The _China Year Book_ for 1919[105] (a work as little concerned with politics as _Whitaker's Almanack_) gives a list of the five principal iron mines in China, with some information about each. The first and most important are the Tayeh mines, worked by the Hanyehping Iron and Coal Co., Ltd., which, as the reader may remember, was the subject of the third group in the Twenty-one Demands. The total amount of ore in sight is estimated by the _China Year Book_ at 50,000,000 tons, derived chiefly from two mines, in one of which the ore yields 65 per cent. of iron, in the other 58 to 63 per cent. The output for 1916 is given as 603,732 tons (it has been greatly increased since then). The _Year Book_ proceeds: "Japanese capital is invested in the Company, and by the agreement between China and Japan of May 1915 [after the ultimatum which enforced the revised Twenty-one Demands], the Chinese Government undertook not to convert the Company into a State-owned concern nor to compel it to borrow money from other than Japanese sources." It should be added that there is a Japanese accountant and a Japanese technical adviser, and that pig-iron and ore, up to a specified value, must be sold to the Imperial Japanese works at much below the market price, leaving a paltry residue for sale in the open market.[106] The second item in the _China Year Book's_ list is the Tungkuan Shan mines. All that is said about these is as follows: "Tungling district on the Yangtze, 55 miles above Wuhu, Anhui province. A concession to work these mines, granted to the London and China Syndicate (British) in 1904, was surrendered in 1910 for the sum of £52,000, and the mines were transferred to a Chinese Company to be formed for their exploitation." These mines, therefore, are in Chinese hands. I do not know what their capacity is supposed to be, and in view of the price at which they were sold, it cannot be very great. The capital of the Hanyehping Co. is $20,000,000, which is considerably more than £52,000. This was the only one of the five iron mines mentioned in the _Year Book_ which was not in Japanese hands at the time when the _Year Book_ was published. Next comes the Taochung Iron Mine, Anhui province. "The concession which was granted to the Sino-Japanese Industrial Development Co. will be worked by the Orient Steel Manufacturing Co. The mine is said to contain 60,000,000 tons of ore, containing 65 per cent. of pure iron. The plan of operations provides for the production of pig iron at the rate of 170,000 tons a year, a steel mill with a capacity of 100,000 tons of steel ingots a year, and a casting and forging mill to produce 75,000 tons a year." The fourth mine is at Chinlingchen, in Shantung, "worked in conjunction with the Hengshan Colliery by the railway." I presume it is to be sold back to China along with the railway.