Chapter XV: A Page From the Story of Protestant (7)

Seven years ago, when plague raged, an isolation hospital was opened by a well-known Chinese philanthropist in the outskirts of the city. He succeeded in buying the house of a wealthy Chinaman, whose several wives and numerous offspring actually performed the unprecedented feat, for Chinese, of vacating the premises in two days. Wards have since been added to the main building, so that the hospital will now accommodate about a hundred. Through the efforts of this same philanthropist, aided by a distinguished foreigner, Dr. Timothy Richard, the China Branch of the Red Cross Society was established in 1904 with headquarters in Shanghai. Three Red Cross hospitals are operated in widely separated districts of the city, two of them intended to be used exclusively for cholera patients during the cholera season. One of these had its opening some months ago when the hospital was visited by many influential Chinese and a few foreign guests. Nothing could have illustrated more clearly the progress the people are making in the science of social service. The building is a thoroughly renovated old-fashioned Chinese mansion, with courts and rooms innumerable and the usual lovely carved woodwork, mural decorations and tiny squares of translucent glass set in quaint wooden screens, though most of these had been replaced by good-sized modern windows. The most fastidious Westerner could not have asked for cleaner wards, arranged for the various classes of patients, whiter examining and operating rooms for both men and women, or a more complete equipment, though the whole was on a somewhat diminutive scale. The question, it is true, would occasionally intrude itself, “How will this place look a month from now?” but it was followed by the reflection “What began best, can’t end worst,” and that a committee capable of initiating such a work could be trusted to supervise its upkeep. The corps of young men nurses wore a neat uniform of white with blue trimmings. The women nurses,--well, to be frank, there were none. “It is so difficult to find women nurses,” explained one of the doctors. “We must have them of course or we can’t open the women’s department.” The keen interest of the Chinese themselves in the hospital, evidenced by the numbers present and their painstaking inspection, was one of the most hopeful signs. An elderly gentleman, of a singularly refined and benevolent countenance, had come all the way from Nanking, half a day’s journey, to study the plant with a view to starting something similar in his own city.

Time fails to tell of the fine modern hospital of the little Chinese woman doctor who received her training at a mission medical school in Canton, and about whom a whole chapter could be written. Unselfish to a fault, serving devotedly under the Red Cross Society during the revolution, pouring her money and her life out in kindred charities, no personal sacrifice is too great for the betterment of her people whose spiritual as well as physical needs lie as a burden on her heart.

A minor charity but one by no means to be despised is that of furnishing on the street in summer free drinks, not of intoxicants, but of tea. The tea is poured hot into earthen jars which stand inside small booths. Beside the jar is a bamboo dipper, and any passerby may stop and quench his thirst. The tea stations are scattered at frequent intervals throughout the foreign settlements as well as the Chinese City, and are an inestimable boon, particularly to the hard-working coolies.

Another charity that well illustrates the poverty of China is the conservation of waste rice. Rice is China’s staff of life. The servant calls his master to eat not by saying “Dinner is ready,” but “Rice is ready.” To waste rice is a sin; to save it, meritorious. As junks laden with rice from the country around are poled down the river and creeks to Shanghai, a few handfuls of the precious grain inevitably sift out from the bags onto the bank. This is picked up by benevolently minded persons, along with the mud in which it has fallen, and afterward laboriously separated and washed. Some hundreds of pounds in the course of a year are collected in this way and distributed to the poor. A number of local Chinese guilds during the coldest winter weather, are in the habit of feeding daily large numbers of the suffering poor, who line up at specified hours for their allotted portion; also generous sums of money are contributed annually by the Chinese and sent to the districts devastated by flood and famine to relieve the destitute.

Perhaps the most significant event of the last year in Shanghai was the organization by young Chinese women of a Social Service League. The leaders are Christians, who in a tactful but persistent way, are sure to make their influence felt. Already as a beginning five free day-schools for the poor, with a total attendance of several hundred, have been started and others are expected to open soon. A Sunday School taught by volunteer workers is held in connection with each day-school. It is the plan to dot the city with these charity schools, which divide the day between the study of the Chinese language and manual training. The whole financial burden is met by the League members and their interested friends, while a few, ladies of high position, who heretofore have led self-centred lives, are giving several hours a week to teaching. The movement is attracting wide attention.

XIV

THE ROMANCE AND PATHOS OF THE MILLS

It was the close of a cold December afternoon, and a raw penetrating wind was blowing. In the mill district out Yangtsepoo way the road was alive with people. Women and little children, with a sprinkling of men, were hurrying along the dusky highway on foot and in wheelbarrows, for it was nearing six o’clock, the hour of the night shift. In front of one of the great cotton mills a crowd of shivering humanity had gathered waiting for the Sikh policemen to throw open the gates. Faces were blue and pinched, shoulders bent, and hands drawn up for warmth inside the padded cotton sleeves. Nearby, within a shallow niche in the brick wall stood a small, solemn-faced boy, perhaps seven years old. He looked like a young sentinel, straight as a ramrod, arms stretched down close to his body. When asked what he was doing he replied briefly, “Keeping warm,” and tried to hug a little closer the sheltering wall. Poor laddie, the whistle would soon blow calling him on duty to work without intermission amid pounding machinery and dizzily whirling spindles, until the welcome signal set him free at six o’clock in the morning.

