1A 
BLOODY DEMANDS FOR A PARLIAMENT 
The first assemblies convened October 
14, 1909, according to the constitutional 
plan, and Hunan, joined by Hupeh, sent 
a delegation to Peking to urge the throne 
to decree a parliament at once and not 
Wait nine years. 
To enhance the effect of the mission, 
a Hunanese school teacher chopped off 
one of his fingers and with the spurting 
blood from the stump wrote an inscrip- 
tion praying the already over-convinced 
delegates to demand parliament. This 
act was a good illustration of the ex- 
travagant spirit of the revolution, which 
soon declared for a republic. 
Last year (1910) 17 provinces formed 
a similar mission to Peking, following 
which the National Assembly was opened 
there October 3; and, influenced by the 
tempestuous action of Hunan and Hupeh, 
from the first urged the government to 
abandon its own plan and grant an im- 
mediate legislative parliament. It defied 
the government; which, however, man- 
aged it with great calmness and success. 
avoiding the granting of any revolution- 
ary demands untii the outbreak of war. 
Through all this history-making the ma- 
terial decline of the Manchu dynasty is 
so precipitate that its details strike one 
with awe. 
The reformers of Hunan and Hupeh 
opposed the government’s policy of cen- 
tral ownership of railways and industrial 
development of China by the use of for- 
eign money. They succeeded in holding 
up the famous “Hukuang” loan for the 
building of trunk-line railways in three 
directions out of Hankow, which in 1909- 
1910 was promoted by the four great 
capitalistic nations of Great Britain, 
France, Germany, and the United States. 
The gentry of Hunan, who have al- 
ways been the most powerful of the 
gentry class in China, became the head 
of this opposition, and showed by their 
course that rebellion, the seat of which 
was established in the provincial assem- 
blies, was due not only to the leaven of 
foreign ideas, but to the ancient sense of 
provincial and community right. 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
No curb upon these reformers and 
revolutionaries was attempted until the 
government at Peking found it necessary 
radically to revise its internal policy and 
its finances and prepare for war and 
other emergencies. 
NEGOTIATIONS FOR FOREIGN LOANS 
Financiers of France and Great Bri- 
tain were the first to sense the revolu- 
tionary rapids ahead of the Manchu goy- 
ernment, and in 1907, when the country 
became revolutionary, adopted the prin- 
ciple of no loans to China for unproduc- 
tive purposes (such as for the army or 
navy), and China learned by the suffer- 
ings attending her poverty at Peking that 
until she had a uniform currency she 
could not develop industries, increase 
national revenues, nor finance war. 
On September 20, 1910, she asked 
America, somewhat suddenly, for a loan 
of $50,000,000 to reform her currency. 
We admitted the other three capitalistic 
world powers to the transaction, and the 
four together obliged China to close up: 
the pending Hukuang loan agreement. 
concurrently with the currency loan 
agreement, regardless of the opposition 
from Hunan, Hupeh, and Szechuan, 
whose reformers had gone so far as to 
influence mobs to make demonstrations. 
of force against the employment of for— 
eign money in railway building. 
To carry this business through, China. 
brought from Shanghai her strongest 
financial and industrial statesman, Sheng 
Hsuan-huai. This able and courageous. 
official persuaded the government to- 
tackle the Hunanese problem at once, 
and the issue of the two loans was ap- 
proved by the throne in June, 1911, in 
spite of the reformers and revolution- 
aries there. 
All now know what happened. ‘The 
Manchu government and dynasty, in the 
language of the Chinese classics, was. 
“riding the tiger.’ But they had been 
riding it for several years, and as their 
difficulties grew they began to regret the 
removal by them from office of the 
strong civil and military mandarin, Yuan 
Shih-k’ai, in 1909. This official had had. 
