Farmers of Forty Centuries Part 6

Large amounts of wood are converted into charcoal in these countries and sent to market baled in rough matting or in basketwork cases woven from small brush and holding two to two and a half bushels.

When such wood is not converted into charcoal it is sawed into one or two-foot lengths, split and marketed tied in bundles, as seen in Fig. 77.

Along the Mukden-Antung railway in Manchuria fuel was also being s.h.i.+pped in four-foot lengths, in the form of cordwood. In Korea cattle were provided with a peculiar saddle for carrying wood in four-foot sticks laid blanket-fas.h.i.+on over the animal, extending far down on their sides. Thus was it brought from the hills to the railway station. This wood, as in Manchuria, was cut from small trees. In Korea, as in most parts of China where we visited, the tree growth over the hills was generally scattering and thin on the ground wherever there was not individual owners.h.i.+p in small holdings. Under and among the scattering pine there were oak in many cases, but these were always small, evidently not more than two or three years standing, and appearing to have been repeatedly cut back. It was in Korea that we saw so many instances of young leafy oak boughs brought to the rice fields and used as green manure.

There was abundant evidence of periodic cutting between Mukden and Antung in Manchuria; between Wiju and Fusan in Korea; and throughout most of our journey in j.a.pan; from Nagasaki to Moji and from s.h.i.+monoseki to Yokohama. In all of these countries afforestation takes place quickly and the cuttings on private holdings are made once in ten, twenty or twenty-five years. When the wood is sold to those coming for it the takers pay at the rate of 40 sen per one horse load of forty kan, or 330 pounds, such as is seen in Fig. 87.

Director Ono, of the Akas.h.i.+ Experiment station, informed us that such fuel loads in that prefecture, where the wood is cut once in ten years, bring returns amounting to about $40 per acre for the ten-year crop. This land was worth $40 per acre but when they are suitable for orange groves they sell for $600 per acre. Mushroom culture is extensively practiced under the shade of some of these wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of $100 per acre.

The forest covered area in j.a.pan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto, amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, less than twenty millions of which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state and to the Imperial Crown.

In all of these countries there has been an extensive general use of materials other than wood for building purposes and very many of the subst.i.tutes for lumber are products grown on the cultivated fields.

The use of rice straw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village, Fig. 8, is very general throughout the rice growing districts, and even the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was observed in the Canton delta region, such a construction being warm for winter and cool for summer. The life of these thatched roofs, however, is short and they must be renewed as often as every three to five years but the old straw is highly prized as fertilizer for the fields on which it is grown, or it may serve as fuel, the ashes only going to the fields.

Burned clay tile, especially for the cities and public buildings, are very extensively used for roofing, clay being abundant and near at hand. In Chihli and in Manchuria millet and sorghum stems, used alone or plastered, as in Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes mixed with lime, cover the roofs of vast numbers of the dwellings outside the larger cities.

At Chiao Tou in Manchuria we saw the building of the thatched millet roofs and the use of kaoliang stems as lumber. Rafters were set in the usual way and covered with a layer about two inches thick of the long kaoliang stems stripped of their leaves and tops. These were tied together and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sort of matting. A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the surface and well trowelled until it began to show on the under side.

Over this was applied a thatch of small millet stems bound in bundles eight inches thick, cut square across the b.u.t.ts to eighteen inches in length. They were dipped in water and laid in courses after the manner of s.h.i.+ngles but the b.u.t.ts of the stems are driven forward to a slope which obliterates the shoulder, making the courses invisible. In the better houses this thatching may be plastered with earth mortar or with an earth-lime mortar, which is less liable to wash in heavy rain.

The walls of the house we saw building were also sided with the long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary frame with posts and girts about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates carrying the roof. Standing vertically against the girts and tied to them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were plastered outside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A similar layer of stems, set up on the inside of the girts and similarly plastered, formed the inner face of the wall of the house, leaving dead air s.p.a.ces between the girts.

