
+of straw per acre, having a cash value of $27.09 for the grain and
+$10.06 for the straw. The soy bean crop follows the wheat, giving an
+additional return of $23.22 for the beans and $6.97 for the straw,
+making the gross earning for the two crops $67.34 per acre. The
+yield of small millet was 54 bushels of seed and 4800 pounds of
+straw per acre, worth $27.09 and $8.12 for seed and straw
+respectively, while the kaoliang or large millet gave a yield of 48
+bushels of grain and 6000 pounds of stalks per acre, worth $19.35
+for the grain, and $10.06 for the straw.
+
+A crop of wheat like the one stated, if no part of the plant food
+contained in the grain or straw were returned to the field, would
+deplete the soil to the extent of about 90 pounds of nitrogen, 15
+pounds of phosphorus and 65 pounds of potassium; and the crop of soy
+beans, if it also were entirely removed, would reduce these three
+plant food elements in the soil to the extent of about 240 pounds of
+nitrogen, 33 pounds of phosphorus and 102 pounds of potassium, on
+the basis of 45 bushels of beans and 5400 pounds of stems and leaves
+per acre, assuming that the beans added no nitrogen to the soil,
+which is of course not true. This household of farmers, therefore,
+in order to have maintained this producing power in their soil, have
+been compelled to return to it annually, in one form or another, not
+less than 48 pounds of phosphorus and 167 pounds of potassium per
+acre. The 330 pounds of nitrogen they would have to return in the
+form of organic matter or accumulate it from the atmosphere, through
+the instrumentality of their soy bean crop or some other legume. It
+has already been stated that they do add more than 5000 to 7000
+pounds of dry compost, which, repeated for a second crop, would make
+an annual application of five to seven tons of dry compost per acre
+annually. They do use, in addition to this compost, large amounts of
+bean and peanut cake, which carry all of the plant food elements
+derived from the soil which are contained in the beans and the
+peanuts. If the vines are fed, or if the stems of the beaus are
+burned for fuel, most of the plant food elements in these will be
+returned to the field, and they have doubtless learned how to
+completely restore the plant food elements removed by their crops,
+and persistently do so.
+
+The roads made by the Germans in the vicinity of Tsingtao enabled us
+to travel by ricksha into the adjoining country, and on one such
+trip we visited a village mill for grinding soy beans and peanuts in
+the manufacture of oil, and Fig. 136 shows the stone roller, four
+feet in diameter and two feet thick, which is revolved about a
+vertical axis on a circular stone plate, drawn by a donkey, crushing
+the kernels partly by its weight and partly by a twisting motion,
+for the arm upon which the roller revolves is very short. After the
+meal had been ground the oil was expressed in essentially the same
+way as that described for the cotton seed, but the bean and peanut
+cakes are made much larger than the cotton seed cakes, about
+eighteen inches in diameter and three to four inches thick. Two of
+these cakes are seen in Fig. 137, standing on edge outside the mill
+in an orderly clean court. It is in this form that bean cake is
+exported in large quantities to different parts of China, and to
+Japan in recent years, for use as fertilizer, and very recently it
+is being shipped to Europe for both stock food and fertilizer.
+
+Nowhere in this province, nor further north, did we see the large
+terra cotta, receptacles so extensively used in the south for
+storing human excreta. In these dryer climates some method of
+desiccation is practiced and we found the gardeners in the vicinity
+of Tsingtao with quantities of the fertilizer stacked under matting
+shelters in the desiccated condition, this being finely pulverized
+in one or another way before it was applied. The next illustration,
+Fig. 138, shows one of these piles being fitted for the garden, its
+thatched shelter standing behind the grandfather of a household. His
+grandson was carrying the prepared fertilizer to the garden area
+seen in Fig. 139, where the father was working it into the soil. The
+greatest pains is taken, both in reducing the product to a fine
+powder and in spreading and incorporating it with the soil, for one
+of their maxims of soil management is to make each square foot of
+field or garden the equal of every other in its power to produce. In
+this manner each little holding is made to yield the highest returns
+possible under the conditions the husbandman is able to control.
+
+From one portion of the area being fitted, a crop of artemisia had
+been harvested, giving a gross return at the rate of $73.19 per
+acre, and from another leeks had been taken, bringing a gross return
+of $43.86 per acre. Chinese celery was the crop for which the ground
+was being fitted.
+
+The application of soil as a fertilizer to the fields of China,
+whether derived from the subsoil or from the silts and organic
+matter of canals and rivers, must have played an important part in
+the permanency of agriculture in the Far East, for all such
+additions have been positive accretions to the effective soil,
+increasing its depth and carrying to it all plant food elements. If
+not more than one-half of the weight of compost applied to the
+fields of Shantung is highly fertilized soil, the rates of
+application observed would, in a thousand years, add more than two
+million pounds per acre, and this represents about the volume of
+soil we turn with the plow in our ordinary tillage operations, and
+this amount of good soil may carry more than 6000 pounds of
+nitrogen, 2000 pounds of phosphorus and more than 60,000 pounds of
+potassium.
+
+When we left our hotel by ricksha for the steamer, returning to
+Shanghai, we soon observed a boy of thirteen or fourteen years
+apparently following, sometimes a little ahead, sometimes behind,
+usually keeping the sidewalk but slackening his pace whenever the
+ricksha man came to a walk. It was a full mile to the wharf. The boy
+evidently knew the sailing schedule and judged by the valise in
+front, that we were to take the out-going steamer and that he might
+possibly earn two cents, Mexican, the usual fee for taking a valise
+aboard the steamer. Twenty men at the wharf might be waiting for the
+job, but he was taking the chance with the mile down and back thrown
+in, and all for less than one cent in our currency, equivalent at
+the time to about twenty "cash". As we neared the steamer the lad
+closed up behind but strong and eager men were watching. Twice he
+was roughly thrust aside and before the ricksha stopped a man of
+stalwart frame seized the valise and, had we not observed the boy
+thus unobtrusively entering the competition, he would have had only
+his trouble for his pains. Thus intense was the struggle here for
+existence and thus did a mere lad put himself effectively into it.
+True to breeding and example he had spared no labor to win and was
+surprised but grateful to receive more than he had expected.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE
+
+
+
+
+
+Time is a function of every life process, as it is of every
+physical, chemical and mental reaction, and the husbandman is
+compelled to shape his operations so as to conform with the time
+requirements of his crops. The oriental farmer is a time economizer
+beyond any other. He utilizes the first and last minute and all that
+are between. The foreigner accuses the Chinaman of being always
+"long on time", never in a fret, never in a hurry. And why should he
+be when he leads time by the forelock, and uses all there is?
+
+The customs and practices of these Farthest East people regarding
+their manufacture of fertilizers in the form of earth composts for
+their fields, and their use of altered subsoils which have served in
+their kangs, village walls and dwellings, are all instances where
+they profoundly shorten the time required in the field to affect the
+necessary chemical, physical and biological reactions which produce
+from them plant food substances. Not only do they thus increase
+their time assets, but they add, in effect, to their land area by
+producing these changes outside their fields, at the same time
+giving their crops the immediately active soil products.
+
+Their compost practices have been of the greatest consequence to
+them, both in their extremely wet, rice-culture methods, and in
+their "dry-farming" practices, where the soil moisture is too scanty
+during long periods to permit rapid fermentation under field
+conditions. Western agriculturalists have not sufficiently
+appreciated the fact that the most rapid growth of plant food
+substances in the soil cannot occur at the same time and place with
+the most rapid crop increase, because both processes draw upon the
+available soil moisture, soil air and soluble potassium, calcium,
+phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. Whether this fundamental
+principle of practical agriculture is written in their literature or
+not it is most indelibly fixed in their practice. If we and they can
+perpetuate the essentials of this practice at a large saving of
+human effort, or perpetually secure the final result in some more
+expeditious and less laborious way, most important progress will
+have been made.
+
+When we went north to the Shantung province the Kiangsu and Chekiang
+farmers were engaged in another of their time saving practices, also
+involving a large amount of human labor. This was the planting of
+cotton in wheat fields before the wheat was quite ready to harvest.
+In the sections of these two provinces which we visited most of the
+wheat and barley were sowed broadcast on narrow raised lands, some
+five feet wide, with furrows between, after the manner seen in Fig.
+140, showing a reservoir in the immediate foreground, on whose bank
+is installed one of the four-man foot-power irrigation pumps in use
+to flood the nursery rice bed close by on the right. The narrow
+lands of broadcasted wheat extend back from the reservoir toward the
+farmsteads which dot the landscape, and on the left stands one of
+the pump shelters near the canal bank.
+
+To save time, or lengthen the growing season of the cotton which was
+to follow, this seed was sown broadcast among the grain on the
+surface, some ten to fifteen days before the wheat would be
+harvested. To cover the seed the soil in the furrows between the
+beds had been spaded loose to a depth of four or five inches, finely
+pulverized, and then with a spade was evenly scattered over the bed,
+letting it sift down among the grain, covering the seed. This loose
+earth, so applied, acts as a mulch to conserve the capillary
+moisture, permitting the soil to become sufficiently damp to
+germinate the seed before the wheat is harvested. The next
+illustration, Fig. 141, is a closer view with our interpreter
+standing in another field of wheat in which cotton was being sowed
+April 22nd in the manner described, and yet the stand of grain was
+very close and shoulder high, making it not an easy task either to
+sow the seed or to scatter sufficient soil to cover it.
+
+When we had returned from Shantung this piece of grain had been
+harvested, giving a yield of 95.6 bushels of wheat and 3.5 tons of
+straw per acre, computed from the statement of the owner that 400
+catty of grain and 500 catty of straw had been taken from the beds
+measuring 4050 square feet. On the morning of May 29th the
+photograph for Fig. 142 was taken, showing the same area after the
+wheat had been harvested and the cotton was up, the young plants
+showing slightly through the short stubble. These beds had already
+been once treated with liquid fertilizer. A little later the plants
+would be hoed and thinned to a stand of about one plant per each
+square foot of surface. There were thirty-seven days between the
+taking of the two photographs, and certainly thirty days had been
+added to the cotton crop by this method of planting, over what would
+have been available if the grain had been first harvested and the
+field fitted before planting, It will be observed that the cotton
+follows the wheat without plowing, but the soil was deep, naturally
+open, and a layer of nearly two inches of loose earth had been
+placed over the seed at the time of planting. Besides, the ground
+would be deeply worked with the two or four tined hoe, at the time
+of thinning.
+
+Starting cotton in the wheat in the manner described is but a
+special case of a general practice widely in vogue. The growing of
+multiple crops is the rule throughout these countries wherever the
+climate permits. Sometimes as many as three crops occupy the same
+field in recurrent rows, but of different dates of planting and in
+different stages of maturity. Reference has been made to the
+overlapping and alternation of cucumbers with greens. The general
+practice of planting nearly all crops in rows lends itself readily
+to systems of multiple cropping, and these to the fullest possible
+utilization of every minute of the growing season and of the time of
+the family in caring for the crops. In the field, Fig. 143, a crop
+of winter wheat was nearing maturity, a crop of windsor beans was
+about two-thirds grown, and cotton had just been planted, April
+22nd. This field had been thrown into ridges some five feet wide
+with a twelve inch furrow between them. Two rows of wheat eight
+inches wide, planted two feet between centers occupied the crest of
+the ridge, leaving a strip sixteen inches wide, seen in the upper
+section, (1) for tillage, (2) then fertilization and (3) finally the
+row of cotton planted just before the wheat was harvested. Against
+the furrow on each side was a row of windsor beans, seen in the
+lower view, hiding the furrow, which was matured some time after the
+wheat was harvested and before the cotton was very large. A late
+fall crop sometimes follows the windsor beans after a period of
+tillage and fertilization, making four in one year. With such a
+succession fertilization for each crop, and an abundance of soil
+moisture are required to give the largest returns from the soil.
+
+In another plan winter wheat or barley may grow side by side with a
+green crop, such as the "Chinese clover" (Medicago denticulata,
+Willd.) for soil fertilizer, as was the case in Fig. 144, to be
+turned under and fertilize for a crop of cotton planted in rows on
+either side of a crop of barley. After the barley had been harvested
+the ground it occupied would be tilled and further fertilized, and
+when the cotton was nearing maturity a crop of rape might be grown,
+from which "salted cabbage" would be prepared for winter use.
+
+Multiple crops are grown as far north in Chihli as Tientsin and
+Peking, these being oftenest wheat, maize, large and small millet
+and soy beans, and this, too, where the soil is less fertile and
+where the annual rainfall is only about twenty-five inches, the
+rainy season beginning in late June or early July, and Fig. 145
+shows one of these fields as it appeared June 14th, where two rows
+of wheat and two of large millet were planted in alternating pairs,
+the rows being about twenty-eight inches apart. The wheat was ready
+to harvest but the straw was unusually short because growing on a
+light sandy loam in a season of exceptional drought, but little more
+than two inches of rain having fallen after January 1st of that
+year.
+
+The piles of pulverized dry-earth compost seen between the rows had
+been brought for use on the ground occupied by the wheat when that
+was removed. The wheat would be pulled, tied in bundles, taken to
+the village and the roots cut off, for making compost, as in Fig.
+146, which shows the family engaged in cutting the roots from the
+small bundles of wheat, using a long straight knife blade, fixed at
+one end, and thrust downward upon the bundle with lever pressure.
+These roots, if not used as fuel, would be transferred to the
+compost pit in the enclosure seen in Fig. 147, whose walls were
+built of earth brick. Here, with any other waste litter, manure or
+ashes, they would be permitted to decay under water until the fiber
+had been destroyed, thus permitting it to be incorporated with soil
+and applied to the fields, rich in soluble plant food and in a
+condition which would not interfere with the capillary movement of
+soil moisture, the work going on outside the field where the changes
+could occur unimpeded and without interfering with the growth of
+crops on the ground.
+
+In this system of combined intertillage and multiple cropping the
+oriental farmer thus takes advantage of whatever good may result
+from rotation or succession of crops, whether these be physical,
+vito-chemical or biological. If plants are mutually helpful through
+close association of their root systems in the soil, as some believe
+may be the case, this growing of different species in close
+juxtaposition would seem to provide the opportunity, but the other
+advantages which have been pointed out are so evident and so
+important that they, rather than this, have doubtless led to the
+practice of growing different crops in close recurrent rows.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT
+
+
+
+
+
+The basal food crop of the people of China, Korea and Japan is rice,
+and the mean consumption in Japan, for the five years ending 1906,
+per capita and per annum, was 302 pounds. Of Japan's 175,428 square
+miles she devoted, in 1906, 12,856 to the rice crop. Her average
+yield of water rice on 12,534 square miles exceeded 33 bushels per
+acre, and the dry land rice averaged 18 bushels per acre on 321
+square miles. In the Hokkaido, as far north as northern Illinois,
+Japan harvested 1,780,000 bushels of water rice from 53,000 acres.
+
+In Szechwan province, China, Consul-General Hosie places the yield
+of water rice on the plains land at 44 bushels per acre, and that of
+the dry land rice at 22 bushels. Data given us in China show an
+average yield of 42 bushels of water rice per acre, while the
+average yield of wheat was 25 bushels per acre, the normal yield in
+Japan being about 17 bushels.
+
+If the rice eaten per capita in China proper and Korea is equal to
+that in Japan the annual consumption for the three nations, using
+the round number 300 pounds per capita per annum, would be:
+
+
+             Population.    Consumption.
+   China     410,000,000    61,500,000 tons
+   Korea      12,000,000     1,800,000 tons
+   Japan      53,000,000     7,950 000 tons
+               -----------------------
+   Total     475,000,000    71,250,000 tons
+
+
+If the ratio of irrigated to dry land rice in Korea and China proper
+is the same as that in Japan, and if the mean yield of rice per acre
+in these countries were forty bushels for the water rice and twenty
+bushels for the dry land rice, the acreage required to give this
+production would be:
+
+
+                         Area.
+              Water rice,     Dry land rice,
+               sq. miles.       sq. miles.
+In China        78,073            4,004
+In Korea         2,285              117
+In Japan        12,534              321
+               -------           ------
+Sum             92,892            4,442
+Total           97,334
+
+
+Our observations along the four hundred miles of railway in Korea
+between Antung, Seoul and Fusan, suggest that the land under rice in
+this country must be more rather than less than that computed, and
+the square miles of canalized land in China, as indicated on pages
+97 to 102, would indicate an acreage of rice for her quite as large
+as estimated.
+
+In the three main islands of Japan more than fifty per cent of the
+cultivated land produces a crop of water rice each year and 7.96 per
+cent of the entire land area of the Empire, omitting far-north
+Karafuto. In Formosa and in southern China large areas produce two
+crops each year. At the large mean yield used in the computation the
+estimated acreage of rice in China proper amounts to 5.93 per cent
+of her total area and this is 7433 square miles greater than the
+acreage of wheat in the United States in 1907. Our yield of wheat,
+however, was but 19,000,000 tons, while China's output of rice was
+certainly double and probably three times this amount from nearly
+the same acreage of land; and notwithstanding this large production
+per acre, more than fifty per cent, possibly as high as seventy-five
+per cent, of the same land matures at least one other crop the same
+year, and much of this may be wheat or barley, both chiefly consumed
+as human food.
+
+Had the Mongolian races spread to and developed in North America
+instead of, or as well as, in eastern Asia, there might have been a
+Grand Canal, something as suggested in Fig. 148, from the Rio Grande
+to the mouth of the Ohio river and from the Mississippi to
+Chesapeake Bay, constituting more than two thousand miles of inland
+water-way, serving commerce, holding up and redistributing both the
+run-off water and the wasting fertility of soil erosion, spreading
+them over 200,000 square miles of thoroughly canalized coastal
+plains, so many of which are now impoverished lands, made so by the
+intolerable waste of a vaunted civilization. And who shall venture
+to enumerate the increase in the tonnage of sugar, bales of cotton,
+sacks of rice, boxes of oranges, baskets of peaches, and in the
+trainloads of cabbage, tomatoes and celery such husbanding would
+make possible through all time; or number the increased millions
+these could feed and clothe? We may prohibit the exportation of our
+phosphorus, grind our limestone, and apply them to our fields, but
+this alone is only temporizing with the future. The more we produce,
+the more numerous our millions, the faster must present practices
+speed the waste to the sea, from whence neither money nor prayer can
+call them back.
+
+If the United States is to endure; if we shall project our history
+even through four or five thousand years as the Mongolian nations
+have done, and if that history shall be written in continuous peace,
+free from periods of wide-spread famine or pestilence, this nation
+must orient itself; it must square its practices with a conservation
+of resources which can make endurance possible. Intensifying
+cultural methods but intensifies the digestion, assimilation and
+exhaustion of the surface soil, from which life springs. Multiple
+cropping, closer stands on the ground and stronger growth, all mean
+the transpiration of much more water per acre through the crops, and
+this can only be rendered possible through a redistribution of the
+run-off and the adoption of irrigation practices in humid climates
+where water exists in abundance. Sooner or later we must adopt a
+national policy which shall more completely conserve our water
+resources, utilizing them not only for power and transportation, but
+primarily for the maintenance of soil fertility and greater crop
+production through supplemental irrigation, and all these great
+national interests should be considered collectively, broadly, and
+with a view to the fullest and best possible coordination. China,
+Korea and Japan long ago struck the keynote of permanent agriculture
+but the time has now come when they can and will make great
+improvements, and it remains for us and other nations to profit by
+their experience, to adopt and adapt what is good in their practice
+and help in a world movement for the introduction of new and
+improved methods.
+
+In selecting rice as their staple crop; in developing and
+maintaining their systems of combined irrigation and drainage,
+notwithstanding they have a large summer rainfall; in their systems
+of multiple cropping; in their extensive and persistent use of
+legumes; in their rotations for green manure to maintain the humus
+of their soils and for composting; and in the almost religious
+fidelity with which they have returned to their fields every form of
+waste which can replace plant food removed by the crops, these
+nations have demonstrated a grasp of essentials and of fundamental
+principles which may well cause western nations to pause and
+reflect.
+
+While this country need not and could not now adopt their laborious
+methods of rice culture, and while, let us hope, those who come
+after us may never be compelled to do so, it is nevertheless quite
+worth while to study, for the sake of the principles involved, the
+practices they have been led to adopt.
+
+Great as is the acreage of land in rice in these countries but
+little, relatively, is of the dry land type, and the fields upon
+which most of the rice grows have all been graded to a water level
+and surrounded by low, narrow raised rims, such as may be seen in
+Fig. 149 and in Fig. 150, where three men are at work on their
+foot-power pump, flooding fields preparatory to transplanting the
+rice. If the country was not level then the slopes have been graded
+into horizontal terraces varying in size according to the steepness
+of the areas in which they were cut. We saw these often no larger
+than the floor of a small room, and Professor Ross informed me that
+he walked past those in the interior of China no larger than a
+dining table and that he saw one bearing its crop of rice,
+surrounded by its rim and holding water, yet barely larger than a
+good napkin. The average area of the paddy field in Japan is
+officially reported at 1.14 se, or an area of but 31 by 40 feet.
+Excluding Hokkaido, Formosa and Karafuto, fifty-three per cent of
+the irrigated rice lands in Japan are in allotments smaller than
+one-eighth of an acre, and seventy-four per cent of other cultivated
+lands are held in areas less than one-fourth of an acre, and each of
+these may be further subdivided. The next two illustrations, Figs.
+151 and 152, give a good idea both of the small size of the rice
+fields and of the terracing which has been done to secure the water
+level basins. The house standing near the center of Fig. 151 is a
+good scale for judging both the size of the paddies and the slope of
+the valley. The distance between the rows of rice is scarcely one
+foot, hence counting these in the foreground may serve as another
+measure. There are more than twenty little fields shown in this
+engraving in front of the house and reaching but half way to it, and
+the house was less than five hundred feet from the camera.
+
+There are more than eleven thousand square miles of fields thus
+graded in the three main islands of Japan, each provided with rims,
+with water supply and drainage channels, all carefully kept in the
+best of repair. The more level areas, too, in each of the three
+countries, have been similarly thrown into water level basins,
+comparatively few of which cover large areas, because nearly always
+the holdings are small. All of the earth excavated from the canals
+and drainage channels has been leveled over the fields unless needed
+for levees or dikes, so that the original labor of construction,
+added to that of maintenance, makes a total far beyond our
+comprehension and nearly all of it is the product of human effort.
