forest and chop down trees did so without ever thinking of asking anybody's permission. That inaugurated a reign of terror similar to the one which had prevailed once on the banks of the Yalu.

The exploitation of the forest area along the Chinese Eastern Railway came naturally enough with completion of the line. The needs of the Chinese Eastern for ties and other construction material as well as for fuel was the first and the sole compelling motive force back of the lumbering work in that section of Manchurian forests. The Russians went at it with no specific treaty understanding with the Chinese and went ahead to cut down timber according to the needs of their railway. As the timber thinned along the immediate neighborhood of the line, they pushed their way farther into the forest land. Finally, however, as the business grew and possibilities of disputes among the men engaged in lumbering became apparent, the Russians under guarantee by the Chinese Eastern Railway entered into an understanding with the Forestry Department of the local administration and got timber-felling contracts. The men who secured such contracts were all Russians. The Chinese Eastern Railway was then following the policy of encouraging Russian emigration out to the Far East. It did everything in its power to help Russian settlers with all the advantages that could be secured for them. Lumbering was one of the most profitable. The foreigners were practically shut out in this section as far as lumber business was concerned, because the Russians commanded all the facilities of the Chinese Eastern line in marketing their lumber, while the Japanese or any other nationals could not count on any such convenience.

DESTRUCTIVE LOGGING METHODS

The Chinese, like most of the oriental peoples, have a deep and abiding respect for their ancestors. Their

Where the larch mixes with the birch in North Manchuria

regard for posterity is not deep at all and gets nowhere. They show this characteristic in a striking way in this business of felling timber. The loggers' eyes are emphatically on the immediate profit. They have never had the pleasure of being even acquainted with Posterity. Why, then, should they worry about it? And, be it remembered, our Chinese friends have no monopoly on this attitude of lumbermen to the future of the forests. With all the enlightened and scientific talk in the United States, the civilized American is chopping down more than twenty-six billion feet of lumber every year-that is safely four times as fast as the trees are growing there. In Manchuria the crime has been committed without even a show of conscientious scruple. Not more than 30 per cent. of the merchantable lumber that is being felled is finding its way into the market-that is the general consensus of opinion now. As a general thing, they leave stumps breast high whenever chopping closer to the root causes any discomfort to the lumber-jacks. And these men, who have infested the Manchurian forests like a scourge, select only the choicest trees and the choicest portions of the bole. The rest they burn on the spot. This was done with savage ferocity when the forest lands were first opened to the flood of starvationdriven Shantung farmers. After thus burning down the trees and clearing the land they put the land to crops in the most wasteful manner possible, with no thought of to-morrow. Two or three years of this sort of agricultural crime robs the land of all vegetable soil by erosion. It exposes the mineral soil which is not fit for even tree-growth. The patches of land so abused are called "paitze." To-day, the former dense forests of Manchuria are dotted with "paitze" everywhere.

Back of this wasteful method of the Manchurian loggers of taking out only 30 per cent. of the timber they fell, is a good and sufficient reason-namely, the loggers

pay only for the lumber they take out. In the exploitation of the Manchurian forest wealth, the Shantung farmers are not the only sinners. Russians working the district east of Harbin along the Chinese Eastern were pretty nearly as bad.

The loggers enter forests in the latter part of September every year in all the three major fields of operation-in the Yalu section, in the Kirin, and along the Chinese Eastern line. In the upper Yalu they work from the middle of October to the middle of December. In other districts they begin the work at about the same time, but continue longer-up to the end of March and into April of the following year if weather conditions permit. The timber cut in spring and summer when the sap is up is soft and quick to decay. Of course the cutting down of firewood goes on through all seasons. Moreover, in hauling out the logs, summer with its dense undergrowth gives no end of trouble to the logger.

TSAR'S INTEREST IN YALU LUMBER

Large organizations for felling and marketing Manchurian forest products were first formed in the Yalu field. An out and out Russian adventurer, one Bezobrazov, came out to the Far East. Before he left St. Petersburg, in November, 1902, Count de Witte, who was then the Russian Minister of Finance, had placed in the RussoChinese Bank to Bezobrazov's credit the sum of 2,000,ooo rubles under the command of the Tsar. Bezobrazov spent two months out in the East and launched a formidable corporation to exploit the timber wealth of the Yalu on a large scale. Of this adventurer and his semiofficial corporation Witte wrote in his Memoir:

"He declared himself to be a personal representative of the Emperor. . . . Everywhere he advocated the policy of industrial aggression by military force. . . .