Brick made from earth are very extensively used for house building, chaff and short straw being used as a binding material, the brick being simply dried in the sun, as seen in Fig. 89. A house in the process of building, where the brick were being used, is seen in Fig. 90. The foundation of the dwelling, it will be observed, was laid with well-formed hard-burned brick, these being necessary to prevent capillary moisture from the ground being drawn up and soften the earth brick, making the wall unsafe.

Several kilns for burning brick, built of clay and earth, were pa.s.sed in our journey up the Pei ho, and stacked about them, covering an area of more than eight hundred feet back from the river were bundles of the kaoliang stems to serve as fuel in the kilns.

The extensive use of the unburned brick is necessitated by the difficulty of obtaining fuel, and various methods are adopted to reduce the number of burned brick required in construction. One of these devices is shown in Fig. 79, where the city wall surrounding Kas.h.i.+ng is constructed of alternate courses of four layers of burned brick separated by layers of simple earth concrete.

In addition to the multiple-function, farm-gown crops used for food, fuel and building material, there is a large acreage devoted to the growing of textile and fiber products and enormous quant.i.ties of these are produced annually. In j.a.pan, where some fifty millions of people are chiefly fed on the produce of little more than 21,000 square miles of cultivated land, there was grown in 1906 more than 75,500,000 pounds of cotton, hemp, flax and China gra.s.s textile stock, occupying 76,700 acres of the cultivated land. On 141,000 other acres there grew 115,000,000 pounds of paper mulberry and Mitsumata, materials used in the manufacture of paper. From still another 14,000 acres were taken 92,000,000 pounds of matting stuff, while more than 957,000 acres were occupied by mulberry trees for the feeding of silkworms, yielding to j.a.pan 22,389,798 pounds of silk. Here are more than 300,000,000 pounds of fiber and textile stuff taken from 1860 square miles of the cultivated land, cutting down the food producing area to 19,263 square miles and this area is made still smaller by devoting 123,000 acres to tea, these producing in 1906 58,900,000 pounds, worth nearly five million dollars. Nor do these statements express the full measure of the producing power of the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, for, in addition to the food and other materials named, there were also made $2,365,000 worth of braid from straw and wood shavings; $6,000,000 worth of rice straw bags, packing cases and matting; and $1,085,000 worth of wares from bamboo, willow and vine. As ill.u.s.trating the intense home industry of these people we may consider the fact that the 5,453,309 households of farmers in j.a.pan produced in 1906, in their homes as subsidiary work, $20,527,000 worth of manufactured articles. If 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 j.a.pan. 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 cla.s.s, was eighty cents, Mexican. A third cla.s.s ticket would have been forty cents and a first cla.s.s, $1.60, practically two cents, one cent and half a cent, our currency, per mile. The second cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.

It was here that we first saw, at close range, the details of using ca.n.a.l mud as a fertilizer, so extensively applied in China. Walking through the fields we came upon the scene in the middle section of Fig. 92 where, close on the right was such a reservoir as seen in Fig. 58. Men were in it, dipping up the mud which had acc.u.mulated over its bottom, pouring it on the bank in a field of windsor beans, and the thin mud was then over two feet deep at that side and flowing into the beans where it had already spread two rods, burying the plants as the engraving shows. When sufficiently dry to be readily handled this would be spread among the beans as we found it being done in another field, shown in the upper section of the ill.u.s.tration. Here four men were distributing such mud, which had dried, between the rows, not to fertilize the beans, but for a succeeding crop of cotton soon to be planted between the rows, before they were harvested. The owner of this piece of land, with whom we talked and who was superintending the work, stated that his usual yield of these beans was three hundred catty per mow and that they sold them green, sh.e.l.led, at two cents, Mexican, per catty. At this price and yield his return would be $15.48, gold, per acre. If there was need of nitrogen and organic matter in the soil the vines would be pulled green, after picking the beans, and composted with the wet mud. If not so needed the dried stems would be tied in bundles and sold as fuel or used at home, the ashes being returned to the fields. The windsor beans are thus an early crop grown for fertilizer, fuel and food.

