458 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



raise the funds for its construction. Considerable sums were raised, 

 but were neither wisely managed nor well spent, and as time passed 

 the funds gradually melted away without any material return in the 

 form of roadbed and rolling-stock. Meanwhile, centralization of power 

 in the Peking government was increasing with rapid strides, and finally 

 the Peking authorities began to negotiate with England, France and 

 Germany a loan for the construction of this and other railways. The 

 means by which the United States claimed and secured the right of 

 participation in this loan, while of importance to China as well as the 

 banker powers, is outside the present question. It was evident from 

 the first that there was great popular opposition to the loan, and for- 

 eigners, who knew the popular temper, prophesied that it could never 

 be consummated. Finally the negotiations were concluded, however, 

 and the terms were announced. Among other provisions it was an- 

 nounced that for the sum already spent by the people of the provinces, 

 stock in the railway enterprises to half its par value would be allotted. 

 The pot of revolution, which is always seething in southern China, at 

 once boiled over. The Chinese people had suffered an incompetent 

 government by alien officials as long as it did not greatly trouble them. 

 When it began to waste their money they promptly revolted. 



It is generally agreed that war is hell. It is also expensive. Bom- 

 bardments, bloody combats, fire and looting figure in the head-lines of 

 the daily journals, but the real work of the revolution was done in the 

 financial council chamber. At the beginning of the outbreak neither 

 side was provided with adequate funds, for the revolutionists were 

 unable to secure any considerable sums, though able to cut off a large 

 part of the normal income of the Peking government, and the imperial 

 household with business caution refused to give up their store of 

 private treasure for what bade fair to be a losing contest. The struggle 

 at once resolved itself, therefore, into a competition to secure foreign 

 financial assistance. 



Perhaps some day the true history of the negotiations at Peking 

 and Nanking will be made known. But from a business standpoint it 

 was at once evident that the Peking government had immensely the 

 more advantageous position. It had for some time been in negotiation 

 with representatives of the banker nations in regard to loans, and was 

 easily able to continue its negotiations. Bankers seek for stability and 

 naturally preferred to deal with a government whose peculiarities had 

 been learned through years of experience, rather than to take a chance 

 with an oriental republic, of which it would be safe only to prophesy 

 that it would do the unexpected. The revolutionists were out of touch 

 with the financiers, many of them were young and inexperienced, and 

 they were unable to make any impression except upon the Japanese 

 and Eussians, who hoped that after a new deal in China they might hold 

 a better hand. 