+
+The laying out and shaping of so many fields into these level basins
+brings to the three nations an enormous aggregate annual asset, a
+large proportion of which western nations are not yet utilizing. The
+greatest gain comes from the unfailing higher yields made possible
+by providing an abundance of water through which more plant food can
+be utilized, thus providing higher average yields. The waters used,
+coming as they do largely from the uncultivated hills and mountain
+lands, carrying both dissolved and suspended matters, make positive
+annual additions of dissolved limestone and plant food elements to
+the fields which in the aggregate have been very large, through the
+persistent repetitions which have prevailed for centuries. If the
+yearly application of such water to the rice fields is but sixteen
+inches, and this has the average composition quoted by Merrill for
+rivers of North America, taking into account neither suspended
+matter nor the absorption of potassium and phosphorus by it, each
+ten thousand square miles would receive, dissolved in the water,
+substances containing some 1,400 tons of phosphorus; 23,000 tons of
+potassium; 27,000 tons of nitrogen; and 48,000 tons of sulphur. In
+addition, there are brought to the fields some 216,000 tons of
+dissolved organic matter and a still larger weight of dissolved
+limestone, so necessary in neutralizing the acidity of soils,
+amounting to 1,221,000 tons; and such savings have been maintained
+in China, Korea and Japan on more than five, and possibly more than
+nine, times the ten thousand square miles, through centuries. The
+phosphorus thus turned upon ninety thousand square miles would
+aggregate nearly thirteen million tons in a thousand years, which is
+less than the time the practice has been maintained, and is more
+phosphorus than would be carried in the entire rock phosphate thus
+far mined in the United States, were it all seventy-five per cent
+pure.
+
+The canalization of fifty thousand square miles of our Gulf and
+Atlantic coastal plain, and the utilization on the fields of the
+silts and organic matter, together with the water, would mean
+turning to account a vast tonnage of plant food which is now wasting
+into the sea, and a correspondingly great increase of crop yield.
+There ought, and it would seem there must some time be provided a
+way for sending to the sandy plains of Florida, and to the sandy
+lands between there and the Mississippi, large volumes of the rich
+silt and organic matter from this and other rivers, aside from that
+which should be applied systematically to building above flood plain
+the lands of the delta which are subject to overflow or are too low
+to permit adequate drainage.
+
+It may appear to some that the application of such large volumes of
+water to fields, especially in countries of heavy rainfall, must
+result in great loss of plant food through leaching and surface
+drainage. But under the remarkable practices of these three nations
+this is certainly not the case and it is highly important that our
+people should understand and appreciate the principles which
+underlie the practices they have almost uniformly adopted on the
+areas devoted to rice irrigation. In the first place, their paddy
+fields are under-drained so that most of the water either leaves the
+soil through the crop, by surface evaporation, or it percolates
+through the subsoil into shallow drains. When water is passed
+directly from one rice paddy to another it is usually permitted some
+time after fertilization, when both soil and crop have had time to
+appropriate or fix the soluble plant food substances. Besides this,
+water is not turned upon the fields until the time for transplanting
+the rice, when the plants are already provided with a strong root
+system and are capable of at once appropriating any soluble plant
+food which may develop about their roots or be carried downward over
+them.
+
+Although the drains are of the surface type and but eighteen inches
+to three feet in depth, they are sufficiently numerous and close so
+that, although the soil is continuously nearly filled with water,
+there is a steady percolation of the fresh, fully aerated water
+carrying an abundance of oxygen into the soil to meet the needs of
+the roots, so that watermelons, egg plants, musk melons and taro are
+grown in the rotations on the small paddies among the irrigated rice
+after the manner seen in the illustrations. In Fig. 153 each double
+row of egg plants is separated from the next by a narrow shallow
+trench which connects with a head drain and in which water was
+standing within fourteen inches of the surface. The same was true in
+the case of the watermelons seen in Fig. 154, where the vines are
+growing on a thick layer of straw mulch which holds them from the
+moist soil and acts to conserve water by diminishing evaporation
+and, through decay from the summer rains and leaching, serves as
+fertilizer for the crop. In Fig. 155 the view is along a pathway
+separating two head ditches between areas in watermelons and taro,
+carrying the drainage waters from the several furrows into the main
+ditches. Although the soil appeared wet the plants were vigorous and
+healthy, seeming in no way to suffer from insufficient drainage.
+
+These people have, therefore, given effective attention to the
+matter of drainage as well as irrigation and are looking after
+possible losses of plant food, as well as ways of supplying it. It
+is not alone where rice is grown that cultural methods are made to
+conserve soluble plant food and to reduce its loss from the field,
+for very often, where flooding is not practiced, small fields and
+beds, made quite level, are surrounded by low raised borders which
+permit not only the whole of any rain to be retained upon the field
+when so desired, but it is completely distributed over it, thus
+causing the whole soil to be uniformly charged with moisture and
+preventing washing from one portion of the field to another. Such
+provisions are shown in Figs. 133 and 138.
+
+Extensive as is the acreage of irrigated rice in China, Korea and
+Japan, nearly every spear is transplanted; the largest and best crop
+possible, rather than the least labor and trouble, as is so often
+the case with us, determining their methods and practices. We first
+saw the fitting of the rice nursery beds at Canton and again near
+Kashing in Chekiang province on the farm of Mrs. Wu, whose homestead
+is seen in Fig. 156. She had come with her husband from Ningpo after
+the ravages of the Taiping rebellion had swept from two provinces
+alone twenty millions of people and settled on a small area of then
+vacated land. As they prospered they added to their holding by
+purchase until about twenty-five acres were acquired, an area about
+ten times that possessed by the usual prosperous family in China.
+The widow was managing her place, one of her sons, although married,
+being still in school, the daughter-in-law living with her
+mother-in-law and helping in the home. Her field help during the
+summer consisted of seven laborers and she kept four cows for the
+plowing and pumping of water for irrigation. The wages of the men
+were at the rate of $24, Mexican, for five summer months, together
+with their meals which were four each day. The cash outlay for the
+seven men was thus $14.45 of our currency per month. Ten years
+before, such labor had been $30 per year, as compared with $50 at
+the time of our visit, or $12.90 and $21.50 of our currency,
+respectively.
+
+Her usual yields of rice were two piculs per mow, or twenty-six and
+two-thirds bushels per acre, and a wheat crop yielding half this
+amount, or some other, was taken from part of the land the same
+season, one fertilization answering for the two crops. She stated
+that her annual expense for fertilizers purchased was usually about
+$60, or $25.80 of our currency. The homestead of Mrs. Wu, Fig. 156,
+consists of a compound in the form of a large quadrangle surrounding
+a court closed on the south by a solid wall eight feet high. The
+structure is of earth brick with the roof thatched with rice straw.
+
+Our first visit here was April 19th. The nursery rice beds had been
+planted four days, sowing seed at the rate of twenty bushels per
+acre. The soil had been very carefully prepared and highly
+fertilized, the last treatment being a dressing of plant ashes so
+incompletely burned as to leave the surface coal black. The seed,
+scattered directly upon the surface, almost completely covered it
+and had been gently beaten barely into the dressing of ashes, using
+a wide, flat-bottom basket for the purpose. Each evening, if the
+night was likely to be cool, water was pumped over the bed, to be
+withdrawn the next day, if warm and sunny, permitting the warmth to
+be absorbed by the black surface, and a fresh supply of air to be
+drawn into the soil.
+
+Nearly a month later, May 14th, a second visit was made to this farm
+and one of the nursery beds of rice, as it then appeared, is seen in
+Fig. 159, the plants being about eight inches high and nearing the
+stage for transplanting. The field beyond the bed had already been
+partly flooded and plowed, turning under "Chinese clover" to ferment
+as green manure, preparatory for the rice transplanting. On the
+opposite side of the bed and in front of the residence, Fig. 156,
+flooding was in progress in the furrows between the ridges formed
+after the previous crop of rice was harvested and upon which the
+crop of clover for green manure was grown. Immediately at one end of
+the two series of nursery beds, one of which is seen in Fig. 159,
+was the pumping plant seen in Fig. 157, under a thatched shelter,
+with its two pumps installed at the end of a water channel leading
+from the canal. One of these wooden pump powers, with the
+blindfolded cow attached, is reproduced in Fig. 158 and just beyond
+the animal's head may be seen the long handle dipper to which
+reference has been made, used for collecting excreta.
+
+More than a month is saved for maturing and harvesting winter and
+early spring crops, or in fitting the fields for rice, by this
+planting in nursery beds. The irrigation period for most of the land
+is cut short a like amount, saving in both water and time. It is
+cheaper and easier to highly fertilize and prepare a small area for
+the nursery, while at the same time much stronger and more uniform
+plants are secured than would be possible by sowing in the field.
+The labor of weeding and caring for the plants in the nursery is far
+less than would be required in the field. It would be practically
+impossible to fit the entire rice areas as early in the season as
+the nursery beds are fitted, for the green manure is not yet grown
+and time is required for composting or for decaying, if plowed under
+directly. The rice plants in the nursery are carried to a stage when
+they are strong feeders and when set into the newly prepared,
+fertilized, clean soil of the field they are ready to feed strongly
+under these most favorable conditions Both time and strength of
+plant are thus gained and these people are following what would
+appear to be the best possible practices under their condition of
+small holdings and dense population.
+
+With our broad fields, our machinery and few people, their system
+appears to us crude and impossible, but cut our holdings to the size
+of theirs and the same stroke makes our machinery, even our plows,
+still more impossible, and so the more one studies the environment
+of these people, thus far unavoidable, their numbers, what they have
+done and are doing, against what odds they have succeeded, the more
+difficult it becomes to see what course might have been better.
+
+How full with work is the month which precedes the transplanting of
+rice has been pointed out,--the making of the compost fertilizer;
+harvesting the wheat, rape and beans; distributing the compost over
+the fields, and their flooding and plowing. In Fig. 160 one of these
+fields is seen plowed, smoothed and nearly ready for the plants. The
+turned soil had been thoroughly pulverized, leveled and worked to
+the consistency of mortar, on the larger fields with one or another
+sort of harrow, as seen in Figs. 160 and 161. This thorough puddling
+of the soil permits the plants to be quickly set and provides
+conditions which ensure immediate perfect contact for the roots.
+
+When the fields are ready women repair to the nurseries with their
+low four-legged bamboo stools, to pull the rice plants, carefully
+rinsing the soil from the roots, and then tie them into bundles of a
+size easily handled in transplanting, which are then distributed in
+the fields.
+
+The work of transplanting may be done by groups of families changing
+work, a considerable number of them laboring together after the
+manner seen in Fig. 163, made from four snap shots taken from the
+same point at intervals of fifteen minutes. Long cords were
+stretched in the rice field six feet apart and each of the seven men
+was setting six rows of rice one foot apart, six to eight plants in
+a hill, and the hills eight or nine inches apart in the row. The,
+bundle was held in one hand and deftly, with the other, the desired
+number of plants were selected with the fingers at the roots,
+separated from the rest and, with a single thrust, set in place in
+the row. There was no packing of earth about the roots, each hill
+being set with a single motion, which followed one another in quick
+succession, completing one cross row of six hills after another. The
+men move backward across the field, completing one entire section,
+tossing the unused plants into the unset field. Then reset the lines
+to cover another section. We were told that the usual day's work of
+transplanting, for a man under these conditions, after the field is
+fitted and the plants are brought to him, is two mow or one-third of
+an acre. The seven men in this group would thus set two and a third
+acres per day and, at the wage Mrs. Wu was paying, the cash outlay,
+if the help was hired, would be nearly 21 cents per acre. This is
+more cheaply than we are able to set cabbage and tobacco plants with
+our best machine methods. In Japan, as seen in Figs. 164 and 165,
+the women participate in the work of setting the plants more than in
+China.
+
+After the rice has been transplanted its care, unlike that of our
+wheat crop, does not cease. It must be hoed, fertilized and watered.
+To facilitate the watering all fields have been leveled, canals,
+ditches and drains provided, and to aid in fertilizing and hoeing,
+the setting has been in rows and in hills in the row.
+
+The first working of the rice fields after the transplanting, as we
+saw it in Japan, consisted in spading between the hills with a
+four-tined hoe, apparently more for loosening the soil and aeration
+than for killing weeds. After this treatment the field was gone over
+again in the manner seen in Fig. 166, where the man is using his
+bare hands to smooth and level the stirred soil, taking care to
+eradicate every weed, burying them beneath the mud, and to
+straighten each hill of rice as it is passed. Sometimes the fingers
+are armed with bamboo claws to facilitate the weeding. Machinery in
+the form of revolving hand cultivators is recently coming into use
+in Japan, and two men using these are seen in Fig. 14. In these
+cultivators the teeth are mounted on an axle so as to revolve as the
+cultivator is pushed along the row.
+
+Fertilization for the rice crop receives the greatest attention
+everywhere by these three nations and in no direction more than in
+maintaining the store of organic matter in the soil. The pink
+clover, to which reference has been made, Figs. 99 and 100, is
+extensively sowed after a crop of rice is harvested in the fall and
+comes into full bloom, ready to cut for compost or to turn under
+directly when the rice fields are plowed. Eighteen to twenty tons of
+this green clover are produced per acre, and in Japan this is
+usually applied to about three acres, the stubble and roots serving
+for the field producing the clover, thus giving a dressing of six to
+seven tons of green manure per acre, carrying not less than 37
+pounds of potassium; 5 pounds of phosphorus, and 58 pounds of
+nitrogen.
+
+Where the families are large and the holdings small, so they cannot
+spare room to grow the green manure crop, it is gathered on the
+mountain, weed and hill lands, or it may be cut in the canals. On
+our boat trip west from Soochow the last of May, many boats were
+passed carrying tons of the long green ribbon-like grass, cut and
+gathered from the bottom of the canal. To cut this grass men were
+working to their armpits in the water of the canal, using a
+crescent-shaped knife mounted like an anchor from the end of a
+16-foot bamboo handle. This was shoved forward along the bottom of
+the canal and then drawn backward, cutting the grass, which rose to
+the surface where it was gathered upon the boats. Or material for
+green manure may be cut on grave, mountain or hill lands, as
+described under Fig. 115.
+
+The straw of rice and other grain and the stems of any plant not
+usable as fuel may also be worked into the mud of rice fields, as
+may the chaff which is often scattered upon the water after the rice
+is transplanted, as in Fig. 168.
+
+Reference has been made to the utilization of waste of various kinds
+in these countries to maintain the productive power of their soils,
+but it is worth while, in the interests of western nations, as
+helping them to realize the ultimate necessity of such economies, to
+state again, in more explicit terms, what Japan is doing. Dr.
+Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce,
+taking his data from their records, informed me that Japan produced,
+in 1908, and applied to her fields, 23,850,295 tons of human manure;
+22,812,787 tons of compost; and she imported 753,074 tons of
+commercial fertilizers, 7000 of which were phosphates in one form or
+another. In addition to these she must have applied not less than
+1,404,000 tons of fuel ashes and 10,185,500 tons of green manure
+products grown on her hill and weed lands, and all of these applied
+to less than 14,000,000 acres of cultivated field, and it should be
+emphasized that this is done because as yet they have found no
+better way of permanently maintaining a fertility capable of feeding
+her millions.
+
+Besides fertilizing, transplanting and weeding the rice crop there
+is the enormous task of irrigation to be maintained until the rice
+is nearly matured. Much of the water used is lifted by animal power
+and a large share of this is human. Fig. 169 shows two Chinese men
+in their cool, capacious, nowhere-touching summer trousers flinging
+water with the swinging basket, and it is surprising the amount of
+water which may be raised three to four feet by this means. The
+portable spool windlass, in Figs. 27 and 123, has been described,
+and Fig. 170 shows the quadrangular, cone-shaped bucket and sweep
+extensively used in Chihli. This man was supplying water sufficient
+for the irrigation of half an acre, per day, lifting the water eight
+feet.
+
+The form of pump most used in China and the foot-power for working
+it are seen in Fig. 171. Three men working a similar pump are seen
+in Fig. 150, a closer view of three men working the foot-power may
+be seen in Fig. 42 and still another stands adjacent to a series of
+flooded fields in Fig. 172. Where this view was taken the old farmer
+informed us that two men, with this pump, lifting water three feet,
+were able to cover two mow of land with three inches of water in two
+hours. This is at the rate of 2.5 acre-inches of water per ten hours
+per man, and for 12 to 15 cents, our currency, thus making sixteen
+acre-inches, or the season's supply of water, cost 77 to 96 cents,
+where coolie labor is hired and fed. Such is the efficiency of human
+power applied to the Chinese pump, measured in American currency.
+
+This pump is simply an open box trough in which travels a wooden
+chain carrying a series of loosely fitting boards which raise the
+water from the canal, discharging it into the field. The size of the
+trough and of the buckets are varied to suit the power applied and
+the amount of water to be lifted. Crude as it appears there is
+nothing in western manufacture that can compete with it in first
+cost, maintenance or efficiency for Chinese conditions and nothing
+is more characteristic of all these people than their efficient,
+simple appliances of all kinds, which they have reduced to the
+lowest terms in every feature of construction and cost. The greatest
+results are accomplished by the simplest means. If a canal must be
+bridged and it is too wide to be covered by a single span, the
+Chinese engineer may erect it at some convenient place and turn the
+canal under it when completed. This we saw in the case of a new
+railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The bridge was completed and the
+water had just been turned under it and was being compelled to make
+its own excavation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on
+the canal had not been obstructed.
+
+In the foot-power wheel of Japan all gearing is eliminated and the
+man walks the paddles themselves, as seen in Fig. 173. Some of these
+wheels are ten feet in diameter, depending upon the height the water
+must be lifted.
+
+Irrigation by animal power is extensively practiced in each of the
+three countries, employing mostly the type of power wheel shown in
+Fig. 158. The next illustration, Fig. 174, shows the most common
+type of shelter seen in Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces, which are
+there very numerous. We counted as many as forty such shelters in a
+semi-circle of half a mile radius. They provide comfort for the
+animals during both sunshine and rain, for under no conditions must
+the water be permitted to run low on the rice fields, and everywhere
+their domestic animals receive kind, thoughtful treatment.
+
+In the less level sections, where streams have sufficient fall,
+current wheels are in common use, carrying buckets near their
+circumference arranged so as to fill when passing through the water,
+and to empty after reaching the highest level into a receptacle
+provided with a conduit which leads the water to the field. In
+Szechwan province some of these current wheels are so large and
+gracefully constructed as to strongly suggest Ferris wheels. A view
+of one of these we are permitted to present in Fig. 175, through the
+kindness of Rollin T. Chamberlin who took the photograph from which
+the engraving was prepared. This wheel which was some forty feet in
+diameter, was working when the snap shot was taken, raising the
+water and pouring it into the horizontal trough seen near the top of
+the wheel, carried at the summit of a pair of heavy poles standing
+on the far side of the wheel. From this trough, leading away to the
+left above the sky line, is the long pipe, consisting of bamboo
+stems joined together, for conveying the water to the fields.
+
+When the harvest time has come, notwithstanding the large acreage of
+grain, yielding hundreds of millions of bushels, the small, widely
+scattered holdings and the surface of the fields render all of our
+machine methods quite impossible. Even our grain cradle, which
+preceded the reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met
+with the old-time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill
+by hill, as it was transplanted.
+
+Previous to the time for cutting, after the seed is well matured,
+the water is drawn off and the land permitted to dry and harden. The
+rainy season is not yet over and much care must be exercised in
+curing the crop. The bundles may be shocked in rows along the
+margins of the paddies, as seen in Fig. 176, or they may be
+suspended, heads down, from bamboo poles as seen in Fig. 177.
+
+The threshing is accomplished by drawing the heads of the rice
+through the teeth of a metal comb mounted as seen at the right in
+Fig. 178, near the lower corner, behind the basket, where a man and
+woman are occupied in winnowing the dust and chaff from the grain by
+means of a large double fan. Fanning mills built on the principle of
+those used by our farmers and closely resembling them have long been
+used in both China and Japan. After the rice is threshed the grain
+must be hulled before it can serve as food, and the oldest and
+simplest method of polishing used by the Japanese is seen in, Fig.
+179, where the friction of the grain upon itself does the polishing.
+A quantity of rice is poured into the receptacle when, with heavy
+blows, the long-headed plunger is driven into the mass of rice, thus
+forcing the kernels to slide over one another until, by their
+abrasion, the desired result is secured. The same method of
+polishing, on a larger scale, is accomplished where the plungers are
+worked by the weight of the body, a series of men stepping upon
+lever handles of weighted plungers, raising them and allowing them
+to fall under the force of the weight attached. Recently, however,
+mills worked by gasoline engines are in operation for both hulling
+and polishing, in Japan.
+
+The many uses to which rice straw is put in the economies of these
+people make it almost as important as the rice itself. As food and
+bedding for cattle and horses; as thatching material for dwellings
+and other shelters; as fuel; as a mulch; as a source of organic
+matter in the soil, and as a fertilizer, it represents a money value
+which is very large. Besides these ultimate uses the rice straw is
+extensively employed in the manufacture of articles used in enormous
+quantities. It is estimated that not less than 188,700,000 bags such
+as are seen in Figs. 180 and 181, worth $3,110,000 are made annually
+from the rice straw in Japan, for handling 346,150,000 bushels of
+cereals and 28,190,000 bushels of beans; and besides these, great
+numbers of bags are employed in transporting fish and other prepared
+manures.
+
+In the prefecture of Hyogo, with 596 square miles of farm land, as
+compared with Rhode Island's 712 square miles, Hyogo farmers
+produced in 1906, on 265,040 acres, 10,584,000 bushels of rice worth
+$16,191,400, securing an average yield of almost forty bushels per
+acre and a gross return of $61 for the grain alone. In addition to
+this, these farmers grew on the same land, the same season, at least
+one other crop. Where this was barley the average yield exceeded
+twenty-six bushels per acre, worth $17.
+
+In connection with their farm duties these Japanese families
+manufactured, from a portion of their rice straw, at night and
+during the leisure hours of winter, 8,980,000 pieces of matting and
+netting of different kinds having a market value of $262,000;
+4,838,000 bags worth $185,000; 8,742,000 slippers worth $34,000;
+6,254,000 sandals worth $30,000; and miscellaneous articles worth
+$64,000. This is a gross earning of more than $21,000,000 from
+eleven and a half townships of farm land and the labor of the
+farmers' families, an average earning of, $80 per acre on nearly
+three-fourths of the farm land of this prefecture. At this rate
+three of the four forties of our 160-acre farms should bring a gross
+annual income of $9,600 and the fourth forty should pay the
+expenses.
