Farmers of Forty Centuries Part 12

Another of the great and in some ways one of the most remarkable industries of the Orient is that of silk production, and its manufacture into the most exquisite and beautiful fabrics in the world. Remarkable for its magnitude; for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China, at least 2600 years B. C.; for having been founded on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than four thousand years, expanding until a $1,000,000 cargo of the product has been laid down on our western coast at one time and rushed by special fast express to New York City for the Christmas trade.

j.a.pan produced in 1907 26,072,000 pounds of raw silk from 17,154,000 bushels of coc.o.o.ns, feeding the silkworms from mulberry leaves grown on 957,560 acres. At the export selling price of this silk in j.a.pan the crop represents a money value of $124,000,000, or more than two dollars per capita for the entire population of the Empire; and engaged in the care of the silkworms, as seen in Figs. 184, 185, 186 and 187, there were, in 1906, 1,407,766 families or some 7,000,000 people.

Richard's geography of the Chinese Empire places the total export of raw silk to all countries, from China, in 1905, at 30,413,200 pounds, and this, at the j.a.panese export price, represents a value of $145,000,000. Richard also states that the value of the annual Chinese export of silk to France amounts to 10,000,000 pounds sterling and that this is but twelve per cent of the total, from which it appears that her total export alone reaches a value near $400,000,000.

The use of silk in wearing apparel is more general among the Chinese than among the j.a.panese, and with China's eightfold greater population, the home consumption of silk must be large indeed and her annual production must much exceed that of j.a.pan. Hosie places the output of raw silk in Szechwan at 5,439,500 pounds, which is nearly a quarter of the total output of j.a.pan, and silk is extensively grown in eight other provinces, which together have an area nearly fivefold that of j.a.pan. It would appear, therefore, that a low estimate of China's annual production of raw silk must be some 120,000,000 pounds, and this, with the output of j.a.pan and Korea, would make a product for the three countries probably exceeding 150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps $700,000,000; quite equalling in value the wheat crop of the United States, but produced on less than one-eighth of the area.

According to the observations of Count Dandola, the worms which contribute to this vast earning are so small that some 700,000 of them weigh at hatching only one pound, but they grow very rapidly, shed their skins four times, weighing 15 pounds at the time of the first moult, 94 pounds at the second, 400 pounds at the third, 1628 pounds at the fourth moulting and when mature have come to weigh nearly five tons--9500 pounds. But in making this growth during about thirty-six days, according to Paton, the 700,000 worms have eaten 105 pounds by the time of the first moult; 315 pounds by the second; 1050 pounds by the third; 3150 pounds by the fourth, and in the final period, before spinning, 19,215 pounds, thus consuming in all nearly twelve tons of mulberry leaves in producing nearly five tons of live weight, or at the rate of two and a half pounds of green leaf to one pound of growth.

According to Paton, the coc.o.o.ns from the 700,000 worms would weigh between 1400 and 2100 pounds and these, according to the observations of Hosie in the province of Szechwan, would yield about one-twelfth their weight of raw silk. On this basis the one pound of worms hatched from the eggs would yield between 116 and 175 pounds of raw silk, worth, at the j.a.panese export price for 1907, between $550 and $832, and 164 pounds of green mulberry leaves would be required to produce a pound of silk.

A Chinese banker in Chekiang province, with whom we talked, stated that the young worms which would hatch from the eggs spread on a sheet of paper twelve by eighteen inches would consume, in coming to maturity, 2660 pounds of mulberry leaves and would spin 21.6 pounds of silk. This is at the rate of 123 pounds of leaves to one pound of silk. The j.a.panese crop for 1907, 26,072,000 pounds, produced on 957,560 acres, is a mean yield of 27.23 pounds of raw silk per acre of mulberries, and this would require a mean yield of 4465 pounds of green mulberry leaves per acre, at the rate of 164 pounds per pound of silk.

Ordinary silk in these countries is produced largely from three varieties of mulberries, and from them there may be three pickings of leaves for the rearing of a spring, summer and autumn crop of silk. We learned at the Nagoya Experiment Station, j.a.pan, that there good spring yields of mulberry leaves are at the rate of 400 kan, the second crop, 150 kan, and the third crop, 250 kan per tan, making a total yield of over thirteen tons of green leaves per acre.

This, however, seems to be materially higher than the average for the Empire.

