There are six lumber-yards with the total capital of more than 2,000,000 yen. There are five soap factories producing annually nearly half a million yen's worth of goods. Three electrical fittings and implements manufacturing plants are capitalized at more than 1,500,000 yen. Five cake and candy factories produce annually nearly half a million yen's worth of goods. There are eleven wine and liquor manufacturing plants. There are twelve car and wagon factories. Altogether, there are 294 manufacturing plants with the capital of more than 66,416,700 yen. They employ more than 800,000 people, and their total annual products are valued at more than 163,421,000 yen. All these are within 1,203 square miles of the leanest section of Manchuria-in other words within less than seven-thousandths of the total area of Manchuria. CHAPTER XII TRADE ROUTES AND TRANSPORTATION WE saw how the farmer immigrants from Shantung and from Chihli made their entry into Manchuria up along the valley of the Liao River from time out of mind. We have seen how these Chinese managed to smuggle themselves into the Land of Nucheng in spite of all the rigor of the exclusion policy of the Manchu Court at Peking since 1644. We have seen also how the ginseng-hunters stole in at the mouth of the Yalu and up the river along the Chosen border into the depths of the Changpai ranges, even while the Chinese farmers were beating the exclusion laws of their Manchu masters up the Liao. Trade did not follow the flag in Manchuria. It followed in the muddy footsteps of the farm coolies from Shantung, up along the waters of the Liao in the west. It followed the stealthy march of the ginseng-smugglers and placer miners up the Yalu in eastern Manchuria. Whenever farm coolies from Shantung gathered themselves together into a string of villages in the rich valley of the Liao or outlaw ginseng-gatherers settled in a far district on the Chosen border there followed Chinese merchants, who bought the products of the soil and handled the shipments of ginseng for the ports of Shantung and of the South. THE LIAO RIVER So the Liao became the first great trade route of Manchuria on the west, and the Yalu followed it closely on the east. The Liao is navigable up to Chengchiatun on the West Liao; and Chengchiatun, also called Liaoyuen, the present terminus of the Chengchia tun-Ssupingkai railway, is 536 miles from the port of Yingkou and therefore 550 miles from the mouth of the river. The River Taitze and the Hunho, the two main branches of the Liao, are both navigable-140 miles on the Taitze and 143 on the Hun River. That is 833 miles of navigable distance on the Liao system. The Liao is not quite as admirable as all this sounds. It is shallow, so shallow that only native junks drawing not more than a couple of feet can make the distance. It freezes up tight for four months at least out of twelve. Because the Liao rises in and washes a vast stretch of the steppes of Eastern Inner Mongolia the tremendous amount of silt which it is constantly washing down toward the sea makes its bed about as fickle as that of the Mississippi of Mark Twain's famous pages. Unless under exceptionally favorable conditions in the summer months, when the current is at its full flood, the boatmen never dream of such a wreckless adventure as sailing on it through the night. It takes more than fifteen days from Chengchiatun to Yingkou, downstream, and more than nineteen days back from Yingkou to Chengchiatun against the current. It can be seen at once, therefore, that it is no Yangtze which can float an oceangoing steamer 600 miles up to Hankow. Nevertheless, the Liao has been quite as important to the development of South Manchuria and to the story of her transportation as the Yangtze has been to those of China's Central Provinces. In the first place, there was no other way open into the heart of southwestern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia but the Liao. And this state of things had prevailed for centuries upon centuries, from pre-historic times until the Russians came down and built the present South Manchuria Railway line to Port Arthur. There |