+
+At the Nara Experiment Station we were informed that the money value
+of a good crop of rice in that prefecture should be placed at ninety
+dollars per acre for the grain and eight dollars for the
+unmanufactured straw; thirty-six dollars per acre for the crop of
+naked barley and two dollars per acre for the straw. The farmers
+here practice a rotation of rice and barley covering four or five
+years, followed by a summer crop of melons, worth $320 per acre and
+some other vegetable instead of the rice on the fifth or sixth year,
+worth eighty yen per tan, or $160 per acre. To secure green manure
+for fertilizing, soy beans are planted each year in the space
+between the rows of barley, the barley being planted in November.
+One week after the barley is harvested the soy beans, which produce
+a yield of 160 kan per tan, or 5290 pounds per acre, are turned
+under and the ground fitted for rice, At these rates the Nara
+farmers are producing on four-fifths or five-sixths of their rice
+lands a gross earning of $136 per acre annually, and on the other
+fifth or sixth, an earning of $480 per acre, not counting the annual
+crop of soy beans used in maintaining the nitrogen and organic
+matter in their soils, and not counting their earnings from home
+manufactures. Can the farmers of our south Atlantic and Gulf Coast
+states, which are in the same latitude, sometime attain to this
+standard? We see no reason why they should not, but only with the
+best of irrigation, fertilization and proper rotation, with multiple
+cropping.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+SILK CULTURE
+
+
+
+
+
+Another of the great and in some ways one of the most remarkable
+industries of the Orient is that of silk production, and its
+manufacture into the most exquisite and beautiful fabrics in the
+world. Remarkable for its magnitude; for having had its birthplace
+apparently in oldest China, at least 2600 years B. C.; for having
+been founded on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and
+for having lived through more than four thousand years, expanding
+until a $1,000,000 cargo of the product has been laid down on our
+western coast at one time and rushed by special fast express to New
+York City for the Christmas trade.
+
+Japan produced in 1907 26,072,000 pounds of raw silk from 17,154,000
+bushels of cocoons, feeding the silkworms from mulberry leaves grown
+on 957,560 acres. At the export selling price of this silk in Japan
+the crop represents a money value of $124,000,000, or more than two
+dollars per capita for the entire population of the Empire; and
+engaged in the care of the silkworms, as seen in Figs. 184, 185, 186
+and 187, there were, in 1906, 1,407,766 families or some 7,000,000
+people.
+
+Richard's geography of the Chinese Empire places the total export of
+raw silk to all countries, from China, in 1905, at 30,413,200
+pounds, and this, at the Japanese export price, represents a value
+of $145,000,000. Richard also states that the value of the annual
+Chinese export of silk to France amounts to 10,000,000 pounds
+sterling and that this is but twelve per cent of the total, from
+which it appears that her total export alone reaches a value near
+$400,000,000.
+
+The use of silk in wearing apparel is more general among the Chinese
+than among the Japanese, and with China's eightfold greater
+population, the home consumption of silk must be large indeed and
+her annual production must much exceed that of Japan. Hosie places
+the output of raw silk in Szechwan at 5,439,500 pounds, which is
+nearly a quarter of the total output of Japan, and silk is
+extensively grown in eight other provinces, which together have an
+area nearly fivefold that of Japan. It would appear, therefore, that
+a low estimate of China's annual production of raw silk must be some
+120,000,000 pounds, and this, with the output of Japan and Korea,
+would make a product for the three countries probably exceeding
+150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps
+$700,000,000; quite equalling in value the wheat crop of the United
+States, but produced on less than one-eighth of the area.
+
+According to the observations of Count Dandola, the worms which
+contribute to this vast earning are so small that some 700,000 of
+them weigh at hatching only one pound, but they grow very rapidly,
+shed their skins four times, weighing 15 pounds at the time of the
+first moult, 94 pounds at the second, 400 pounds at the third, 1628
+pounds at the fourth moulting and when mature have come to weigh
+nearly five tons--9500 pounds. But in making this growth during
+about thirty-six days, according to Paton, the 700,000 worms have
+eaten 105 pounds by the time of the first moult; 315 pounds by the
+second; 1050 pounds by the third; 3150 pounds by the fourth, and in
+the final period, before spinning, 19,215 pounds, thus consuming in
+all nearly twelve tons of mulberry leaves in producing nearly five
+tons of live weight, or at the rate of two and a half pounds of
+green leaf to one pound of growth.
+
+According to Paton, the cocoons from the 700,000 worms would weigh
+between 1400 and 2100 pounds and these, according to the
+observations of Hosie in the province of Szechwan, would yield about
+one-twelfth their weight of raw silk. On this basis the one pound of
+worms hatched from the eggs would yield between 116 and 175 pounds
+of raw silk, worth, at the Japanese export price for 1907, between
+$550 and $832, and 164 pounds of green mulberry leaves would be
+required to produce a pound of silk.
+
+A Chinese banker in Chekiang province, with whom we talked, stated
+that the young worms which would hatch from the eggs spread on a
+sheet of paper twelve by eighteen inches would consume, in coming to
+maturity, 2660 pounds of mulberry leaves and would spin 21.6 pounds
+of silk. This is at the rate of 123 pounds of leaves to one pound of
+silk. The Japanese crop for 1907, 26,072,000 pounds, produced on
+957,560 acres, is a mean yield of 27.23 pounds of raw silk per acre
+of mulberries, and this would require a mean yield of 4465 pounds of
+green mulberry leaves per acre, at the rate of 164 pounds per pound
+of silk.
+
+Ordinary silk in these countries is produced largely from three
+varieties of mulberries, and from them there may be three pickings
+of leaves for the rearing of a spring, summer and autumn crop of
+silk. We learned at the Nagoya Experiment Station, Japan, that there
+good spring yields of mulberry leaves are at the rate of 400 kan,
+the second crop, 150 kan, and the third crop, 250 kan per tan,
+making a total yield of over thirteen tons of green leaves per acre.
+This, however, seems to be materially higher than the average for
+the Empire.
+
+In Fig. 188 is a near view of a mulberry orchard in Chekiang
+province, which has been very heavily fertilized with canal mud, and
+which was at the stage for cutting the leaves to feed the first crop
+of silkworms. A bundle of cut limbs is in the crotch of the front
+tree in the view. Those who raise mulberry leaves are not usually
+the feeders of the silkworms and the leaves from this orchard were
+being sold at one dollar, Mexican, per picul, or 32.25 cents per one
+hundred pounds. The same price was being paid a week later in the
+vicinity of Nanking, Kiangsu province.
+
+The mulberry trees, as they appear before coming into leaf in the
+early spring, may be seen in Fig. 189. The long limbs are the shoots
+of the last year's growth, from which at least one crop of leaves
+had been picked, and in healthy orchards they may have a length of
+two to three feet. An orchard from a portion of which the limbs had
+just been cut, presented the appearance seen in Fig. 190. These
+trees were twelve to fifteen years old and the enlargements on the
+ends of the limbs resulted from the frequent pruning, year after
+year, at nearly the same place. The ground under these trees was
+thickly covered with a growth of pink clover just coming into bloom,
+which would be spaded into the soil, providing nitrogen and organic
+matter, whose decay would liberate potash, phosphorus and other
+mineral plant food elements for the crop.
+
+In Fig. 191 three rows of mulberry trees, planted four feet apart,
+stand on a narrow embankment raised four feet, partly through
+adjusting the surrounding fields for rice, and partly by additions
+of canal mud used as a fertilizer. On either side of the mulberries
+is a crop of windsor beans, and on the left a crop of rape, both of
+which would be harvested in early June, the ground where they stand
+flooded, plowed and transplanted to rice. This and the other
+mulberry views were taken in the extensively canalized portion of
+China represented in Fig. 52. The farmer owning this orchard had
+just finished cutting two large bundles of limbs for the sale of the
+leaves in the village. He stated that his first crop ordinarily
+yields from three to as many as twenty piculs per mow, but that the
+second crop seldom exceeded two to three piculs. The first and
+second crop of leaves, if yielding together twenty-three piculs per
+mow, would amount to 9.2 tons per acre, worth, at the price named,
+$59.34. Mulberry leaves must be delivered fresh as soon as gathered
+and must be fed the same day, the limbs, when, stripped of their
+leaves, at the place where these are sold, are tied into bundles and
+reserved for use as fuel.
+
+In the south of China the mulberry is grown from low cuttings rooted
+by layering. We have before spoken of our five hours ride in the
+Canton delta region, on the steamer Nanning, through extensive
+fields of low mulberry then in full leaf, which were first mistaken
+for cotton nearing the blossom stage. This form of mulberry is seen
+in Fig. 43, and the same method of pruning is practiced in southern
+Japan. In middle Japan high pruning, as in Chekiang and Kiangsu
+provinces, is followed, but in northern Japan the leaves are picked
+directly, as is the case with the last crop of leaves everywhere,
+pruning not being practiced in the more northern latitudes.
+
+Not all silk produced in these northern countries is from the
+domesticated Bombyx mori, large amounts being obtained from the
+spinnings of wild silkworms feeding upon the leaves of species of
+oak growing on the mountain and hill lands in various parts of
+China, Korea and Japan. In China the collections in largest amount
+are reeled from the cocoons of the tussur worm (Antheraea pernyi)
+gathered in Shantung, Honan, Kweichow and Szechwan provinces. In the
+hilly parts of Manchuria also this industry is attaining large
+proportions, the cocoons being sent to Chefoo in the Shantung
+province, to be woven into pongee silk.
+
+M. Randot has estimated the annual crop of wild silk cocoons in
+Szechwan at 10,180,000 pounds, although in the opinion of Alexander
+Hosie much of this may come from Kweichow. Richard places the export
+of raw wild silk from the whole of China proper, in 1904, at
+4,400,000 pounds. This would mean not less than 75,300,000 pounds of
+wild cocoons and may be less than half the home consumption.
+
+From data collected by Alexander Hosie it appears that in 1899 the
+export of raw tussur silk from Manchuria, through the port of
+Newchwang by steamer alone, was 1,862,448 pounds, valued at
+$1,721,200, and the production is increasing rapidly. The export
+from the same port the previous year, by steamer, was 1,046,704
+pounds. This all comes from the hilly and mountain lands south of
+Mukden, lying between the Liao plain on the west and the Yalu river
+on the east, covering some five thousand square miles, which we
+crossed on the Antung-Mukden railway.
+
+There are two broods of these wild silkworms each season, between
+early May and early October. Cocoons of the fall brood are kept
+through the winter and when the moths come forth they are caused to
+lay their eggs on pieces of cloth and when the worms are hatched
+they are fed until the first moult upon the succulent new oak leaves
+gathered from the hills, after which the worms are taken to the low
+oak growth on the hills where they feed themselves and spin their
+cocoons under the cover of leaves drawn about them.
+
+The moths reserved from the first brood, after becoming fertile, are
+tied by means of threads to the oak bushes where they deposit the
+eggs which produce the second crop of tussur silk. To maintain an
+abundance of succulent leaves within reach the oaks are periodically
+cut back.
+
+Thus these plain people, patient, frugal, unshrinking from toil, the
+basic units of three of the oldest nations, go to the uncultivated
+hill lands and from the wild oak and the millions of insects which
+they help to feed upon it, not only create a valuable export trade
+but procure material for clothing, fuel, fertilizer and food, for
+the large chrysalides, cooked in the reeling of the silk, may be
+eaten at once or are seasoned with sauce to be used later. Besides
+this, the last unreelable portion of each cocoon is laid aside to be
+manufactured into silk wadding and into soft mattresses for caskets
+upon which the wealthy lay their dead.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE TEA INDUSTRY
+
+
+
+
+
+The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great
+industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture,
+if not above it, in the important part it plays in the welfare of
+the people. There is little reason to doubt that the industry has
+its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water
+palatable for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water has
+been universally adopted in these countries as an individually
+available, thoroughly efficient and safe guard against that class of
+deadly disease germs which it has been almost impossible to exclude
+from the drinking water of any densely peopled country.
+
+So far as may be judged from the success of the most thorough
+sanitary measures thus far instituted, and taking into consideration
+the inherent difficulties which must increase enormously with
+increasing populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods
+must ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety
+must be secured in some manner having the equivalent effect of
+boiling water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races, and which
+destroys active disease germs at the latest moment before using. And
+it must not be overlooked that the boiling of drinking water in
+China and Japan has been demanded quite as much because of congested
+rural populations as to guard against such dangers in large cities,
+while as yet our sanitary engineers have dealt only with the urban
+phases of this most vital problem and chiefly, too, thus far, only
+where it has been possible to procure the water supply in
+comparatively unpopulated hill lands. But such opportunities cannot
+remain available indefinitely, any more than they did in China and
+Japan, and already typhoid epidemics break out in our large cities
+and citizens are advised to boil their drinking water.
+
+If tea drinking in the family is to remain general in most portions
+of the world, and especially if it shall increase in proportion to
+population, there is great industrial and commercial promise for
+China, Korea and Japan in their tea industry if they will develop
+tea culture still further over the extensive and still unused flanks
+of the hill lands; improve their cultural methods; their
+manufacture; and develop their export trade. They have the best of
+climatic and soil conditions and people sufficiently capable of
+enormously expanding the industry. Both improvement and expansion of
+methods along all essential lines, are needed, enabling them to put
+upon the market pure teas of thoroughly uniform grades of guaranteed
+quality, and with these the maintenance of an international code of
+rigid ethics which shall secure to all concerned a square deal and a
+fair division of the profits.
+
+The production of rice, silk and tea are three industries which
+these nations are preeminently circumstanced and qualified to
+economically develop and maintain. Other nations may better
+specialize along other lines which fitness determines, and the time
+is coming when maximum production at minimum cost as the result of
+clean robust living that in every way is worth while, will determine
+lines of social progress and of international relations. With the
+vital awakening to the possibility of and necessity for world peace,
+it must be recognized that this can be nothing less than universal,
+industrial, commercial, intellectual and religious, in addition to
+making impossible forever the bloody carnage that has ravaged the
+world through all the centuries.
+
+With the extension of rapid transportation and more rapid
+communication throughout the world, we are fast entering the state
+of social development which will treat the whole world as a mutually
+helpful, harmonious industrial unit. It must be recognized that in
+certain regions, because of peculiar fitness of soil, climate and
+people, needful products can be produced there better and enough
+more cheaply than elsewhere to pay the cost of transportation. If
+China, Korea and Japan, with parts of India, can and will produce
+the best and cheapest silks, teas or rice, it must be for the
+greatest good to seek a mutually helpful exchange, and the erection
+of impassable tariff barriers is a declaration of war and cannot
+make for world peace and world progress.
+
+The date of the introduction of tea culture into China appears
+unknown. It was before the beginning of the Christian era and
+tradition would place it more than 2700 years earlier. The Japanese
+definitely date its introduction into their islands as in the year
+805 A. D., and state its coming to them from China. However and
+whenever tea growing originated in these countries, it long ago
+attained and now maintains large proportions. In 1907 Japan had
+124,482 acres of land occupied by tea gardens and tea plantations.
+These produced 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea, giving a mean yield
+of 489 pounds per acre. Of the more than sixty million pounds of tea
+produced annually on nearly two hundred square miles in Japan, less
+than twenty-two million pounds are consumed at home, the balance
+being exported at a cash value, in 1907, of $6,309,122, or a mean of
+sixteen cents per pound.
+
+In China the volume of tea produced annually is much larger than in
+Japan. Hosie places the annual export from Szechwan into Tibet alone
+at 40,000,000 pounds and this is produced largely in the mountainous
+portion of the province west of the Min river. Richard places her
+direct export to foreign countries, in 1905, at 176,027,255 pounds;
+and in 1906 at 180,271,000 pounds, so that the annual export must
+exceed 200,000,000 pounds, and her total product of cured tea must
+be more than 400,000,000.
+
+The general appearance of tea bushes as they are grown in Japan is
+indicated in Fig. 192. The form of the bushes, the shape and size of
+the leaves and the dense green, shiny foliage quite suggests our
+box, so much used in borders and hedges. When the bushes are young,
+not covering the ground, other crops are grown between the rows, but
+as the bushes attain their full size, standing after trimming, waist
+to breast high, the ground between is usually thickly covered with
+straw, leaves or grass and weeds from the hill lands, which serve as
+a mulch, as a fertilizer, as a means of preventing washing on the
+hillsides, and to force the rain to enter the soil uniformly where
+it falls.
+
+Quite a large per cent of the tea bushes are grown on small,
+scattering, irregular areas about dwellings, on land not readily
+tilled, but there are also many tea plantations of considerable
+size, presenting the appearance seen in Fig. 193. After each picking
+of the leaves the bushes are trimmed back with pruning shears,
+giving the rows the appearance of carefully trimmed hedges.
+
+The tea leaves are hand picked, generally by women and girls, after
+the manner seen in Fig. 194, where they are gathering the tender,
+newly-formed leaves into baskets to be weighed fresh, as seen in
+Fig. 195.
+
+Three crops of leaves are usually gathered each season, the first
+yielding in Japan one hundred kan per tan, the second fifty kan and
+the third eighty kan per tan. This is at the rate of 3307 pounds,
+1653 pounds, and 2645 pounds per acre, making a total of 7605 pounds
+for the season, from which the grower realizes from a little more
+than 2.2 to a little more than 3 cents per pound of the green
+leaves, or a gross earning of $167 to $209.50 per acre.
+
+We were informed that the usual cost for fertilizers for the tea
+orchards was 15 to 20 yen per tan, or $30 to $40 per acre per annum,
+the fertilizer being applied in the fall, in the early spring and
+again after the first picking of the leaves. While the tea plants
+are yet small one winter crop and one summer crop of vegetables,
+beans or barley are grown between the rows, these giving a return of
+some forty dollars per acre. Where the plantations are given good
+care and ample fertilization the life of a plantation may be
+prolonged continuously, it is said, through one hundred or more
+years.
+
+During our walk from Joji to Kowata, along a country road in one of
+the tea districts, we passed a tea-curing house. This was a long
+rectangular, one-story building with twenty furnaces arranged, each
+under an open window, around the sides. In front of each heated
+furnace with its tray of leaves, a Japanese man, wearing only a
+breech cloth, and in a state of profuse perspiration, was busy
+rolling the tea leaves between the palms of his hands.
+
+At another place we witnessed the making of the low grade dust tea,
+which is prepared from the leaves of bushes which must be removed or
+from those of the prunings. In this case the dried bushes with their
+leaves were being beaten with flails on a threshing floor. The dust
+tea thus produced is consumed by the poorer people.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+ABOUT TIENTSIN
+
+
+
+
+
+On the 6th of June we left central China for Tientsin and further
+north, sailing by coastwise steamer from Shanghai, again plowing
+through the turbid waters which give literal exactness to the name
+Yellow Sea. Our steamer touched at Tsingtao, taking on board a body
+of German troops, and again at Chefoo, and it was only between these
+two points that the sea was not strongly turbid. Nor was this all.
+From early morning of the 10th until we anchored at Tientsin, 2:30
+P. M., our course up the winding Pei ho was against a strong
+dust-laden wind which left those who had kept to the deck as grey as
+though they had ridden by automobile through the Colorado desert; so
+the soils of high interior Asia are still spreading eastward by
+flood and by wind into the valleys and far over the coastal plains.
+Over large areas between Tientsin and Peking and at other points
+northward toward Mukden trees and shrubs have been systematically
+planted in rectangular hedgerow lines, to check the force of the
+winds and reduce the drifting of soils, planted fields occupying the
+spaces between.
+
+It was on this trip that we met Dr. Evans of Shunking, Szechwan
+province. His wife is a physician practicing among the Chinese
+women, and in discussing the probable rate of increase of population
+among the Chinese, it was stated that she had learned through her
+practice that very many mothers had borne seven to eleven children
+and yet but one, two or at most three, were living.
+
+It was said there are many customs and practices which determine
+this high mortality among children, one of which is that of feeding
+them meat before they have teeth, the mother masticating for the
+children, with the result that often fatal convulsions follow. A
+Scotch physician of long experience in Shantung, who took the
+steamer at Tsingtao, replied to my question as to the usual size of
+families in his circuit, "I do not know. It depends on the crops. In
+good years the number is large; in times of famine the girls
+especially are disposed of, often permitted to die when very young
+for lack of care. Many are sold at such times to go into other
+provinces." Such statements, however, should doubtless be taken with
+much allowance. If all the details were known regarding the cases
+which have served as foundations for such reports, the matter might
+appear in quite a different light from that suggested by such cold
+recitals.
+
+Although land taxes are high in China Dr. Evans informed me that it
+is not infrequent for the same tax to be levied twice and even three
+times in one year. Inquiries regarding the land taxes among farmers
+in different parts of China showed rates running from three cents to
+a dollar and a half, Mexican, per mow; or from about eight cents to
+$3.87 gold, per acre. At these rates a forty acre farm would pay
+from $3.20 to $154.80, and a quarter section four times these
+amounts. Data collected by Consul-General E. T. Williams of Tientsin
+indicate that in Shantung the land tax is about one dollar per acre,
+and in Chihli, twenty cents. In Kiangsi province the rate is 200 to
+300 cash per mow, and in Kiangsu, from 500 to 600 cash per mow, or,
+according to the rate of exchange given on page 76, from 60 to 80
+cents, or 90 cents to $1.20 per acre in Kiangsi; and $1.50 to $2.00
+or $1.80 to $2.40 in Kiangsu province. The lowest of these rates
+would make the land tax on 160 acres, $96, and the highest would
+place it at $384, gold.
+
+In Japan the taxes are paid quarterly and the combined amount of the
+national, prefectural and village assessments usually aggregates
+about ten per cent of the government valuation placed on the land.
+The mean valuation placed on the irrigated fields, excluding Formosa
+and Karafuto, was in 1907, 35.35 yen per tan; that of the upland
+fields, 9.40 yen, and the genya and pasture lands were given a
+valuation of .22 yen per tan. These are valuations of $70.70, $18.80
+and $.44, gold, per acre, respectively, and the taxes on forty acres
+of paddy field would be $282.80; $75.20 on forty acres of upland
+field, and $1.76, gold, on the same area of the genya and weed
+lands.
+
+In the villages, where work of one or another kind is done for pay,
+Dr. Evans stated that a woman's wage might not exceed $8, Mexican,
+or $3.44, gold, per year, and when we asked how it could be worth a
+woman's while to work a whole year for so small a sum, his reply
+was, "If she did not do this she would earn nothing, and this would
+keep her in clothes and a little more." A cotton spinner in his
+church would procure a pound of cotton and on returning the yarn
+would receive one and a quarter pounds of cotton in exchange, the
+quarter pound being her compensation.