The story of cotton-growing in China is not a very old one. It began only a few hundred years back, some say in the eleventh, others in the thirteenth century, when the first cotton seeds were brought here from Chinese Turkestan. Strangely enough, it was a woman who gave the cultivation of cotton its initial impulse, for not until Lady Hwang, public-spirited and enterprising, took it upon herself to distribute cotton seeds among the farmers of the Yangtse Valley, was the plant grown to any extent. This valley is to-day the most flourishing cotton producing district in the country. Ninety per cent of China’s millions dress in cotton, a coarse, strong cloth, dyed blue. But what did the people wear in the long ago before the cotton plant had ever been heard of? Did peasant as well as prince array himself in silk and fine linen? What we do know is that the introduction of cotton was strenuously opposed by the silk and hemp growers. It is a curious fact that as early as 500 A.D. reference is found in Chinese books to “cotton robes,” though they were evidently regarded as rarities and were doubtless brought into the country by travellers, or as tribute for the august ruler of the Flowery Kingdom.

India gave China her first spinning wheel, and this same crude wheel, scarcely improved upon at all, is still seen, not only in the interior, but in many a home in and around metropolitan Shanghai. Multitudes of families too, as in the olden days, run their own simple hand loom. Time-honoured customs die slowly in China, but the southern provinces are the least conservative, and Canton is one of the most progressive of cities. So we are not surprised to find that about 1870 a Cantonese company started a factory for spinning cotton by steam-operated machinery. When all was in readiness would the farmers trust their cotton to this wizard concern? Not a man of them! It was their firm conviction that by some occult process their dearly grown product would vanish from sight never to reappear. Thus the enterprise launched so hopefully was doomed to failure. Twenty years later, however, the experiment was tried again, and this time with success. Foreign capital too was attracted to the venture, and at the close of the Chino-Japanese war, when the new treaty gave assurance of protection, a number of foreign-owned mills were built. At first they were operated without profit if not at a positive loss. This was mainly due to the fact that on account of the sudden and greatly increased number of spindles the supply of cotton was not equal to the demand, which caused a rise in price. That is no longer true, and dividends now are often very large. Cotton, to a greater or less extent, is grown in every province in China, but the quality is inferior and the staple short. This is not because of an unfavourable soil and climate, especially in the lower central provinces, but is wholly due to the carelessness and ignorance of the farmers. They cultivate the farms in a haphazard fashion, or strictly speaking, pay no attention whatever to cultivation, allowing nature to run riot at her own sweet will. There is no reason why, with the introduction of scientific methods in seed selection and planting, China in a few years should not see a complete transformation in the character of her crops. Foreigners are planning to start an experimental farm in the neighbourhood of Shanghai, and hope each year to induce a few farmers from the interior to spend several months working on it and receiving practical instruction. It is estimated that within the last ten years the acreage devoted to cotton growing in China has increased one hundred per cent.

Great as has been this advance, the end is not yet, and cotton fields will continue to multiply. “But where is the land to come from?” some one asks. “China’s millions must be fed, and surely the rice and wheat fields can not be sacrificed.” No, but the acres once aflame with the now prohibited poppy will be available, and then there are the burial lands. The amount of ground taken up by the mammoth mound-shaped and horse-shoe graves is enormous, but little by little it is yielding to the encroachments of Western civilization. At a recent medical conference in Shanghai, one of China’s most brilliant foreign-trained doctors, for sanitary and economic reasons dared advocate cremation, or at least confining the sepulchres of the dead to the hillsides and other untillable spots. Half of China’s cotton crop is exported annually to Japan. On the other hand she imports quantities of cotton from America. Foreign countries send many kinds of cotton cloth to China, where it is most popular, particularly the cotton prints. While Japan’s goods flood China’s markets, the Japanese markets are closed to the finished product from China. Yet it should be easily possible in the near future for China to supply her own needs, growing the best quality of cotton, and opening cotton mills all over the country. This would relieve the congested agricultural districts and furnish employment to many idle hands.

What the cotton industry in China requires above everything else is the fostering care of the government. Until this is given there will be little advance in either quality or quantity of production. The most the central government has done thus far has been to give its tardy recognition to “The Cotton Anti-Adulteration Association” of Shanghai, and to place the testing of cotton against adulteration under a Commissioner of the Customs, which has led to most beneficial results. It is a pity that thus far the Chinese-owned mills have declined to join the Association. The greatest handicap to the native industry is heavy taxation. In Japan the raw material is imported and the finished product exported free of duty. In China not only is no such encouragement given, but internal taxes are levied as well, so that the farmer must pay to send his cotton down the river to the manufacturer, the manufacturer to return it in yarn and cloth to the merchant, and the merchant to pass it on to the country buyer.