This farmer was paying his laborers one hundred cash per day and providing their meals, which he estimated worth two hundred cash more, making twelve cents, gold, for a ten-hour day. Judging from what we saw and from the amount of mud carried per load, we estimated the men would distribute not less than eighty-four loads of eighty pounds each per day, an average distance of five hundred feet, making the cost 3.57 cents, gold, per ton for distribution.

The lower section of Fig. 92 shows another instance where mud was being used on a narrow strip bordering the path along which we walked, the amount there seen having been brought more than four hundred feet, by one man before 10 A. M. on the morning the photograph was taken. He was getting it from the bottom of a ca.n.a.l ten feet deep, laid bare by the out-going tide. Already he had brought more than a ton to his field.

The carrying baskets used for this work were in the form of huge dustpans suspended from the carrying poles by two cords attached to the side rims, and steadied by the hand grasping a handle provided in the back for this purpose and for emptying the baskets by tipping. With this construction the earth was readily raked upon the basket and very easily emptied from it by simply raising the hands when the destination was reached. No arrangement could be more simple, expeditious or inexpensive for this man with his small holding. In this simple manner has nearly all of the earth been moved in digging the miles of ca.n.a.l and in building the long sea walls. In Shanghai the mud carried through the storm sewers into Soochow creek we saw being removed in the same manner during the intervals when the tide was out.

In still another field, seen in Fig. 93, the upper portion shows where ca.n.a.l mud had been applied at a rate exceeding seventy tons per acre, and we were told that such dressings may be repeated as often as every two years though usually at longer intervals, if other and cheaper fertilizers could be obtained. In the lower portion of the same ill.u.s.tration may be seen the section of ca.n.a.l from which this mud was taken up the three earthen stairways built of the mud itself and permitted to dry before using. Many such lines of stairway were seen during our trips along the ca.n.a.ls, only recently made or in the process of building to be in readiness when the time for applying the mud should arrive. To facilitate collecting the mud from the shallow ca.n.a.ls temporary dams may be thrown across them at two places and the water between either scooped or pumped out, laying the bottom bare, as is often done also for fis.h.i.+ng. The earth of the large grave mound seen across a ca.n.a.l in the center background of the upper portion of the engraving had been collected in a similar manner.

In the Chekiang province ca.n.a.l mud is extensively used in the mulberry orchards as a surface dressing. We have referred to this practice in southern China, and Fig. 94 is a view taken south of Kas.h.i.+ng early in April. The boat anch.o.r.ed in front of the mulberry orchard is the home of a family coming from a distance, seeking employment during the season for picking mulberry leaves to feed silkworms. We were much surprised, on looking back at the boat after closing the camera, to see the head of the family standing erect in the center, having shoved back a section of the matting roof.

The dressing of mud applied to this field formed a loose layer more than two inches deep and when compacted by the rains which would follow would add not less than a full inch of soil over the entire orchard, and the weight per acre could not be less than 120 tons.

Another equally, or even more, laborious practice followed by the Chinese farmers in this province is the periodic exchange of soil between mulberry orchards and the rice fields, their experience being that soil long used in the mulberry orchards improves the rice, while soil from the rice fields is very helpful when applied to the mulberry orchards. We saw many instances, when traveling by boat-train between Shanghai, Kas.h.i.+ng and Hangchow, of soil being carried from rice fields and either stacked on the banks or dropped into the ca.n.a.l. Such soil was oftenest taken from narrow trenches leading through the fields, laying them off in beds. It is our judgment that the soil thrown into the ca.n.a.ls undergoes important changes, perhaps through the absorption of soluble plant food substances such as lime, phosphoric acid and potash withdrawn from the water, or through some growth or fermentation, which, in the judgment of the farmer, makes the large labor involved in this procedure worth while. The stacking of soil along the banks was probably in preparation for its removal by boat to some of the mulberry orchards.

