1016 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



would no longer be a problem, as there would be no ricksha-coolie. 

 But how, then, would be ever be able to get around in Shanghai? Car- 

 riages and autos are so dear! Well, either walk or go home and live 

 honest lives. Just think of asking a man in San Francisco or Chicago 

 to haul you for an hour in a ricksha for a dime ! 



To return to Lai An-hsien, the reason why no petition was forthr 

 coming from the landed gentry for an extension of the land for our 

 colony was that they found out by experience two facts: First, that 

 wages were raised by colonization ; and, second, that their lands, which 

 they have been renting to the poor to farm, giving the farmer only five- 

 tenths of the crops and taking the other five-tenths as rent (yes, some- 

 times even six-tenths of the crop is taken as rent), they found out that 

 these lands were not so valuable to them when they had to pay wages to 

 have them cultivated as they were when they could squeeze half the 

 produce from a tenant farmer. 



I once went the rounds with a landlord among his tenants as he was 

 assessing how much grain should be paid from each field every farmer 

 had, and I saw how the thing was worked out. The landowner took 

 no chances. He said this field will produce ten bushels, that six, and 

 so on, and the farmer might protest as he liked, but he had to produce 

 the five or three bushels for the landlord after harvest. No arbitrators ! 

 The farmer and his wife and children work day and night, live in huts 

 not fit for pigs, and are lucky if they have rags as covering. Rarely are 

 there schools, and what there are, are not for the children of the farm- 

 ers, but for those of their oppressors. So long as the gentry are allowed 

 to keep the public lands vacant, in order that their own cattle may graze 

 over those lands to prevent their slaves (for these tenant farmers are 

 slaves) from running away from tilling their estates, so long will the 

 situation of coolie labor remain with us. Can we not shame the land- 

 lords in some way into desiring to elevate their country in the eyes of 

 foreigners? That isn't the plan. Shake the land out of their grip 

 and throw it open to all. Establish rural credits banks, and there won't 

 be any need of colonization associations or any other form of charity. 

 Just give the farmers fair play, and we'll see a new China soon, for the 

 farmers are 85 per cent of the nation. 



