Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, November 25, 1900, Page 19

November 25, 1900. THE ILLUSTRATED BEE. " Big Railroad Boom In Chinese Empire (Copyrighted, 1900, by Frank G. Carpenter.) SHANGHAI, Oct. 7, 1900.—(Special Cor- respondence of The Bee.)—I have just re- turned from a ride to Woosung, a dirty little town on the Yangste at the mouth of the Whampoa river. It is ten miles below Shanghai and the Chinese have now a rail- way connecting the two. This is practi- cally the only railroad in operation in the great Yangtse Kiang valley, a region which contains more than twice as many people as the whole United Ntates and surpasses in its industries any country in Asia. The tensions are being made to the coal and iron mines nearby, but the track altogether will not measure fifty miles. In addition to the above are the little road to Woosung and the German roads back of Kiao Chou bay. The Germans have about fifty miles of track ready for the rai's and they will have cars running be- fore the end of the year. Altogether the total length of the Chipese railroads will not exceed 700 miles. If all the tracks could be lifted up and dropped upon the United States they would not suffice to | - | l BUILDING BRIDGE ON LAN HO—“IT IS THE BRIDGES THAT COST."” Shanghal-Woosung line is the beginning of a line to Soochow and thence to Chin kiang and Nanking, formerly a part of the great rallway system which, sooner or later, will gridiron China. At present no building is going on, but the moment peace is settled the great railroad era of China will begin. Shanghal will be the center of future railroad operations. It will be the ter- minus of many trunk lines. It is the New York of the empire. It has all the big banks and is the headquarters of the great financiers. Here Sheng, the director of the imperial railroads, has his offices, ana here, rather than at Pekin, will be granted the concessions by which hundreds of mil- llons of foreign gold will be transformed into tracks of steel. There are already a dozen representatives of big syndicates here awaiting developments. Among them are Russians, Germans, Italians, French, English and Americans. All are after con- cessions and some have already obtained concessions which they want extended. They hope that the powers will force the Chinese government to guaranty the se- curity of foreign capital and that railroad concessions will be so granted hereafter that they can be bullt with foreign money and be controlled by foreigners. If this {s done a stream of gold will flow from the money centers of Europe and the United States to Shanghal. It will spread out over the empire and will eventually make it one of the most profitable rail- road countries of the world. What China’s Railroads Are. So far capital hes been afraid of China. The concessions provide that the work shall be done by Chinese, the accounts audited by Chinese and the foreigners who are fur- nishing the money shoved to the back- ground. As a result there has been much talk and little work. Our people imagine there are thousands of miles of rallroads here. Indeed, more than 4,000 miles have been planned and loose concessions granted for as much track as would reach from New York to Salt Lake City. The roads already built would not make much more than a double track between New York and Washington. They embrace about 600 miles of working lines, with an addition of perhaps 200 miles ready for the rails. Take a rough glance at the aystem as it now is. The most of it is in north China. Take your map and put your flager on Tien Tsin. You are now at the central station of the Tien Tsin-Pekin-Shan Hal Kwan system. This is the oldest system of China and practically the only one which is doing profitable business. I inspected it with General John W. Foster a few years ago. It includes the line which goes from Tien Tsin to Shan Hal Kwan on the Gulf of Pe Chi Li, at the end of the great Chinese wall, and thence on around the gulf to Kinchau. It has also the line from Tien Tein to Pekin, eighty miles lomg, and the little branch which runs down to the sea at the mouth of the Pel Ho, making al- together about 876 miles. Much of this road has been torn up during the war, but the track has been relaid, and by the time this letter is published the cars will be running. At Port Arthur the Russian-Chinese rafl- road begins and extends northward, with a branch to Newchwang into Manchuria. There is 280 miles of it in actual operation and the work is going rapidly on. It will include something like 1,000 miles in Chinese territory before it reaches the Si- berian line, across which it {s to go to con- nect with the great trunk line to Burope. The Pekin-Hankow system has from 100 to 130 miles, either