It is clearly recognized by the farmers that mud collected from those sections of the ca.n.a.l leading through country villages, such as that seen in Fig. 10, is both inherently more fertile and in better physical condition than that collected in the open country.

They attribute this difference to the effect of the village was.h.i.+ng in the ca.n.a.l, where soap is extensively used. The storm waters of the city doubtless carry some fertilizing material also, although sewage, as such, never finds its way into the ca.n.a.ls. The was.h.i.+ng would be very likely to have a decided flocculating effect and so render this material more friable when applied to the field.

One very important advantage which comes to the fields when heavily dressed with such mud is that resulting from the addition of lime which has become incorporated with the silts through their flocculation and precipitation, and that which is added in the form of snail sh.e.l.ls abounding in the ca.n.a.ls. The amount of these may be realized from the large numbers contained in the mud recently thrown out, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 95, where the pebbly appearance of the surface is caused by snail sh.e.l.ls. In the lower section of the same ill.u.s.tration the white spots are snail sh.e.l.ls exposed in the soil of a recently spaded field. The sh.e.l.ls are by no means as numerous generally as here seen but yet sufficient to maintain the supply of lime.

Several species of these snails are collected in quant.i.ties and used as food. Piles containing bushels of the empty sh.e.l.ls were seen along the ca.n.a.ls outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the sh.e.l.l and often sold by measure to be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips the spiral point from each sh.e.l.l with a pair of small shears. This admits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by suction when the lips are applied to the sh.e.l.l. In the ca.n.a.ls there are also large numbers of fresh water eel, shrimp and crabs as well as fish, all of which are collected and used for human food. It is common, when walking through the ca.n.a.l country, to come upon groups of gleaners busy in the bottoms of the shallow agricultural ca.n.a.ls, gathering anything which may serve as food, even including small bulbs or the fleshy roots of edible aquatic plants. To facilitate the collection of such food materials sections of the ca.n.a.l are often drained in the manner already described, so that gleaning may be done by hand, wading in the mud. Families living in houseboats make a business of fis.h.i.+ng for shrimp. They trail behind the houseboat one or two other boats carrying hundreds of shrimp traps cleverly constructed in such manner that when they are trailed along the bottom and disturb the shrimps they dart into the holes in the trap, mistaking them for safe hiding places.

On the streets, especially during festival days, one may see young people and others in social intercourse, busying their fingers and their teeth eating cooked snails or often watermelon seeds, which are extensively sold and thus eaten. This custom we saw first in the streets of a city south of Kas.h.i.+ng on the line of the new railway between Hangchow and Shanghai. The first pa.s.senger train over the line had been run the day before our visit, which was a festival day and throngs of people were visiting the nine-story paG.o.da standing on a high hill a mile outside the city limits. The day was one of great surprises to these people who had never before seen a pa.s.senger train, and my own person appeared to be a great curiosity to many. No boy ever scrutinized the face of a caged chimpanzee closer, with purer curiosity, or with less consideration for his feelings than did a woman of fifty scrutinize mine, standing close in front, not two feet distant, even bending forward as I sat upon a bench writing at the railway station. People would pa.s.s their hands along my coat sleeve to judge the cloth, and a boy felt of my shoes.

Walking through the street we pa.s.sed many groups gathered about tables and upon seats, visiting or in business conference, their fingers occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked snails. Along the pathway leading to the paG.o.da beggars had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three hundred feet, asking alms, most of them infirm with age or in some other way physically disabled. We saw but one who appeared capable of earning a living.

