Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China

by D. W. Fisher

In the theological college at Tsingchow fu, according to the last report, there were eleven students in the regular theological department and one hundred and twenty-eight in the normal school. In the medical college at Tsinan fu there were thirteen young men. The aggregate for the whole university rises to five hundred and thirty-eight. On the Presbyterian side this all began with those six little boys, in the old Kwan Yin temple, in the autumn of 1864, at Tengchow. To-day it is a university, and is second to no higher institution of learning in China.

It is said that Dr. Mateer never led in prayer, either public or private, that he did not most earnestly ask that the Lord would raise up Chinese Christian men, who as leaders would bring many to Christ. His prayers during the forty-five years of his missionary life are receiving a wonderful answer at Wei Hsien and at Tsingchow fu.

XII
WITH APPARATUS AND MACHINERY

“The things most likely to be needed in China, are first, electrical engineering, especially telegraphy, and second, civil engineering, especially surveying and laying out of railroads. Special preparation in one or both of these things would be very valuable. But what is more necessary for immediate use, and as a preliminary to these things, is a practical knowledge of scientific apparatus,—how to make and how to use it. I have myself picked it up from books, without any instructor, but only at a great expense of time and labor.”—LETTER TO A PROSPECTIVE TEACHER, October 29, 1888.

Whenever a group of the early acquaintances of Dr. Mateer talked together about him, one thing certain to be mentioned was his achievements with apparatus and machinery, both with the making and with the using of them. Out in China his reputation for this was so great that it at times came near to being a burden to him. We have already seen that the temporary superintendence of the mission press at Shanghai was thrust upon him, contrary to his own preference, and because, as he expressed it in a letter at that time, the men in control considered him a “Jack-of-all-trades,” able to do anything at which he might be put. If they then did really think of him as no more than a man who with machinery could do a great many things without performing any of them thoroughly well, they did him a great injustice, which their subsequent knowledge amply corrected. As the years went by, and in this sphere of his multifarious activity he rose to larger and more difficult achievements, his fame as to this spread far and wide among both natives and foreigners. At no time, however, did he permit his efficiency in this line to loom up in such a form or in such a degree as to seem even to others to put his distinctively missionary labors into the background. It is a significant fact that in the eulogiums pronounced on him at his death this feature of his character and work is seldom even mentioned. He was—first, last, and all the time—a man whose life and whose abilities were so completely and so manifestly consecrated to the evangelization of the Chinese that when those who knew him best looked back over the finished whole, his remarkable achievements with apparatus and machinery scarcely arrested their attention.

Dr. Mateer himself regarded his efficiency in this sphere as due in some measure to native endowment. He had an inborn taste and ability for that sort of work; and stories have come down concerning certain very early manifestations of this characteristic. It is related that when he was a little boy he was suffering loss through the raids made by the woodpeckers on a cherry tree laden with luscious fruit. He pondered the situation carefully, and then set up a pole, close by, with a nice lodging place for a bird at the top, and armed himself with a mallet down at the foot. The woodpecker would grab a cherry, and immediately fly to the pole in order to eat it; but a sharp blow with the mallet would bring him from his perch to the ground. So the boy saved his cherries. It is also related of him that when a mere boy he had a friendly dispute with his father over the question whether a sucking pig had the homing instinct. He maintained that it would return to its mother under conditions that proved the affirmative; and in order to satisfy himself, he placed a pig in a sack, and took it a long way from its familiar haunts, and turned it loose. It had been agreed that the result was to decide the ownership. To his delight, immediately the pig started on a bee line for home, and never gave up the race until it was back in its old place.

For the development and application of this natural gift he received almost no help from others. Probably if that old workbench in the barn at the “Hermitage” could speak, it might tell something as to oversight and guidance of the boy by his father, in making and repairing traps and tools for use in recreation and in work; but beyond this he had no instruction. In his day at college a chemical or physical laboratory was supposed to be exclusively for the professor to prepare his experiments; the student was expected only to be a spectator in the classroom when the experiments were shown. The man who occupied the chair of natural philosophy at Jefferson when we were there had a gift for supplementing his scanty outfit of apparatus with the products of his own skill and labor, and if the student Mateer had found his way down into the subterranean regions where these were wrought, he and Professor Jones would have rejoiced together in sympathetic collaboration; but no such unheard-of violation of ancient custom occurred. In the academy at Beaver he first turned his hand to making a few pieces of apparatus which he craved as helps in teaching. But it was not until he reached China that this field for his talent opened before him, and continued to enlarge all the rest of his life. In fact, even when he was absent from China, on his furloughs, he did not get away from his work with apparatus and machinery. During one of his earlier furloughs, while he was looking up everything that could be helpful to his Chinese boys, he spent some time in the Baldwin Locomotive Works, by special permission, in studying the construction of locomotives, so that he might be able to make a model of one on his return to China. In connection with this he showed such an acquaintance with the structure of these engines that he could scarcely convince some of the skilled mechanics that he had not been trained to the business. Dr. Corbett wrote concerning him, after his death: “It was my privilege to meet him at the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893. He had spent nearly a month there examining minutely many things of special interest to him. As my time was limited he kindly became my guide for a while, and gave me the benefit of his observations. We first visited the department of electricity, which he had carefully studied in all its various applications. We next went to Machinery Hall, where he had spent days making drawings, measurements, and so forth, of the most complex machinery. He seemed to understand everything as though this had been the work of his life.” Dr. Hayes says: “Dr. Mateer’s ability to meet exigencies was well shown a few years ago in Wei Hsien, when suddenly the large dynamo failed to produce a current. He unwound the machine until he located the fault, reinsulated the wire and rewound the coil; after which the machine furnished its current as usual.... Electrotyping was hardly in general use in the west until he secured an outfit of tools and taught a class of native artisans. When electric fans came in vogue he purchased a small one as a model and proceeded to make another.”

The time came when Dr. Mateer had a shop equipped to do a great variety of work; and though not on a large scale, yet big enough to meet his needs. Already in 1886 in a letter to his brother William he said: “In order to repair apparatus, and in order to make many simpler articles, I have fitted up quite a complete workshop, entirely at my own expense. I have invested in the shop, in tools and materials quite one thousand dollars. I keep a workman at my own cost, whom I have trained so that he can do most ordinary kinds of work. There are a great many small articles we can make here more cheaply than we can buy them. There are, however, many articles we cannot make, especially those that involve glass or the use of special machinery, or special skill.” That shop continued to grow, and the variety of its output increased. Writing of this, Mrs. Ada Mateer says:

So soon as possible in addition to the room used for carpenter work, a side house was devoted to the purposes of a shop, which grew in completeness as time went on. An upper story was used for storing finished apparatus, for a painting, varnishing, and drying room. The lower story was the shop proper, with well, smithy, a long workroom, private room for chemicals and so forth. Every conceivable amount of space in the shop—above, around, and below—was occupied with materials, on boards hung from above, in cases made of old boxes lining the walls, and on the floor. The shop contained not only materials for things that are to be, but became also a tomb of things that were, but are not, as well as a hospital for things disabled. What old histories were unearthed when, after forty years, this shop had to be moved to Wei Hsien!