Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

It is no wonder that the Government protects the herds of wild elephants. But sometimes they invade the rice fields in great numbers. When they do, the destruction is so great that the officials give license to go and shoot them. Sometimes the hunters succeed in killing a few. If they are males, the tusks are very valuable. The feet are also skinned, including the leg, sole of the feet, and the nails, and when so prepared are often used as waste-paper baskets, and are regarded as great curiosities.

Burma has great ruby mines; but as these stones are not of so much value as formerly, the mining is not to be considered as constituting a great industry. But the oil fields of Burma are very valuable, and it is supposed that the industry is as yet only in its early beginning. It is said that the company that owns the chief refinery, and many of the oil fields, will not sell any part of the stock they hold, and that they are getting rich rapidly.

It will be seen from the foregoing facts that Burma is a great land in itself. It belongs to the Indian Empire, and it is the richest province in the whole country. It pays all its own expenses, which are heavy, and gives largely to the deficit of other provinces. As a field for mission work, there is none more promising so far as natural conditions are concerned.

CHAPTER V
The City of Rangoon

Rangoon may not perhaps be rated as a great, but it is an important, city. The population of Rangoon numbers above two hundred thousand, without the usual thickly-inhabited suburbs. It is a seaport third in importance in Southern Asia. Calcutta and Bombay are the only cities that surpass it. The capital of the province of Burma, it is the center of official life. Being situated so near the sea, only twenty miles inland, and having the best of harbors and every connection with the interior, both by rail and river, its importance as a trading center is very great. Compared to other Indian cities, it is more important than many with a greater population, while it is doubtful if any city in all the seacoasts of Southern Asia is of equal importance in proportion to its population. Then, it has the advantage of being a newly-planned city. As such it has straight streets, crossing at right angles for the most part, like Western cities of the modern plan. However, this admirable arrangement has been of far less advantage than it would have been, because the blocks are too narrow to be utilized to the best advantage. This blunder has, unhappily, been perpetuated in the great new addition that has been made on the eastward of the city. It would seem that experience in this matter would have taught the municipality better things; but like other things Oriental, I suppose, they found it very difficult to get adapted to anything new. As the beginning was made that way, the end must be the same. But in the one fact that the streets are straight and at right angles, there is an advantage that is not found in any other Oriental city. The streets are kept well paved, and the general improvements are progressive, except in two very important particulars. They still use poor kerosene in inferior lamps for street lighting. Ten years ago I went to the municipal engineer, and asked him if it was not feasible to light the city with electricity, instead of the obsolete methods then, as now, in vogue. He said: “Yes, it might be; but we are not so enterprising as you in America. We will wait ten years, and see if a new thing works well before we adopt it.” The ten years are passed, and still the smoky old lamps send out their indifferent light and obnoxious odors—too many of which befoul any Oriental city—because the municipal authorities have not yet found out that electric lighting is a success. This is being written in America, where most little towns of one or two thousand population are being well lighted with electricity, while over the sea the great city of Rangoon, with two hundred thousand inhabitants and large revenues, can not yet venture on this modern system of lighting its streets.

There is, also, a lamentable backwardness in the matter of street railways. There is a poorly-built and poorly-kept street railway run by steam. But there is little comfort in the car service, and the motive power is antiquated steam engines. The street railway, such as it is, is not extended to such limits as it should be. Were the streets lighted with electric-lights and a system of electric cars adequate to the city and suburbs running, these public improvements would be in keeping with what Rangoon is in the matter of trade.

There is only one other city in Burma of nearly the same number of inhabitants as Rangoon, and that is Mandalay, the capital of Upper Burma. This city was the capital of independent Burma in modern times. When the British annexed Upper Burma in 1886, they projected the railway to the city of Mandalay, and as it already had steamer connection with Lower Burma, its many advantages as a distributing center maintained its continued growth. While it has a population nearly equal to Rangoon, it has nothing else to be compared with the latter city.

There is a very great contrast between the two cities in the matter of racial population. While Mandalay has some immigrants from other lands, like other cities and towns of Burma, the city as a whole is distinctly Burman. Rangoon, on the other hand, is so foreign in its makeup that it can not be called a Burmese city. Relatively, very few Burmans live in the main part of the city. Here you find many peoples of India. There are wide areas of the city given over to the Tamils, Telegus, Bengalis, Gujaratties, and Chinese; while yet other Indian people are found in this Indian community to the exclusion of the Burmese. The Burmese live chiefly at both ends of the city of Rangoon, where there is much trading in rice and other dealings of a Burmese character. The Burmese have given way before the immigrants of India, largely because they are an independent and proud race, and will not do the work commonly done by the coolies and servants about the city. They look upon the immigrant from India as an inferior, and they will not allow themselves to be his competitor for the more menial services and work of the city. The Burmese, therefore, collect chiefly where they have occupation congenial to their tastes. It is significant that the Burman will work at almost anything, where the Madrassis and other Indian people are not working alongside of him. But where there may be constant contrasts or comparisons in inferior positions, he will not condescend to go. So he gives way to the native as indicated, not from necessity, but from choice.

Rangoon is a great trade center. The two greatest industries are that of the lumber trade and the traffic in rice. The lumber manufacture and sale has had previous mention. I will only add that immense sawmills line the river front at frequent intervals, and the logs lie in the river in great rafts, or in heaps on land. There are perhaps scores of elephants at work in connection with these mills.

The rice mills are conducted on a very large scale. The plan is common to make advances to brokers, who go out and loan money on the growing crop and agree to take the rice, which in the husk is called “paddy,” at harvest time, at a given rate per hundred baskets. The basket holds about a bushel. Usually the price ranges about one hundred rupees for a hundred baskets, though often the rice is a fourth above or a fourth below this amount. The rupee is equal to thirty cents. As the price of rice is impossible of calculation so many months in advance of harvest, the millers who advance the money to the brokers, who are usually Burmans, and the brokers who advance the money to the cultivators agreeing to take “paddy” at a given rate at harvest, and the cultivators, all base their calculations upon guesses usually wrong, the whole system has much of the elements of gambling, like the dealing in futures on an American Board of Trade. The rice is husked and cleaned in these great mills, and sold to buyers from abroad, or in the local markets for food. Often the cleaned rice is sent to Europe, and converted into some kind of intoxicants, and comes back to curse the land out of which it grew. It is noteworthy that most of these greater business enterprises that call for great organization are managed by Europeans. But there are many merchants in wholesale or retail business that are of all races. The Chinamen are busy traders, and will doubtless have a more controlling voice in the affairs of business as time goes forward.