Travel between Shanghai and Hangchow at this time was heavy. Three companies were running trains, of six or more houseboats, each towed by a steam launch, and these were daily crowded with pa.s.sengers. Our train left Shanghai at 4:30 P. M., reaching Hangchow at 5:30 P. M.

the following day, covering a distance along the ca.n.a.l of something more than 117 miles. We paid $5.16, gold, for the exclusive use of a first-cabin, five-berth stateroom for myself and interpreter. It occupied the full width of the boat, lacking about fourteen inches of footway, and could be entered from either side down a flight of five steps. The berths were flat, naked wooden shelves thirty inches wide, separated by a part.i.tion headboard six inches high and without railing in front. Each traveler provided his own bedding. A small table upon which meals were served, a mirror on one side and a lamp on the other, set in an opening in the part.i.tion, permitting it to serve two staterooms, completed the furnis.h.i.+ngs. The roof of the staterooms was covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two tiers of berths, each thirty inches wide, by board part.i.tions six inches high. In these sections pa.s.sengers spread their beds, sleeping heads together, separated only by a headboard six inches high. The awning was only sufficiently high to permit pa.s.sengers to sit erect. Ventilation was ample but privacy was nil. Curtains could be dropped around the sides in stormy weather.

Meals were served to each pa.s.senger wherever he might be. Dinner consisted of hot steamed rice brought in very heavy porcelain bowls set inside a covered, wet, steaming hot wooden case. With the rice were tiny dishes, b.u.t.terchip size, of green clover, nicely cooked and seasoned; of cooked bean curd served with shredded bamboo sprouts; of tiny pork strips with bean curd; of small bits of liver with bamboo sprouts; of greens, and hot water for tea. If the appet.i.te is good one may have a second helping of rice and as much hot water for tea as desired. There was no table linen, no napkins and everything but the tea had to be negotiated with chop sticks, or, these failing, with the fingers. When the meal was finished the table was cleared and water, hot if desired, was brought for your hand basin, which with tea, teacup and bedding, const.i.tute part of the traveler's outfit. At frequent intervals, up to ten P. M., a crier walked about the deck with hot water for those who might desire an extra cup of tea, and again in the early morning.

At this season of the year Chinese incubators were being run to their full capacity and it was our good fortune to visit one of these, escorted by Rev. R. A. Haden, who also acted as interpreter.

The art of incubation is very old and very extensively practiced in China. An interior view of one of these establishments is shown in Fig. 96, where the family were hatching the eggs of hens, ducks and geese, purchasing the eggs and selling the young as hatched. As in the case of so many trades in China, this family was the last generation of a long line whose lives had been spent in the same work. We entered through their store, opening on the street of the narrow village seen in Fig. 10. In the store the eggs were purchased and the chicks were sold, this work being in charge of the women of the family. It was in the extreme rear of the home that thirty incubators were installed, all doing duty and each having a capacity of 1,200 hens' eggs. Four of these may be seen in the ill.u.s.tration and one of the baskets which, when two-thirds filled with eggs, is set inside of each incubator.

Each incubator consists of a large earthenware jar having a door cut in one side through which live charcoal may be introduced and the fire partly smothered under a layer of ashes, this serving as the source of heat. The jar is thoroughly insulated, cased in basketwork and provided with a cover, as seen in the ill.u.s.tration. Inside the outer jar rests a second of nearly the same size, as one teacup may in another. Into this is lowered the large basket with its 600 hens'

eggs, 400 ducks' eggs or 175 geese' eggs, as the case may be. Thirty of these incubators were arranged in two parallel rows of fifteen each. Immediately above each row, and utilizing the warmth of the air rising from them, was a continuous line of finis.h.i.+ng hatchers and brooders in the form of woven shallow trays with sides warmly padded with cotton and with the tops covered with sets of quilts of different thickness.

After a basket of hens' eggs has been incubated four days it is removed and the eggs examined by lighting, to remove those which are infertile before they have been rendered unsalable. The infertile eggs go to the store and the basket is returned to the incubator.

Ducks' eggs are similarly examined after two days and again after five days incubation; and geese' eggs after six days and again after fourteen days. Through these precautions practically all loss from infertile eggs is avoided and from 95 to 98 per cent of the fertile eggs are hatched, the infertile eggs ranging from 5 to 25 per cent.

