Manchuria

the northeastern district of the Chinese Empire. It rests on the Yellow Sea. It borders on China proper, Mongolia, Siberia, and Korea. It is a region of mountain chains, large rivers, and wide plains. The waters of the greater portion are tributary to the Amur River. Area, 363,610 square miles. Population, about 8,500,000. Portions have several hundred inhabitants to the square mile. In point of area, range and severity of climate, and agricultural possibilities, Manchuria is not unlike Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the two Dakotas. According to all accounts, the soil of the plains is deep and black. The water is excellent and the climate bracing. Cold winters and warm summers remind the readers of the upper valley of the Mississippi.

In 1644 the Manchurians, who are of a race akin to the Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese, invaded China and placed their leader on the Chinese throne. They established the seat of government at Pekin. The Manchurian dynasty, as it is called, has ruled in China ever since, and Manchuria has been held rather as a dependency. The Manchu language is the official language of the Chinese court. Mukden, the old capital of Manchuria, is surrounded by an outer and an inner wall, and has about 200,000 inhabitants. The royal cemetery is near the city. The tombs are approached by long avenues guarded by mammoth stone elephants. Mukden is regarded with affection and veneration by the Manchus, that is to say, the official class of Chinese. It is their Mecca, their holy city.

When the Russians were building the Trans-Siberian Railway, they "obtained permission" to take a short cut through northern Manchuria to Vladivostock. At the crossing of the Sangari they established administration headquarters and built the city of Harbin. It is situated on a noble waterway in the midst of a fertile region. Here the Russians built a government building worth nearly $1,000,000, railway shops, hospitals, a commercial school in which their young men learn Chinese, a trade school, a club house, a store for employes, a $30,000 hotel, and a Russo-Chinese bank. In all, over $15,000,000 was spent by the Russians in improvements. There were large flouring mills, warehouses and shops, manufactories, and a city of 60,000 Russians and Chinese where formerly the river flowed undisturbed. In 1903, before the Japanese War interrupted traffic, there were thirty through trains and eighteen local trains daily. It is needless to say that the city was strictly Russian. At the very southern end of the country, scarce 300 miles from Pekin, the Russians "leased" the promontory of Port Arthur and the port of Dalny. They built a railway southward from Harbin by way of Mukden to Port Arthur and Dalny. They proceeded to build docks and warehouses at Dalny, and converted Port Arthur into one of the most strongly fortified places in the world. Prior to the war with Japan, Russia had expended $200,000,000 in Manchuria. Soldiers poured into the country under pretense of guarding the new railroad from the attacks of brigands. Protest was made; Russia agreed to remove her military forces in 1903. When the time for evacuation arrived, even more soldiers came, and the Russian fleet got up a naval demonstration. Manchuria seemed to become a province of Russia by virtue of occupation.

Japan, seeing that with Manchuria and Korea under Russian rule her turn would come next, bought warships, trained her army, borrowed money and sprang at Russia for a struggle of life and death. The result of the war is well known. With the "consent" of China, Russia transferred Port Arthur and Dalny to Japan and yielded a large interest in the Harbin-Dalny railroad to the latter power. Nominally a province of China, Manchuria is really subject to management by Japan. The nations of the world have a commercial interest in Manchuria. The region seems likely to become one of the great wheat-producing centers of the world,-a competitor in the flour markets of Japan and China. Then, too, American merchants are eager to sell in Manchurian markets. There is a demand for machinery, cotton, clothing, groceries, kerosene, canned goods, and a thousand manufactured articles.

The chief agricultural productions are millet, beans, wheat, barley, oats, corn, hemp, and tobacco. Sheep thrive. Fine grain - fed cattle and hogs are raised. Under Russian inspection, hams and bacon are prepared for market. There are manufactures of brick and distilleries of Russian vodka. The barley about Harbin is converted into beer. Manchuria exports $7,000,000 worth of bean oil a year. It is used in painting. The next export in point of value is raw silk. Other items are opium, ginseng, medicinal herbs, melon seeds, shrimps, deer horns, salt fish, musk, fur, bristles, hair, hides, skins, pearl barley, leaf tobacco, and mushrooms.

The chief reliance of the peasant farmer is the giant millet. It resembles broom corn in its growth, only it attains a height of eight to fourteen feet. The grain is used for stock and for bread. The stalks, as stout as those of sunflowers, are used for fuel and for fences. The leaves are braided into mats on which to sleep. The people live in slight huts. In winter, for want of glass, they paste sheets of oiled paper over their windows. Like the Chinese, they are Mongolians and Buddhists, but they are stronger, of a lighter complexion, and more progressive.

Immense forests of valuable oak, walnut, pine, and fir await sawmills. The panther, wolf, bear, deer, owl, eagle, and various fur-bearing animals, even the tiger, are found in the forests. Wild flowers grow in profusion. The mountains are known to contain mineral wealth, as iron, coal, lead, and precious metals. With railroads, ports, natural resources, fertile soil, a fine climate, and an industrious people waiting for direction, it is not hazardous to predict that the century will see wonderful changes in Manchuria.

See Harbin

It is the opinion of the writer that the chief problems of agricultural development in Manchuria at the present time are economic, social, and political problems, rather than scientific problems relative to the stimulation of greater productiveness in the soil. . . . The agricultural problem of Manchuria is not so much the problem of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before as to change the existing economic and social conditions of farm life into an advanced condition of commercial agriculture in which the farmer can produce a surplus of food above local demands and find a ready cash market for that surplus. While improved methods of agriculture are undoubtedly necessary, if the Manchurian farmer is to produce a large surplus for export, it is still more necessary that there be a market and a means for reaching that market with the surplus crop.

If good roads could connect with railways and waterways in Manchuria, and if capital could organize the facilities for storing and shipping staple agricultural products, thus bringing relatively high cash prices for agricultural products into every community, there is little doubt but that Manchuria would produce a large surplus of crop for export, and in striving to produce a surplus the farmer would be quickened and fully awake to the advantages of improved methods of agriculture. The Manchurian farmer is not so much in need of the agricultural teachings of European and American applied science as he is in need of the far-sighted genius of such men as James J. Hill in the United States and Shaughnessy in Canada, who built the steel paths of commerce into the fertile fields of North America and were content to wait for dividends until the settlers came in and opened the soil. . . .

The potential wealth of Manchuria lies to a far greater extent in the soil than in either timber or minerals, and should Manchuria ever be developed to its full possibilities its products both in quantity and quality would be as famous in the world's markets as the wheat of Canada and the cotton, corn, and beef of the United States, Manchuria is a country of tremendous agricultural possibilities.-Edward C. Parker.