built or ready for the rails. The work is going on at both ends. About elghty miles have been built from the Loukou bridge, just outside Pekin, to Pao Ting Fu, the capital of Chihli. This section is in operation; it is well patronized and i{s paying. From Hankow the road s being extended northward and from forty to fifty miles are ready for the ralls. Bx- make a singie line from New York to Cleveland. Our Big American Schemens, As to railroads on paper, China is full of them and among the biggest is an Amer- ican one. This is the scheme of the Amer- ican-China Development company, which has a concession for a road from Canton to Hankow. Its concession is signed by the emperor. It was granted through Wu Ting Fang, the minister at Washington, to the late Calvin Brice and others. The syn- dicate has already made a deposit of $100,- 000 and has spent considerable money in esurveying. It is claimed that the Vander- bilts, the Rockefellers, Levi P. Morton, the Carnegie Steel company and others are in it. The road is to rum in a straight line from Canton to Hankow, where it will connect with the road to Pekin, making a ago. They were smelting foreign iron with foreign coke, trying to learn how to make rails and evidently not succeeding, for the rails now being used are imported from Belgium. Fifty miles of track will be lald with such rails within the next few months, There are now 3,000 men there employed and the work will be steadily pushed. Chat with American Rallrond Men, The route of thls Hankow-Pekin railroad was recently surveyed by Captain Watson W. Rich, a prominent American railroad en- gincer, who is now in the employ of the Chi- nese government. He Is the confidential technical foreign rallroad advisor to Sheng, and has much influence here. He built the Sfault Ste. Marle road and is thoroughly up in railrcad construction. I chatted with him about the line from Hankow to Pekin. Sald he: ““The country through that part of China is flat and our chief difficulty will be in bridging the waterways. The great plain of north China is cut up by streams and canals. You can go everywhere in boats and the many waterways will necessitate bridges at every few miles, so that all told the cost of rallroad construction is quite ns heavy as in the United States. It is the bridges that cost. “One of our great troubles on the Han- kow-Pekin line will be the Yellow river, This has heavy floods and it often changes its course. We have tried to plan the road so that it shall be outside the danger line. For this reason the route has been lald out near the foot of the mountain, 500 miles back of the coast. Here the river at low water is about fifteen feet deep and a mile wide. At high water it is three miles wide, 80 that we shall need a three-mile bridge. All such bridges must be brought from abroad. We have no cheap wood in China and our bridge material must be steel.” “I had an idea, Captain Rich, that rail- roads could be built here very cheaply.” “That is a mistake,” was the reply. ‘“Wages are much lower, but the people are unskilled and they work slowly. Take, for instance, the bricklayers. We pay a Chinese mason and his helper about 256 cents a day for twelve hours’ work and they lay 100 bricks. An American brick- layer and helper would receive about $4.50, but they would lay 1,200 bricks, so that the difference is not so great as it would seem. We can get dirt excavated for about three-fourths the American price, but all rock work is equally expensive. We also have to pay a big freight on all our ma- terfals, so that there are many offsets to cheap labor.” The railroad builders out here have to RAILWAY STATION trunk line through the richest and most populous part of China. Canton has per- haps 2,000,000 and Hankow and the great cities about it have at least 2,000,000 more. The provinces cut by the road have a pop- ulation something like 100,000,000 and they are among the richest industrial provinces of the empire. There are big cities all along the line and the road would probably pay from the start. By the surveys of Mr. Willilam Barclay Parsons the road with its branches will be about 900 miles long. It offers no great engineering difficulties and Calvin Brice estimated that its cost would be in the neighborhood of $30,000,000, or a little over $33,000 a mile. It is probable that it can be built for much less, for the road from Pekin to Shan Hai Kwan has cost, I am told, only $30,000 a mile, including its workshops and its rolling stock. The road to Woosung cost about the same and the abundance and cheapness of the labor all along the line of the Canton-Hankow system should make its construction comparatively low. The Hankow-Pekin Road. The northern extension of this trunk line has been granted to the