At present China has approximately forty cotton mills, nearly two-thirds of which are in and around Shanghai. Three in the city are owned and operated by the Japanese, several are the property of European companies, but the majority belong to the Chinese. The oldest cotton mill, started more than twenty-five years ago in Shanghai, was financed by China’s great statesman, Li Hung Chang. It is still running under Chinese management, though the original buildings were burned a few years ago. This mill is one of the largest, having sixty thousand spindles. The assistant superintendent is a bright young man who recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in sociology. He brings to his work high ideals which he hopes gradually to see realized. The next oldest mill is also Chinese. Its owner, Mr. C. C. Nieh, an unusual man, recently returned from a five months’ tour in the United States, where he made a careful and critical study of cotton growing and cotton mills. It is his purpose as quickly as possible to bring his mill up to the highest grade of efficiency. Indeed his American manager reports that his chief is anxious to advance more rapidly than the operatives can be trained to follow, and describes him as a “delightful man to work for.” The largest mill in Shanghai is under British management. It operates seventy thousand spindles and employs between five and six thousand hands. One of the newest mills, that represents the very latest thought in building and equipment, belongs to the Japanese. The brick walls are lined with cement, the floors are reinforced concrete, while the saw-tooth roofs, with glass on one side, admit an abundance of light. The machinery, the best made in England, is operated by electricity, all of the other mills in Shanghai, except Mr. Nieh’s, using steam. A peculiarity of this mill is that the majority of the employees are men and boys, female help being almost exclusively found in the other mills.

A few years ago the Japanese mill owners in Shanghai did a good thing for themselves and for the Chinese in sending to Japan a hundred Chinese men and women to take a course of nine months’ instruction in the mills. Since their return, these trained workers have been used to teach the raw Chinese mill hands in Japanese employ.

Wages in all the mills are about the same, and are good, as pay goes in China. Children receive from eleven to fifteen cents a day, women from fifteen to thirty-five according to their skill, and men fifteen to twenty dollars a month. This is reckoned in Mexican currency, which would yield less than one-half that amount in American money. Some of the mill people come from farms in the suburbs and are in comfortable circumstances. One or two members of a family may work in the mill, not so much from necessity as to be able to add a little to the general income. But others, and these far outnumber the more fortunate class, are the poorest of the poor, often unable to pay the “cash” or two required to ride in a wheelbarrow between the mill and their home which is frequently miles distant. A single instance may be given. A young girl supports a widowed mother and little brothers and sisters on two dollars and a half a month. She starts to the mill each morning at four o’clock, as it takes her two hours to walk there, and when her day’s work is over, at six in the evening, she is two hours more walking home. Many a time when the moon is shining the child mistakes its bright light for dawn and sets out at three or earlier. The walk is not so bad in pleasant weather, lonely only until she joins crowds of other mill folk moving in the same direction. But what of the chill days in winter, with a bleak wind blowing, rain falling, and roads treacherously slippery with mud? It is hardest for the women who have bound feet, women too poor to pay for a seat on a wheelbarrow with five or six others. Yonder comes a group uncertainly picking their way along in the blinding mist. One poor soul at last reaches the gate of the mill and drops all in a heap on the cold wet ground to wait for the blowing of the whistle. “Have you come far?” is asked of her pityingly. Half fearfully, half defiantly, as if braced for a reprimand, she struggles to her feet and answers, “From Honkew,” a distance of nearly three miles. A fleeting smile is by and by coaxed into her pale face, but she is tired, so very tired, and a long twelve hours of unremittent labour lies before her. Let us hope she is one who works at a loom, for then she can have a seat on a narrow bench. The women and children who watch the spindles must stand the long night through.

The employees carry their lunch in a small round basket, all of uniform size. The basket is half filled with cold boiled rice, and set in the midst of it is sure to be a little bowl containing a few mouthfuls of bean curd, salt fish or some other simple relish. Before eating, the food is warmed by pouring boiling water into the basket and allowing the water to filter through the rice and out at the bottom. Hot water is also furnished in the mills for tea. In the new Japanese mill tea itself is given the hands. “Not the best kind,” says the superintendent, “but nevertheless, tea.” This mill has rough dining halls for its employees, and allows a half hour at noon and the same at midnight for eating. Another mill gives fifteen minutes at noon and at midnight. An Englishwoman living in the neighbourhood says she always awakens at night when the great engines stop their throbbing and thinks with tender pity of the wan-faced women and wide-eyed little children toiling across the way while she rests in her comfortable bed. In most of the mills no intermission whatever is granted for rest or food, and the people eat whenever they are hungriest, snatching a morsel now and then as they tend their looms or watch their reels and spindles. Formerly mothers brought their nursing babies to the mills, and laid them at their feet while they worked, but this is no longer permitted in the large mills. Some relative, it may be a grandmother, carries the little one to the mother to nurse twice a day, in the middle of the morning and again in the afternoon. Mothers who work at night often draw from the breast before they leave home sufficient milk to last the baby until they return in the morning.

