The banks of the river in front of his capital, Wuchang, are lined for miles with cotton mills, hempworks, silk filatures, glassworks, iron foundries, and powder-mills, whose high chimneys proclaim the coming war. When China can supply her own markets, foreign steamers will cease to ascend the Yang-tse-Kiang.
In view of the fact that China's educational system was established more than twenty-five hundred years before Christ, and that up to only a few months ago the official examinations were restricted exclusively to subjects relating to China's literature and history, what Dr. Martin tells us of the rapid growth of schoolhouses is surprising and significant.
Going within the walls, we are struck by the great number of fine schoolhouses in foreign style that rise above the huts of the natives. Our clever viceroy knows that the industrial arts have their root in science and that science must be taught in schools. He thus proclaims from the housetops his gospel of the new education. He has embodied it in a book of rhymes, which are sung by his soldiers to the beat of the drum, and committed to memory by all the school children in a population of fifty millions. The following are some of his sounding periods:
We pride ourselves on our antiquity, But foreign nations ridicule our weakness. Knowledge is power. What but their newly acquired knowledge Enabled the Japanese to gain the victory over us And win for themselves a place Among the great powers of the earth? Over against their three small islands Have we not a vast territory with four hundred millions? If we of the yellow race learn to stand together Where is the nation that will dare to molest us?
The empress dowager and all her grandees have become converts to Chang's new gospel. Not merely has she reenacted the emperor's ordinance for the establishment of graded schools in all the provinces—ousting the idols and using their temples for want of houses—she has cut down the annual expenses of her theatrical troupe to one-third and devoted the other two-thirds to the erection of schoolhouses.
Teachers for these Chinese schools are being largely provided by the normal colleges in Japan, which contain over four thousand Chinese students, including both sexes. Such, at least, is the claim of another recent writer upon the Chinese awakening; this time a Japanese, Adachi Kinnosuke.
WE MUST HAVE EQUAL LAWS FOR ALL.
But Every Law Looks Blue to the Man
Who Wants to Break It, Says
Governor Folk, of Missouri.
Governor Joseph W. Folk, who became the most popular man in Missouri because he dared to enforce the laws without fear or favor, until lately has been too busy putting grafters in jail to talk about his work. But in a speech which he made the other day in Boston, he told pretty clearly what he is aiming at. He said:
The trust manager defies the laws of the State against combinations and monopolies, and then calls for the protection of the State for his property.