Show written for oft paper CHINAS unemployed copyrighted by frank 6 carpenter 1694 china may 24 1894 understand that many J americans are patting them avs selves on the i r K back i at their i success in economizing durin during 9 the present h hard a r d times they dont know what economy inthey should take a trip to china and learn something of the science of saving the expense of living is here reduced to a minimum and these chinese millions would grow fat on what the thrifty french and germans waste the food for a poor man in costs him no more than two cents a day and at 4 a month a man will support a family and lay up money I 1 met a fat jolly looking chinaman this morning in 9 aning who told me he had a wife and five five children and his income was sufficient for all his wants he earned about two gold dollars a month as a carpenter and his wife makes one dollar more by going out to work it costs five cents a day to feed a patient in the methodist hospital here and a farmer may be hired for from from ten to twelve dollars a year provided he has his rice his head shaving and his tobacco it costs about 5 a year to buy the wardrobe of a common laborer and a chinaman will p ii ut on flesh on a dollar a month the majority of the people of this part of china C hina are well fed and well dressed they have good faces and they are I 1 beli believe eie far happier than the average american laborers they seem to enjoy their lives and their families and ey they e y are far above the average of the world r d in their manners and culture I 1 have mixed indiscriminately among them and find them polite and kindly they crowd about me wherever I 1 go they finger anger my clothes and when I 1 take a photograph or stop to write a note they almost block the street in their anxiety to see what the foreign barbarian is doing their curiosity however is free from malice and they are not the fierce foreign devil haters baters whom I 1 met with further up the river I 1 find much in them to admire and I 1 wonder every day at their wonderful economies let me mention a few of them in the first place in the way of fuel nearly all of the fires in are made anade of straw and reeds every whisp of f dry grass is cut and saved there are thousands of people who do nothing else but reap the reeds which grow along the banks of the yingtse kiang and bring them into the cities to sell these reeds are as thick as the base of a walking stick and are often fifteen f feet beet long they are cut and stacked up a along I 1 on g the te banks and from thence are ca carried rr aed u up an and d down the river in flat bottomed boats oats such wood as is used is tied up in little bunches and is sold by weight charcoal is som sometimes betimes found and I 1 see here and there little balls of coal dust of about the size of a base ball the powdered coal is mixed with mud and dried in this shape no one in china however either rich or poor thinks of keeping warm by means of fuel there are no furnaces nor base burners and wadded clothing among the poor and fur garments among the rich keep out the cold A fire is never bui built it by y a poor man except when it is absolutely necessary and the hot water used for for the tea and rice in the early morning is sold by hot water stores you can get a bucket of boiling water for one tenth of a cent and there is one such store in shanghai to every twenty families A large amount of rice rice is cooked at one time and the breakfast rice is warmed by the pouring of hot water or hot tea over it speaking of tea there are tea shops or restaurants all over china and you get very fair meals in these these for small prices the cooking ovens are at the entrance of the tea house and you have often to pass the cook in going in to your meal the tea is put into cups and hot water poured over it after you have swallowed half of the contents the cup is is again filled with hot water and one drawing of deais supposed to last one customer for a meal after he leaves the tea grounds are gathered up and dried they are sold later on to poorer restaurants or to families and nothing about the cook shop goes to waste even the water in iii which the potatoes are boiled and the other vegetables cooked is saved and sold for the feeding of hogs and the bones of the meat are bought by the makers or of chop sticks mr ferguson the president of the university told me that he had for a long time trouble in getting any meat brought to his hii house with the bones in it and he found that butchers always cut out the bones and sold them separately from the meat itself you see no empty cans or bottles lying about the houses of the foreigners of of the chinese take them they sell the bottles and the tin of the cans is used by the dinners tin ners A large part of the tin used in china comes from the petroleum cans of the standard oil company and alad every bit of iron is worked up by the blacksmiths into knives and farming implements clements ts A large part of the razors of china are made of old horse shoes and these are brought here byh ship load from europe and are carried to all parts of the empire after the franco prussian war they were torn from the feet of the horses killed in battle and were brought here by the thousands of barrels the old clothes man of china does a bigger business