looking upon people as being well provided for who are able to treat themselves to a meager meal perhaps once every twenty-four hours. There are millions of this class in famine areas, but the name of none such is ever written down on the lists of the actually needy. The provinces affected are Chi-li, Shan-tung, Honan, Shen-si and Shan-si. These provinces have a total population of approximately 45,000,000, out of which 25,550,000 have been counted as famine victims, while some 15,000,000 are listed as being completely destitute and dependent during the next four months upon such relief as may be given them. All these facts and figures were cabled to the United States long ago, but in case the figures should be regarded by some as being beyond belief I wish to repeat and ask that my word be taken for it that they are wholly conservative. Fifteen millions are not in danger of death, but in extreme distress.
Clothing as Scarce as Food
ON THE way out across the Pacific I cheered myself along with the thought that when I arrived amidst the horrors probably I would be able to echo the too often expressed cynical opinion, "There are plenty of Chinese," and that I would not find it difficult coldly to calculate the economic advantage to be derived from such a thinning out of the population as threatened. The truth is there are not plenty of Chinese. There are more than enough in certain sections, no doubt, but there are other sections, tremendous in extent, which have never recovered from the devastation of the Tai-ping Rebellion, the great famine of the late seventies, and subsequent similar calamities, and which even now are all but devoid of population. When China's natural resources begin to be developed, when the country is opened up to free interprovincial communication by rail, motor and highway, and when the great industries are established which already are being planned in view of the time when the country shall settle down in a united effort to resume and maintain orderly processes, there will be need for an increased rather than a diminished Chinese population.
However, it was not any such thoughts as these that plunged me into emotions I had no intention of permitting myself to feel. It was what I began to see. I had no sooner entered the famine area than I began to get all the horror I had any use for. It was like what the hell for the wasteful and extravagant ought to resemble. The penurious also might be put along in with the wasteful and extravagant, just to show how useless it is to be too thrifty.
I came up from Shanghai on the railway which runs via Nanking, Pukow, Tsinanfu and Tientsin, and though this road has been in operation a good many years it was new to me. My only trips to Peking had been made by sea to Chingwangtao and thence by rail through Tientsin or up the Yang-tse River to Hankow, and from there on the Hankow and Peking Railway; so except for a visit to Tsingtao in the old German days I had never been in the province of Shan-tung. Curiously, though I know North China well enough and should have known enough to keep my mental pictures harsh in all their tones, I always had in mind a false vision of this sacred corner of this ancient land. For some reason I always thought of it as being green and soft and as having templed hills and sweet valleys filled with quaint farmsteads such as I have seen in old Chinese pictures, but never anywhere in China. I don't know why I should have thought this. I suppose association with it of the name of Confucius and the almost fanatic love the people have for Shan-tung assisted my imagination and helped lead me so pleasantly astray.
The train leaves Shanghai at half past nine in the morning and manages to rumble along at a sufficient pace to get to Nanking at four in the afternoon. There passengers cross the Yang-tse ferry to Pukow, where another train is waiting. If I were not writing about the Chinese famine it would be great fun to write about Chinese railroads, but perhaps the subject will keep for future reference. At Pukow you get into a so-called sleeping car, and I should be willing to bet anything you like that whoever bought the sleeping cars for the Chinese Government railways squeezed their dimensions and pocketed the squeeze. Such narrow-chested compartments never could have been designed by a liberal-minded, unhampered manufacturer of rolling stock. The seats are also narrow, upholstered with bricks or something, and turned at night into bunks are provided with narrow sheets, narrow blanket and narrow pillow stuffed with a strangely lumpy 'substance that excites one's curiosity but contributes very little to one's ease. Fortunately the roadbed is excellently constructed and as no Chinese time-table calls for much in the way of speed going is fairly smooth.
