zation committee of eighty eminent men of the Empire, and at his death Viscount Terauchi, who was the Minister of War at the time, succeeded him. The Japanese Government took over 100,000,000 yen worth of its capital stock as payment for all the property it turned over to the company, 4371⁄2 miles, including the trunk line (as it stood then) from Changchun to Dairen, and its seven branches; also 188.9 miles of light military railway from Antung to Mukden, as well as the coal mines at Fushun and Yentai, etc. No company known to the memory of financial Japan has come within a hundred miles of the South Manchuria Railway Company in its popularity with the investing public of Nippon. The first offer of its shares. for public subscription caused a sensation. The shares were oversubscribed 1,066 times. Not for financial profit, mind you. For at the time none of the Japanese subscribers ever dreamed of the rainbow gold. The Russians had spent a pile of rubles on it: they had not made a single penny out of it. And the Japanese investors in the South Manchuria shares knew that well. It was entirely sentimental, altogether patriotic. Here was the only thing Japan had to show for more than 100,000 brave sons of Nippon who had died in Manchuria, not to say anything of billions of yen, the fruit of their pathetic sacrifices made in fighting back the Russian avalanche which threatened the very life of the Empire. The whole nation rose as one man and said it would make this thing an outstanding success if it took the last penny. That, and nothing else, was the reason why the first offering of the South Manchuria shares were one-thousand-and-sixty-six times oversubscribed. From the very first the South Manchuria Railway has proved to be astoundingly profitable. Under able management all its stockholders made money-a lot of it. But nobody was so astounded by its prosperous showing as the first subscribers. Both the Government and the people of Japan were anxious to have the Chinese Government as a stockholder of the company. The Japanese Government invited the Chinese Government to take such portion as she liked of the 100,000,000 yen worth of its shares set aside for public subscription. But when the Japanese Government approached the Chinese Government with the invitation China, whose reputation for financial sagacity is world-wide, turned it down cold. The Chinese Government has not a share of the South Manchuria Railway to-day. Not because the Japanese slammed the door in its face, but because the Chinese's own business sagacity froze them out of it. In June, 1920, the Company increased its capitalization from 200,000,000 yen to 440,000,000. The Japanese Government increased its holdings by 120,000,000 yen by taking over the two debentures the company had floated on the London market: 6,000,000 pounds sterling of five per cent. and the same amount of four-andone-half per cent. It holds fifty per cent. of the capital stock, therefore-the same proportion as it has always held. Of the remaining shares, 160,000,000 yen worth have been subscribed by the public, and 60,000,000 yen worth are still unissued. The statement for the financial year ending with March 31, 1924, shows that the S. M. R. has invested since its formation in 1906 more than 536,000,000 yen in its various properties. The amount of money the company has loaned out-principally in financing the construction of Chinese railways in Manchuria, such as the Kirin-Changchun line-stands at more than 59,459,000 yen. It has more than 38,000,000 yen on deposit: and accounts receivable amount to more than 12,427,000 yen, while its stores are valued at more than 22,570,000 yen. INVESTMENTS IN RAILWAYS Of its total investment of more than 536 million yen, the South Manchuria Railway spent considerably more than 200 million yen or 39.5 per cent. of the total for its railways and equipment. It spent $12,000,000 in rebuilding the 170 miles of Antung-Mukden line from the light military railway of two feet and six inches gauge into a part of the trunk line of standard gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches. If this reconstruction job had been done in the United States with American labor the cost would have been much closer to $100,000,000 than to $12,000,000. The work took from August, 1909, until October of 1911. It was pushed without a let-up through the rigor of a Manchurian winter and through the torrential rains of the summer season. It stands to-day as one of the most notable engineering works in the whole of the Far East. It pierces its way through the Changpai range by means of its twenty-four tunnels. The one at Fuchinling is 4,884 feet long, and the one that bores through Chinkuan-shan measures 3,254 feet. It makes its way over 205 bridges. The longest of them is the iron bridge over the Taitze River, 1,779 feet long. The twenty-four tunnels and 205 bridges shortened this line by more than eighteen miles. The Company spent more than 15,000,000 yen in double-tracking the main line between the port of Dairen and Suchiatun, a distance of 238 1/3 miles. In the four years 1908-1911, inclusive, while the work of reconstruction was being pushed, the Company spent no less than 56,328,691 yen for its railway alone. In 1919 it spent more than 25,893,000 yen, and in the single year of 1920 it put more than 34,000,000 yen into its railways. This liberal investment told in many waysthe condition of its roadbed, the heavy steel rails upon it, all imported from the United States, and its equip |