In Fig. 188 is a near view of a mulberry orchard in Chekiang province, which has been very heavily fertilized with ca.n.a.l mud, and which was at the stage for cutting the leaves to feed the first crop of silkworms. A bundle of cut limbs is in the crotch of the front tree in the view. Those who raise mulberry leaves are not usually the feeders of the silkworms and the leaves from this orchard were being sold at one dollar, Mexican, per picul, or 32.25 cents per one hundred pounds. The same price was being paid a week later in the vicinity of Nanking, Kiangsu province.

The mulberry trees, as they appear before coming into leaf in the early spring, may be seen in Fig. 189. The long limbs are the shoots of the last year's growth, from which at least one crop of leaves had been picked, and in healthy orchards they may have a length of two to three feet. An orchard from a portion of which the limbs had just been cut, presented the appearance seen in Fig. 190. These trees were twelve to fifteen years old and the enlargements on the ends of the limbs resulted from the frequent pruning, year after year, at nearly the same place. The ground under these trees was thickly covered with a growth of pink clover just coming into bloom, which would be spaded into the soil, providing nitrogen and organic matter, whose decay would liberate potash, phosphorus and other mineral plant food elements for the crop.

In Fig. 191 three rows of mulberry trees, planted four feet apart, stand on a narrow embankment raised four feet, partly through adjusting the surrounding fields for rice, and partly by additions of ca.n.a.l mud used as a fertilizer. On either side of the mulberries is a crop of windsor beans, and on the left a crop of rape, both of which would be harvested in early June, the ground where they stand flooded, plowed and transplanted to rice. This and the other mulberry views were taken in the extensively ca.n.a.lized portion of China represented in Fig. 52. The farmer owning this orchard had just finished cutting two large bundles of limbs for the sale of the leaves in the village. He stated that his first crop ordinarily yields from three to as many as twenty piculs per mow, but that the second crop seldom exceeded two to three piculs. The first and second crop of leaves, if yielding together twenty-three piculs per mow, would amount to 9.2 tons per acre, worth, at the price named, $59.34. Mulberry leaves must be delivered fresh as soon as gathered and must be fed the same day, the limbs, when, stripped of their leaves, at the place where these are sold, are tied into bundles and reserved for use as fuel.

In the south of China the mulberry is grown from low cuttings rooted by layering. We have before spoken of our five hours ride in the Canton delta region, on the steamer Nanning, through extensive fields of low mulberry then in full leaf, which were first mistaken for cotton nearing the blossom stage. This form of mulberry is seen in Fig. 43, and the same method of pruning is practiced in southern j.a.pan. In middle j.a.pan high pruning, as in Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces, is followed, but in northern j.a.pan the leaves are picked directly, as is the case with the last crop of leaves everywhere, pruning not being practiced in the more northern lat.i.tudes.

Not all silk produced in these northern countries is from the domesticated Bombyx mori, large amounts being obtained from the spinnings of wild silkworms feeding upon the leaves of species of oak growing on the mountain and hill lands in various parts of China, Korea and j.a.pan. In China the collections in largest amount are reeled from the coc.o.o.ns of the tussur worm (Antheraea pernyi) gathered in Shantung, Honan, Kweichow and Szechwan provinces. In the hilly parts of Manchuria also this industry is attaining large proportions, the coc.o.o.ns being sent to Chefoo in the Shantung province, to be woven into pongee silk.

M. Randot has estimated the annual crop of wild silk coc.o.o.ns in Szechwan at 10,180,000 pounds, although in the opinion of Alexander Hosie much of this may come from Kweichow. Richard places the export of raw wild silk from the whole of China proper, in 1904, at 4,400,000 pounds. This would mean not less than 75,300,000 pounds of wild coc.o.o.ns and may be less than half the home consumption.

From data collected by Alexander Hosie it appears that in 1899 the export of raw tussur silk from Manchuria, through the port of Newchw.a.n.g by steamer alone, was 1,862,448 pounds, valued at $1,721,200, and the production is increasing rapidly. The export from the same port the previous year, by steamer, was 1,046,704 pounds. This all comes from the hilly and mountain lands south of Mukden, lying between the Liao plain on the west and the Yalu river on the east, covering some five thousand square miles, which we crossed on the Antung-Mukden railway.

There are two broods of these wild silkworms each season, between early May and early October. Coc.o.o.ns of the fall brood are kept through the winter and when the moths come forth they are caused to lay their eggs on pieces of cloth and when the worms are hatched they are fed until the first moult upon the succulent new oak leaves gathered from the hills, after which the worms are taken to the low oak growth on the hills where they feed themselves and spin their coc.o.o.ns under the cover of leaves drawn about them.

The moths reserved from the first brood, after becoming fertile, are tied by means of threads to the oak bushes where they deposit the eggs which produce the second crop of tussur silk. To maintain an abundance of succulent leaves within reach the oaks are periodically cut back.

