The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 9, 1899, Page 17

SAN FRANCISCO, SUNDAY, JULY 9, 1899. HO YOW ON THE lord Beresford's Book lIs. the “Wake- Up,” Not -Break-Up,” apd No Euro- pean Power (ap Hold the Oriept--So- Says the @bhinesg Qopsul--But America (an Have the Empirg at Her feet. ORD CHARLES BERESFCRD has issued his recent survey of China under the title of *‘The Break-Up of China.” Ho Yow. ranks next to Wu Tung Fang, Imperial Embassador at W: takes exception to Lord Beresford’s statements and Ho Yow carry great weight, the p and 0 > relations of his country as Mr. uld certainl a e upon the eve of an apparently great in of the Chinese empi Ho s also something to say of the Chinaman as set forth in Bret Har ‘‘Heathen Chinee. Besides, he enters into the subject of future trade relations between the Celestial king- d the United States—a mat the utmost ance to Francisco. shown rising it 2 to his rule a No doubt ve gained a want Chinese 14 be fooled if ews upon the ntries as re- yund both e also California, Chinese n and in foreign offi- clal life. Mr. Yow has resided wree years. His 1 shortly join h Washington Mrs. Yov most esteemed ladies 1 foremos t most > paucity of sala- of which Lord < beifig the chief nsatisfactory condition ces, does not obtain in rtment. The salary General to the United 000 a year besides fees > not only through of- of trade, but in s of arbitration ccts. There is no such as is held by American Consuls in Asia, for the Chinese the courts of the fens, but the juris- tter cannot extend s of the United States. he decrees of Mr. Yow the person and property in China, although X >t bind him in the ed States, except as a result of ar-' rd in the usual form. the embassy there is sidl deg at present w{n:;flrruih y little. The absence of ladies is the cause of this. s : After the arrival of Mrs. Yow, how- The Legation in Front of the ever, this be considerably changed t was formerly the custom for the for- elgn representatives in San Francisco to give series of dinners to each other reason that China and the Chinese lock upon our, territory, but has practically during vear, but for some inex- so favorably upon the Americans. You undertaken to keep it intact. plicable reason this fashion has fallen do not want our territory, ‘you only “And y continued Mr. Yow, “if to 0w the Chinese Con- want our trade, and there any nation s ould take a piece of China, al ¢ tead of having a din- suspicion, apprehension, what” would they’ do with it? I:have r, g sption on Chinese New Chinese mind .toward Ame not heard that England has been so Year, which occurs in Febr js the case of any other nation, gratified with her acquisition of Hong- this all foreign representat land not excepted, and she manifestly kong that she desires more of the same. their families are invited, as well is not only resolved not-to encroach In fact, as I have said, she does not Embassy. Wong, Lao, Shouting, Chan, Wang, Ho Yow. want China parceled. Japan desired territory at the close of her successes in the late war, but now she appar- ently does not want territory, but has made overtures to assist China to put her armies on a footing to defend the vast interests of the empire against modern methods of warfare. No, none can rule the Chinese like the Chinese; the job of administering a government of four hundred milllons of people, who may be as turbulent as any other peo- ple when occasion ari , is not a thing to be sought after ecially is it not an aspiration by ropean nations, who may at any time have all they can do at home. The situation is adequately presented in the reply recently made in the House of Commons of England by the Under Secretary to Lord Beresford, who criticized the Government’s atti- tude upon the Yangtse River. The sacretary said: ‘England has interests in China, but it has a thousand tim greater interests in Eurcpe and it must look to these first.” This is the real status of every nation of Europe who is in the East to-day; the only trouble with some of them is that they don’t know it. “You must know,” continued Mr. Yow, ‘“that very. recently ‘a great change has come over the face of things in the Orfent. Tha Chinese people are waking up. They have been in a slum- ber of centuries, but they find that they have now got to face new condi- tions which have been thrust upon them by the enlightenment of the ‘Western world. Japan was prompt to gee this, and she has applled Western benefits to herself. She utilized these in the late war. It Is a hard way for science and knowledge to be injected into a nation, but it is nevertheless effective; you have heard of great fires bullding cities; and marvelous bene- fits may be acquired to the defeated natfon from the most disastrous of wars. “The Chinese need to be taught. They are hungering now for a knowledge of