than his bis brothers of other parts of the world there are streets of secondhand second hand clothiers clo thiers in every chinese city and clothes are sold over and over again until they get down to the beggars by this time they are shreds of of rags but their end is not yet after the beggars find them too po booy for even their use they are sold as old rags and are bought by the makers ofaf shoes the shoes of the men and be boyst of china have soles nearly an inch thi thick and these soles are made of rags have been washed and dried and cheit therill pasted layer upon layer until they reach the thickness required they are c cut then into shape and are so sc polish ou along the edges that you woi would ild thin thinht them made of leather or wood th uppers are made of different qualities 0 ofil silk or fine cloth and the chinaman Chin amans an shoes if manufactured in amer america I 1 i would cost more than the kind we usel ourselves in the making of the U r rayarl i boots for muddy weather and hard trav eling soles of iron are often added an anac the itinerant shoemaker who sits i binl nearly every block of a chinese to town haebig has big headed iron shoe tacks to drivel into the soles to save wear and tea tear and there are places where you canh have your chinese cap renovated a and made equal to new even the rich c 1 w who h have thousands of dollars invest invested e d in their fur garments do not throw them away when they get dirty they wiit wear a coat of silk lined with lamb hambsh wool till the lining is as black as yo your hat but some day the coat will disi dig appear it will be ripped ed a apart p and nad a preparation of lime LIT and jtb other er material ate will be used which will make mak e it a and as pure as when it was first bought bough the clothing of the poor is patched a ance re patched and there are women by th score in every chinese city who about doing mending I 1 see the them m sit ting in the narrow streets out outside j de houses working away under the hot s sun n and they go from house to house and do the patching ol of the families for a fe fend cash per patch it is the same wit bif menders of crockery and broken chin cainas chinas these are so skilled that they will tak b a cup or teapot of the finest and thinness thin nesi of porcelain after it has been broken i into pieces and by means of wire rivet riveter lw which are fastened only to the outside of the cup or pot put it together so tha you cou could bufor d not tell if you saw only thac 1 inside that it had bad ever been broken they will mend a half a dozen pieces iff f this way for from two to three cenat cental the work is marvelous it could not be done by the watchmakers of amert ica but it is one of the specialities of chinese itinerant tinker 1 I 1 might go on for a column describing others of the wonderful economies I 1 SW se all about me I 1 could tell you how these people will take a buffalos buffaloe buff alos horn of about the size of a tows cows horn hem and by boiling 1 I and pressing it out make it so thin thit that it be becomes cothes a lantern and forms a trans parent globe as big as a two gallon crock I 1 I 1 could show you them sitting in their shops handling old cotton wa wad ding which has been worn by severt dl 1 different owners till it has almost dropped J to pieces they will pull it apart take out the cotton half clean it and mix it S with fresh cotton for sale take a look at the barbers who stand on every street 3 shaving the heads of all males from alq olt men to babies they receive from less les q than a cent to 5 cents a shave according to the rank and wealth of their cusi omer but you note that they save scrapings of the head an these bits 0 oi hair are sold by them to furniture dealers for the making of cushions ift i is the same with eatables all sorts 0 of greens are eaten co cooked 0 ked and raw at anda a large number of the beggars are supported every winter by the government of the towns town S and villages but us is soon as spring comes this appropriation is dropped and they are literally turned out to grass As to beggars there is no country in the world that has more impudent beggars than china but I 1 doubt whether in proportion to its population 0 it has more than many parts 0 of europe the chinese beggars are however organized into bands they have a trades union of their own and they go into the business as a profession they have their kings and the cities are divided up into beats and woe to the man who attempts to jump his brother beggars claim there is sure to be a fight and he will be run into prison or out of town these beggars expect to get a certain amount say one tenth of a cent a day from each store keeper on their beat and you can sometimes pay them to keep other beggars away at juhu a missionary owned a house facing on two streets he had beggars on both sides of him but he finally arranged with the beggar in the front to keep his rear cleared by the payment of a small sum per month As soon as the bargain was made the beggars at the back of the house went away and he lias had no trouble since then here in there is a royal guild of beggars established it is said by the emperor hung wo who began life as a beggar and became one ot of the greatest emperors china has ever had the head or bt this guild