+
+Dr. Evans also described a method of rooting slips from trees,
+practiced in various parts of China. The under side of a branch is
+cut, bent upward and split for a short distance; about this is
+packed a ball of moistened earth wrapped in straw to retain the soil
+and to provide for future watering; the whole may then be bound with
+strips of bamboo for greater stability. In this way slips for new
+mulberry orchards are procured.
+
+At eight o'clock in the morning we entered the mouth of the Pei ho
+and wound westward through a vast, nearly sea-level, desert plain
+and in both directions, far toward the horizon, huge white stacks of
+salt dotted the surface of the Taku Government salt fields, and
+revolving in the wind were great numbers of horizontal sail
+windmills, pumping sea water into an enormous acreage of evaporation
+basins. In Fig. 196 may be seen five of the large salt stacks and
+six of the windmills, together with many smaller piles of salt. Fig.
+197 is a closer view of the evaporation basins with piles of salt
+scraped from the surface after the mother liquor had been drained
+away. The windmills, which were working one, sometimes two, of the
+large wooden chain pumps, were some thirty feet in diameter and
+lifted the brine from tide-water basins into those of a second and
+third higher level where the second and final concentration
+occurred. These windmills, crude as they appear in Fig. 198, are
+nevertheless efficient, cheaply constructed and easily controlled.
+The eight sails, each six by ten feet, were so hung as to take the
+wind through the entire revolution, tilting automatically to receive
+the wind on the opposite face the moment the edge passed the
+critical point. Some 480 feet of sail surface were thus spread to
+the wind, working on a radius of fifteen feet. The horizontal drive
+wheel had a diameter of ten feet, carried eighty-eight wooden cogs
+which engaged a pinion with fifteen leaves, and there were nine arms
+on the reel at the other end of the shaft which drove the chain. The
+boards or buckets of the chain pump were six by twelve inches,
+placed nine inches apart, and with a fair breeze the pump ran full.
+
+Enormous quantities of salt are thus cheaply manufactured through
+wind, tide and sun power directed by the cheapest human labor.
+Before reaching Tientsin we passed the Government storage yards and
+counted two hundred stacks of salt piled in the open, and more than
+a third of the yard had been passed before beginning the count. The
+average content of each stack must have exceeded 3000 cubic feet of
+salt, and more than 40,000,000 pounds must have been stored in the
+yards. Armed guards in military uniform patrolled the alleyways day
+and night. Long strips of matting laid over the stacks were the only
+shelter against rain.
+
+Throughout the length of China's seacoast, from as far north as
+beyond Shanhaikwan, south to Canton, salt is manufactured from sea
+water in suitable places. In Szechwan province, we learn from the
+report of Consul-General Hosie, that not less than 300,000 tons of
+salt are annually manufactured there, largely from brine raised by
+animal power from wells seven hundred to more than two thousand feet
+deep.
+
+Hosie describes the operations at a well more than two thousand feet
+deep, at Tzeliutsing. In the basement of a power-house which
+sheltered forty water buffaloes, a huge bamboo drum twelve feet
+high, sixty feet in circumference, was so set as to revolve on a
+vertical axis propelled by four cattle drawing from its
+circumference. A hemp rope was wound about this drum, six feet from
+the ground, passing out and under a pulley at the well, then up and
+around a wheel mounted sixty feet above and descended to the bucket
+made from bamboo stems four inches in diameter and nearly sixty feet
+long, which dropped with great speed to the bottom of the well as
+the rope unwound. When the bucket reached the bottom four
+attendants, each with a buffalo in readiness, hitched to the drum
+and drove at a running pace, during fifteen minutes, or until the
+bucket was raised from the well. The buffalo were then unhitched
+and, while the bucket was being emptied and again dropped to the
+bottom of the well, a fresh relay were brought to the drum. In this
+way the work continued night and day.
+
+The brine, after being raised from the well, was emptied into
+distributing reservoirs, flowing thence through bamboo pipes to the
+evaporating sheds where round bottomed, shallow iron kettles four
+feet across were set in brick arches in which jets of natural gas
+were burning.
+
+Within an area some sixty miles square there are more than a
+thousand brine and twenty fire wells from which fuel gas is taken.
+The mouths of the fire wells are closed with masonry, out from which
+bamboo conduits coated with lime lead to the various furnaces,
+terminating with iron burners beneath the kettles. Remarkable is the
+fact that in the city of Tzeliutsing, both these brine and the fire
+wells have been operated in the manufacture of salt since before
+Christ was born.
+
+The forty water buffalo are worth $30 to $40 per head and their food
+fifteen to twenty cents per day. The cost of manufacturing this salt
+is placed at thirteen to fourteen cash per catty, to which the
+Government adds a tax of nine cash more, making the cost at the
+factory from 82 cents to $1.15, gold, per hundred pounds. Salt
+manufacture is a Government monopoly and the product must be sold
+either to Government officials or to merchants who have bought the
+exclusive right to supply certain districts. The importation of salt
+is prohibited by treaties. For the salt tax collection China is
+divided into eleven circuits each having its own source of supply
+and transfer of salt from one circuit to another is forbidden.
+
+The usual cost of salt is said to vary between one and a half and
+four cash per catty. The retail price of salt ranges from
+three-fourths to three cents per pound, fully twelve to fifteen
+times the cost of manufacture. The annual production of salt in the
+Empire is some 1,860,000 tons, and in 1901 salt paid a tax close to
+ten million dollars.
+
+Beyond the salt fields, toward Tientsin, the banks of the river were
+dotted at short intervals with groups of low, almost windowless
+houses, Fig. 199, built of earth brick plastered with clay on sides
+and roof, made more resistant to rain by an admixture of chaff and
+cut straw, and there was a remarkable freshness of look about them
+which we learned was the result of recent preparations made for the
+rainy season about to open. Beyond the first of these villages came
+a stretch of plain dotted thickly and far with innumerable grave
+mounds, to which reference has been made. For nearly an hour we had
+traveled up the river before there was any material vegetation, the
+soil being too saline apparently to permit growth, but beyond this,
+crops in the fields and gardens, with some fruit and other trees,
+formed a fringe of varying width along the banks. Small fields of
+transplanted rice on both banks were frequent and often the land was
+laid out in beds of two levels, carefully graded, the rice occupying
+the lower areas, and wooden chain pumps were being worked by hand,
+foot and animal power, irrigating both rice and garden crops.
+
+In the villages were many stacks of earth compost, of the Shantung
+type; manure middens were common and donkeys drawing heavy stone
+rollers followed by men with large wooden mallets, were going round
+and round, pulverizing and mixing the dry earth compost and the
+large earthen brick from dismantled kangs, preparing fertilizer for
+the new series of crops about to be planted, following the harvest
+of wheat and barley. Large boatloads of these prepared fertilizers
+were moving on the river and up the canals to the fields.
+
+Toward the coast from Tientsin, especially in the country, traversed
+by the railroad, there was little produced except a short grass,
+this being grazed at the time of our visit and, in places, cut for a
+very meagre crop of hay. The productive cultivated lands lie chiefly
+along the rivers and canals or other water courses, where there is
+better drainage as well as water for irrigation. The extensive,
+close canalization that characterizes parts of Kiangsu and Chekiang
+provinces is lacking here and for this reason, in part, the soil is
+not so productive. The fuller canalization, the securing of adequate
+drainage and the gaining of complete control of the flood waters
+which flow through this vast plain during the rainy season
+constitute one of China's most important industrial problems which,
+when properly solved, must vastly increase her resources. During our
+drive over the old Peking-Taku road saline deposits were frequently
+observed which had been brought to the surface during the dry
+season, and the city engineer of Tientsin stated that in their
+efforts at parking portions of the foreign concessions they had
+found the trees dying after a few years when their roots began to
+penetrate the more saline subsoil, but that since they had opened
+canals, improving the drainage, trees were no longer dying. There is
+little doubt that proper drainage by means of canals, and the
+irrigation which would go with it, would make all of these lands,
+now more or less saline, highly productive, as are now those
+contiguous to the existing water courses.
+
+It had rained two days before our drive over the Taku road and when
+we applied for a conveyance, the proprietor doubted whether the
+roads were passible, as he had been compelled to send out an extra
+team to assist in the return of one which had been stalled during
+the previous night. It was finally arranged to send an extra horse
+with us. The rainy season had just begun but the deep trenching of
+the roads concentrates the water in them and greatly intensifies the
+trouble. In one of the little hamlets through which we passed the
+roadway was trenched to a depth of three to four feet in the middle
+of the narrow street, leaving only five feet for passing in front of
+the dwellings on either side, and in this trench our carriage moved
+through mud and water nearly to the hubs.
+
+Between Tientsin and Peking, in the early morning after a rain of
+the night before, we saw many farmers working their fields with the
+broad hoes, developing an earth mulch at the first possible moment
+to conserve their much needed moisture. Men were at work, as seen in
+Figs. 200 and 201, using long handled hoes, with blades nine by
+thirteen inches, hung so as to draw just under the surface, doing
+very effective work, permitting them to cover the ground rapidly.
+
+Walking further, we came upon six women in a field of wheat,
+gleaning the single heads which had prematurely ripened and broken
+over upon the ground between the rows soon to be harvested. Whether
+they were doing this as a privilege or as a task we do not know;
+they were strong, cheerful, reasonably dressed, hardly past middle
+life and it was nearly noon, yet not one of them had collected more
+straws than she could readily grasp in one hand. The season in
+Chihli as in Shantung, had been one of unusual drought, making the
+crop short and perhaps unusual frugality was being practiced; but it
+is in saving that these people excel perhaps more than in producing.
+These heads of wheat, if left upon the ground, would be wasted and
+if the women were privileged gleaners in the fields their returns
+were certainly much greater than were those of the very old women we
+have seen in France gathering heads of wheat from the already
+harvested fields.
+
+In the fields between Tientsin and Peking all wheat was being
+pulled, the earth shaken from the roots, tied in small bundles and
+taken to the dwellings, sometimes on the heavy cart drawn by a team
+consisting of a small donkey and cow hitched tandem, as seen in Fig.
+202. Millet had been planted between the rows of wheat in this field
+and was already up. When the wheat was removed the ground would be
+fertilized and planted to soy beans. Because of the dry season this
+farmer estimated his yield would be but eight to nine bushels per
+acre. He was expecting to harvest thirteen to fourteen bushels of
+millet and from ten to twelve bushels of soy beans per acre from the
+same field. This would give him an earning, based on the local
+prices, of $10.36, gold, for the wheat; $6.00 for the beans, and
+$5.48 per acre for the millet. This land was owned by the family of
+the Emperor and was rented at $1.55, gold, per acre. The soil was a
+rather light sandy loam, not inherently fertile, and fertilizers to
+the value of $3.61 gold, per acre, had been applied, leaving the
+earning $16.71 per acre.
+
+Another farmer with whom we talked, pulling his crop of wheat, would
+follow this with millet and soy beans in alternate rows. His yield
+of wheat was expected to be eleven to twelve bushels per acre, his
+beans twenty-one bushels and his millet twenty-five bushels which,
+at the local prices for grain and straw, would bring a gross earning
+of $35, gold, per acre.
+
+Before reaching the end of our walk through the fields toward the
+next station we came across another of the many instances of the
+labor these people are willing to perform for only a small possible
+increase in crop. The field was adjacent to one of the windbreak
+hedges and the trees had spread their roots far afield and were
+threatening his crop through the consumption of moisture and plant
+food. To check this depletion the farmer had dug a trench twenty
+inches deep the length of his field, and some twenty feet from the
+line of trees, thereby cutting all of the surface roots to stop
+their draft on the soil. The trench was left open and an interesting
+feature observed was that nearly every cut root on the field side of
+the trench had thrown up one or more shoots bearing leaves, while
+the ends still connected with the trees showed no signs of leaf
+growth.
+
+In Chihli as elsewhere the Chinese are skilled gardeners, using
+water for irrigation whenever it is advantageous. One gardener was
+growing a crop of early cabbage, followed by one of melons, and
+these with radish the same season. He was paying a rent of $6.45,
+gold, per acre; was applying fertilizer at a cost of nearly $8 per
+acre for each of the three crops, making his cash outlay $29.67 per
+acre. His crop of cabbage sold for $103, gold; his melons for $77,
+and his radish for something more than $51, making a total of
+$232.20 per acre, leaving him a net value of $202.53.
+
+A second gardener, growing potatoes, obtained a yield, when sold
+new, of 8,000 pounds per acre; and of 16,000 pounds when the crop
+was permitted to mature. The new potatoes were sold so as to bring
+$51.60 and the mature potatoes $185.76 per acre, making the earning
+for the two crops the same season a total of $237.36, gold. By
+planting the first crop very early these gardeners secure two crops
+the same season, as far north as Columbus, Ohio, and Springfield,
+Illinois, the first crop being harvested when the tubers are about
+the size of walnuts. The rental and fertilizers in this case
+amounted to $30.96 per acre.
+
+Still another gardener growing winter wheat followed by onions, and
+these by cabbage, both transplanted, realized from the three crops a
+gross earning of $176.73, gold, per acre, and incurred an expense of
+$31.73 per acre for fertilizer and rent, leaving him a net earning
+of $145 per acre.
+
+These old people have acquired the skill and practice of storing and
+preserving such perishable fruits as pears and grapes so as to
+enable them to keep them on the markets almost continuously. Pears
+were very common in the latter part of June, and Consul-General
+Williams informed me that grapes are regularly carried into July. In
+talking with my interpreter as to the methods employed I could only
+learn that the growers depend simply upon dry earth cellars which
+can be maintained at a very uniform temperature, the separate fruits
+being wrapped in paper. No foreigner with whom we talked knew their
+methods.
+
+Vegetables are carried through the winter in such earth cellars as
+are seen in Fig. 88, page 161, these being covered after they are
+filled.
+
+As to the price of labor in this part of China, we learned through
+Consul-General Williams that a master mechanic may receive 50 cents,
+Mexican, per day, and a journeyman 18 cents, or at a rate of 21.5
+cents and 7.75 cents, gold. Farm laborers receive from $20 to $30,
+Mexican, or $8.60 to $12.90, gold, per year, with food, fuel and
+presents which make a total of $17.20 to $21.50. This is less for
+the year than we pay for a month of probably less efficient labor.
+There is relatively little child labor in China and this perhaps
+should be expected when adult labor is so abundant and so cheap.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MANCHURIA AND KOREA
+
+
+
+
+
+The 39th parallel of latitude lies just south of Tientsin; followed
+westward, it crosses the toe of Italy's boot, leads past Lisbon in
+Portugal, near Washington and St. Louis and to the north of
+Sacramento on the Pacific. We were leaving a country with a mean
+July temperature of 80 deg F., and of 21 deg in January, but where
+two feet of ice may form; a country where the eighteen year mean
+maximum temperature is 103.5 deg and the mean minimum 4.5 deg; where
+twice in this period the thermometer recorded 113 deg above zero,
+and twice 7 deg below, and yet near the coast and in the latitude of
+Washington; a country where the mean annual rainfall is 19.72 inches
+and all but 3.37 inches falls in June, July, August and September.
+We had taken the 5:40 A. M. Imperial North-China train, June 17th,
+to go as far northward as Chicago,--to Mukden in Manchuria, a
+distance by rail of some four hundred miles, but all of the way
+still across the northward extension of the great Chinese coastal
+plain. Southward, out from the coldest quarter of the globe, where
+the mean January temperature is more than 40 deg below zero, sweep
+northerly winds which bring to Mukden a mean January temperature
+only 3 deg above zero, and yet there the July temperature averages
+as high as 77 deg and there is a mean annual rainfall of but 18.5
+inches, coming mostly in the summer, as at Tientsin.
+
+Although the rainfall of the northern extension of China's coastal
+plain is small, its efficiency is relatively high because of its
+most favorable distribution and the high summer temperatures. In the
+period of early growth, April, May and June, there are 4.18 inches;
+but in the period of maximum growth, July and August, the rainfall
+is 11.4 inches; and in the ripening period, September and October,
+it is 3.08 inches, while during the rest of the year but 1.06 inch
+falls. Thus most of the rain comes at the time when the crops
+require the greatest daily consumption and it is least in
+mid-winter, during the period of little growth.
+
+As our train left Tientsin we traveled for a long distance through a
+country agriculturally poor and little tilled, with surface flat,
+the soil apparently saline, and the land greatly in need of
+drainage. Wherever there were canals the crops were best, apparently
+occupying more or less continuous areas along either bank. The day
+was hot and sultry but laborers were busy with their large hoes,
+often with all garments laid aside except a short shirt or a pair of
+roomy trousers.
+
+In the salt district about the village of Tangku there were huge
+stacks of salt and smaller piles not yet brought together, with
+numerous windmills, constituting most striking features in the
+landscape, but there was almost no agricultural or other vegetation.
+Beyond Pehtang there are other salt works and a canal leads westward
+to Tientsin, on which the salt is probably taken thither, and still
+other salt stacks and windmills continued visible until near Hanku,
+where another canal leads toward Peking. Here the coast recedes
+eastward from the railway and beyond the city limits many grave
+mounds dot the surrounding plains where herds of sheep were grazing.
+
+As we hurried toward the delta region of the Lwan ho, and before
+reaching Tangshan, a more productive country was traversed. Thrifty
+trees made the landscape green, and fields of millet, kaoliang and
+wheat stretched for miles together along the track and back over the
+flat plain beyond the limit of vision. Then came fields planted with
+two rows of maize alternating with one row of soy beans, but not
+over twenty-eight inches apart, one stalk of corn in a place every
+sixteen to eighteen inches, all carefully hoed, weedless and
+blanketed with an excellent earth mulch; but still the leaves were
+curling in the intense heat of the sun. Tangshan is a large city,
+apparently of recent growth on the railroad in a country where
+isolated conical hills rise one hundred or two hundred feet out of
+the flat, plains. Cart loads of finely pulverized earth compost were
+here moving to the fields in large numbers, being laid in single
+piles of five hundred to eight hundred pounds, forty to sixty feet
+apart. At Kaiping the country grows a little rolling and we passed
+through the first railway cuts, six to eight feet deep, and the
+water in the streams is running ten to twelve feet below the surface
+of the fields. On the right and beyond Kuyeh there are low hills,
+and here we passed enormous quantities of dry, finely powdered earth
+compost, distributed on narrow unplanted area over the fields. What
+crop, if indeed any, had occupied these areas this season, we could
+not judge. The fertilization here is even more extensive and more
+general than we found it in the Shantung province, and in places
+water was being carried in pails to the fields for use either in
+planting or in transplanting, to ensure the readiness of the new
+crops to utilize the first rainfall when it comes.
+
+Then the bed of a nearly dry stream some three hundred feet wide was
+crossed and beyond it a sandy plain was planted in long narrow
+fields between windbreak hedges. The crops were small but evidently
+improved by the influence of the shelter. The sand in places had
+drifted into the hedges to a height of three feet. At a number of
+other places along the way before Mukden was reached such protected
+areas were passed and oftenest on the north side of wide, now nearly
+dry, stream channels.
+
+As we passed on toward Shanhaikwan we were carried over broad plains
+even more nearly level and unobstructed than any to be found in the
+corn belt of the middle west, and these too planted with corn,
+kaoliang, wheat and beans, and with the low houses hidden in distant
+scattered clusters of trees dotting the wide plain on either side,
+with not a fence, and nothing to suggest a road anywhere in sight.
+We seemed to be moving through one vast field dotted with hundreds
+of busy men, a plowman here, and there a great cart hopelessly lost
+in the field so far as one could see any sign of road to guide their
+course.
+
+Some early crop appeared to have been harvested from areas
+alternating with those on the ground, and these were dotted with
+piles of the soil and manure compost, aggregating hundreds of tons,
+distributed over the fields but no doubt during the next three or
+four days these thousands of piles would have been worked into the
+soil and vanished from sight, to reappear after another crop and
+another year.
+
+It was at Lwanchow that we met the out-going tide of soy beans
+destined for Japan and Europe, pouring in from the surrounding
+country in gunny sacks brought on heavy carts drawn by large mules,
+as seen in Fig. 203, and enormous quantities had been stacked in the
+open along the tracks, with no shelter whatever, awaiting the
+arrival of trains to move them to export harbors.
+
+The planting here, as elsewhere, is in rows, but not of one kind of
+grain. Most frequently two rows of maize, kaoliang or millet
+alternated with the soy beans and usually not more than twenty-eight
+inches apart, sharp high ridge cultivation being the general
+practice. Such planting secures the requisite sunshine with a larger
+number of plants on the field; it secures a continuous general
+distribution of the roots of the nitrogen-fixing soy beans in the
+soil of all the field every season, and permits the soil to be more
+continuously and more completely laid under tribute by the root
+systems. In places where the stand of corn or millet was too open
+the gaps were filled with the soy beans. Such a system of planting
+possibly permits a more immediate utilization of the nitrogen
+gathered from the soil air in the root nodules, as these die and
+undergo nitrification during the same season, while the crops are
+yet on the ground, and so far as phosphorus and potassium compounds
+are liberated by this decay, they too would become available to the
+crops.
+
+The end of the day's journey was at Shanhaikwan on the boundary
+between Chihli and Manchuria, the train stopping at 6:20 P. M. for
+the night. Stepping upon the veranda from our room on the second
+floor of a Japanese inn in the early morning, there stood before us,
+sullen and grey, the eastern terminus of the Great Wall, winding
+fifteen hundred miles westward across twenty degrees of longitude,
+having endured through twenty-one centuries, the most stupendous
+piece of construction ever conceived by man and executed by a
+nation. More than twenty feet thick at the base and than twelve feet
+on the top; rising fifteen to thirty feet above the ground with
+parapets along both faces and towers every two hundred yards rising
+twenty feet higher, it must have been, for its time and the methods
+of warfare then practiced, when defended by their thousands, the
+boldest and most efficient national defense ever constructed. Nor in
+the economy of construction and maintenance has it ever been
+equalled.
+
+Even if it be true that 20,000 masons toiled through ten years in
+its building, defended by 400,000 soldiers, fed by a commissariat of
+20,000 more and supported by 30,000 others in the transport, quarry
+and potters' service, she would then have been using less than eight
+tenths per cent of her population, on a basis of 60,000,000 at the
+time; while according to Edmond Théry's estimate, the officers and
+soldiers of Europe today, in time of peace, constitute one per cent
+of a population of 400,000,000 of people, and these, at only one
+dollar each per day for food, clothing and loss of producing power
+would cost her nations, in ten years, more than $14,000 million.
+China, with her present habits and customs, would more easily have
+maintained her army of 470,000 men on thirty cents each per day, or
+for a total ten-year cost of but $520,000,000. The French cabinet in
+1900 approved a naval program involving an expenditure of
+$600,000,000 during the next ten years, a tax of more than $15 for
+every man, woman and child in the Republic.