Belgian syndicate, but it is now supposed that the French and Russians have bought the Belgians out. The syndicate has an alleged capital of about $25,000,000, of which $15,000,000 was orig- inally French and $10,000,000 Belgian, There are also Chinese capitalists in it, but the foreigners have the control. The Hankow-Pekin rcad has been bullt as far as Pao Ting Fu. The cars are now run- ning and the traffic is such as to promise great profits. It is estimated that it will pay 30 per cent. The work of construction goes slowly at the Hankow end of the line. Chang Chi Tung has much to do with this branch of it, and it was his original in- tention to build it entirely of rails made of Chirese iron, rinelted with Chinese coal. The result was that he put up about seventy-five acres of car shops, including two enormous blast furnaces, at Hanyang, adjoining Hankow. He spent something llke $6,000,000 in such experiments and then turned the road over to Sheng. Sheng is importing most of his materials from Europe. 1 visited Chang Chi Tung’s works not long AT SHANGHAL fight spiritual as well as material nature. The roads are forced to wind this way and that to avoild the habitations of spirits. They be built must without going through graveyards and make many detours. The spirits of good and bad luck, known as the Feng Shui, arc everywhere and the Chinese think it is death to disturb them. Not long ago on the Hankow road it was necessary to bridge a river at a point where there was an islaand in the shape of a fish. The Chi- nese insisted that nothing be cut from the island, as it would hurt the fish and bring bad luck. The result was that piles were erected and the bridge carried on them along the shore, While they were working a flood came and an excavation had to be INSPECTING A NEW made in the island to save the bridge. Hereupon the people made a great outcry and the engineers were forced to bring dirt from the mainland and fill up the hole. In another case there was a ridge near a village. The natural course of the rail- road was across the ridge, but the vil- lagers said that the track must go around it, as in the ridge lived the Feng Shul, or spirit, which brought good or bad luck to them. They sald they would permit the rallroad to pass through their rice fields, but that it must not touch the ridge. The superstition was so strong that the road was carried a little out of its way to avold the ridge. When the Kalping rallroad was first bullt Mr. C. W. Kinder, the famous railroad en- gineer, ordered some locomotives re- painted. The Chinese who did the work copled the old painting, with the exception of the smokestacks. Upon these they put two great eyes, one on each side the stack, When asked why they did so they re- plied: “Engine must have eye. No have eye, no can see. No can see, how can walkee?’ Mr. Kinder sald he would risk it and ordered the eyes taken off. It was supersition that destroyed China's first railroad. This road ran frore Shanghal to Woosung, over much the same 1'ne that I traveled yesterday. It was bullt by the English, started as a tramway and then operated with small engines. The road was colning money, but the Chinese thereabouts attributed all thelr misfortunes to it and they wanted to get rid of it. They bought the rallroad at a high price and then pald a man $100 to throw himself in front of the engine and be killed by it. The $100 went to his family. The killing created a sensation and the owners of the road ordered that it be re moved. They took its rolling stock, ralls and machinery over to Formosa and dumped them on the shores, Some Big Railroad Schemes, Other big rallroad schemes are those of the Pekin syndicate, Jardine-Matheson & Co., the British-Chinese corporatiow, the Anglo-Chinese company and others. The Pekin syndicate has an enormous coal con- cession in Shansi. It has probably the richest coal fleld of the worla to develop and there 18 a second company connected with it which claims to have $30,000,000 capital as an cperating fund. This syndi- cate proposes to bulld about 2560 miles of rallway to connect its coal beds with the Yangtse system and it will need other lines. Jardine, Matheson & Co. Is one of the oldest and richest of the commerclal es- tablishments of China. It has steamers, wharves and big establishments at almost every port. It controls millions and it Is ready for everything that turns up. It bullt the first railroad in China and I believe It is largely interested in the Woosung line. It now has a concession for a road from Shanghai via Hangchow and Chinkiang to Nanking. This road will be about 180 miles long and it wil have an extension to con- nect it with the Hankow-Pekin road. It will go through the largest silk district of China and