western ways. They want western ma- chinery, appliances, methods. No coun- try can furnish these in such a degree as the United States. “Your invention and engineering is in advance of these of any other nation. The country to conquer China—or rather I should say convert China—is not Russia, in many respects nearly as dark as itself, but the United States, with all its marvels of mechanics and its Ingenuity in turn- ing the forces of nature to the uses of man. In such a conquest China ex- tends the welcome hand, for it is one which would raise our people to a higher plane, which would lift up the individual as well as the nation, for as a chain is no stronger than its OF weakest link, so it ought to be an axiom of administrative science that a government is never superior to the welfare of its humblest subject. The exaltation of the Chinese must be ef- fected, and this must be done through the practical avenues of his material advancement. The Chinese are quiet, intelligent and exceedingly industrious. Honesty with them is a kind of reli- glon. Bret Harte misrepresented us hugely in the ‘Heathen Chinee.’ I am sorry to have to believe that the euchre trickster of Poker Flat, who had or w nas erected in the American mind an ideal of Chinese character. There are tricksters among us, to be sure, but the Chinese as a people are honest. Joe Goetz, a German-American, who owns this building, owns also about half of Chinatown. He lends a great deal of money to the Chinese merchants. I understand he has now about $6 000 loaned out among them. 3 rant that for not a dollar has loaned to Chinese has he a scrap of p: per to show. He does not require i it is not customary among Chinese to give such. A Chinese asks Mr. Goetz for .a loan of-$1000; he wants it at 9 per cent for six months. All right; he gets it. That is the end of that part of the transaction. At the end of the six months the merchant goes to him and gives him his money and interest Among the Chinese the word of a bor- rower is his bond. I do not believe that Mr. Goetz deals with other nationall- ties in the same manner. “This leads me to say that a vast op- portunity now lies open to the Ameri- cans in the Orient. You are most ag- gressive people for trade when you once get started. If you would pursue the the ends of his fingers, which tapered,, at is frequent in tapers—that's wax. methods of trade getting among the Chinese in China that you employ among yourselves, the country would be at your feet in a few years. We are not a poor nation; we have among us the accumulated wealth of thousands of years of continuous nationality. We have gold to buy and we have domin- ion over a regign of the earth’s surface inferior to no like scope in undeveloped resources. The greatest opportunity which exists on the globe to-day for a vast aggregate of people is open to the Americans in China. Now is the time; heretofore the minds of our people were not prepared to receive you; now they are. I remember -only very recently that a half-dezen Amierican business men went to Ching on a pleasure trip. They had,no notion of doing business, but they had entree into the higher and official element of the country and managed to get acquainted with some of our merchants. When they returned to the United States they had contracts aggregating over $5,000,000. “And, indeed,” continued Mr. Yow, “I am gratified to observe that the Arteri- cans are turning thelr attention to China. - Through my brother-in-law, Minister Fang, Mr. Rockefeller has tak- CHINA en a concession for a thousand miles of railway from Canton to Hankow, through one of the most populous and cultivated districts of China, and this will shortly be undergoing construction. Besides this road there are 2577 miles of road projected, for which contracts have been signed, and nearly 2000 miles of other lines are actually being bulilt, making In all nearly 6000 miles of new railroads, which are either building or contracted to be built, and which will be in operation within a few years. This will give you some idea of how China is waking up, and of the business there is there for Americans if they will only go after it. “China needs thousands of things you have here to She needs your flour, Yyour sugar, petroleum, your metals, implements, glassware and infinite else. In only one town in China, Hong- kong, is there a water works; there are no electric light plants, no telephones or telegraphs, street railway lines or factories. “With all of these advantages offered Americans in China,” continued Mr. Yow, “we feel that the peoples of the two nations should be brought closer together. My brother-in-law has sought through an eminent Congress- man to secure some modification of the exclusion act. The United States have been grossly misled upon the exclusion of Chinese and the e now pursuing