+
+Leaving Shanhaikwan at 5:20 in the morning and reaching Mukden at
+6:30 in the evening, we rode the entire day through Manchurian
+fields. Manchuria has an area of 363,700 square miles, equal to that
+of both Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa combined. It has
+roughly the outline of a huge boot and could one slide it eastward
+until Port Arthur was at Washington, Shanhaikwan would fall well
+toward Pittsburgh, both at the tip of the broad toe to the boot. The
+foot would lie across Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and all of
+New England, extending beyond New Brunswick with the heel in the
+Gulf of St. Lawrence. Harbin, at the instep of the boot, would lie
+fifty miles east of Montreal and the expanding leg would reach
+northwestward nearly to James Bay, entirely to the north of the
+Ottawa river and the Canadian Pacific, spanning a thousand miles of
+latitude and nine hundred miles of longitude.
+
+The Liao plain, thirty miles wide, and the central Sungari plain,
+are the largest in Manchuria, forming together a long narrow valley
+floor between two parallel mountain systems and extending
+northeasterly from the Liao gulf, between Port Arthur and
+Shanhaikwan, up the Liao river and down the Sungari to the Amur, a
+distance of eight hundred or more miles. These plains have a
+fertile, deep soil and it is on them and other lesser river bottoms
+that Manchurian agriculture is developed, supporting eight or nine
+million people on a cultivated, acreage possibly not greater than
+25,000 square miles.
+
+Manchuria has great forest and grazing possibilities awaiting future
+development, as well as much mineral wealth. The population of
+Tsitsihar, in the latitude of middle North Dakota, swells from
+thirty thousand to seventy thousand during September and October,
+when the Mongols bring in their cattle to market. In the middle
+province, at the head of steam navigation on the Sungari, because of
+the abundance and cheapness of lumber, Kirin has become a
+shipbuilding center for Chinese junks. The Sungari-Milky-river, is a
+large stream carrying more water at flood season than the Amur above
+its mouth, the latter being navigable 450 miles for steamers drawing
+twelve feet of water, and 1500 miles for those drawing four feet, so
+that during the summer season the middle and northern provinces have
+natural inland waterways, but the outlet to the sea is far to the
+north and closed by ice six months of the year.
+
+Not far beyond the Great Wall of China, fast falling into ruin,
+partly through the appropriation of its material for building
+purposes now that it has outlived its usefulness, another broad,
+nearly dry stream bed was crossed. There, in full bloom, was what
+appeared to be the wild white rose seen earlier, further south, west
+of Suchow, having a remarkable profusion of small white bloom in
+clusters resembling the Rambler rose. One of these bushes growing
+wild there on the bank of the canal had over spread a clump of trees
+one of which was thirty feet in height, enveloping it in a mantle of
+bloom, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 204. The lower section
+of the illustration is a closer view showing the clusters. The stem
+of this rose, three feet above the ground, measured 14.5 inches in
+circumference. If it would thrive in this country nothing could be
+better for parks and pleasure drives. Later on our journey we saw it
+many times in bloom along the railway between Mukden and Antung, but
+nowhere attaining so large growth. The blossoms are scant
+three-fourths inch in diameter, usually in compact clusters of three
+to eleven, sometimes in twos and occasionally standing singly. The
+leaves are five-foliate, sometimes trifoliate; leaflets broadly
+lanceolate, accuminate and finely serrate; thorns minute, recurrent
+and few, only on the smaller branches.
+
+In a field beyond, a small donkey was drawing a stone roller three
+feet long and one foot in diameter, firming the crests of narrow,
+sharp, recently formed ridges, two at a time. Millet, maize and
+kaoliang were here the chief crops. Another nearly dry stream was
+crossed, where the fields became more rolling and much cut by deep
+gullies, the first instances we had seen in China except on the
+steep hillsides about Tsingtao. Not all of the lands here were
+cultivated, and on the untilled areas herds of fifty to a hundred
+goats, pigs, cattle, horses and donkeys were grazing.
+
+Fields in Manchuria are larger than in China and some rows were a
+full quarter of a mile long, so that cultivation was being done with
+donkeys and cattle, and large numbers of men were working in gangs
+of four, seven, ten, twenty, and in one field as high as fifty,
+hoeing millet. Such a crew as the largest mentioned could probably
+be hired at ten cents each, gold, per day, and were probably men
+from the thickly settled portions of Shantung who had left in the
+spring, expecting to return in September or October. Both laborers
+and working animals were taking dinner in the fields, and earlier in
+the day we had seen several instances where hay and feed were being
+taken to the field on a wooden sled, with the plow and other tools.
+At noon this was serving as manger for the cattle, mules or donkeys.
+
+In fields where the close, deep furrowing and ridging was being done
+the team often consisted of a heavy ox and two small donkeys driven
+abreast, the three walking in adjacent rows, the plow following the
+ox, or a heavy mule instead.
+
+The rainy season had not begun and in many fields there was planting
+and transplanting where water was used in separate hills, sometimes
+brought in pails from a nearby stream, and in other cases on carts
+provided with tanks. Holes were made along the crests of the ridges
+with the blade of a narrow hoe and a little water poured in each
+hill, from a dipper, before planting or setting. These must have
+been other instances where the farmers were willing to incur
+additional labor to save time for the maturing of the crop by
+assisting germination in a soil too dry to make it certain until the
+rains came.
+
+It appears probable that the strong ridging and the close level rows
+so largely adopted here must have marked advantages in utilizing the
+rainfall, especially the portions coming early, and that later also
+if it should come in heavy showers. With steep narrow ridging, heavy
+rains would be shed at once to the bottom of the deep furrows
+without over-saturating the ridges, while the wet soil in the bottom
+of the furrows would favor deep percolation with lateral capillary
+flow taking place strongly under the ridges from the furrows,
+carrying both moisture and soluble plant food where they will be
+most completely and quickly available. When the rain comes in heavy
+showers each furrow may serve as a long reservoir which will prevent
+washing and at the same time permit quick penetration; the ridges
+never becoming flooded or puddled, permit the soil air to escape
+readily as the water from the furrows sinks, as it cannot easily do
+in flat fields when the rains fall rapidly and fill all of the soil
+pores, thus closing them to the escape of air from below, which must
+take place before the water can enter.
+
+When rows are only twenty-four to twenty-eight inches apart, ridging
+is not sufficiently more wasteful of soil moisture, through greater
+evaporation because of increased surface, to compensate for the
+other advantages gained, and hence their practice, for their
+conditions, appears sound.
+
+The application of finely pulverized earth compost to fields to be
+planted, and in some cases where the fields were already planted,
+continued general after leaving Shanhailkwan as it had been before.
+Compost stacks were common in yards wherever buildings were close
+enough to the track to be seen. Much of the way about one-third of
+the fields were yet to be, or had just been, planted and in a great
+majority of these compost fertilizer had been laid down for use on
+them, or was being taken to them in large heavy carts drawn
+sometimes by three mules. Between Sarhougon and Ningyuenchow
+fourteen fields thus fertilized were counted in less than half a
+mile; ten others in the next mile; eleven in the mile and a quarter
+following. In the next two miles one hundred fields were counted and
+just before reaching the station we counted during five minutes,
+with watch in hand, ninety-five fields to be planted, upon which
+this fertilizer had been brought. In some cases the compost was
+being spread in furrows between the rows of a last year's crop,
+evidently to be turned under, thus reversing the position of the
+ridges.
+
+After passing Lienshan, where, the railway runs near the sea, a sail
+was visible on the bay and many stacks of salt piled about the
+evaporation fields were associated with the revolving sail windmills
+already described. Here, too, large numbers of cattle, horses, mules
+and donkeys were grazing on the untilled low lands, beyond which we
+traversed a section where all fields were planted, where no
+fertilizer was piled in the field but where many groups of men were
+busy hoeing, sometimes twenty in a gang.
+
+Chinese soldiers with bayonetted guns stood guard at every railway
+station between Shanhaikwan and Mukden, and from Chinchowfu our
+coach was occupied by some Chinese official with guests and military
+attendants, including armed soldiers. The official and his guests
+were an attractive group of men with pleasant faces and winning
+manners, clad in many garments of richly figured silk of bright,
+attractive, but unobtrusive, colors, who talked, seriously or in
+mirth, almost incessantly. They took the train about one o'clock and
+lunch was immediately served in Chinese style, but the last course
+was not brought until nearly four o'clock. At every station soldiers
+stood in line in the attitude of salute until the official car had
+passed.
+
+Just before reaching Chinchowfu we saw the first planted fields
+littered with stubble of the previous crop, and in many instances
+such stubble was being gathered and removed to the villages, large
+stacks having been piled in the yards to be used either as fuel or
+in the production of compost. As the train approached Taling ho
+groups of men were hoeing in millet fields, thirty in one group on
+one side and fifty in another body on the other. Many small herds of
+cattle, horses, donkeys and flocks of goats and sheep were feeding
+along stream courses and on the unplanted fields. Beyond the
+station, after crossing the river, still another sand dune tract was
+passed, planted with willows, millet occupying the level areas
+between the dunes, and not far beyond, wide untilled flats were
+crossed, on which many herds were grazing and dotted with grave
+mounds as we neared Koupantze, where a branch of the railway
+traverses the Liao plain to the port of Newchwang. It was in this
+region that there came the first suggestion of resemblance to our
+marshland meadows; and very soon there were seen approaching from
+the distance loads so green that except for the large size one would
+have judged them to be fresh grass. They were loads of cured hay in
+the brightest green, the result, no doubt, of curing under their dry
+weather conditions.
+
+At Ta Hu Shan large quantities of grain in sacks were piled along
+the tracks and in the freight yards, but under matting shelters.
+Near here, too, large three-mule loads of dry earth compost were
+going to the fields and men were busy pulverizing and mixing it on
+the threshing floors preparatory for use. Nearly all crops growing
+were one or another of the millets, but considerable areas were yet
+unplanted and on these cattle, horses, mules and donkeys were
+feeding and eight more loads of very bright new made hay crossed the
+track.
+
+When the train reached Sinminfu where the railway turns abruptly
+eastward to cross the Liao ho to reach Mukden we saw the first
+extensive massing of the huge bean cakes for export, together with
+enormous quantities of soy beans in sacks piled along the railway
+and in the freight yards or loaded on cars made up in trains ready
+to move. Leaving this station we passed among fields of grain
+looking decidedly yellow, the first indication we had seen in China
+of crops nitrogen-hungry and of soils markedly deficient in
+available nitrogen. Beyond the next station the fields were
+decidedly spotted and uneven as well as yellow, recalling conditions
+so commonly seen at home and which had been conspicuously absent
+here before. Crossing the Liao ho with its broad channel of shifting
+sands, the river carrying the largest volume of water we had yet
+seen, but the stream very low and still characteristic of the close
+of the dry season of semi-arid climates, we soon reached another
+station where the freight yards and all of the space along the
+tracks were piled high with bean cakes and yet the fields about were
+reflecting the impoverished condition of the soil through the yellow
+crops and their uneven growth on the fields.
+
+Since the Japanese-Russian war the shipments of soy beans and of
+bean cake from Manchuria have increased enormously. Up to this time
+there had been exports to the southern provinces of China where the
+bean cakes were used as fertilizers for the rice fields, but the new
+extensive markets have so raised the price that in several instances
+we were informed they could not then afford to use bean cake as
+fertilizer. From Newchwang alone, in 1905, between January 1st and
+March 31st, there went abroad 2,286,000 pounds of beans and bean
+cake, but in 1906 the amount had increased to 4,883,000 pounds. But
+a report published in the Tientsin papers as official, while we were
+there, stated that the value of the export of bean cake and soy
+beans from Dalny for the months ending March 31st had been, in 1909,
+only $1,635,000, gold, compared with $3,065,000 in the corresponding
+period of 1908, and of $5,120,000 in 1907, showing a marked
+decrease.
+
+Edward C. Parker, writing from Mukden for the Review of Reviews,
+stated: "The bean cake shipments from Newchwang, Dalny and Antung in
+1908 amounted to 515,198 tons; beans, 239,298 tons; bean oil, 1930
+tons; having a total value of $15,016,649 (U. S. gold)". According
+to the composition of soy beans as indicated in Hopkins' table of
+analyses, these shipments of beans and bean cake would remove an
+aggregate of 6171 tons of phosphorus, 10,097 tons of potassium, and
+47,812 tons of nitrogen from Manchurian soils as the result of
+export for that year. Could such a rate have been maintained during
+two thousand years there would have been sold from these soils
+20,194,000 tons of potassium; 12,342,000 tons of phosphorus and
+95,624,000 tons of nitrogen; and the phosphorus, were it thus
+exported, would have exceeded more than threefold all thus far
+produced in the United States; it would have exceeded the world's
+output in 1906 more than eighteen times, even assuming that all
+phosphate rock mined was seventy-five per cent pure.
+
+The choice of the millets and the sorghums as the staple bread crops
+of northern China and Manchuria has been quite as remarkable as the
+selection of rice for the more southern latitudes, and the two
+together have played a most important part in determining the high
+maintenance efficiency of these people. In nutritive value these
+grains rank well with wheat; the stems of the larger varieties are
+extensively used for both fuel and building material and the smaller
+forms make excellent forage and have been used directly for
+maintaining the organic content of the soil. Their rapid development
+and their high endurance of drought adapt them admirably to the
+climate of north China and Manchuria where the rains begin only
+after late June and where weather too cold for growth comes earlier
+in the fall. The quick maturity of these crops also permits them to
+be used to great advantage even throughout the south, in their
+systems of multiple cropping so generally adopted, while their great
+resistance to drought, being able to remain at a standstill for a
+long time when the soil is too dry for growth and yet be able to
+push ahead rapidly when favorable rains come, permits them to be
+used on the higher lands generally where water is not available for
+irrigation.
+
+In the Shantung province the large millet, sorghum or kaoliang,
+yields as high as 2000 to 3000 pounds of seed per acre, and 5600 to
+6000 pounds of air-dry stems, equal in weight to 1.6 to 1.7 cords of
+dry oak wood. In the region of Mukden, Manchuria, its average yield
+of seed is placed at thirty-five bushels of sixty pounds weight per
+acre, and with this comes one and a half tons of fuel or of building
+material. Hosie states that, the kaoliang is the staple food of the
+population of Manchuria and the principal grain food of the work
+animals. The grain is first washed in cold water and then poured
+into a kettle with four times its volume of boiling water and cooked
+for an hour, without salt, as with rice. It is eaten with chopsticks
+with boiled or salted vegetables. He states that an ordinary servant
+requires about two pounds of this grain per day, and that a workman
+at heavy labor will take double the amount. A Chinese friend of his,
+keeping five servants, supplied them with 240 pounds of millet per
+month, together with 16 pounds of native flour, regarded as
+sufficient for two days, and meat for two days, the amount not being
+stated. Two of the small millets (Setaria italica, and Panicum
+milliaceum), wheat, maize and buckwheat are other grains which are
+used as food but chiefly to give variety and change of diet.
+
+Very large quantities of matting and wrappings are also made from
+the leaves of the large millet, which serve many purposes
+corresponding with the rice mattings and bags of Japan and southern
+China.
+
+The small millets, in Shantung, yield as high as 2700 pounds of seed
+and 4800 pounds of straw per acre. In Japan, in the year 1906, there
+were grown 737,719 acres of foxtail, barnyard and proso millet,
+yielding 17,084,000 bushels of seed or an average of twenty-three
+bushels per acre. In addition to the millets, Japan grew, the same
+year, 5,964,300 bushels of buckwheat on 394,523 acres, or an average
+of fifteen bushels per acre. The next engraving, Fig. 205, shows a
+crop of millet already six inches high planted between rows of
+windsor beans which had matured about the middle of June. The leaves
+had dropped, the beans had been picked from the stems, and a little
+later, when the roots had had time to decay the bean stems would be
+pulled and tied in bundles for use as fuel or for fertilizer.
+
+We had reached Mukden thoroughly tired after a long day of
+continuous close observation and writing. The Astor House, where we
+were to stop, was three miles from the station and the only
+conveyance to meet the train was a four-seated springless, open,
+semi-baggage carryall and it was a full hour lumbering its way to
+our hotel. But here as everywhere in the Orient the foreigner meets
+scenes and phases of life competent to divert his attention from
+almost any discomfort. Nothing could be more striking than the
+peculiar mode the Manchu ladies have of dressing their hair, seen in
+Fig. 206, many instances of which were passed on the streets during
+this early evening ride. It was fearfully and wonderfully done, laid
+in the smoothest, glossiest black, with nearly the lateral spread of
+the tail of a turkey cock and much of the backward curve of that of
+the rooster; far less attractive than the plainer, refined, modest,
+yet highly artistic style adopted by either Chinese or Japanese
+ladies.
+
+The journey from Mukden to Antung required two days, the train
+stopping for the night at Tsaohokow. Our route lay most of the way
+through mountainous or steep hilly country and our train was made up
+of diminutive coaches drawn by a tiny engine over a three-foot
+two-inch narrow gauge track of light rails laid by the Japanese
+during the war with Russia, for the purpose of moving their armies
+and supplies to the hotly contested fields in the Liao and Sungari
+plains. Many of the grades were steep, the curves sharp, and in
+several places it was necessary to divide the short train to enable
+the engines to negotiate them.
+
+To the southward over the Liao plain the crops were almost
+exclusively millet and soy beans, with a little barley, wheat, and a
+few oats. Between Mukden and the first station across the Hun river
+we had passed twenty-four good sized fields of soy beans on one side
+of the river and twenty-two on the other, and before reaching the
+hilly country, after travelling a distance of possibly fifteen
+miles, we had passed 309 other and similar fields close along the
+track. In this distance also we had passed two of the monuments
+erected by the Japanese, marking sites of their memorable battles.
+These fields were everywhere flat, lying from sixteen to twenty feet
+above the beds of the nearly dry streams, and the cultivation was
+mostly being done with horses or cattle.
+
+After leaving the plains country the railway traversed a narrow
+winding valley less than a mile wide, with gradient so steep that
+our train was divided. Fully sixty per cent of the hill slopes were
+cultivated nearly to the summit and yet rising apparently more than
+one in three to five feet, and the uncultivated slopes were closely
+wooded with young trees, few more than twenty to thirty feet high,
+but in blocks evidently of different ages. Beyond the pass many of
+the cultivated slopes have walled terraces. We crossed a large
+stream where railway ties were being rafted down the river. Just
+beyond this river the train was again divided to ascend a gradient
+of one in thirty, reaching the summit by five times switching back,
+and matched on the other side of the pass by a down grade of one in
+forty.
+
+At many of the farm houses in the narrow valleys along the way large
+rectangular, flat topped compost piles were passed, thirty to forty
+inches high and twenty, thirty, forty and even in one case as much
+as sixty feet square on the ground. More and more it became evident
+that these mountain and hill lands were originally heavily wooded
+and that the new growth springs up quickly, developing rapidly. It
+was clear also that the custom of cutting over these wooded areas at
+frequent intervals is very old, not always in the same stage of
+growth but usually when the trees are quite small. Considerable
+quantities of cordwood were piled at the stations along the railway
+and were being loaded on the cars. This was always either round wood
+or sticks split but once; and much charcoal, made mostly from round
+wood or sticks split but once, was being shipped in sacks shaped
+like those used for rice, seen in Fig. 180. Some strips of the
+forest growth had been allowed to stand undisturbed apparently for
+twenty or more years, but most areas have been cut at more frequent
+intervals, often apparently once in three to five, or perhaps ten,
+years.
+
+At several places on the rapid streams crossed, prototypes of the
+modern turbine water-wheel were installed, doing duty grinding beans
+or grain. As with native machinery everywhere in China, these wheels
+were reduced to the lowest terms and the principle put to work
+almost unclothed. These turbines were of the downward discharge
+type, much resembling our modern windmills, ten to sixteen feet in
+diameter, set horizontally on a vertical axis rising through the
+floor of the mill, with the vanes surrounded by a rim, the water
+dropping through the wheel, reacting when reflected from the
+obliquely set vanes. American engineers and mechanics would
+pronounce these very crude, primitive and inefficient. A truer view
+would regard them as examples of a masterful grasp of principle by
+some, man who long ago saw the unused energy of the stream and
+succeeded thus in turning it to account.
+
+Both days of our journey had been bright and very warm and, although
+we took the train early in the morning at Mukden, a young Japanese
+anticipated the heat, entering the train clad only in his kimono and
+sandals, carrying a suitcase and another bundle. He rode all day,
+the most comfortably, if immodestly, clad man on the train, and the
+next morning took his seat in front of us clad in the same garb, but
+before the train reached Antung he took down his suitcase and then
+and there, deliberately attired himself in a good foreign suit,
+folding his kimono and packing it away with his sandals.
+
+From Antung we crossed the Yalu on the ferry to New Wiju at 6:30 A.
+M., June 22, and were then in quite a different country and among a
+very different people, although all of the railway officials,
+employes, police and guards were Japanese, as they had been from
+Mukden. At Antung and New Wiju the Yalu is a very broad slow stream
+resembling an arm of the sea more than a river, reminding one of the
+St. Johns at Jacksonville, Florida.
+
+June 22nd proved to be one of the national festival days in Korea,
+called "Swing day", and throughout our entire ride to Seoul the
+fields were nearly all deserted and throngs of people, arrayed in
+gala dress, appeared all along the line of the railway, sometimes
+congregating in bodies of two to three thousand or more, as seen in
+Fig. 207. Many swings had been hung and were being enjoyed by the
+young people. Boys and men were bathing in all sorts of "swimming
+holes" and places. So too, there were many large open air gatherings
+being addressed by public speakers, one of which is seen in Fig.
+208.
+
+Nearly everyone was dressed in white outer garments made from some
+fabric which although not mosquito netting was nearly as open and
+possessed of a remarkable stiffness which seemed to take and retain
+every dent with astonishing effect and which was sufficiently
+transparent to reveal a third undergarment. The full outstanding
+skirts of five Korean women may be seen in Fig. 209, and the
+trousers which went with these were proportionately full but tied
+close about the ankles. The garments seemed to be possessed of a
+powerful repulsion which held them quite apart and away from the
+person, no doubt contributing much to comfort. It was windy but one
+of those hot sultry, sticky days, and it made one feel cool to see
+these open garments surging in the wind.