All of the mills run their spinning department through the twenty-four hours, but weaving can not be done as well at night, so the looms shut down. One mill makes its day fourteen hours long. “And these little children must stand and work all those hours?” asked a visitor of the manager. “Yes,” and with a slight shrug of the shoulder, “rather hard on them, isn’t it?” “But then you know how it is in the Chinese shops,” he added, “they keep their apprentices at work often eighteen and twenty hours on a stretch.”

The best mills no longer employ very young children, that is tots of five and six. This is not so much in the interest of the children as because the little ones are found to be more of a hindrance than a help. But parents try to smuggle them in past the keen-eyed Sikh policemen at the gate, who are kept busy at the times of shift driving them out.

The hiring of women and girls is generally committed to Chinese forewomen, who are responsible for keeping their full quota at work. These women are usually shrewd and business-like, with a full appreciation of the dignity of their position. One recently entered the first class compartment of a tramcar. She wore the loose blue gown, apron, and head cloth of the working people and when the Chinese conductor came by he addressed her gruffly. “Old woman, you belong in the third class. Get out of here.” “Why should I get out?” she responded with spirit, “I have money to pay for a seat in the first class.” The conductor changed his tone and manner at once, recognizing a dominant personality behind the coarse clothes. “Pardon me, Madame,” he said and meekly took the proffered coppers. The mills as a rule give four holidays a month, though they are not always Sundays. Some employees object to Sunday as a holiday as they say it brings bad luck.

The Chinese for so many centuries have been an agricultural race that they do not take as kindly to mechanical labour as the Japanese, who have long had industrial training in the schools and make at first steadier, more dependable mill hands. Yet these patient, plodding people, with almost unlimited endurance, are capable of being trained to do the highest grade of work. The improvement of their material condition is a crying need. Said the superintendent of one of the foreign-owned mills: “I have been in this work in Shanghai now for twenty years, and I hope I may not leave for home till I have seen the employees in the mills better housed, fed, clothed, and educated. But employers can not do this until the Chinese government enables them to compete on better terms than at present with others in the cotton market.” Mr. Nieh is making practical application of his philanthropic principles in an effort to divide the twenty-four hours into three shifts instead of two, and as fast as possible to dispense with child labour, so that the boys may be free to enter the public school which is being built on land donated by him near his mill. This same generous-hearted man, who recently accepted the Christian faith, is also planning for a girls’ school, a day nursery, and a hospital in the mill district. Several years ago he and his wife, also a Christian, threw open their beautiful private garden as a playground for street children. When remonstrated with by their friends they replied smilingly, “We feel it is selfish to enjoy it alone.” The recently organized “Mill Owners Association of Shanghai” it is expected will pave the way for concerted action in relation to needed reforms.

Although cotton is an exotic in China proper, silk is a native product. More than four thousand years ago, in the dim, semi-prehistoric days, China alone of all the countries in the world, understood the art of sericulture. Again it was a woman to whom she was indebted, for tradition has it that as early as 2600 B.C. the wife of the great emperor Hwang-ti experimented with silk-worms and finally discovered a way of unwinding the silk from the cocoons much in the same manner that it is done now. This was a precious secret and China guarded it jealously. But during the fifth century of the Christian era it leaked out, as secrets often will, and lo, it was a woman who divulged it, which is not as surprising a happening as might be. It fell out that the Prince of Khotan in Chinese Turkestan wedded a Chinese princess, and when the bride was being conducted to her new home, so the story goes, she managed to carry with her, concealed in her headgear and at the risk of her life, some seeds of the mulberry plant and eggs of the silk-worm. Thus sericulture became known in Central Asia and later in Europe. It is an interesting coincidence that while it was Khotan that learned the art of silk manufacture from China, it was also Khotan that furnished China with her first cotton seeds several centuries later. So the debt was paid back in part.

Though China shared with the rest of the world the secret of sericulture, yet up to within fifty years she possessed half the world’s trade in silk. Then Japan outstripped her in the race and now leads in silk production and export. It is generally admitted that this would not have happened had the Chinese Government realized the value of the silk industry sufficiently to foster it, abolish undue taxation, and introduce scientific methods of sericulture. As it is, under favouring conditions she may regain what she has lost, for the finest cocoons are found in China, with a tenacity far beyond that of any others. While there is not a province where silk-worms are not raised, broadly speaking two-thirds of the silk produced in China comes from the Yangtse valley and the country north of it, and the other third from the south. Filature steam mills are of recent date. During long centuries it was on crude hand reels that the delicate thread was spun, and equally crude hand looms wove it into the exquisite fabrics so dear to the heart of womankind. Even now there are no silk looms in China run by machinery. All the weaving is done on hand looms. Their familiar thud, thud is heard everywhere. As the traveller stops to look into one of the small, smoke-blackened shops, where half a dozen people it may be are busy with their shuttles, he marvels that textiles so rare and beautiful can come forth from such an environment. Usually a city is celebrated for some one kind of silk, or a province perhaps for two or three hundred varieties.

