66 KURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



come to the limits of available power. It could, we are 

 persuaded, be shown from the records of the time that 

 the amount of power derived from the muscular energy 

 of the horse and the ox had begun to diminish in propor- 

 tionate quantity, and that derived from human muscles 

 to increase. And for this underlying cause, that the 

 power drawn from the labor of the horse and ox calls 

 for a greater extent of land surface for food supply 

 than does the same amount of power derived from the 

 muscles of men. This is. the explanation of the use 

 of human labor in the heaviest tasks in China and 

 Japan. The tourist is shocked as he listens to the 

 forced respiration of the coolies while they haul carts 

 laden with builders' materials up the Bluff at Yoko- 

 hama; the philanthropist is stirred to indignation as 

 he sees the Chinaman carry, poised on the head cradle, 

 the heavy timbers of the Yunnan forests to their place 

 of use on the Great Plain. I have seen teams of a 

 thousand men, with intensest strain of the muscles, 

 spurred on by the crack of the lash, haul the heavy 

 hulls of junks up the inclined planes of mud which 

 form the locks of the Grand Canal of China. Such 

 human toil is due to the relative dearness of animal 

 labor amidst a dense population as its sole cause. This, 

 and not indifference to human suffering, this, and not 

 lack of inventiveness, lays such loads upon the coolies 

 of the Orient. 



When the sedan chair was first used in England it 

 was a common remark that men were made to do the 

 work of beasts. The first letters patent for the keep 

 of sedan chairs for hire in London were granted in 

 order " to prevent the unnecessary use of coaches." As 

 England increased further in population she must have 