+
+The Korean men, like the Chinese, wear the hair long but not braided
+in a queue. No part of the head is shaved but the hair is wound in a
+tight coil on the top of the head, secured by a pin which, in the
+case of the Korean who rode in our coach from Mukden to Antung, was
+a modern, substantial tenpenny wire nail. The tall, narrow, conical
+crowns of the open hats, woven from thin bamboo splints, are
+evidently designed to accommodate this style of hair dressing as
+well as to be cool.
+
+Here, too, as in China and Manchuria, nearly all crops are planted
+in rows, including the cereals, such as wheat, rye, barley and oats.
+We traversed first a flat marshy country with sandy soil and water
+not more than four feet below the surface where, on the lowest areas
+a close ally of our wild flower-de-luce was in bloom. Wheat was
+coining into head but corn and millet were smaller than in
+Manchuria. We had left New Wiju at 7:30 in the morning and at 8:15
+we passed from the low land into a hill country with narrow valleys.
+Scattering young pine, seldom more than ten to twenty-five feet
+high, occupied the slopes and as we came nearer the hills were seen
+to be clothed with many small oak, the sprouts clearly not more than
+one or two years old. Roofs of dwellings in the country were usually
+thatched with straw laid after the manner of shingles, as may be
+seen in Fig. 210, where the hills beyond show the low tree growth
+referred to, but here unusually dense. Bundles of pine boughs,
+stacked and sheltered from the weather, were common along the way
+and evidently used for fuel.
+
+At 8:25 we passed through the first tunnel and there were many along
+the route, the longest requiring thirty seconds for the passing of
+the train. The valley beyond was occupied by fields of wheat where
+beans were planted between the rows. Thus far none of the fields had
+been as thoroughly tilled and well cared for as those seen in China,
+nor were the crops as good. Further along we passed hills where the
+pines were all of two ages, one set about thirty feet high and the
+others twelve to fifteen feet or less, and among these were numerous
+oak sprouts. Quite possibly these are used as food for the wild
+silkworms. In some places appearances indicate that the oak and
+other deciduous growth, with the grass, may be cut annually and only
+the pines allowed to stand for longer periods. As we proceeded
+southward and had passed Kosui the young oak sprouts were seen to
+cover the hills, often stretching over the slopes much like a
+regular crop, standing at a height of two to four feet, and fresh
+bundles of these sprouts were seen at houses along the foot of the
+slopes, again suggesting that the leaves may be for the tussur
+silkworms although the time appears late for the first moulting.
+After we had left Seoul, entering the broader valleys where rice was
+more extensively grown, the using of the oak boughs and green grass
+brought down from the hill lands for green manure became very
+extensive.
+
+After the winter and early spring crops have been harvested the
+narrow ridges on which they are grown are turned into the furrows by
+means of their simple plow drawn by a heavy bullock, different from
+the cattle in China but closely similar to those in Japan. The
+fields are then flooded until they have the appearance seen in Fig.
+12. Over these flooded ridges the green grass and oak boughs are
+spread, when the fields are again plowed and the material worked
+into the wet soil. If this working is not completely successful men
+enter the fields and tramp the surface until every twig and blade is
+submerged. The middle section in this illustration has been fitted
+and transplanted; in front of it and on the left are two other
+fields once plowed but not fertilized; those far to the right have
+had the green manure applied and the ground plowed a second time but
+not finished, and in the immediate foreground the grass and boughs
+have been scattered but the second plowing is not yet done.
+
+We passed men and bullocks coming from the hill lands loaded with
+this green herbage and as we proceeded towards Fusan more and more
+of the hill area was being made to contribute materials for green
+manure for the cultivated fields. The foreground of Fig. 211 had
+been thus treated and so had the field in Fig. 212, where the man
+was engaged in tramping the dressing beneath the surface. In very
+many cases this material was laid along the margin of the paddies;
+in other cases it had been taken upon the fields as soon as the
+grain was cut and was lying in piles among the bundles; while in
+still other cases the material for green manure had been carried
+between the rows while the grain was still standing, but nearly
+ready to harvest. In some fields a full third of a bushel of the
+green stuff had been laid down at intervals of three feet over the
+whole area. In other cases piles of ashes alternated with those of
+herbage, and again manure and ashes mixed had been distributed in
+alternate piles with the green manure.
+
+In still other cases we saw untreated straw distributed through the
+fields awaiting application. At Shindo this, straw had the
+appearance of having been dipped in or smeared with some mixture,
+apparently of mud and ashes or possibly of some compost which had
+been worked into a thin paste with water.
+
+After passing Keizan, mountain herbage had been brought down from
+the hills in large bales on cleverly constructed racks saddled to
+the backs of bullocks, and in one field we saw a man who had just
+come to his little field with an enormous load borne upon his
+easel-like packing appliance. Thus we find the Koreans also adopting
+the rice crop, which yields heavily under conditions of abundant
+water; we find them supplementing a heavy summer rainfall with water
+from their hills, and bringing to their fields besides both green
+herbage for humus and organic matter, and ashes derived from the
+fuel coming also from the hills, in these ways making good the
+unavoidable losses, through intense cropping.
+
+The amount of forest growth in Korea, as we saw it, in proximity to
+the cultivated valleys, is nowhere large and is fairly represented
+in Figs. 210, 213 and 214. There were clear evidences of periodic
+cutting and considerable, amounts of cordwood split from timber a
+foot through were being brought to the stations on the backs of
+cattle. In some places there was evident and occasionally very
+serious soil erosion, as may be seen in Fig. 214, one such region
+being passed just before reaching Kinusan, but generally the hills
+are well rounded and covered with a low growth of shrubs and
+herbaceous plants.
+
+Southernmost Korea has the latitude of the northern boundary of
+South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, while the
+northeast corner attains that of Madison, Wisconsin, and the
+northern boundary of Nebraska, the country thus spanning some nine
+degrees and six hundred miles of latitude. It has an area of some
+82,000 square miles, about equaling the state of Minnesota, but much
+of its surface is occupied by steep hill and mountain land. The
+rainy season had not yet set in, June 23rd. Wheat and the small
+grains were practically all harvested southward of Seoul and the
+people were everywhere busy with their flails threshing in the open,
+about the dwellings or in the fields, four flails often beating
+together on the same lot of grain. As we journeyed southward the
+valleys and the fields became wider and more extensive, and the
+crops, as well as the cultural methods, were clearly much better.
+
+Neither the foot-power, animal-power, nor the wooden chain pump of
+the Chinese were observed in Korea in use for lifting water, but we
+saw many instances of the long handled, spoonlike swinging scoop
+hung over the water by a cord from tall tripods, after the manner
+seen in Fig. 215, each operated by one man and apparently with high
+efficiency for low lifts. Two instances also were observed of the
+form of lift seen in Fig. 173, where the man walks the circumference
+of the wheel, so commonly observed in Japan. Much hemp was being
+grown in southern Korea but everywhere on very small isolated areas
+which flecked the landscape with the deepest green, each little
+field probably representing the crop of a single family.
+
+It was 6:30 P. M. when our train reached Fusan after a hot and dusty
+ride. The service had been good and fairly comfortable but the
+ice-water tanks of American trains were absent, their place being
+supplied by cooled bottled waters of various brands, including
+soda-water, sold by Japanese boys at nearly every important station.
+Close connection was made by trains with steamers to and from Japan
+and we went directly on board the Iki Maru which was to weigh anchor
+for Moji and Shimonoseki at 8 P. M. Although small, the steamer was
+well equipped, providing the best of service. We were fortunate in
+having a smooth passage, anchoring at 6:30 the next morning and
+making close connection with the train for Nagasaki, landing at the
+wharf with the aid of a steam launch.
+
+Our ride by train through the island of Kyushu carried us through
+scenes not widely different from those we had just left. The journey
+was continuously among fields of rice, with Korean features strongly
+marked but usually under better and more intensified culture, and
+the season, too, was a little more advanced. Here the plowing was
+being done mostly with horses instead of the heavy bullocks so
+exclusively employed in Korea. Coming from China into Korea, and
+from there into Japan, it appeared very clear that in agricultural
+methods and appliances the Koreans and Japanese are more closely
+similar than the Chinese and Koreans, and the more we came to see of
+the Japanese methods the more strongly the impression became fixed
+that the Japanese had derived their methods either from the Koreans
+or the Koreans had taken theirs more largely from Japan than from
+China.
+
+It was on this ride from Moji to Nagasaki that we were introduced to
+the attractive and very satisfactory manner of serving lunches to
+travelers on the trains in Japan. At important stations hot tea is
+brought to the car windows in small glazed, earthenware teapots
+provided with cover and bail, and accompanied with a teacup of the
+same ware. The set and contents could be purchased for five sen, two
+and a half cents, our currency. All tea is served without milk or
+sugar. The lunches were very substantial and put together in a neat
+sanitary manner in a three-compartment wooden box, carefully made
+from clear lumber joined with wooden pegs and perfect joints. Packed
+in the cover we found a paper napkin, toothpicks and a pair of
+chopsticks. In the second compartment there were thin slices of
+meat, chicken and fish, together with bamboo sprouts, pickles, cakes
+and small bits of salted vegetables, while the lower and chief
+compartment was filled with rice cooked quite stiff and without
+salt, as is the custom in the three countries. The box was about six
+inches long, four inches deep and three and a half inches wide.
+These lunches are handed to travelers neatly wrapped in spotless
+thin white paper daintily tied with a bit of color, all in exchange
+for 25 sen,--12.5 cents. Thus for fifteen cents the traveler is
+handed, through the car window, in a respectful manner, a square
+meal which he may eat at his leisure.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+RETURN TO JAPAN
+
+
+
+
+
+We had returned to Japan in the midst of the first rainy season, and
+all the day through, June 25th, and two nights, a gentle rain fell
+at Nagasaki, almost without interruption. Across the narrow street
+from Hotel Japan were two of its guest houses, standing near the
+front of a wall-faced terrace rising twenty-eight feet above the
+street and facing the beautiful harbor. They were accessible only by
+winding stone steps shifting on paved landings to continue the
+ascent between retaining walls overhung with a wealth of shrubbery
+clothed in the densest foliage, so green and liquid in the drip of
+the rain, that one almost felt like walking edgewise amid stairs
+lest the drip should leave a stain. Over such another series of
+steps, but longer and more winding, we found our way to the American
+Consulate where in the beautifully secluded quarters Consul-General
+Scidmore escaped many annoyances of settling the imagined petty
+grievances arising between American tourists and the ricksha boys.
+
+Through the kind offices of the Imperial University of Sapporo and
+of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, Professor
+Tokito met us at Nagasaki, to act as escort through most of the
+journey in Japan. Our first visit was to the prefectural
+Agricultural Experiment Station at Nagasaki. There are four others
+in the four main islands, one to an average area of 4280 square
+miles, and to each 1,200,000 people. The island of Kyushu, whose
+latitude is that of middle Mississippi and north Louisiana, has two
+rice harvests, and gardeners at Nagasaki grow three crops, each
+year. The gardener and his family work about five tan, or a little
+less than one and one-quarter acres, realizing an annual return of
+some $250 per acre. To maintain these earnings fertilizers are
+applied rated worth $60 per acre, divided between the three crops,
+the materials used being largely the wastes of the city, animal
+manure, mud from the drains, fuel ashes and sod, all composted
+together. If this expenditure for fertilizers appears high it must
+be remembered that nearly the whole product is sold and that there
+are three crops each year. Such intense culture requires a heavy
+return if large yields are maintained. Good agricultural lands were
+here valued at 300 yen per tan, approximately $600 per acre.
+
+When returning toward Moji to visit the Agricultural Experiment
+Station of Fukuoka prefecture, the rice along the first portion of
+the route was standing about eight inches above the water. Large
+lotus ponds along the way occupied areas not readily drained, and
+the fringing fields between the rice paddies and the untilled hill
+lands were bearing squash, maize, beans and Irish potatoes. Many
+small areas had been set to sweet potatoes on close narrow ridges,
+the tops of which were thinly strewn with green grass, or sometimes
+with straw or other litter, for shade and to prevent the soil from
+washing and baking in the hot sun after rains. At Kitsu we passed
+near Government salt works, for the manufacture of salt by the
+evaporation of sea water, this industry in Japan, as in China, being
+a Government monopoly.
+
+Many bundles of grass and other green herbage were collected along
+the way, gathered for use in the rice fields. In other cases the
+green manure had already been spread over the flooded paddies and
+was being worked beneath the surface, as seen in Fig. 216. At this
+time the hill lands were clothed in the richest, deepest green but
+the tree growth was nowhere large except immediately about temples,
+and was usually in distinct small areas with sharp boundaries
+occasioned by differences in age. Some tracts had been very recently
+cut; others were in their second, third or fourth years; while
+others still carried a growth of perhaps seven to ten years. At one
+village many bundles of the brush fuel had been gathered from an
+adjacent area, recently cleared.
+
+A few fields were still bearing their crop of soy beans planted in
+February between rows of grain, and the green herbage was being
+worked into the flooded soil, for the crop of rice. Much compost,
+brought to the fields, was stacked with layers of straw between,
+laid straight, the alternate courses at right angles, holding the
+piles in rectangular form with vertical sides, some of which were
+four to six feet high and the layers of compost about six inches
+thick.
+
+Just before reaching Tanjiro, a region is passed where orchards of
+the candleberry tree occupy high leveled areas between rice paddies,
+after the manner described for the mulberry orchards in Chekiang,
+China. These trees, when seen from a distance, have quite the
+appearance of our apple orchards.
+
+At the Fukuoka Experiment Station we learned that the usual depth of
+plowing for the rice fields is three and a half to four and a half
+inches, but that deeper plowing gives somewhat larger yields. As an
+average of five years trials, a depth of seven to eight inches
+increased the yield from seven to ten per cent over that of the
+usual depth. In this prefecture grass from the bordering hill lands
+is applied to the rice fields at rates ranging from 3300 to 16,520
+pounds green weight per acre, and, according to analyses given,
+these amounts would carry to, the fields from 18 to 90 pounds of
+nitrogen; 12.4 to 63.2 pounds of potassium, and 2.1 to 10.6 pounds
+of phosphorus per acre.
+
+Where bean cake is used as a fertilizer the applications may be at
+the rate of 496 pounds per acre, carrying 33.7 pounds of nitrogen,
+nearly 5 pounds of phosphorus and 7.4 pounds of potassium. The earth
+composts are chiefly applied to the dry land fields and then only
+after they are well rotted, the fermentation being carried through
+at least sixty days, during which the material is turned three times
+for aeration, the work being done at the home. When used on the rice
+fields where water is abundant the composts are applied in a less
+fermented condition.
+
+The best yields of rice in this prefecture are some eighty bushels
+per acre, and crops of barley may even exceed this, the two crops
+being grown the same year, the rice following the barley. In most
+parts of Japan the grain food of the laboring people is about 70 per
+cent naked barley mixed with 30 per cent of rice, both cooked and
+used in the same manner. The barley has a lower market value and its
+use permits a larger share of the rice to be sold as a money crop.
+
+The soils are fertilized for each crop every year and the
+prescription for barley and rice recommended by the Experiment
+Station, for growers in this prefecture, is indicated by the
+following table:
+
+
+         FERTILIZATION FOR NAKED BARLEY.
+                    Pounds per acre.
+ Fertilizers.               N       P      K
+Manure compost   6,613    33.0     7.4   33.8
+Rape seed cake     330    16.7     2.8    3.5
+Night soil       4,630    26.4     2.6   10.2
+Superphosphate     132             9.9
+                 ----------------------
+      Sum       11,705    76.1    22.7   47.5
+
+         FERTILIZATION FOR PADDY RICE.
+
+Manure compost   5,291    26.4     5.9   27.1
+Green manure,
+  soy beans      3,306    19.2     1.1   19.6
+Soy bean cake      397    27.8     1.7    6.4
+Superphosphate     198            12.8
+                 ----------------------
+       Sum       9,192    73.4    21.5   53.1
+                ======   =====    ====  =====
+Total for year  20,897   149.5    44.2  100.6
+
+
+Where these recommendations are followed there is an annual
+application of fertilizer material which aggregates some ten tons
+per acre, carrying about 150 pounds of nitrogen, 44 pounds of
+phosphorus and 100 pounds of potassium. The crop yields which have
+been associated with these applications on the Station fields are
+about forty-nine bushels of barley and fifty bushels of rice per
+acre.
+
+The general rotation recommended for this portion of Japan covers
+five years and consists of a crop of wheat or naked barley the first
+two years with rice as the summer crop; in the third year genge,
+"pink clover" (Astragalus sinicus) or some other legume for green
+manure is the winter crop, rice following in the summer; the fourth
+year rape is the winter crop, from which the seed is saved and the
+ash of the stems returned to the soil, or rarely the stems
+themselves may be turned under; on the fifth and last year of the
+rotation the broad kidney or windsor bean is the winter crop,
+preceding the summer crop of rice. This rotation is not general yet
+in the practice of the farmers of the section, they choosing rape or
+barley and in February plant windsor or soy beans between the rows
+for green manure to use when the rice comes on.
+
+It was evident from our observations that the use of composts in
+fertilizing was very much more general and extensive in China than
+it was in either Korea or Japan, but, to encourage the production
+and use of compost fertilizers, this and other prefectures have
+provided subsidies which permit the payment of $2.50 annually to
+those farmers who prepare and use on their land a compost heap
+covering twenty to forty square yards, in accordance with specified
+directions given.
+
+The agricultural college at Fukuoka was not in session the day of
+our visit, it being a holiday usually following the close of the
+last transplanting season. One of the main buildings of the station
+and college is seen in Fig. 217, and Figs. 218, 219 and 220, placed
+together from left to right in the order of their numbers, form a
+panoramic view of the station grounds and buildings with something
+of the beautiful landscape setting. There is nowhere in Japan the
+lavish expenditure of money on elaborate and imposing architecture
+which characterizes American colleges and stations, but in equipment
+for research work, both as to professional staff and appliances,
+they compare favorably with similar institutions in America. The
+dormitory system was in vogue in the college, providing room and
+board at eight yen per month or four dollars of our currency. Eight
+students were assigned to one commodious room, each provided with a
+study table, but beds were mattresses spread upon the matting floor
+at night and compactly stored on closet shelves during the day.
+
+The Japanese plow, which is very similar to the Korean type, may be
+seen in Fig. 221, the one on the right costing 2.5 yen and the other
+2 yen. With the aid of the single handle and the sliding rod held in
+the right hand, the course of the plow is directed and the plow
+tilted in either direction, throwing the soil to the right or the
+left.
+
+The nursery beds for rice breeding experiments and variety tests by
+this station are shown in Fig. 222. Although these plots are flooded
+the marginal plants, adjacent to the free water paths, were
+materially larger than those within and had a much deeper green
+color, showing better feeding, but what seemed most strange was the
+fact that these stronger plants are never used in transplanting, as
+they do not thrive as well as those less vigorous.
+
+We left the island of Kyushu in the evening of June 29th, crossing
+to the main island of Honshu, waiting in Shimonoseki for the morning
+train. The rice-planted valleys near Shimonoseki were relatively
+broad and the paddies had all been recently set in close rows about
+a foot apart and in hills in the rows. Mountain and hill lands were
+closely wooded, largely with coniferous trees about the base but
+toward and at the summits, especially on the South slopes, they were
+green only with herbage cut for fertilizing and feeding stock. Many
+very small trees, often not more than one foot high, were growing on
+the recently cut-over areas; tall slender graceful bamboos clustered
+along the way and everywhere threw wonderful beauty into the
+landscape. Cartloads of their slender stems, two to four inches in
+diameter at the base and twenty or more feet long, were moving along
+the generally excellent, narrow, seldom fenced roads, such as seen
+in Fig. 223. On the borders and pathways between rice paddies many
+small stacks of straw were in waiting to be laid between the rows of
+transplanted rice, tramped beneath the water and overspread with mud
+to enrich the soil. The farmers here, as elsewhere, must contend
+against the scouring rush, varieties of grass and our common
+pigweeds, even in the rice fields. The large area of mountain and
+hill land compared with that which could be tilled, and the
+relatively small area of cultivated land not at this time under
+water and planted to rice persisted throughout the journey.
+
+If there could be any monotony for the traveller new to this land of
+beauty it must result from the quick shifting of scenes and in the
+way the landscapes are pieced together, out-doing the craziest
+patchwork woman ever attempted; the bits are almost never large;
+they are of every shape, even puckered and crumpled and tilted at
+all angles. Here is a bit of the journey: Beyond Habu the foothills
+are thickly wooded, largely with conifers. The valley is extremely
+narrow with only small areas for rice. Bamboo are growing in
+congenial places and we pass bundles of wood cut to stove length, as
+seen in Fig. 224. Then we cross a long narrow valley practically all
+in rice, and then another not half a mile wide, just before reaching
+Asa. Beyond here the fields become limited in area with the
+bordering low hills recently cut over and a new growth springing up
+over them in the form of small shrubs among which are many pine. Now
+we are in a narrow valley between small rice fields or with none at
+all, but dash into one more nearly level with wide areas in rice
+chiefly on one side of the track just before reaching Onoda at 10:30
+A. M. and continuing three minutes ride beyond, when we are again
+between hills without fields and where the trees are pine with
+clumps of bamboo. In four minutes more we are among small rice
+paddies and at 10:35 have passed another gap and are crossing
+another valley checkered with rice fields and lotus ponds, but in
+one minute more the hills have closed in, leaving only room for the
+track. At 10:37 we are running along a narrow valley with its
+terraced rice paddies where many of the hills show naked soil among
+the bamboo, scattering pine and other small trees; then we are out
+among garden patches thickly mulched with straw. At 10:38 we are
+between higher hills with but narrow areas for rice stretching close
+along the track, but in two minutes these are passed and we are
+among low hills with terraced dry fields. At 10:42 we are spinning
+along the level valley with its rice, but are quickly out again
+among hills with naked soil where erosion was marked. This is just
+before passing Funkai where we are following the course of a stream
+some sixty feet wide with but little cultivated land in small areas.
+At 10:47 we are again passing narrow rice fields near the track
+where the people are busy weeding with their hands, half knee-deep
+in water. At 10:53 we enter a broader valley stretching far to the
+south and seaward, but we had crossed it in one minute, shot through
+another gap, and at 10:55 are traversing a much broader valley
+largely given over to rice, but where some of the paddies were
+bearing matting rush set in rows and in hills after the manner of
+rice. It is here we pass Oyou and just beyond cross a stream
+confined between levees built some distance back from either bank.
+At 11:17 this plain is left and we enter a narrow valley without
+fields. Thus do most of the agricultural lands of Japan lie in the
+narrowest valleys, often steeply sloping, and into which jutting
+spurs create the greatest irregularity of boundary and slope.