It was not till 1882 that an unsuccessful attempt was made to start a steam silk filature mill. Ten years later a few were in operation, most of them under Chinese management. As in the case of cotton mills, foreign capital was not invested largely in silk filatures till the close of the war between China and Japan. By 1901 there were 28 mills in Shanghai, the number being about the same to-day. The largest mill in this early period employed 90 men, 630 women and 385 children. It requires considerably less capital to launch a silk filature mill than a cotton mill, but it is a more precarious venture. Cocoons must be ordered at the time the eggs are hatched and put in cold storage, but it is impossible to foretell what the market will be when they are delivered nearly a year afterward. It is most desirable that the filature mills be maintained, as their silk brings two or three times the price of that spun on hand-looms, and the greater part of the gain goes in wages to the employees.

Industrial conditions, in some respects, are rather better in the silk filatures than in the cotton mills. The mills close down at night, not for humanitarian reasons, however, but because the work can not be done well after dark. Sundays are usually holidays. In some of the mills work continues every other Sunday. Fifteen minutes are allowed in the morning for breakfast and an hour at noon for dinner and rest. In at least one of the Chinese mills mothers keep their nursing babies with them, the tiny things lying all day on the floor at the mother’s feet. They seldom cry. It seems as if they knew by instinct that they must not. The lesson of patient endurance is learned early in China.

The first work in a silk filature mill is sorting the cocoons, throwing out the worthless ones, and separating the perfect from the inferior. This is an easy but monotonous task and is given to women. Slipping the wound silk off the reels, testing, weighing, and twisting it into beautiful shapes for shipment requires more skill, and brings somewhat higher wages. Most of this, too, is woman’s work.

The pathos of a silk filature mill centres in the reeling room. Steam pipes for supplying boiling water keep it at a high temperature the year around, while in the fierce heat of July and August, the place, as one foreign manager expressed it, “is a veritable Gehenna.” Only when the breeze is not strong enough to break the silken, web-like threads can the windows be left open. Down the length of the long apartment sit rows of women, and in front of them, with a wire frame between, stand rows of little girls. Each child controls a stationary copper basin half filled with boiling water. It is her business to soften the cocoons by swashing them around in the water, using a small reed brush. After the threads are sufficiently loosened, the bunch of cocoons is handed over to the woman opposite, who also has in front of her a shallower copper basin filled with boiling water. Dexterously she picks up a thread from each cocoon and fastens it to the frame. Then by working a treadle it is spun out and out and finally passes above and back of her, where it is wound onto the reel, which is enclosed on three sides by a wooden case to keep it from the dust. Quickly and deftly the women splice the almost invisible threads when they break, keeping often as many as six spinning at the same time. When at night the silk is taken off the reel, any shortness in weight or imperfection in the thread means a fine for the one who has wound it. Women and children grow very skilful in keeping their hands out of the water, yet they are loose-skinned and parboiled, for fingers must of necessity be continually dipped in. Then, too, the Chinese women overseers, passing constantly up and down the lines, occasionally punish a child’s inefficiency, or supposed laziness, by thrusting the little hand into the bubbling caldron. The hours are long, from five thirty in the morning to five or six at night, and it is not strange if, as the day wanes, youthful senses are dulled and energy flags. The children, most of them, are such slips of girls and some scarcely more than babies. Faces are blanched by the continuous moist heat, and the little slim bodies, even in winter, are often wet with perspiration. Robbed of their birthright of schooling and play, not the youngest among them knows the sweet luxury of laying her tired head on mother’s breast in sleep. An American lady living in the vicinity of a silk filature mill was aroused morning after morning about half past four o’clock by the shrill cries of a child. One day she slipped out on her veranda to discover the cause of the trouble, and saw a little girl being dragged along the ground by one arm to the mill. Frightened perhaps by the sternness of the overseer, or half sick from the confinement, she was trying to escape from bondage. But her parents were inexorable, for in over-populated, underfed China,

“‘Children’ must work and women must weep,
For there’s little to earn and many to keep.”

One European mill has for its manager a kind-hearted Italian, who says he understands sericulture from A to Z, having learned to care for silk-worms when a little lad in his native land. He has introduced several humane features, one of them being stools for the children to sit on while at work, the only mill in the city that has them. Fines collected from the employees the management allows him to use in buying medicine for the sick, coffins for the dead, and in paying for beds in the hospital. “Do the people ever faint in this great heat?” a visitor asked. “Oh, yes.” “And drop dead?” “No, they have never done that. If we see they are getting too bad we send them home in a ricsha.”

None of the silk from the filature mills is kept in China. It is all exported, most of it to Lyons, France, and to New York. Waste silk, which is made principally from defective cocoons, is one of the paying by-products of the industry. The only waste silk filature mill in China is in Shanghai. The silk it turns out is coarse in quality and does not keep its lustre but can be utilized in many ways, as for sewing silk, and in making cords, tassels, Chinese caps, carpets, and portières.

