Harbin

a city projected by the Russians as the capital of Manchuria. It is situated on the south bank of the Sangari River, a branch of the Amur, near the forty-sixth parallel of north latitude. The Trans-Siberian railway branches here for Vladivostock and for Dalny, near Port Arthur.

The history of Harbin is of unusual interest and gives a clue to the kind of private interests that led Russian capitalists and Russian officials to urge expansion in the East. The Russians took possession of Manchuria under ostensible leases from China. They decided that this site on the bank of a navigable stream 350 miles west of Vladivostock and 600 north of Dalny was the spot intended by fate for a city which should be Russian headquarters. The engineers ignored a village of the name three miles away and laid out the town of Harbin, Western fashion, amid fields of millet on a level prairie. This was to be the eastern headquarters of Russia. A modern railway station and freight houses were erected. The town was "boomed." Quotations are lifted from the Review of Reviews and from the pen of Mr. George B. Rea in the Far Eastern Review published at Manila.

Here, at Harbin, it was that Russia planned her Asiatic metropolis; and every inducement was held out to the confiding Russian capitalists to purchase lots and to cast their fortunes in with the new venture.

Wide streets were laid out and paved, electric lights installed; fine, large official buildings, railway clubs, hotels, and schools were erected, immense car and machine shops equipped. . . The town rapidly outgrew its original delimitations, and further land was added to meet the expansion.

The city grew astonishingly. When Japan declared war with Russia, the young city surprised itself.

The immense armies of the Czar, transported across Siberia, came to a halt at Harbin and were here encamped and forwarded on to the front as their time came. Here was the real military headquarters. . . Here the officers left their families, some wives, some mistresses; and here the camp follower halted and went no further; here the gamblers and sharpers plucked the easy-going and good-natured soldier, and the commercial adventurer divided the loot with the mercenary official. To Harbin swarmed the women, who made it their abode, bringing with them the luxuries of Paris and the life and atmosphere of the boulevards. Theaters multiplied, cafes chantants were in full blast, drinking saloons and pleasure resorts abounded. No less than twenty-six music-halls catered to the pleasures of the soldiers, running day and night without pause. The pace was swift, life was short, and extravagance and recklessness the order of the day. Champagne flowed like water. Magnums took the place of the ordinary pint or quart bottles. They cost more and the money would go quicker. . . Houses were at a premium, and fortunes were made in real estate and building transactions. Chinese and Jewish money-lenders flourished, jewelry dealers were reaping a glorious harvest, and fashionable dry-goods stores did a thriving trade.

Breweries, four of them, were hastily erected; eight vodka distilleries were placed in operation . . . and other industries were rapidly financed and carried through. Profits were enormous. . . Everything was lovely, and as long as the boom lasted no one cared to look ahead.

When the Treaty of Portsmouth brought the war to a close, the Russian capitalist sadly, and the Russian soldier gladly, turned their backs on Harbin. The merchants had ignored the natives. When the Russians left, they had no trade. Flour mills making 1,000,000 pounds of flour a day lost their customers. There was no one to drink the beer; no one to drink the vodka; the breweries and distilleries closed down. The theaters were closed for want of patronage. Elegant houses stood vacant. Nobody wanted to build; the brickyards and sawmills closed down. The only building needed by Russians was an office for a consulate. The native town plods on in the old way, a center of native trade, while of the new town, Harbin, the center of expected fortunes, Mr. Rea writes:

Grass grows in the streets; no smoke issues from the tall chimneys of the mills. The large and costly stocked department stores open for the day and only a casual customer appears. Theaters have closed. Only one or two cafes chantants invite the midnight pleasure seeker, in place of the previous twenty-six. The houses are out of repair and the plaster and ornamentation of many of the large buildings has fallen away, disclosing the naked lath, revealing the fact that the buildings in part were only imitation stone. The town is existing on the expenditure of the railway. The salaries of the employees maintain the few stores. . . The last financial year of the bank was closed without the payment of the customary dividend. The railway is losing at the rate of 5,000,000 roubles per annum.

If the Russians had continued to hold Manchuria the reasonable expectations of Harbin might have been realized. As the case stands the future of Harbin is uncertain. Russia has no further interest. China does not take to anything new, and Japan has no authority to step in. So far as soil, climate, transportation, and natural resources go, Harbin is situated favorably for manufacturing and jobbing on a large scale. In America it would develop rapidly into an Omaha, a Cincinnati, or a St. Louis. It may be a century before Harbin comes to its own again.