Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and JapanKing, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Science
Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
King, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Agriculture -- China; Agriculture -- Japan; Agriculture -- Korea
correspondingly exact statistical data were available from China and
Korea a similarity full utilization of cultural possibilities would
be revealed there.
This marvelous heritage of economy, industry and thrift, bred of the
stress of centuries, must not be permitted to lose virility through
contact with western wasteful practices, now exalted to seeming
virtues through the dazzling brilliancy of mechanical achievements.
More and more must labor be dignified in all homes alike, and
economy, industry and thrift become inherited impulses compelling
and satisfying.
Cheap, rapid, long distance transportation, already well started in
these countries, will bring with it a fuller utilization of the
large stores of coal and mineral wealth and of the enormous
available water power, and as a result there will come some
temporary lessening of the stress for fuel and with better forest
management some relief along the lines of building materials. But
the time is not a century distant when, throughout the world, a
fuller, better development must take place along the lines of these
most far-reaching and fundamental practices so long and so
effectively followed by the Mongolian races in China, Korea and
Japan. When the enormous water-power of these countries has been
harnessed and brought into the foot-hills and down upon the margins
of the valleys and plains in the form of electric current, let it,
if possible, be in a large measure so distributed as to become
available in the country village homes to lighten the burden and
lessen the human drudgery and yet increase the efficiency of the
human effort now so well bestowed upon subsidiary manufactures under
the guidance and initiative of the home, where there may be room to
breathe and for children to come up to manhood and womanhood in the
best conditions possible, rather than in enormous congested
factories.
VIII
TRAMPS AFIELD
On March 31st we took the 8 A. M. train on the Shanghai-Nanking
railway for Kunshan, situated thirty-two miles west from Shanghai,
to spend the day walking in the fields. The fare, second class, was
eighty cents, Mexican. A third class ticket would have been forty
cents and a first class, $1.60, practically two cents, one cent and
half a cent, our currency, per mile. The second class fare to
Nanking, a distance of 193 miles, was $1.72, U. S. currency, or a
little less than one cent per mile. While the car seats were not
upholstered, the service was good. Meals were served on the train in
either foreign or Chinese style, and tea, coffee or hot water to
drink. Hot, wet face cloths were regularly passed and many Chinese
daily newspapers were sold on the train, a traveler often buying
two.
In the vicinity of Kunshan a large area of farm land had been
acquired by the French catholic mission at a purchase price of $40,
Mexican, per mow, or at the rate of $103.20 per acre. This they
rented to the Chinese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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