can prevent a shop or a family from being annoyed by the beg gars and there is a system of buying off the assaults of beggars which prevails throughout china and which exempts the man who pays from their visits As it is every one gives to the beggar the sum sum is generally not more than one tenth of a cent and sometimes only half of that this is in silver and it means only half the same amount on a gold basis think of giving a man the twentieth or fortieth of ofa a cent to satisfy his hunger that is what some ot these beggars get there is a kind of copper cash about half the size of an ordinary cash of as big as a nickel which is worth about this and this coin is called beggar cash if a storekeeper refuses to give the beggar will set up a howl and ite he will continue his lamentations until the man is glad to pay him to on sometimes the beggar threatens to kill himself in the store th ann FP F P and there if his demands are not satisfied P and what is more he so sometimes me does it this is a terrible thing f for or feih be storekeeper he has by the wi las 0 of china to pay the mans funeral expenses xieng s and he may have to support h his Is ramify for the rest of their lives the tricks and schemes which these beggars get up to screw money out of the people are legion they mutilate themselves in all sorts of ways to excite pity I 1 watched one getting ready for easiness business yesterday he had a festering sore on his right foot which extended from the little toe to the ankle and he was scraping at this with a piece of rusty hoo hoop iron t to 0 ma make ke it bleed and to make the R flesh esh raw and angry he sto stopped P as I 1 approached him pointed to his bleeding foot and whined out a request for alms another beggar I 1 photographed in in one of the main streets ot of two days ago he was standing in the center of the road with no clothing on above the waist and was apparently blind he had abat what looked like a great brick in his two hands and he was throwing this over his shoulders and striking himself on the small of the back he was howling for alms as he did so and had a basket fastened to a string which he passed around between the blows after his posing I 1 gave him about 50 cash his face lighted up and his eyes opened and he ran off on the trot the happiest beggar in other beggars cut themselves with knives to excite pity and I 1 saw one yesterday on what may be called the vanity fair of this city who had cut off his toes and was lying on the stones with the bare stumps sticking out one of the feet was still bloody and the sight almost made me sick many of these beggars go about in boats and there is a creek near shanghai which is filled with boats of beggars who go out over the country to prey upon the people there is a jolly beggar along the yingtse who has but one leg but who sculls himself about from place to place in a little canoe and gathers up the cash from the thousands who come near him on the water I 1 saw here yesterday on the steps of the temple of confucius a boy who was pounding his head up and down upon his knees to excite pity he had no arms and he looked at me in a dazed way when I 1 pointed my camera at him many of these beggars go about in gangs of from three to a score and this is especially the case with the blind beggars they have their leader who goes ahead with a stick and the others women and men follow holding on to each other by the shoulder and carrying baskets for cash or rice rice the worst beggars ot of the world however are the diseased beggars of china men and women sometimes take babies with the smallpox about in their arms and enter the stores to beg the shopkeepers are glad to throw them some coppers to get them to move on the lepers are another set of bad citizens they are found all over china and they are desperate in their applications for help elp they have their unions and they levy evy blackmail upon every funeral if f they do not receive it they sometimes t make it lively for the mourners at canton they wait at the cemetery and approach the funeral groces as they come in they will take promises promis in case the head of the occasion hass has no money at hand but if no money is sent they will dig up the bodies and hold them thiern until they are ransomed rans omed the chinese are however far more charitable than is generally supposed they take better care of their families than any other people of the world and a man is is supposed to aid his poorer relatives and to help them on in the world with all the beggars there are I 1 venture fewer unemployed people here in china today in proportion to its population than there are in america the government has charitable institutions and its officials are always giving out of their own pockets some extracts from the great government journal of C china h ina li lie e before me from them I 1 see that was lately sent to some of the inhabitants of mongolia who had suffered through a late rebel lion there and that a lady in peking had just sent a thousand dollars to relieve some poor people in her native province of angui in most of the cities there are government granaries where rice is ii stored up for the poor against famine and there are blind asylums leper asylums and in some places I 1 am told public hospitals there are no lunatic |