Thus these plain people, patient, frugal, unshrinking from toil, the basic units of three of the oldest nations, go to the uncultivated hill lands and from the wild oak and the millions of insects which they help to feed upon it, not only create a valuable export trade but procure material for clothing, fuel, fertilizer and food, for the large chrysalides, cooked in the reeling of the silk, may be eaten at once or are seasoned with sauce to be used later. Besides this, the last unreelable portion of each coc.o.o.n is laid aside to be manufactured into silk wadding and into soft mattresses for caskets upon which the wealthy lay their dead.

XIV

THE TEA INDUSTRY

The cultivation of tea in China and j.a.pan is another of the great industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture, if not above it, in the important part it plays in the welfare of the people. There is little reason to doubt that the industry has its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water has been universally adopted in these countries as an individually available, thoroughly efficient and safe guard against that cla.s.s of deadly disease germs which it has been almost impossible to exclude from the drinking water of any densely peopled country.

So far as may be judged from the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus far inst.i.tuted, and taking into consideration the inherent difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods must ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety must be secured in some manner having the equivalent effect of boiling water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races, and which destroys active disease germs at the latest moment before using. And it must not be overlooked that the boiling of drinking water in China and j.a.pan has been demanded quite as much because of congested rural populations as to guard against such dangers in large cities, while as yet our sanitary engineers have dealt only with the urban phases of this most vital problem and chiefly, too, thus far, only where it has been possible to procure the water supply in comparatively unpopulated hill lands. But such opportunities cannot remain available indefinitely, any more than they did in China and j.a.pan, and already typhoid epidemics break out in our large cities and citizens are advised to boil their drinking water.

If tea drinking in the family is to remain general in most portions of the world, and especially if it shall increase in proportion to population, there is great industrial and commercial promise for China, Korea and j.a.pan in their tea industry if they will develop tea culture still further over the extensive and still unused flanks of the hill lands; improve their cultural methods; their manufacture; and develop their export trade. They have the best of climatic and soil conditions and people sufficiently capable of enormously expanding the industry. Both improvement and expansion of methods along all essential lines, are needed, enabling them to put upon the market pure teas of thoroughly uniform grades of guaranteed quality, and with these the maintenance of an international code of rigid ethics which shall secure to all concerned a square deal and a fair division of the profits.

The production of rice, silk and tea are three industries which these nations are preeminently circ.u.mstanced and qualified to economically develop and maintain. Other nations may better specialize along other lines which fitness determines, and the time is coming when maximum production at minimum cost as the result of clean robust living that in every way is worth while, will determine lines of social progress and of international relations. With the vital awakening to the possibility of and necessity for world peace, it must be recognized that this can be nothing less than universal, industrial, commercial, intellectual and religious, in addition to making impossible forever the b.l.o.o.d.y carnage that has ravaged the world through all the centuries.

With the extension of rapid transportation and more rapid communication throughout the world, we are fast entering the state of social development which will treat the whole world as a mutually helpful, harmonious industrial unit. It must be recognized that in certain regions, because of peculiar fitness of soil, climate and people, needful products can be produced there better and enough more cheaply than elsewhere to pay the cost of transportation. If China, Korea and j.a.pan, with parts of India, can and will produce the best and cheapest silks, teas or rice, it must be for the greatest good to seek a mutually helpful exchange, and the erection of impa.s.sable tariff barriers is a declaration of war and cannot make for world peace and world progress.

The date of the introduction of tea culture into China appears unknown. It was before the beginning of the Christian era and tradition would place it more than 2700 years earlier. The j.a.panese definitely date its introduction into their islands as in the year 805 A. D., and state its coming to them from China. However and whenever tea growing originated in these countries, it long ago attained and now maintains large proportions. In 1907 j.a.pan had 124,482 acres of land occupied by tea gardens and tea plantations.

These produced 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea, giving a mean yield of 489 pounds per acre. Of the more than sixty million pounds of tea produced annually on nearly two hundred square miles in j.a.pan, less than twenty-two million pounds are consumed at home, the balance being exported at a cash value, in 1907, of $6,309,122, or a mean of sixteen cents per pound.

In China the volume of tea produced annually is much larger than in j.a.pan. Hosie places the annual export from Szechwan into Tibet alone at 40,000,000 pounds and this is produced largely in the mountainous portion of the province west of the Min river. Richard places her direct export to foreign countries, in 1905, at 176,027,255 pounds; and in 1906 at 180,271,000 pounds, so that the annual export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds, and her total product of cured tea must be more than 400,000,000.