XV

A PAGE FROM THE STORY OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS

Late in the autumn of 1842 as the setting sun was illumining the western sky, a vessel very different from the surrounding Chinese junks steamed slowly up the Woosung river toward Shanghai. On board were the new British Consul and his suite and the Consul’s interpreter, the Rev. Walter H. Medhurst, D.D. But the missionary had other and more important business, for with his colleague, William Lockhart, M.D., a younger man, he came as the first ambassador of the Great King to the Yangtse valley. Eight years before he had called at this port, when cruising up and down the coast, and distributed thousands of Testaments and tracts among the friendly natives. Indeed Dr. Medhurst was already a veteran of twenty-seven years’ service, while Dr. Lockhart had landed in Canton in 1839, being the second medical missionary sent to China. Both men were commissioned by the historic London Missionary Society, which gave to China its first Protestant Missionary, Robert Morrison, in 1807.

While the Consular party was proposing toasts to the greatness of the Shanghai to be, the missionaries were thinking hopefully and prayerfully of the task awaiting them in proclaiming the Kingdom of Christ to this people. For a while, on that memorable day, it was impossible to see the city because of the intervening masts on the numberless junks lying at anchor, but presently, as the little steamer approached the shore, it was found to be thronged with Chinese who had gathered to watch and ridicule the strange “fire-wheel ship” of the “foreign devils.”

The following weeks sped quickly by, and before the year closed, a little chapel and a small hospital had opened their doors inside the Chinese city. It is easy enough to state the bald fact, but what mountains of difficulty were climbed, what dangers faced and discouragements overcome before that much was accomplished, is told only in part in the sacredly guarded mission records, yellow and worn with age. Happily, ludicrous episodes were not lacking. Dr. Medhurst in particular was blessed with a saving sense of humour which eased many an otherwise hard jolt on the rough road he and his colleague were obliged to travel.

As time passed other missionaries were sent out from home to reinforce the pioneers, and women’s voices and children’s sweet laughter made homelike the mission premises. Then suddenly a war-cloud appeared in the sky, and almost before its presence was realized, it had burst and the T’aiping Rebellion was raging in all its fury. Grave dangers now threatened the little foreign community, officials and merchants as well as missionaries. It was during this period that a fair-haired, handsome youth made his appearance in Shanghai, and although not a member of the London Mission sought a home among their missionaries. He was Hudson Taylor, destined to become the founder of the China Inland Mission. The story of his early years in China, as told in his recently published biography, makes one of the most captivating chapters in the history of Shanghai. From it we are interested to learn that this sensitive, shrinking young man did not at first adopt from choice the Chinese dress and mode of living, afterward a distinguishing mark of China Inland Missionaries, but because he was driven to it through scarcity of funds.

The present headquarters of the China Inland Mission are conveniently located in the down-town district. They include business offices, a rest house for travelling missionaries, and a chapel where both Chinese and English services are held, although the Mission, as it has done from the beginning, confines its actual work to the interior. The buildings form a square around a spacious, secluded compound that seems as far apart from the turmoil of the street as if it were miles distant. In the spring of 1915, at the Jubilee celebration of the founding of the Mission, tea was served on the beautiful lawn, and following it a large company of friends gathered in the chapel to listen to the reading of reports and papers of thrilling interest relating to the experiences of the past fifty years.

While the T’aiping Rebellion was still in full swing, the London missionaries performed a courageous act. Having succeeded in purchasing a large tract of land at some distance from the foreign Settlement and the Chinese City, they at once effected the transfer of their work and took possession of the new property. When the British Consul learned of it he shook his head dubiously, affirming frankly that if the missionaries were rash enough to risk living in that exposed place, he could not undertake to furnish them protection. But unaffrighted they stayed on, and presently a hospital, a chapel, and a few dwelling houses arose amidst the rice fields. Events proved that the missionaries builded better than they knew, for the plot that at first seemed so far away and out of reach of the very people the work was intended to benefit is now in the heart of one of the most thickly populated Chinese districts of the International Settlement.

The mission chapel bears the marks of age and is shortly to be torn down and replaced by a more commodious one, but will the tablets back of the chancel, to the memory of the brave missionary veterans, ever seem quite so appropriate on any other walls? At the Christian Endeavour meeting held in the chapel every Wednesday afternoon may usually be seen a little white-haired lady of over ninety, the oldest Chinese Christian in Shanghai and some say in all China. Though exceedingly deaf, Mrs. Lai Sun’s memory is unimpaired and her mind as alert as a woman half her age. She delights to see her friends and entertain them with stories of her romantic life, how in her earlier years she visited America with her parents, dined at the White House as the guest of President and Mrs. Grant and was made much of at a time when Chinese women were a rarity in the Occident. But her favourite topic is her student days in Miss Aldersey’s school in Ningpo, Miss Aldersey being not only the first single woman to enter China as a missionary, in 1843, but the first one to open a school for Chinese girls. Mrs. Lai Sun is without question the only living pupil of that far-famed school.

