FARM-LIFE IN CHINA. 325 



by treadles in irrigating the fields, four dollars ; a water-buffalo, 

 twenty dollars ; hoes, sickles, baskets, and sundries, nine dollars. 



When land is leased, the owner pays the taxes, and the lessee 

 furnishes all that is required in tillage. Payment to the landlord 

 is always made in unhusked rice, and when the land is worked 

 on shares this amounts to about one half the crop. The usual 

 bargain for the use of land is a ton and a quarter of unhusked 

 rice, worth about thirty dollars, for each acre. If the year be 

 remarkably bad, the lessee may insist upon the landlord's taking 

 one half the crop, though that be manifestly much less than the 

 amount agreed upon as payment. If the year be good and the 

 land excellent, the lessee may pay one third of his crop to the 

 landlord, may have expended another third upon fertilizers, and 

 may have the other third as net profit for his labor. As one man 

 is unable to till more than one acre alone, the average yearly earn- 

 ings of men who work land on shares is less than thirty dollars. 

 One acre of good land produces on the average 3,648 pounds of 

 clean rice. 



A farmer may be hired by the year for from eight to fourteen 

 dollars, with food, clothing, head-shaving, and tobacco. Those 

 who work by the day receive from eight to ten cents, with a noon- 

 day meal. At the planting and harvesting of rice, wages are from 

 ten to twenty cents a day, with five meals ; or thirty cents a day 

 without food. Few land-owners hire hands, except for a few days 

 during the planting and harvesting of rice. Those who have more 

 land than they and their sons can till, lease it to their neighbors. 



Much land is held on leases given by ancient proprietors to 

 clansmen whose descendants now till it, paying from seven to 

 fourteen dollars' worth of rice annually for its use. 



Food averages little more than a dollar a month for each 

 member of a farmer's family. One who buys, cooks, and eats his 

 meals alone, spends from one and a half to two dollars a month 

 upon the raw material and fuel. Two pounds of rice, costing 

 three and a half cents, with relishes of salt fish, pickled cabbage, 

 cheap vegetables and fruits, costing a cent and a half, is the ordi- 

 nary allowance to each laborer for each day. Abefnethy's advice 

 to a luxurious patient, " Live on sixpence a day and earn it," is 

 followed by nearly every Chinaman. One or two dependent rela- 

 tives frequently share with him the sixpence. 



Five dollars, wisely spent, each year, will keep up a comfort- 

 able and even elegant outfit of clothing for a man or a woman. 

 The clothing is usually woven in hand-looms in the farmer's 

 house, from the fiber of the grass-cloth plant (Boehmeria nivea), 

 or from imported cotton yarn. The average amount of clothing 

 possessed by a farmer may be reckoned at four dollars in value. 



A room may be comfortably furnished by an outlay of five 



