There is a great field for American machinery here. Her pipe foundries will grow, as she has as much iron as coal. For many years, however, her industrial, municipal and railway supplies, and certainly her machinery, must largely come from abroad. It is a great field for the manufacturing nations, and even Austria is entering it with recent success. She has increased the service of the Austrian Lloyd Steamship Company from Trieste, and her manufactures are seen more and more throughout the Far East. Yet Austria is not a nation that can be compared with America, Britain or Germany in potentiality. Since China has become a purchaser of machinery, she invites the world to advertise in Chinese in her newspapers, and to open agencies in China, where Chinese is read by the compradores at least. She hates concession hunters when they are of the Pizarro and Cortez type, and desires to exploit and profit by her own wealth. I have seen the bitterest complaint in the _Ching Wei Pao_, an able native paper of Tientsin, that too many franchises are given free to foreigners, who pay small wages and take the profits out of the country. Can you blame them for desiring municipal ownership, if they are willing to buy our machinery and hire our instructors? China is slowly establishing fire departments in its municipal and marine life. I have seen a fire break out on oil boats in the West River of Kwangtung province. Gongs were struck everywhere, and tugs and launches hastened to the scene and with hose poured water upon the blaze. The Chinese engine builders of Hongkong, who were apprenticed at the British Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, are successfully copying foreign marine engines and pumps, and for boats under one thousand tons European builders can not compete with them, except in the matter of quicker delivery, which is often important. Many motor-boats, manufactured in Hongkong, are brought across the Pacific for delivery in Canada via the C. P. R. steamships. Until recently the Szechuen and Hupeh boatmen of the upper Yangtze would not permit the competition of steam, but the Kwangtung province men of the West River--the brainiest men of modern China--have been quick to adopt machinery, possibly because wonderful Hongkong was so near as an example of the new era and an efficient interpreter of the West to the East. While the labor at Hongkong is Chinese, most of the capital and the expert foremanship is British. The total taxes that a Chinese pays for national, provincial and municipal purposes is one dollar per head per year, against seven dollars in Russia, and twenty dollars in Europe and America. As most of this money is wasted on soon obsolete navies and armies, and is drawn from mines and land that can not be replenished, one can see the vast wealth with which China will some day suddenly step into the world arena, China strong, and the others impoverished in all but brain power.