The chapel built so long ago by Dr. Medhurst in the Chinese city is still standing, sandwiched in between a book shop on one side and a shop selling funeral supplies on the other. Its years exceed the allotted age of man, and if bricks could speak, many a tale this pile could relate of fires and floods, famines and pestilence, riots and rebellions. While destruction was rife and changes taking place all around, the little chapel, within whose walls was proclaimed daily the Evangel of Peace, remained intact as if it possessed a charmed existence.

It is rather singular that to-day there is not a single hospital foreign or Chinese, in the populous Chinese City. The small plant started so long ago by Dr. Medhurst was transferred, in 1861, with the other activities of the Mission, to the new site, now known as Shantung Road, where a great medical work is carried on. Accident cases are especially numerous in the roomy wards, where an empty bed is rarely seen, and hundreds attend the daily clinic.

In the centre of another crowded district is beautiful St. Elizabeth’s Hospital of the American Episcopal Mission. This hospital, which is for women only, receives patients from the Municipal Prison, and when one looks about the cheerful, sunny wards, it ceases to be a wonder that the poor creatures often make a feint of illness in order to be kept on a little longer where they are so happy and comfortable.

One other woman’s hospital is located near the western entrance to the Chinese City. Thirty-five years ago a large-hearted American, Margaret Williamson, had a vision of helpless sufferers in China, and in dying left money for a hospital which bears her name. While waiting for the building to be completed, the doctor and trained nurse just out from home opened a dispensary in a small rented house in the disease-infected Chinese city. They toiled on day after day through all the unaccustomed heat of July and August. “Some friend ought to have warned us of the danger of it,” one of them, years afterward, smilingly told a caller. “How did the Chinese feel about the hospital? Were the women afraid to go to it?” “Oh, not at all. We were always full. In fact it was necessary to keep enlarging our borders as fast as we could get the money.” The sweet face in its frame of snow-white hair broke into a reminiscent smile, and the listener knew something interesting was coming. “We used to have most amusing clinic experiences. Patients many times would persist in taking internally what was meant for external application. It was necessary to be careful and give nothing strong enough to do any great harm either way. Then, too, the women would get so excited and jealous over the medicines. If one patient received something and another did not, the latter felt unhappy. It did no good to explain to her that she wasn’t in need of that particular medicine. She wanted it just the same. I remember one time the doctor had ordered a large dose of castor oil for a patient. Her companion saw it and begged for some too. She was so persistent that I finally asked the doctor if I should give it to her. “Yes, do,” said she. “It can’t hurt her and the experience may do her good.” The clinics are very large. On a winter’s afternoon an unexpected visitor found one young doctor in sole charge, her colleague having been taken sick. She that day treated two hundred and forty-seven dispensary patients besides caring for the wards and performing three difficult operations. “I shall not stay a minute,” declared the caller when the last woman had departed, “you must rest.” “Oh, do sit down a little while. I need to get my mind off my work,” urged the doctor. Just then the friend, noticing the exhausted look on the wan face before her, remarked impulsively, “I wish I could take you home with me and put you to bed and give you a little mothering.” “Don’t speak to me like that,” cried the younger woman almost sharply, while a few hot tears forced themselves into her eyes. “I shall break down and cry if you do, and I mustn’t; I mustn’t!” This hospital belongs to that pioneer in the field of woman’s work for women, The Woman’s Union Missionary Society of America.

The glory of the Presbyterian Mission is its Press. In 1843, that year of momentous happenings in the Far East, it was first set up in Macao, a Portuguese settlement near Canton and of chief interest to Protestants because on its tropical shores Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, was laid to rest. Soon afterward the Press was brought north to Ningpo, and in 1860 was moved to Shanghai. With it came Mr. Gamble, whose name was William and not John, but if ever a man was “sent of God” to do an all-important work, he was one. A native of Ireland, from an old Protestant family that had the honour of giving many ministers to the Presbyterian Church, he migrated to America in his youth and got his training as a printer in a publishing house in Philadelphia and later in the Bible House, New York. Mr. Gamble spent only eleven years in China and nine of them in Shanghai, but in that brief period he accomplished a monumental work. With a prophet’s eye he foresaw the future development of the city when few believed in it and urged the removal of the Press to this metropolitan centre, influenced “by his desire to plant the Gospel in the heart of China with the minimum of effort and the maximum of results.” His energy, industry, and inventive genius gave a great impulse to printing throughout the country, not only in connection with the mission press but the secular press as well. This was so universally recognized that when he died years later in America every one realized the truth of the eulogy pronounced at his funeral: “For a century to come not a Bible, Christian or scientific book in China or Japan but will bear the impress of Mr. Gamble’s hand.”