+
+The journey of this day covered 350 miles in fourteen hours, all of
+the way through a country of remarkable and peculiar beauty which
+can be duplicated nowhere outside the mountainous, rice-growing
+Orient and there only during fifteen days closing the transplanting
+season. There were neither high mountains nor broad valleys, no
+great rivers and but few lakes; neither rugged naked rocks, tall
+forest trees nor wide level fields reaching away to unbroken
+horizons. But the low, rounded, soil-mantled mountain tops clothed
+in herbaceous and young forest growth fell everywhere into lower
+hills and these into narrow steep valleys which dropped by a series
+of water-level benches, as seen in Fig. 225, to the main river
+courses. Each one of these millions of terraces, set about by its
+raised rim, was a silvery sheet of water dotted in the daintiest
+manner with bunches of rice just transplanted, but not so close nor
+yet so high and over-spreading as to obscure the water, yet quite
+enough to impart to the surface a most delicate sheen of green; and
+the grass-grown narrow rims retaining the water in the basins,
+cemented them into series of the most superb mosaics, shaped into
+the valley bottoms by artizan artists perhaps two thousand years
+before and maintained by their descendants through all the years
+since, that on them the rains and fertility from the mountains and
+the sunshine from heaven might be transformed by the rice plant into
+food for the families and support for the nation. Two weeks earlier
+the aspect of these landscapes was very different, and two weeks
+later the reflecting water would lie hidden beneath the growing and
+rapidly developing mantle of green, to go on changing until autumn,
+when all would be overspread with the ripened harvest of grain. And
+what intensified the beauty of it all was the fact that only along
+the widest valley bottoms were the mosaics level, except the water
+surface of each individual unit and these were always small. At one
+time we were riding along a descending series of steps and then
+along another rising through a winding valley to disappear around a
+projecting spur, and anywhere in the midst of it all might be
+standing Japanese cottages or villas with the water and the growing
+rice literally almost against the walls, as seen in Fig. 226, while
+a near-by high terrace might hold its water on a level with the
+chimney-tops. Can one wonder that the Japanese loves his country or
+that they are born and bred landscape artists?
+
+Just before reaching Hongo there were considerable areas thrown into
+long narrow, much-raised, east and west beds under covers of straw
+matting inclined at a slight angle toward the south, some two feet
+above the ground but open toward the north. What crop may have been
+grown here we did not learn but the matting was apparently intended
+for shade, as it was hot midsummer weather, and we suspect it may
+have been ginseng. It was here, too, that we came into the region of
+the culture of matting rush, extensively grown in Hiroshima and
+Okayama prefectures, but less extensively all over the empire. As
+with rice, the rush is first grown in nursery beds from which it is
+transplanted to the paddies, one acre of nursery supplying
+sufficient stock for ten acres of field. The plants are set twenty
+to thirty stalks in a hill in rows seven inches apart with the hills
+six inches from center to center in the row. Very high fertilization
+is practiced, costing from 120 to 240 yen per acre, or $60 to $120
+annually, the fertilizer consisting of bean cake and plant ashes, or
+in recent years, sometimes of sulphate of ammonia for nitrogen, and
+superphosphate of lime. About ten per cent of the amount of
+fertilizer required for the crop is applied at the time of fitting
+the ground, the balance being administered from time to time as the
+season advances. Two crops of the rush may be taken from the same
+ground each year or it is grown in rotation with rice, but most
+extensively on the lands less readily drained and not so well suited
+for other crops. Fields of the rush, growing in alternation with
+rice, are seen in Fig. 45, and in Fig. 227, with the Government salt
+fields lying along the seashore beyond.
+
+With the most vigorous growth the rush attain a height exceeding
+three feet and the market price varies materially with the length of
+the stems. Good yields, under the best culture, may be as high as
+6.5 tons per acre of the dry stems but the average yield is less,
+that of 1905 being 8531 pounds, for 9655 acres, The value of the
+product ranges from $120 to $200 per acre.
+
+It is from this material that mats are woven in standard sizes, to
+be laid over padding, upholstering the floors which are the seats of
+all classes in Japan, used in the manner seen in Fig. 228 and in
+Fig. 229, which is a completely furnished guest room in a first
+class Japanese inn, finished in natural unvarnished wood, with walls
+of sliding panels of translucent paper, which may open upon a porch,
+into a hallway or into another apartment; and with its bouquet,
+which may consist of a single large shapely branch of the purple
+leaved maple, having the cut end charred to preserve it fresh for a
+longer time, standing in water in the vase.
+
+"Two little maids I've heard of, each with a pretty taste, Who had
+two little rooms to fix and not an hour to waste. Eight thousand
+miles apart they lived, yet on the selfsame day The one in Nikko's
+narrow streets, the other on Broadway, They started out, each happy
+maid her heart's desire to find, And her own dear room to furnish
+just according to her mind.
+
+When Alice went a-shopping, she bought a bed of brass, A bureau and
+some chairs and things and such a lovely glass To reflect her little
+figure--with two candle brackets near-- And a little dressing table
+that she said was simply dear! A book shelf low to hold her books, a
+little china rack, And then, of course, a bureau set and lots of
+bric-a-brac; A dainty little escritoire, with fixings all her own
+And just for her convenience, too, a little telephone. Some oriental
+rugs she got, and curtains of madras, With 'cunning' ones of lace
+inside, to go against the glass; And then a couch, a lovely one,
+with cushions soft to crush, And forty pillows, more or less, of
+linen, silk and plush; Of all the ornaments besides I couldn't tell
+the half, But wherever there was nothing else, she stuck a
+photograph. And then, when all was finished, she sighed a little
+sigh, And looked about with just a shade of sadness in her eye: 'For
+it needs a statuette or so--a fern--a silver stork Oh, something,
+just to fill it up!' said Alice of New York.
+
+When little Oumi of Japan went shopping, pitapat, She bought a fan
+of paper and a little sleeping mat; She set beside the window a lily
+in a vase, And looked about with more than doubt upon her pretty
+face: 'For, really--don't you think so?--with the lily and the fan.
+It's a little overcrowded!' said Oumi of Japan."
+
+(Margaret Johnson in St. Nicholas Magazine)
+
+In the rural homes of Japan during 1906 there were woven 14,497,058
+sheets of these floor mats and 6,628,772 sheets of other matting,
+having a combined value of $2,815,040, and in addition, from the
+best quality of rush grown upon the same ground, aggregating 7657
+acres that year, there were manufactured for the export trade, fancy
+mattings, having the value of $2,274,131. Here is a total value, for
+the product of the soil and for the labor put into the manufacture,
+amounting to $664 per acre for the area named.
+
+At the Akashi agricultural experiment station, under the
+Directorship of Professor Ono, we saw some of the methods of fruit
+culture as practiced in Japan. He was conducting experiments with
+the object of improving methods of heading and training pear trees,
+to which reference was made on page 22. A study was also being made
+of the advantages and disadvantages associated with covering the
+fruit with paper bags, examples of which are seen in Figs. 6 and 7.
+The bags were being made at the time of our visit, from old
+newspapers cut, folded and pasted by women. Naked cultivation was
+practiced in the orchard, and fertilizers consisting of fish guano
+and superphosphate of lime were being applied twice each year in
+amounts aggregating a cost of twenty-four dollars per acre.
+
+Pear orchards of native varieties, in good bearing, yield returns of
+150 yen per tan, and those of European varieties, 200 yen per tan,
+which is at the rate of $300 and $400 per acre. The bibo, so
+extensively grown in China was being cultivated here also and was
+yielding about $320 per acre.
+
+It was here that we first met the cultivation of a variety of
+burdock grown from the seed, three crops being taken each season
+where the climate is favorable, or as one of three in the multiple
+crop system. It is grown for the root, yielding a crop valued at $40
+to $50 per acre. One crop, planted, in March, was being harvested
+July 1st.
+
+During our ride to Akashi on the early morning train we passed long
+processions of carts drawn by cattle, horses or by men, moving along
+the country road which paralleled the railway, all loaded with the
+waste of the city of Kobe, going to its destination in the fields,
+some of it a distance of twelve miles, where it was sold at from 54
+cents to $1.63 per ton.
+
+At several places along our route from Shimonoseki to Osaka we had
+observed the application of slacked lime to the water of the rice
+fields, but in this prefecture, Hyogo, where the station is located,
+its use was prohibited in 1901, except under the direction of the
+station authorities, where the soil was acid or where it was needed
+on account of insect troubles. Up to this time it had been the
+custom of farmers to apply slacked lime at the rate of three to five
+tons per acre, paying for it $4.84 per ton. The first restrictive
+legislation permitted the use of 82 pounds of lime with each 827
+pounds of organic manure, but as the farmers persisted in using much
+larger quantities, complete prohibition was resorted to.
+
+Reference has been made to subsidies encouraging the use of
+composts, and in this prefecture prizes are awarded for the best
+compost heaps in each county, examinations being made by a
+committee. The composts receiving the four highest awards in each
+county are allowed to compete with those in other counties for a
+prefectural prize awarded by another committee.
+
+The "pink clover" grown in Hyogo after rice, as a green manure crop,
+yields under favorable conditions twenty tons of the green product
+per acre, and is usually applied to about three times the area upon
+which it grew, at the rate of 6.6 tons per acre, the stubble and
+roots serving for the ground upon which the crop grew.
+
+On July 3rd we left Osaka, going south through Sakai to Wakayama,
+thence east and north to the Nara Experiment Station. After passing
+the first two stations the route lay through a very flat, highly
+cultivated garden section with cucumbers trained on trellises, many
+squash in full bloom, with fields of taro, ginger and many other
+vegetables. Beyond Hamadera considerable areas of flat sandy land
+had been set close with pine, but with intervening areas in rice,
+where the growers were using the revolving weeder seen in Fig. 14.
+At Otsu broad areas are in rice but here worked with the short
+handled claw weeders, and stubble from a former crop had been drawn
+together into small piles, seen in Fig. 230, which later would be
+carefully distributed and worked beneath the mud.
+
+Much of the mountain lands in this region, growing pine, is owned by
+private parties and the growth is cut at intervals of ten, twenty or
+twenty-five years, being sold on the ground to those who will come
+and cut it at a price of forty sen for a one-horse load, as already
+described, page 159.
+
+The course from here was up the rather rapidly rising Kiigawa valley
+where much water was being applied to the rice fields by various
+methods of pumping, among them numerous current wheels; an
+occasional power-pump driven by cattle; and very commonly the
+foot-power wheel where the man walks on the circumference, steadying
+himself with a long pole, as seen in the field, Fig. 231. It was
+here that a considerable section of the hill slope had been very
+recently cut over, the area showing light in the engraving. It was
+in the vicinity of Hashimoto on this route, too, that the two
+beautiful views reproduced in Figs. 151 and 152 were taken.
+
+At the experiment station it was learned that within the prefecture
+of Nara, having a population of 558,314, and 107,574 acres of
+cultivated land, two-thirds of this was in paddy rice. Within the
+province there are also about one thousand irrigation reservoirs
+with an average depth of eight feet. The rice fields receive 16.32
+inches of irrigation water in addition to the rain.
+
+Of the uncultivated hill lands, some 2500 acres contribute green
+manure for fertilization of fields. Reference has been made to the
+production of compost for fertilizers on page 211. The amount
+recommended in this prefecture as a yearly application for two crops
+grown is:
+
+
+Organic matter       3,711 to 4,640 lbs. per acre
+Nitrogen               105 to   131 lbs. per acre
+Phosphorus              35 to    44 lbs. per acre
+Potassium               56 to    70 lbs. per acre
+
+
+These amounts, on the basis of the table, p. 214, are nearly
+sufficient for a crop of thirty bushels of wheat, followed by one of
+thirty bushels of rice, the phosphorus being in excess and the
+potassium not quite enough, supposing none to be derived from other
+sources.
+
+At the Nara hotel, one of the beautiful Japanese inns where we
+stopped, our room opened upon a second story veranda from which one
+looked down upon a beautiful, tiny lakelet, some twenty by eighty
+feet, within a diminutive park scarcely more than one hundred by two
+hundred feet, and the lakelet had its grassy, rocky banks over-hung
+with trees and shrubs planted in all the wild disorder and beauty of
+nature; bamboo, willow, fir, pine, cedar, red-leaved maple, catalpa,
+with other kinds, and through these, along the shore, wound a
+woodsy, well trodden, narrow footpath leading from the inn to a half
+hidden cottage apparently quarters for the maids, as they were
+frequently passing to and fro. A suggestion of how such wild beauty
+is brought right to the very doors in Japan may be gained from Fig.
+232, which is an instance of parking effect on a still smaller scale
+than that described.
+
+On the morning of July 6th, with two men for each of our rickshas,
+we left the Yaami hotel for the Kyoto Experiment station, some two
+miles to the southwest of the city limits. As soon as we had entered
+upon the country road we found ourselves in a procession of cart men
+each drawing a load of six large covered receptacles of about ten
+gallons capacity, and filled with the city's waste. Before reaching
+the station we had passed fifty-two of these loads, and on our
+return the procession was still moving in the same direction and we
+passed sixty-one others, so that during at least five hours there
+had moved over this section of road leading into the country, away
+from the city, not less than ninety tons of waste; along other
+roadways similar loads were moving. These freight carts and those
+drawn by horses and bullocks were all provided with long racks
+similar to that illustrated in Fig. 108, page 197, and when the load
+is not sufficient to cover the full length it is always divided
+equally and placed near each end, thus taking advantage of the
+elasticity of the body to give the effect of springs, lessening the
+draft and the wear and tear,
+
+One of the most common commodities coming into the city along the
+country roads was fuel from the hill lands, in split sticks tied in
+bundles as represented in Fig. 224; as bundles of limbs twenty-four
+to thirty inches, and sometimes four to six feet, long; and in the
+form of charcoal made from trunks and stems one and a half inches to
+six inches long, and baled in straw matting. Most of the draft
+animals used in Japan are either cows, bulls or stallions; at least
+we saw very few oxen and few geldings.
+
+As early as 1895 the Government began definite steps looking to the
+improvement of horse breeding, appointing at that time a commission
+to devise comprehensive plans. This led to progressive steps finally
+culminating in 1906 in the Horse Administration Bureau, whose duties
+were to extend over a period of thirty years, divided into two
+intervals, the first, eighteen and the second, twelve years. During
+the first interval it is contemplated that the Government shall
+acquire 1,500 stallions to be distributed throughout the country for
+the use of private individuals, and during the second period it is
+the expectation that the system will have completely renovated the
+stock and familiarized the people with proper methods of management
+so that matters may be left in their hands.
+
+As our main purpose and limited time required undivided attention to
+agricultural matters, and of these to the long established practices
+of the people, we could give but little time to sight-seeing or even
+to a study of the efforts being made for the introduction of
+improved agricultural methods and practices. But in the very old
+city of Kyoto, which was the seat of the Mikado's court from before
+800 A. D. until 1868, we did pay a short visit to the Kiyomizu
+temple, situated some three hundred yards south from the Yaami
+hotel, which faces the Maruyaami park with its centuries-old giant
+cherry tree, having a trunk of more than four feet through and wide
+spreading branches, now much propped up to guard against accident,
+as seen in Fig. 233. These cherry trees are very extensively used
+for ornamental purposes in Japan with striking effect. The tree does
+not produce an edible fruit, but is very beautiful when in full
+bloom, as may be seen from Fig. 234. It was these trees that were
+sent by the Japanese government to this country for use at
+Washington but the first lot were destroyed because they were found
+to be infested and threatened danger to native trees.
+
+Kyoto stands amid surroundings of wonderful beauty, the site
+apparently having been selected with rare acumen for its
+possibilities in large landscape effects, and these have been
+developed with that fullness and richness which the greatest artists
+might be content to approach. We are thinking particularly of the
+Kiyomizu-dera, or rather of the marvelous beauty of tree and foliage
+which has overgrown it and swept far up and over the mountain
+summit, leaving the temple half hidden at the base. No words, no
+brush, no photographic art can transfer the effect. One must see to
+feel the influence for which it was created, and scores of people,
+very old and very young, nearly all Japanese, and more of them on
+that day from the poorer rather than from the well-to-do class, were
+there, all withdrawing reluctantly, like ourselves, looking
+backward, under the spell. So potent and impressive was that
+something from the great overshadowing beauty of the mountain, that
+all along up the narrow, shop-lined street leading to the gateway of
+the temple, seen in Fig. 235, the tiniest bits of park effect were
+flourishing in the most impossible situations; and as Professor
+Tokito and myself were coming away we chanced upon six little
+roughly dressed lads laying out in the sand an elaborate little
+park, quite nine by twelve feet. They must have been at it hours,
+for there were ponds, bridges, tiny hills and ravines and much
+planting in moss and other little greens. So intent on their task
+were they that we stood watching full two minutes before our
+presence attracted their attention, and yet the oldest of the group
+must have been under ten years of age.
+
+One partly hidden view of the temple is seen in Fig. 236, the dense
+mountain verdure rising above and beyond it. And then too, within
+the temple, as the peasant men and women came before the shrine and
+grasped the long depending rope knocker, with the heavy knot in
+front of the great gong, swinging it to strike three rings,
+announcing their presence before their God, then kneeling to offer
+prayers, one could not fail to realize the deep sincerity and faith
+expressed in face and manner, while they were oblivious to all else.
+No Christian was ever more devout and one may well doubt if any ever
+arose from prayer more uplifted than these. Who need believe they
+did not look beyond the imagery and commune with the Eternal Spirit?
+
+A third view of the same temple, showing resting places beneath the
+shade, which serve the purpose of lawn seats in our parks, is seen
+in Fig. 237.
+
+That a high order of the esthetic sense is born to the Japanese
+people; that they are masters of the science of the beautiful; and
+that there are artists among them capable of effective and
+impressive results, is revealed in a hundred ways, and one of these
+is the iris garden of Fig. 238. One sees it here in the bulrushes
+which make the iris feel at home; in the unobtrusive semblance of a
+log that seems to have fallen across the run; in the hard beaten
+narrow path and the sore toes of the old pine tree, telling of the
+hundreds that come and go; it is seen in the dress and pose of the
+ladies, and one may be sure the photographer felt all that he saw
+and fixed so well.
+
+The vender of Oumi's lily that Margaret Johnson saw, is in Fig. 239.
+There another is bartering for a spray of flowers, and thus one sold
+the branch of red maple leaves in our room at the Nara inn. His
+floral stands are borne along the streets pendant from the usual
+carrying pole.
+
+When returning to the city from the Kyoto Experiment Station several
+fields of Japanese indigo were passed, growing in water under the
+conditions of ordinary rice culture, Fig. 240 being a view of one of
+these. The plant is Poligonum tinctoria, a close relative of the
+smartweed. Before the importation of aniline and alizarin dyes,
+which amounted in 1907 to 160,558 pounds and 7,170,320 pounds
+respectively, the cultivation of indigo was much more extensive than
+at present, amounting in 1897 to 160,460,000 pounds of the dried
+leaves; but in 1906 the production had fallen to 58,696,000 pounds,
+forty-five per cent of which was grown in the prefecture of
+Tokushima in the eastern part of the island of Shikoku. The
+population of this prefecture is 707,565, or 4.4 people to each of
+the 159,450 acres of cultivated field, and yet 19,969 of these acres
+bore the indigo crop, leaving more than five people to each
+food-producing acre.
+
+The plants for this crop are started in nursery beds in February and
+transplanted in May, the first crop being cut the last of June or
+first of July, when the fields are again fertilized, the stubble
+throwing out new shoots and yielding a second cutting the last of
+August or early September. A crop of barley may have preceded one of
+indigo, or the indigo may be set following a crop of rice. Such
+practice, with the high fertilization for every crop, goes a long
+way toward supplying the necessary food. The dense population, too,
+has permitted the manufacture of the indigo as a home industry among
+the farmers, enabling them to exchange the spare labor of the family
+for cash. The manufactured product from the reduced planting in 1907
+was worth $1,304,610, forty-five per cent of which was the output of
+the rural population of the prefecture of Tokushima, which they
+could exchange for rice and other necessaries. The land in rice in
+this prefecture in 1907 was 73,816 acres, yielding 114,380,000
+pounds, or more than 161 pounds to each man, woman and child, and
+there were 65,665 acres bearing other crops. Besides this there are
+874,208 acres of mountain and hill land in the prefecture which
+supply fuel, fuel ashes and green manure for fertilizer; run-off
+water for irrigation; lumber and remunerative employment for service
+not needed in the fields.
+
+The journey was continued from Kyoto July 7th, taking the route
+leading northeastward, skirting lake Biwa which we came upon
+suddenly on emerging from a tunnel as the train left Otani. At many
+places we passed waterwheels such as that seen in Fig. 241, all
+similarly set, busily turning, and usually twelve to sixteen feet in
+diameter but oftenest only as many inches thick. Until we had
+reached Lake Biwa the valleys were narrow with only small areas in
+rice. Tea plantations were common on the higher cultivated slopes,
+and gardens on the terraced hillsides growing vegetables of many
+kinds were common, often with the ground heavily mulched with straw,
+while the wooded or grass-covered slopes still further up showed the
+usual systematic periodic cutting. After passing the west end of the
+lake, rice fields were nearly continuous and extensive. Before
+reaching Hachiman we crossed a stream leading into the lake but
+confined between levees more than twelve feet high, and we had
+already passed beneath two raised viaducts after leaving Kusatsu.
+Other crops were being grown side by side with the rice on similar
+lands and apparently in rotation with it, but on sharp, narrow close
+ridges twelve to fourteen inches high. As we passed eastward we
+entered one of the important mulberry districts where the fields are
+graded to two levels, the higher occupied with mulberry or other
+crops not requiring irrigation, while the lower was devoted to rice
+or crops grown in rotation with it.
+
+On the Kisogawa, at the station of the same name, there were four
+anchored floating water-power mills propelled by two pair of large
+current wheels stationed fore and aft, each pair working on a common
+axle from opposite sides of the mill, driven by the force of the
+current flowing by.
+
+At Kisogawa we had entered the northern end of one of the largest
+plains of Japan, some thirty miles wide and extending forty miles
+southward to Owari bay. The plain has been extensively graded to two
+levels, the benches being usually not more than two feet above the
+rice paddies, and devoted to various dry land crops, including the
+mulberry. The soil is decidedly sandy in character but the mean
+yield of rice for the prefecture is 37 bushels per acre and above
+the average for the country at large. An analysis of the soils at
+the sub-experiment station north of Nagoya shows the following
+content of the three main plant food elements.
