bears the poetic name of the Bay of Stars, Hoshiga-ura. All these are called Yamato Hotels. When the S. M. R. took over the operation of the Chosen Railway it extended its hotel system through Chosen out to Fusan. The Yamato Hotel in Dairen is a solid stone and brick structure in Renaissance style, fireproof throughout. It is by far the most modern and handsome hotel in the Far East, as it dominates the Central Plaza of the port city. The quaint garden on its roof sweeps the view of the bay and the Yellow Sea beyond. It so happened that I passed, in my wanderings last year, from the Dairen Yamato Hotel to what was advertised as the best hotel in Shanghai. The contrast was something of a shock. There lay at least twenty years of hotelevolution between them. The newly built Imperial Hotel at Tokyo looked like architectural pidgin-English beside it. The striking feature of the resort hotel at Hoshiga-ura was the golf course over the rolling hills back of it. As if the Company were not losing enough money through these hotels, it subsidizes a lot of other private hostelries at different points with considerable amounts of money, so that they may keep up a high standard of accommodation all along its lines. Last year the Company lost more than 336,500 yen in its hotel business.

RESEARCH WORK OF THE S. M. R.

Through the Dairen Central laboratory; through the Geological Institute, also of Dairen; through the experimental stations at Kungchuling and at Hsiungyocheng; through its Research Bureaus at Dairen and at Tokyo, the Empire-Builder achieves its victories of peace with microscopes and scientific experiments. All of its works are by no means merely academic. The one outstanding object of the research work of the Company is to

The Yamato Hotel at Changchun-one of the many Yamato Hotels under the South Manchuria Railway management

inaugurate a new business and nurse it along to a commercially profitable stage and then turn it over to a business company to carry on. In this manner a Tussah filature was established in 1910. An earthenware and porcelain factory and a firebrick kiln followed. A little later a sorghum alcohol distillery plant, a dyeing and weaving works, a bean-oil mill employing a chemical extraction method, a fatty-acid factory, were built up and turned over to new companies organized for the purpose of continuing the work. After them came also a glass factory and a lignoid factory.

By means of its agricultural-experiment stations the Company is improving the quality of beans and the quantity of output. It is improving the live stock by cross-breeding with imported stock. Its geological bureau was first established at Fushun. It was meant chiefly for the examination of coal resources. It moved to Dairen and enlarged its field of activity to survey the mineral wealth of Manchuria. The discovery of the iron deposit at Anshan is one of its crowning achievements. It has found iron deposits at seven other points, also magnesite in Kaiping and Haichung districts, and fluorspar at various points.

Through the Eastern Asia Economic Bureau which the Company established at Tokyo in 1908 it keeps financial and business Manchuria in touch with international tendencies and conditions in various lines of business. It has already published more than 200 reports. The Company is not satisfied with merely commercial and financial activities. In its research work it invades the realm of scholarship as well. One bureau is making original researches in the history of Manchuria and Chosen under Professor Shiratori of the Imperial University, known as an authority in that particular field. It has issued a number of monographs of considerable value.

CENTURIES ago

CHAPTER VII

AGRICULTURE

Manchuria won the title of "the Granary of Asia." What makes Manchuria great are the valleys of the Liao, of the Sungari, the Nonni, the Hurka, and the Yalu. The prime emphasis of the activities of the South Manchuria Railway Company, as we have seen, is on the development of Agricultural Manchuria. Industrial Manchuria is as yet a promised land toward which many eyes are turning. Industrial Manchuria is predicated and founded on Agricultural Manchuria.

Nature had done much to make the plains of Manchuria into a great agricultural state. We have seen how the heights of the Great Khingan range screen the vast oval plain of central Manchuria on the west, and on the north and northeast the peaks of the Little Khingan shelter it from the storms that come out of arctic Siberia, and how the Changpai range stands as its eastern wall. We have noted also how these various Manchurian plains lie, their complexions, and the climatic conditions which reign over them. We have also told how and through what combination and compulsion of economic forces they have come under the plough, and by whose hand.

Therefore, in this chapter we shall examine in more detail the various factors which enter into the making of Agricultural Manchuria, and its influences on the life and trade of all its Asian neighbors, especially Japan.

Out of the windows of a Pullman car on the South Manchuria Line, a traveler sees, to the right and to the