The Presbyterian Press justly claims to be the oldest in China, although the London Mission Press, established by Robert Morrison in Malacca in 1818, was removed to Hongkong, at very nearly the same time. The Presbyterian Press was the first to introduce movable Chinese type in China, and for a long time remained the sole source of supply. During the fifty-seven years since the plant was set up in Shanghai it has changed homes several times and is now housed in new, completely equipped quarters which would have delighted the aspiring soul of William Gamble. A dozen power presses are kept busy from Monday morning till Saturday night turning out vast quantities of Christian literature, veritable “Leaves of Healing,” which find their way the year through to the remotest corners of this needy, sin-cursed land and whose uplifting influence far outreaches all human reckoning.

Among the Chinese publications which are working a quiet transformation in the lives of the people are two popular monthly magazines, “The Woman’s Messenger” and “Happy Childhood.” The very artistic cover of a recent Christmas number of “Happy Childhood” was designed by one of the pupils in a Girls’ Baptist Mission Boarding School.

The spiritual interests of the large force of Press employees are not forgotten. In two chapels Sunday and week-day services are held. There are day schools and a kindergarten for the children of the men, the wife of one of the Presbyterian missionaries devoting much of her time to evangelistic work among the women. Every morning prayers are conducted by the missionary in charge, attended by most of the employees, at least half of whom are Christians. Many give touching and convincing proof of the sincerity of their profession. The case of Elder Loo is an illustration and refutes the oft-repeated assertion that no Chinese can handle money without some of it clinging to his palm. For twenty years all the Press’s money excepting checks passed through Mr. Loo’s hands. He died one night very suddenly. It was with considerable anxiety that the foreign manager the next morning opened the accountant’s safe and examined his books, but they balanced exactly. In a corner of the safe were found stowed away several bad dollars that had been palmed off on Mr. Loo, but which he had quietly made good out of his own meagre funds.

“Where did you receive your education?” The question was asked of a bright young Chinese matron into whose pretty home a foreign friend had just been introduced. “In McTyeire School,” came the smiling answer. This reply, in response to similar inquiries, is given so often in Shanghai that a newcomer, unfamiliar with local mission work, is sure soon to ask another question: “What and where, pray, is this famous institution?” Every resident knows, or nearly every one. Those who do not are half ashamed to confess it, for to be uninformed about McTyeire Girls’ School is to be ignorant indeed. Its capacious buildings are kept full, too full, even though the younger pupils have just been transferred to rented Chinese houses across the road, the Assembly Hall converted into dormitories and every available foot of space utilized to the best advantage.[2] Pleasant recitation rooms open from either side of the school corridors and a peep inside shows well organized classes hard at work, in algebra, drawing, physics, sewing, domestic science. What an immaculate place is the domestic science kitchen, with snowy tables, muslin window curtains, shining stove, and artistically arranged enamel pots and pans! No wonder the cooking class covers itself with laurels. The missionary in charge modestly disclaims the credit, but adds, “I do mean that my girls shall learn two important lessons, to keep themselves tidy and to clean up when their work is done,” items that it would do no harm to emphasize in other countries than China. The music rooms are upstairs. An invitation to a musicale is something to rejoice over. Last year one of the graduates in music gave a recital, all her own, and acquitted herself most creditably. Two years ago Commencement week opened with Baccalaureate Sunday, a distinct innovation in the history of Girls’ Schools in China, but a custom other mission schools are beginning to follow.

[2] Since writing the above a splendid piece of property covering about fifteen acres, with a three-story brick mansion on it built by a wealthy deceased Chinese, has been purchased, and the congestion is relieved now that the High School pupils have removed to the new quarters.

It is doubtful whether any department of work in McTyeire School is yielding more abundant fruit than the “Annex,” a school for married women and girls too old or backward to enter the regular classes. Last term among the many interested pupils was the wife of the socialist leader of Shanghai, the mother of five young children. The patriarchal system of family life common in China makes it possible for a mother to leave her children for lengthy periods, as there are usually plenty of women relatives ready to assume the care of them in her absence. Any pupil in the Annex ambitious to pursue a complete course of study is admitted to the regular school classes as soon as she can be prepared for them.

Above the mantel in the parlour of the Missionary Home, adjoining the main building, hangs the portrait of a noble-faced woman. It is Laura Haygood, the first principal, who “being dead yet speaketh.” She was sent to China in 1884 by the Woman’s Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and for eight memorable years prayed and toiled, much of the time weighed down by great physical weakness. Then came the glad realization of her cherished hopes in the opening of this girls’ school named for a bishop of the denomination.

The highest grade of scholarship is the goal, but the building up of Christian character and training for service have always had first place. “I want to save my people,” sobbed a girl in a burst of confidence to her foreign teacher. “As soon as I finish here I mean to go as a missionary to my native place and teach and try to save that place.” This is the spirit that prevails among the Christians. Every week Bible students and teachers go out to hold services for the street children in the neighbourhood. Last winter evangelistic meetings were held in the school chapel. “I wish you could see how our Christian girls work for their unconverted friends,” said one of the missionaries. “They have their sweetest and holiest times in their own little prayer-meetings, led by themselves. The passionate earnestness of their prayers and testimonies would move any heart.”