a wrong poli You are driving Chi- into Mexico, where there are no exclusion laws, who would otherwise come here and help develop your country. It is a fallacy to be- lieve that a Chinese will work cheaper than any one el You cannot get a Chinese cook to-day in California for the same money that you can get one of a Kuropean nation. You can see that the cheap labor fallacy is now ex- ploded. You have no restrictions to the introduction of Japanese labo except that they come upon contract, and this obtains as well against Bu- rope as a Asia aw had been at in existence th 2 > been a Chinese qu coast, for the cause of of coolles bui the Union Pacific Railroad. They c in too large hu s to become di- gested by the country and to compre- hend tt environme Stil t any time over 100,000 Chi- coast; there are now about any upon gration, and when we this obvious discrimination that there Japanese that y a can come at all events, inese there are hundreds become inundated with their popu tion. This is entirely erroneous. It not commonly known that the Chinese in the United States are all from the Kwang Tung province in the south of China. They are Cantonese. In this district there are not more people than there are in Japan. The Chinese from elsewhere would not come her They could not speak the dialect of the Tungs nor get along with them and they would not come. Nor would the Tungs themselves come in ge numbers For people to move in armies they mu be marshaled in armies. An agent st ring up people to go to a remote reglon and accept employment for a defin increase of their existing wages ma move a vast numbe but if they are left to be influenced only by the gener- ally superior advantages of a country for residence and occupation, such will act alone upon the individual and not upon the assemblage; and you will get only an emigrant here and there. “With more Chinese In the United States~the trade of the United States with China would be g ter. Chinese now here, largely engage in production and shipment to China. Industry in these lines would increase proportion- ately with the increase of Chinese pop- ulation. Trade as it at present exists with China is on the inc e, but you buy vastly more than you sell us. In 1897, for instance, you imported from China on this coast $10,450,000 worth of goods and sent us only $3,556,000 of goods, the larger of which was flour. This conditic could e reversed. Your treaty with us ever, needs sion, not alone exclusion clauses, but in other resp particularly In the matter of the op trade. Under its existing provi 1S néither a Chinese nor an American can engage in importing opit Last year there was a cargo of this product which came to San Franc upon which the duty-alone was $150,800. The profits on that shipment and upon all such ship- ments could not go to Americans. Why do you elect to deny yourselves the benefit and throw it into the hands of Europeans? “Upon the whole, I wish to say,” con- tinued Mr. Yow, ‘“that there has never been a time in the history of the two nations that all the conditions seem to favor such close amity as the present. Our arising development, the existence of the open-door status of China, the awakening demands of our government and our people in the lines of progress, your genius, enterprise and power in material flelds, from all this vast re- sults must be achieved. An immense amount of benefit if¥getting Americans to understand China has been effected by Mr. Fang. He is himself thoroughly in touch with American life and is un- doubtedly the most valuable man for this mission whom China possesses. His term expires next year, but he will in all probability be reappointed, as the existing administration in China is looking first to the capacities and pecu- liar fitnesses of men for prescribed work and to their personalities and connec- tions afterward. A few years of drawing the lines closer between the United States and China, such as has been done through the activities of Mr. Fang, will place the reciprocal interests of the two nations on a far different footing from what they are to-day.” In conclusion Mr. Yow stated that he was, with the purpose of introducing American goods into China on some- thing of a complete scale, arranging a plan to this end. The difficulty in intro- ducing American goods to China has al- ways been that Americans do not know how to go about it, as the Chin are very deliberate and great sticklers on form. To present American interests to Chinese, therefore, r. Yow’s aim, and he is thoroughl with the methods to be pursued in doing thi Being widely known in China and mov- ing upon a high plane of citizenship and _society, this can be more readily and perfectly accomplished. ~The de- tails of the undertaking have not yet been announced, but they will transpire through diplomatic channels.