After the fourth day in the incubator all eggs are turned five times in twenty-four hours. Hens' eggs are kept in the lower incubator eleven days; ducks' eggs thirteen days, and geese' eggs sixteen days, after which they are transferred to the trays. Throughout the incubation period the most careful watch and control is kept over the temperature. No thermometer is used but the operator raises the lid or quilt, removes an egg, pressing the large end into the eye socket. In this way a large contact is made where the skin is sensitive, nearly constant in temperature, but little below blood heat and from which the air is excluded for the time. Long practice permits them thus to judge small differences of temperature expeditiously and with great accuracy; and they maintain different temperatures during different stages of the incubation. The men sleep in the room and some one is on duty continuously, making the rounds of the incubators and brooders, examining and regulating each according to its individual needs, through the management of the doors or the s.h.i.+fting of the quilts over the eggs in the brooder trays where the chicks leave the eggs and remain until they go to the store. In the finis.h.i.+ng trays the eggs form rather more than one continuous layer but the second layer does not cover more than a fifth or a quarter of the area. Hens' eggs are in these trays ten days, ducks' and geese' eggs, fourteen days.

After the chickens have been hatched sufficiently long to require feeding they are ready for market and are then sorted according to s.e.x and placed in separate shallow woven trays thirty inches in diameter. The sorting is done rapidly and accurately through the sense of touch, the operator recognizing the s.e.x by gently pinching the a.n.u.s. Four trays of young chickens were in the store fronting on the street as we entered and several women were making purchases, taking five to a dozen each. Dr. Haden informed me that nearly every family in the cities, and in the country villages raise a few, but only a few, chickens and it is a common sight to see grown chickens walking about the narrow streets, in and out of the open stores, dodging the feet of the occupants and pa.s.sers-by. At the time of our visit this family was paying at the rate of ten cents, Mexican, for nine hens' and eight ducks' eggs, and were selling their largest strong chickens at three cents each. These figures, translated into our currency, make the purchase price for eggs nearly 48 cents, and the selling price for the young chicks $1.29, per hundred, or thirteen eggs for six cents and seven chickens for nine cents.

It is difficult even to conceive, not to say measure, the vast import of this solution of how to maintain, in the millions of homes, a constantly accessible supply of absolutely fresh and thoroughly sanitary animal food in the form of meat and eggs. The great density of population in these countries makes the problem of supplying eggs to the people very different from that in the United States. Our 250,600,000 fowl in 1900 was at the rate of three to each person but in j.a.pan, with her 16,500,000 fowl, she had in 1906 but one for every three people. Her number per square mile of cultivated land however was 825, while in the United States, in 1900, the number of fowls per square mile of improved farm land was but 387. To give to j.a.pan three fowls to each person there would needs be an average of about nine to each acre of her cultivated land, whereas in the United States there were in 1900 nearly two acres of improved farm land for each fowl. We have no statistics regarding the number of fowl in China or the number of eggs produced but the total is very large and she exports to j.a.pan. The large boat load of eggs seen in Fig. 97 had just arrived from the country, coming into Shanghai in one of her ca.n.a.ls.

Besides applying ca.n.a.l mud directly to the fields in the ways described there are other very extensive practices of composting it with organic matter of one or another kind and of then using the compost on the fields. The next three ill.u.s.trations show some of the steps and something of the tremendous labor of body, willingly and cheerfully incurred, and something of the forethought practiced, that homes may be maintained and that grandparents, parents, wives and children need neither starve nor beg. We had reached a place seen in Fig. 98, where eight bearers were moving winter compost to a recently excavated pit in an adjoining field shown in Fig. 99.

Four months before the camera fixed the activity shown, men had brought waste from the stables of Shanghai fifteen miles by water, depositing it upon the ca.n.a.l bank between layers of thin mud dipped from the ca.n.a.l, and left it to ferment. The eight men were removing this compost to the pit seen in Fig. 99, then nearly filled. Near by in the same field was a second pit seen in Fig. 100, excavated three feet deep and rimmed about with the earth removed, making it two feet deeper.