+
+
+                        Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium
+                             Pounds per million
+                               In paddy field
+Soil                      1520      769        805
+Subsoil                    810      756        888
+                               In upland field
+Soil                      1060      686       1162
+Subsoil                    510      673       1204
+
+
+The green manure crops on this plain are chiefly two varieties of
+the "pink clover," one sowed in the fall and one about May 15th, the
+first yielding as high as sixteen tons green weight per acre and the
+other from five to eight tons.
+
+On the plain distant from the mountain and hill land the stems of
+agricultural crops are largely used as fuel and the fuel ashes are
+applied to the fields at the rate of 10 kan per tan, or 330 pounds
+per acre, worth $1.20, little lime, as such, being used.
+
+In the prefecture of Aichi, largely in this plain, with an area of
+cultivated land equal to about sixteen of our government townships,
+there is a population of 1,752,042, or a density of 4.7 per acre,
+and the number of households of farmers was placed at 211,033, thus
+giving to each farmer's family an average of 1.75 acres, their chief
+industries being rice and silk culture.
+
+Soon after leaving the Agricultural Experiment Station of Aichi
+prefecture at An Jo we crossed the large Yahagigawa, flowing between
+strong levees above the level of the rice fields. Mulberries, with
+burdock and other vegetables were growing upon all of the tables
+raised one to two, feet above the rice paddies, and these features
+continued past Okasaki, Koda, and Kamagori, where the hills in many
+places had been recently cut clean of the low forest growth and
+where we passed many large stacks of pine boughs tied in bundles for
+fuel. After passing Goyu sixty-five miles east from Nagoya, mulberry
+was the chief crop. Then came a plain country which had been graded
+and leveled at great cost of labor, the benches with their square
+shoulders standing three to four feet above the paddy fields; and
+after passing Toyohashi some distance we were surprised to cross a
+rather wide section of comparatively level land overgrown with pine
+and herbaceous, plants which had evidently been cut and recut many
+times. Beyond Futagawa rice fields were laid out on what appeared to
+be, similar land but with soil a little finer in texture, and still
+further along were other flat areas not cultivated.
+
+At Maisaka quite half the cultivated fields appear to be in mulberry
+with ponds of lotus plants in low places, while at Hamamatsu the
+rice fields are interspersed with many square-shouldered tables
+raised three to four feet and occupied with mulberry or vegetables.
+As we passed upon the flood plain of the Tenryugawa, with its nearly
+dry bed of coarse gravel half a mile wide, the dwellings of farm
+villages were, many of them surrounded with nearly solid,
+flat-topped, trimmed evergreen hedges nine to twelve feet high, of
+the umbrella pine, forming beautiful and effective screens.
+
+At Nakaidzumi we had left the mulberry orchards for those of tea,
+rice still holding wherever paddies could be formed. Here, too, we
+met the first fields of tobacco, and at Fukuroi and Homouchi large
+quantities of imported Manchurian bean cake were stacked about the
+station, having evidently been brought by rail. At Kanaya we passed
+through a long tunnel and were in the valley of the Oigawa, crossing
+the broad, nearly dry stream over a bridge of nineteen long spans
+and were then in the prefecture of Shizuoka where large fields of
+tea spread far up the hillsides, covering extensive areas, but after
+passing the next station, and for seventeen miles before reaching
+Shizuoka we traversed a level stretch of nearly continuous rice
+fields.
+
+The Shizuoka Experiment Station is devoting special attention to the
+interests of horticulture, and progress has already been made in
+introducing new fruits of better quality and in improving the native
+varieties. The native pears and peaches, as we found them served on
+the hotel tables in either China or Japan, were not particularly
+attractive in either texture or flavor, but we were here permitted
+to test samples of three varieties of ripe figs of fine flavor and
+texture, one of them as large as a good sized pear. Three varieties
+of fine peaches were also shown, one unusually large and with
+delicate deep rose tint, including the flesh. If such peaches could
+be canned so as to retain their delicate color they would prove very
+attractive for the table. The flavor and texture of this peach were
+also excellent, as was the case with two varieties of pears.
+
+The station was also experimenting with the production of marmalades
+and we tasted three very excellent brands, two of them lacking the
+bitter flavor. It would appear that, in Japan, Korea and China there
+should be a very bright future along the lines of horticultural
+development, leading to the utilization of the extensive hill lands
+of these countries and the development of a very extensive export
+trade, both in fresh fruits and marmalades, preserves and the canned
+forms. They have favorable climatic and soil conditions and great
+numbers of people with temperament and habits well suited to the
+industries, as well as an enormous home need which should be met, in
+addition to the large possibilities in the direction of a most
+profitable export trade which would increase opportunities for labor
+and bring needed revenue to the people. In Fig. 242 are three views
+at this station, the lower showing a steep terraced hillside set
+with oranges and other fruits, holding out a bright promise for the
+future.
+
+Peach orchards were here set on the hill lands, the trees six feet
+apart each way. They come into bearing in three years, remain
+productive ten to fifteen years, and the returns are 50 to 60 yen
+per tan, or at the rate of $100 to $120 per acre. The usual
+fertilizers for a peach orchard are the manure-earth-compost,
+applied at the rate of 3300 pounds per acre, and fish guano applied
+in rotation and at the same rate.
+
+Shizuoka is one of the large prefectures, having a total area of
+3029 square miles; 2090 of which are in forest; 438 in pasture and
+genya land, and 501 square miles cultivated, not quite one-half of
+which is in paddy fields. The mean yield of paddy rice is nearly 33
+bushels per acre. The prefecture has a population of 1,293,470, or
+about four to the acre of cultivated field, and the total crop of
+rice is such as, to provide 236 pounds to each person.
+
+At many places along the way as we left Shizuoka July 10th for
+Tokyo, farmers were sowing broadcast, on the water, over their rice
+fields, some pulverized fertilizer, possibly bean cake. Near the
+railway station of Fuji, and after crossing the boulder gravel bed
+of the Fujikawa which was a full quarter of a mile wide, we were
+traversing a broad plain of rice paddies with their raised tables,
+but on them pear orchards were growing, trained to their overhead
+trellises. About. Suduzuka grass was being cut with sickles along
+the canal dikes for use as green manure in the rice fields, which on
+the left of the railway, stretched eastward more than six miles to
+beyond Hara where we passed into a tract of dry land crops
+consisting of mulberry, tea and various vegetables, with more or
+less of dry land rice, but we returned to the paddy land again at
+Numazu, in another four miles. Here there were four carloads of beef
+cattle destined for Tokyo or Yokohama, the first we had seen.
+
+It was at this station that the railway turns northward to skirt the
+eastern flank of the beautiful Fuji-yama, rising to higher lands of
+a brown loamy character, showing many large boulders two feet in
+diameter. Horses were here moving along the roadways under large
+saddle loads of green grass, going to the paddy fields from the
+hills, which in this section are quite free from all but herbaceous
+growth, well covered and green. Considerable areas were growing
+maize and buckwheat, the latter being ground into flour and made
+into macaroni which is eaten with chopsticks, Fig. 243, and used to
+give variety to the diet of rice and naked barley. At Gotenba, where
+tourists leave the train to ascend Fuji-yama, the road turns
+eastward again and descends rapidly through many tunnels, crossing
+the wide gravelly channel of the Sakawagawa, then carrying but
+little water, like all of the other main streams we had crossed,
+although we were in the rainy season. This was partly because the
+season was yet not far advanced; partly because so much water was
+being taken upon the rice fields, and again because the drainage is
+so rapid down the steep slopes and comparatively short water
+courses. Beyond Yamakita the railway again led along a broad plain
+set in paddy rice and the hill slopes were terraced and cultivated
+nearly to their summits.
+
+Swinging strongly southeastward, the coast was reached at Noduz in a
+hilly country producing chiefly vegetables, mulberry and tobacco,
+the latter crop being extensively grown eastward nearly to Oiso,
+beyond which, after a mile of sweet potatoes, squash and cucumbers,
+there were paddy fields of rice in a flat plain. Before Hiratsuka
+was reached the rice paddies were left and the train was crossing a
+comparatively flat country with a sandy, sometimes gravelly, soil
+where mulberries, peaches, eggplants, sweet potatoes and dry land
+rice were interspersed with areas still occupied with small pine and
+herbaceous growth or where small pine had been recently set. Similar
+conditions prevailed after we had crossed the broad channel of the
+Banyugawa and well toward and beyond Fujishiwa where a leveled plain
+has its tables scattered among the fields of paddy rice, this being
+the southwest margin of the Tokyo plain, the largest in Japan, lying
+in five prefectures, whose aggregate area of 1,739,200 acres of
+arable lands was worked by 657,235 families of farmers; 661,613
+acres of which was in paddy rice, producing annually some 19,198,000
+bushels, or 161 pounds for each of the 7,194,045 men, women and
+children in the five prefectures, 1,818,655 of whom were in the
+capital city, Tokyo.
+
+Three views taken in the eastern portion of this plain in the
+prefecture of Chiba, July 17th, are seen in Fig. 244, in two of
+which shocks of wheat were still standing in the fields among the
+growing crops, badly weathered and the grain sprouting as the result
+of the rainy season. Peanuts, sweet potatoes and millet were the
+main dry land, crops then on the ground, with paddy rice in the
+flooded basins. Windsor beans, rape, wheat and barley had been
+harvested. One family with whom we talked were threshing their
+wheat. The crop had been a good one and was yielding between 38.5
+and. 41.3 bushels per acre, worth at the time $35 to $40. On the
+same land this farmer secures a yield of 352 to 361 bushels of
+potatoes, which at the market price at that time would give a gross
+earning of $64 to $66 per acre.
+
+Reference has been made to the extensive use of straw in the
+cultural methods of the Japanese. This is notably the case in their
+truck garden work, and two phases of this are shown in Fig. 245. In
+the lower section of the illustration the garden has been ridged and
+furrowed for transplanting, the sets have been laid and the roots
+covered with a little soil; then, in the middle section, showing the
+next step in the method, a layer of straw has been pressed firmly
+above the roots, and in the final step this would be covered with
+earth. Adopting this method the straw is so placed that (1) it acts
+as an effective mulch without in any way interfering with the
+capillary rise of water to the roots of the sets; (2) it gives deep,
+thorough aeration of the soil, at the same time allowing rains to
+penetrate quickly, drawing the air after it; (3) the ash ingredients
+carried in the straw are leached directly to the roots where they
+are needed; (4) and finally the straw and soil constitute a compost
+where the rapid decay liberates plant food gradually and in the
+place where it will be most readily available. The upper section of
+the illustration shows rows of eggplants very heavily mulched with
+coarse straw, the quantity being sufficient to act as a most
+effective mulch, to largely prevent the development of weeds and to
+serve during the rainy season as a very material fertilizer.
+
+In growing such dry land crops as barley, beans, buckwheat or dry
+land rice the soil of the field is at first fitted by plowing or
+spading, then furrowed deeply where the rows are to be planted. Into
+these furrows fertilizer is placed and covered with a layer of earth
+upon which the seed is planted. When the crop is up, if a second
+fertilization is desired, a furrow may be made alongside each row,
+into which the fertilizer is sowed and then covered. When the crop
+is so far matured that a second may be planted, a new furrow is
+made, either midway between two others or adjacent to one of them,
+fertilizer applied and covered with a layer of soil and the seed
+planted. In this way the least time possible is lost during the
+growing season, all of the soil of the field doing duty in crop
+production.
+
+It was our privilege to visit the Imperial Agricultural Experiment
+Station at Nishigahara, near Tokyo, which is charged with the
+leadership of the general and technical agricultural research work
+for the Empire. The work is divided into the sections of
+agriculture, agricultural chemistry, entomology, vegetable
+pathology, tobacco, horticulture, stock breeding, soils, and tea
+manufacture, each with their laboratory equipment and research
+staff, while the forty-one prefectural stations and fourteen
+sub-stations are charged with the duty of handling all specific
+local, practical problems and with testing out and applying
+conclusions and methods suggested by the results obtained at the
+central station, together with the local dissemination of knowledge
+among the farmers of the respective prefectures.
+
+A comprehensive soil survey of the arable lands of the Empire has
+been in progress since before 1893, excellent maps being issued on a
+scale of 1 to 100,000, or about 1.57 inch-to the mile, showing the
+geological formations in eight colors with subdivisions indicated by
+letters. Some eleven soil types are recognized, based on physical
+composition and the areas occupied by these are shown by means of
+lines and dots in black printed over the colors. Typical profiles of
+the soil to depths of three meters are printed as insets on each
+sheet and localities where these apply are indicated by
+corresponding numbers in red on the map.
+
+Elaborate chemical and physical studies are also being made in the
+laboratories of samples of both soil and subsoil. The Imperial
+Agricultural Experiment Station is well equipped for investigation
+work along many lines and that for soils is notably strong. In Fig.
+246 may be seen a portion of the large immersed cylinders which are
+filled with typical soils from different parts of the Empire, and
+Fig. 247 shows a portion of another part of their elaborate outfit
+for soil studies which are in progress.
+
+It is found that nearly all cultivated soils of Japan are acid to
+litmus, and this they are inclined to attribute to the presence of
+acid hydro-aluminum silicates.
+
+The Island Empire of Japan stretches along the Asiatic coast through
+more than twenty-nine degrees of latitude from the southern
+extremity of Formosa northward to the middle of Saghalin, some 2300
+statute miles; or from the latitude of middle Cuba to that of north
+Newfoundland and Winnipeg; but the total land area is only 175,428
+square miles, and less than that of the three states of Wisconsin,
+Iowa and Minnesota. Of this total land area only 23,698 square miles
+are at present cultivated; 7151 square miles in the three main
+islands are weed and pasture land. Less than fourteen per cent of
+the entire land area is at present under cultivation.
+
+If all lands having a slope of less than fifteen degrees may be
+tilled, there yet remain in the four main islands, 15,400 square
+miles to bring under cultivation, which is an addition of 65.4 per
+cent to the land already cultivated.
+
+In 1907 there were in the Empire some 5,814,362 households of
+farmers tilling 15,201,969 acres and feeding 3,522,877 additional
+households, or 51,742,398 people. This is an average of 3.4 people
+to the acre of cultivated land, each farmer's household tilling an
+average of 2.6 acres.
+
+The lands yet to be reclaimed are being put under cultivation
+rapidly, the amount improved in 1907 being 64,448 acres. If the new
+lands to be reclaimed can be made as productive as those now in use
+there should be opportunity for an increase in population to the
+extent of about 35,000,000 without changing the present ratio of 3.4
+people to the acre of cultivated land.
+
+While the remaining lands to be reclaimed are not as inherently
+productive as those now in use, improvements in management will more
+than compensate for this, and the Empire is certain to quite double
+its present maintenance capacity and provide for at least a hundred
+million people with many more comforts of home and more satisfaction
+for the common people than they now enjoy.
+
+Since 1872 there has been an increase in the population of Japan
+amounting to an annual average of about 1.1 per cent, and if this
+rate is maintained the one hundred million mark would be passed in
+less than sixty years. It appears probable however that the
+increased acreage put under cultivation and pasturage combined, will
+more than keep pace with the population up to this limit, while the
+improvement in methods and crops will readily permit a second like
+increment to her population, bringing that for the present Empire up
+to 150 millions. Against this view, perhaps, is the fact that the
+rice crop of the twenty years ending in 1906 is only thirty-three
+per cent greater than the crop of 1838.
+
+In Japan, as in the United States, there has been a strong movement
+from the country to the city as a natural result of the large
+increase in manufactures and commerce, and the small amount of land
+per each farmer's household. In 1903 only .23 per cent of the
+population of Japan were living in villages of less than 500, while
+79.06 per cent were in towns and villages of less than 10,000
+people, 20.7 per cent living in those larger. But in 1894 84.36 per
+cent of the population were living in towns and villages of less
+than 10,000, and only 15.64 per cent were in cities, towns and
+villages of over 10,000 people; and while during these ten years the
+rural population had increased at the rate of 640 per 10,000, in
+cities the increase had been 6,174 per 10,000.
+
+Japan has been and still is essentially an agricultural nation and
+in 1906 there were 3,872,105 farmers' households, whose chief work
+was farming, and 1,581,204 others whose subsidiary work was farming,
+or 60.2 per cent of the entire number of households. A like ratio
+holds in Formosa. Wealthy land owners who do not till their own
+fields are not included.
+
+Of the farmers in Japan some 33.34 per cent own and work their land.
+Those having smaller holdings, who rent additional land, make up
+46.03 per cent of the total farmers; while 20.63 per cent are
+tenants who work 44.1 per cent of the land. In 1892 only one per
+cent of the land holders owned more than twenty-five acres each;
+those holding between twenty-five acres and five acres made up 11.7
+per cent; while 87.3 per cent held less than five acres each. A man
+owning seventy-five acres of land in Japan is counted among the
+"great landholders". It is never true, however, except in the
+Hokkaido, which is a new country agriculturally, that such holdings
+lie in one body.
+
+Statistics published in "Agriculture in Japan", by the Agricultural
+Bureau, Department of Agriculture and Commerce, permit the following
+statements of rent, crop returns, taxes and expenses, to be made.
+The wealthy land owners who rent their lands receive returns like
+these:
+
+
+              For paddy field,  For upland field,
+                 per acre.         per acre.
+Rent              $27.98            $13.53
+Taxes               7.34              1.98
+Expenses            1.72              2.48
+Total expenses     $9.06             $4.46
+Net profit         18.92              9.07
+
+
+It is stated, in connection with these statistics, that the rate of
+profit for land capital is 5.6 per cent for the paddy field, and 5.7
+per cent for the upland field. This makes the valuation of the land
+about $338 and $159 per acre, respectively. A land holder who owns
+and rents ten acres of paddy field and ten acres of upland field
+would, at these rates, realize a net annual income of $279.90.
+
+Peasant farmers who own and work their lands receive per acre an
+income as follows:
+
+
+                  For paddy field,    For upland field,
+                     per acre.            per acre.
+Crop returns          $55.00               $30.72
+Taxes                   7.34                 1.98
+Labor and expenses     36.20                24.00
+                     -------              -------
+Total expense         $43.54               $25.98
+Net profit             11.46                 4.74
+
+
+
+The peasant farmer who owns and works five acres, 2.5 of paddy and
+2.5 of upland field, would realize a total net income of $40.50.
+This is after deducting the price of his labor. With that included,
+his income would be something like $91.
+
+Tenant farmers who work some 41 per cent of the farm lands of Japan,
+would have accounts something as follows:
+
+
+               For paddy field,  For upland field,
+               1 crop.  2 crops.
+                   per acre.        per acre.
+Crop returns    $49.03   $78.62       $41.36
+Tenant fee       23.89    31.58        13.52
+Labor            15.78    25.79        14.69
+Fertilization     7.82    17.30        10.22
+Seed               .82     1.40         1.57
+Other expenses    1.69     2.82         1.66
+                  -------------   -------
+Total expenses   $50.00  $78.89       $41.66
+Net profit        --.97   --.27        --.30
+
+
+
+This statement indicates that tenant farmers do not realize enough
+from the crops to quite cover expenses and the price named for their
+labor. If the tenant were renting five acres, equally divided
+between paddy and upland field, the earning would be $73.00 or
+$99.73 according as one or two crops are taken from the paddy field,
+this representing what he realizes on his labor, his other expenses
+absorbing the balance of the crop value.
+
+But the average area tilled by each Japanese farmer's household is
+only 2.6 acres, hence the average earning of the tenant household
+would be $37.95 or $51.86. A clearer view of the difference in the
+present condition of farmers in Japan and of those in the United
+States may be gained by making the Japanese statement on the basis
+of our 160-acre farm, as expressed in the table below:
+
+
+                For paddy field. For upland field.  Total.
+                 For 80 acres.    For 80 acres.   160 acres.
+Crop returns      $4,400.00         $2,457.60     $6,857.60
+                  ----------        ----------    ----------
+Taxes               $587.20           $158.40       $745.60
+Expenses           1,633.60            744.80      2,378.40
+Labor              1,262.40          1,175.20      2,437.60
+                  ----------        ----------    ----------
+   Total cost     $3,488.20         $2,078.40     $5,561.60
+Net return           916.80            379.20      1,296.00
+Return
+  including labor  2,179.20          1,554.40      3,783.60
+
+
+
+In the United States the 160-acre farm is managed by and supports a
+single family, but in Japan, as the average household works but 2.6
+acres, the earnings of the 160 acres are distributed among some 61
+households, making the net return to each but $21.25, instead of
+$1296, and including the labor as earning, the income would be
+$39.96 more, or $60.67 per household instead of $3733.60, the total
+for a 160-acre farm worked under Japanese conditions.
+
+These figures reveal something of the tense strain and of the
+terrible burden which is being carried by these people, over and
+above that required for the maintenance of the household. The tenant
+who raises one crop of rice pays a rental of $23.89 per acre. If he
+raises two crops he pays $31.58; if it is upland field, he pays
+$13.52. To these amounts he adds $10.33, $21.52 or $13.45
+respectively for fertilizer, seed and other expenses making a total
+investment of $34.22, $53.10 or $26.97 per acre, which would require
+as many bushels of wheat sold at a dollar a bushel to cover this
+cost. In addition to this he assumes all the risks of loss from
+weather, from insects and from blight, in the hope that he may
+recoup his expenses and in addition have for his services $14.81,
+$25.52 or $14.39 for the season's work.
+
+The burdens of society, which have been and still are so largely
+burdens of war and of government, with all nations, are reflected
+with almost blinding effect in the land taxes of Japan, which range
+from $1.98, on the upland, to $7.34 per acre on the paddy fields,
+making a quarter section, without buildings, carry a burden of $300
+to $1100 annually. Japan's budget in 1907 was $134,941,113, which is
+at the rate of $2.60 for each man, woman and child; $8.90 for each
+acre of cultivated land, and $23, for each household in the Empire.
+When such is the case it is not strange that scenes like Fig. 248
+are common in Japan today where, after seventy years, toil may not
+cease.
+
+There is a bright, as well as a pathetic side to scenes like this.
+The two have shared for fifty years, but if the days have been full
+of toil, with them have come strength of body, of mind and sterling
+character. If the burdens have been heavy, each has made the other's
+lighter, the satisfaction fuller, the joys keener, the sorrows less
+difficult to bear; and the children who came into the home and have
+gone from it to perpetuate new ones, could not well be other than
+such as to contribute to the foundations of nations of great
+strength and long endurance.
+
+Reference has been made to the large amount of work carried on in
+the farmers' households by the women and children, and by the men
+when they are not otherwise employed, and the earnings of this
+subsidiary work have materially helped to piece out the meagre
+income and to meet the relatively high taxes and rent.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 5350 ***