will probably be very profitable. The British Chinese Corporation has a concession for a road from Soochow via Hangchow to Ningpo. This would also tap the silk regions and give them a rallroad outlet to the sea. Another company proposes a road from Shanghal to Tien Tsin. Then there Is an Anglo-Chinese raillway company which s said to have a concession for a road from Canton to Chengtu, in southwestern China, and another to connect the Burmese system with Chungking, on the Yangtse. This last railroad will be very profitable, as it will probably form the tea route for much of the crop of central China. It is desirable to get the tea very quickly to the market and by this route the long journey from Shanghai round through the Straits of Ma- lacca would be cut off and the tea would be shipped direct from Maulmain and Ran- goon, Burmah, on the bay of Bengal. Chunking is 2,000 miles up the Yangtse, with steam communication to the Pacific. It will some day be a great rallroad center and vast quantities of freight will be shipped via the Yangtse and the Burmese railroad. This same road will pass through the rich mineral province of Yunnan. Still further south a French line has been planned to run from Canton through the province of Kwangsi and on through Yun- nan into Tonquin. Chinese-Russian Schemens, The Russians have their fingers in nearly everything that is going on in China. They have their steamers on the Yangtse and they own large tea factories at Hankow, which 1s as far inland as Pittsburg is dis- tant from New York. They are said to own a large amount of stock in the Pekin- G [l RAILWAY IN NORTH CHINA. Hankow scheme and they have a conces- slon for 140 miles of rallroad from Tayuen-fu, the capital of Shansi, to Chen Ting Fu, in Chihll, This will probably be a great coal rallroad and it may be that the Russians are planning it in order to bring the Shansi coal mines into connce- tion with their Manchurian rallroads. The concession belongs to the Russo-Chinese bank, The Russians are steadily pushing their rallroad northward from Port Arthur and 17 it will soon connect with the Trans-Siberian read. The road is being well built. It is of a five-foot gauge. The most of its roll- ing stock, ralls and ties come from the United States and more will be taken in the future. Aside from the natural dis- like the Russians have to the English they find the American rallroad material equally good, If not botter. They can get it in a much shorter time and the result i{s they are ordering it by shiploads. American Rallrond Exports, The prospective development promises to open up an enormous market for our rallroad materials. The American-China Development company, in case it carries out its concession, will bring all its ma- terfals from the United States and this alone will require Imports to the araount of $30,000,000. The Tien Tsin-Shan Hal Kwan road i{s now using quite a lot of American machinery. It has Baldwin eugines and in its works I saw models of cars and tracks furnished by the Pennsylvania Rallroad company. The Tien Tsin-Pekin company is now (Continued on Eighth Page.) OMAHA COMES T0 THE FRONT B. H. Robison, President of the Bankers Reserve Life Assooiation, AN OMAHA INSURANCE COMPANY Whose Growth Has Been Phenomenal, Suggests Some of the Reanonn Which Have Contributed to Its Success, “When I started the Bankers Reserve Life assoclation in June, 1897," sald B. H. 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We are growing as never before and no legitimate business un- dertaking properly managed could fall of success under these conditions. ‘““The success achleved by our company, which has written more business in Ne- braska during 1900 than any competitor, shows that the people were ready to wel- come a well-managed institution offering its patrons a modern, liberal up-to-date life insurance policy. We have written over $2,000,000 of business this year. Next year we shall more than double this record. ‘““The bankers and business men of the state are aroused as never before to the direct Interest of the community In putting an end to a system of financing which turns $1,600,000 of cash savings into channels of trade leading ever outward and reaching the common congestion of the far east, where 2 per cent per annum I8 a good in- come on an investment. ‘‘Tell your friends to come to the home office of the company in the McCague bulld- ing and see for themselves what business sense, energy and opportunity have made possible in this community." “No time to pull the cork!” Bmergencies call for action. Jud¢ment calls for THE HAIR TELLS ALL. If sick send a lock of your hair, name sex and 4 cts. in stamps and I will di ose your case FREE and tell ybn will cure your I:l C. Batdort, Dept. oh.