I waked up when the train was in the heart of Shan-tung, and looked out of my window just in time to see the sunrise painting the slopes cf the sacred mountain of Tai-shan in the shades of purple rose. In view of what lay directly before my eyes and what was later seen I was grateful for this vision, glad to begin the day with it, because thereafter came deep depression I have not since been able to escape. It is in the very atmosphere. Fellow passengers and I began at once to talk about death from starvation, and have talked about nothing but death from starvation from that hour to this. It is all there is left to talk about in North China. All else is for the time being forgotten.
It is to be understood that a shortage of food in China means a shortage of everything. The fuel of the people consists of the dried stalks of the kaoliang and thick reed-like stalks of the large millet, but for two years there has been neither kaoliang nor millet. Also they build fences and roof houses with the stalks of the kaoliang. The people wear cotton because they raise cotton in large quantities, but for two years the cotton crop has been a complete failure, so the padded cotton suits soared-in price beyond the reach of the very poor. Tens of thousands of poor have sold their clothes and are shivering through the winter in unspeakable rags or thin clothing made for summer wear.
The population is idle because there is no work to be done. Practically all the workers in cotton are out of employment. At Tientsin, for instance, only eighty out of four hundred small cotton mills are in operation. The thousands of weavers of baskets and mats from stalks of the millet and kaoliang have nothing to do. The farmers have done their utmost and are awaiting spring and prayed-for rains. Carters and venders of food; itinerant cooks; grinders and carriers of grain; bakers; butchers—think of the tens of thousands of people exclusive of farmers who cater to the needs of the teeming, vast population. What can they do when there is nothing to do with but drop their hands—such eternally willing and industrious hands—drop their hands and wait? For what? They know their ancient Mother Earth—even if ancient Mother Earth turn kind—cannot yield in time wherewith to save them.
At Tsinanfu, the capital of Shan-tung, there were friends to meet me. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and the brilliant sunshine seemed merely to light up the cold and make it sting the more sharply. My friends were the local manager of the British-American Tobacco Company and his wife, and had come to the station in order to give me a brief glimpse of what they are up against and what they are doing. It is a dark, gray region round Tsinanfu, and in common with a number of other foreign firms this company has gone actively into the famine-relief business on a rather extensive scale. They went to work independently in the early autumn, when they recognized the widespread distress inevitable, and are now operating a number of gruel kitchens, in the Tsinanfu district, from which they are supplying some 3000 meals a day.
The Quiet Pluck of the Famished
I ASKED them if they were able to take care of everybody in their district and they said: "By no means. We have made very careful and what may seem sometimes very cold-blooded selection. Otherwise we could save nobody. There just isn't enough money. We take care of all we can and make the ration as small as possible in order that as many as possible may have it. We give each person a ticket with his name on it, and only holders of these tickets can get food at the kitchens. We assure you all ticket holders have been thoroughly investigated and proved to be absolutely destitute."
"But suppose someone comes along who really is starving but has no ticket; what do you do?"
"We tell him to go on home."
"That may mean to go on home to die?"
"It almost invariably does, but there is no help for it. The worst of it is that they take it so philosophically. You can trust a Chinese to meet his fate halfway, no matter what it is, without any fuss about it. We thought we knew the Chinese pretty well, but we didn't know much about them as fatalists until this situation developed. In any other country there would be bread riots, wholesale murder, thievery and disturbances generally; but the average Chinese calmly accepts the fact that he has to starve to death, and goes quietly ahead and does it."
"Are many dying in this section?"
"Not yet; about 1500 so far, but the death rate is increasing and is bound to be pretty awful."
They told me I was just coming into the real hunger belt, and assured me that on the up line between Tsinanfu and Tientsin I would see things I probably would not care to look at. And they were right. All station platforms along this railway are fenced in by heavy picket fences, and sometimes fences of barbed wire. This is to keep the clamorous inquisitive people at a respectful distance from the trains. I was glad of the fences as we went along from station to station, because behind them presently began to appear mobs of such human beings as I had never before seen; mobs of such people as I would not care to have come too near me, however much I might pity them. There are always beggars in China, but the worst, old hardened sinner in the country who pretends to believe that starvation is chronic and cultivated among the Chinese, could not look upon these crowds and dismiss them from his mind
(Continued on Page 105)