The general appearance of tea bushes as they are grown in j.a.pan is indicated in Fig. 192. The form of the bushes, the shape and size of the leaves and the dense green, s.h.i.+ny foliage quite suggests our box, so much used in borders and hedges. When the bushes are young, not covering the ground, other crops are grown between the rows, but as the bushes attain their full size, standing after tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, waist to breast high, the ground between is usually thickly covered with straw, leaves or gra.s.s and weeds from the hill lands, which serve as a mulch, as a fertilizer, as a means of preventing was.h.i.+ng on the hillsides, and to force the rain to enter the soil uniformly where it falls.

Quite a large per cent of the tea bushes are grown on small, scattering, irregular areas about dwellings, on land not readily tilled, but there are also many tea plantations of considerable size, presenting the appearance seen in Fig. 193. After each picking of the leaves the bushes are trimmed back with pruning shears, giving the rows the appearance of carefully trimmed hedges.

The tea leaves are hand picked, generally by women and girls, after the manner seen in Fig. 194, where they are gathering the tender, newly-formed leaves into baskets to be weighed fresh, as seen in Fig. 195.

Three crops of leaves are usually gathered each season, the first yielding in j.a.pan one hundred kan per tan, the second fifty kan and the third eighty kan per tan. This is at the rate of 3307 pounds, 1653 pounds, and 2645 pounds per acre, making a total of 7605 pounds for the season, from which the grower realizes from a little more than 2.2 to a little more than 3 cents per pound of the green leaves, or a gross earning of $167 to $209.50 per acre.

We were informed that the usual cost for fertilizers for the tea orchards was 15 to 20 yen per tan, or $30 to $40 per acre per annum, the fertilizer being applied in the fall, in the early spring and again after the first picking of the leaves. While the tea plants are yet small one winter crop and one summer crop of vegetables, beans or barley are grown between the rows, these giving a return of some forty dollars per acre. Where the plantations are given good care and ample fertilization the life of a plantation may be prolonged continuously, it is said, through one hundred or more years.

During our walk from Joji to Kowata, along a country road in one of the tea districts, we pa.s.sed a tea-curing house. This was a long rectangular, one-story building with twenty furnaces arranged, each under an open window, around the sides. In front of each heated furnace with its tray of leaves, a j.a.panese man, wearing only a breech cloth, and in a state of profuse perspiration, was busy rolling the tea leaves between the palms of his hands.

At another place we witnessed the making of the low grade dust tea, which is prepared from the leaves of bushes which must be removed or from those of the prunings. In this case the dried bushes with their leaves were being beaten with flails on a thres.h.i.+ng floor. The dust tea thus produced is consumed by the poorer people.

XV

ABOUT TIENTSIN

On the 6th of June we left central China for Tientsin and further north, sailing by coastwise steamer from Shanghai, again plowing through the turbid waters which give literal exactness to the name Yellow Sea. Our steamer touched at Tsingtao, taking on board a body of German troops, and again at Chefoo, and it was only between these two points that the sea was not strongly turbid. Nor was this all.

From early morning of the 10th until we anch.o.r.ed at Tientsin, 2:30 P. M., our course up the winding Pei ho was against a strong dust-laden wind which left those who had kept to the deck as grey as though they had ridden by automobile through the Colorado desert; so the soils of high interior Asia are still spreading eastward by flood and by wind into the valleys and far over the coastal plains.

Over large areas between Tientsin and Peking and at other points northward toward Mukden trees and shrubs have been systematically planted in rectangular hedgerow lines, to check the force of the winds and reduce the drifting of soils, planted fields occupying the s.p.a.ces between.

It was on this trip that we met Dr. Evans of Shunking, Szechwan province. His wife is a physician practicing among the Chinese women, and in discussing the probable rate of increase of population among the Chinese, it was stated that she had learned through her practice that very many mothers had borne seven to eleven children and yet but one, two or at most three, were living.

It was said there are many customs and practices which determine this high mortality among children, one of which is that of feeding them meat before they have teeth, the mother masticating for the children, with the result that often fatal convulsions follow. A Scotch physician of long experience in Shantung, who took the steamer at Tsingtao, replied to my question as to the usual size of families in his circuit, "I do not know. It depends on the crops. In good years the number is large; in times of famine the girls especially are disposed of, often permitted to die when very young for lack of care. Many are sold at such times to go into other provinces." Such statements, however, should doubtless be taken with much allowance. If all the details were known regarding the cases which have served as foundations for such reports, the matter might appear in quite a different light from that suggested by such cold recitals.