THE IRRIGATION AGE. 23 



ural, and therefore right, but it is not healthy for our American man- 

 ufacturers. 



As before stated all industries in China are carried on in the most 

 primitive way and will be for many years ,to come. The civilization of 

 Eastern Nations is founded upon the family and not based upon the 

 individual as in America, This difference is much greater than one 

 would imagine and its consequences are not only far reaching, but are 

 almost immutable. A father teaches his children his own trade and 

 seldom permits them to learn any other. There are many industries 

 in the country that have belonged to the same family for over 3,000 

 years, and they do their work to-day the same as their ancestors did 

 before the Christian era. Companies or corporation, as we understand 

 them, are unknown to the orientals except where they have been 

 forced upon them by foreign nations. As a result in their industrial 

 systems there is no dividing and distributing of the functions of man- 

 ufacture among a mass of men. It is a well-known fact that "the 

 cobbler is the bootmaker, and starts with the raw leather, and works 

 until he has completed the finished boot or shoe. In working silk the 

 man and his relatives and slaves will even begin with the silk-worm 

 and mulberry leaf and toil in every stage until a roll of silk has been 

 produced for the store." The same principle applies to the distribu- 

 tion of merchandise. It is true the Orientals are very skillful. Give 

 them a type-writing machine, no matter how complicated, and they 

 will reproduce it with absolute accuracy. The reproduction will be 

 done by a man and his family, sons -and grandsons, or possibly sons, 

 brothers, nephews, etc. They can reproduce one machine, but they 

 cannot reproduce a dozen at the same time. If it takes a month to re- 

 produce one it will take one year to reproduce twelve. This is one 

 reason why the east cannot compete with us westerners 



On the other hand, as Dr. Bedloe, late U. S. consul to Ammoy, 

 China, very tersely puts it, "The Chinese have not that wonderful 

 training and technical knowledge of our own artisans. Take the sew- 

 ing machine for an example: The iron .of the framework is of one 

 grade of metal, the rod between the treadles and the wheel is of a sec- 

 ond, of the pin upon the wheel a third, of the finely cast piece above 

 the board a fourth, of the sliding bar a fifth, of the sliding plate a 

 sixth, of the needle a seventh, of the hook an eighth, and of minor 

 parts four or five more. Our artisan selects the form of iron which is 

 suited to the purpose for which it is employed. One variety must re- 

 sist shaping, another percussion. One must resist tensile strains, and 

 another strains of compression. All this demands an immense 

 amount of knowledge, of which the oriental artisan has little or noth- 

 ing. If you give your sporting rifle to an Oriental machinist to be re- 

 paired, he is liable to put a soft, ductile steelin for a new trigger, and a 



