THE DESCENDANTS OF CONFUCIUS 



By Maynard Owen Williams 



Author of "Russia's Orphan Races," "Between Massacres in Van," etc. 



DAINTY Miss America motors 

 her way to the Country Club 

 dance, her tresses held in place 

 by an unobtrusive yet effective net made 

 of human hair. 



To her this is one of the new necessi- 

 ties that appear as if by magic and help 

 her to preserve her beauty for an appre- 

 ciative audience. To thousands of rosy- 

 cheeked, raven-haired maidens of far 

 Shantung the making of hair nets from 

 the discarded queues of their brothers is 

 their only means of livelihood. 



The almost invisible net serves fashion 

 to preserve for another hour the loveli- 

 ness of a moment. But the making of 

 hair nets enables whole villages of wrin- 

 kled old women of Shantung to put a 

 little more food into ever-hungry stom- 

 achs. 



The dictates of fashion say that the net 

 must be as fine as spider web and much 

 stronger, yet the hair from which the net 

 is made is the coarsest hair that grows 

 on human head. Miss America insists 

 on absolute cleanliness, yet those nets are 

 woven in a thousand smoky huts. Every 

 modern scientific process is utilized to fit 

 the product of unwashed workers for the 

 vanity dresser of the most fastidious 

 beauty. 



"Know thyself," says Dame Nature to 

 the world's people, "and nothing is im- 

 possible. Shantung and Miami Beach 

 are sisters." 



I AMERICAN FASHIONS FEED FRUGAL 

 CHINESE 



When the speedy roadster made hair 

 nets a necessity, the hunger pressure in 

 a remote province of 30,000,000 relented 

 a Iittie. 



When the American male emerged 

 from the woolen of former convention 

 and donned the dapper suit of cool pon- 

 gee, all the silkworms in Shantung had 

 to work overtime, and their masters 

 added a strip of pork to the family dish. 



A pongee-clad crowd at Bar Harbor 

 means a better-fed population in Weihai- 

 wei. 



An American woman wears some Che- 

 foo lace, and, thanks to her and the pur- 

 chases of her friends, almond-eyed girls 

 are being trained in mission schools 8,000 

 miles away. 



The doughboy back from the war is 

 also a booster for Shantung, though per- 

 haps he doesn't know it. As he tells of 

 the ever-smiling Chinese whom he saw 

 making roads in France, he testifies to 

 the fine qualities of some of the world 's 

 best laborers. 



HOW THE SHANTUNG COOLIE DID HIS 

 SHARE OE WAR WORK 



The Shantung coolie did his fair share 

 of war work. A hundred and fifty thou- 

 sand of him went out to better living con- 

 ditions and a wider outlook when the 

 British troopships steamed away from 

 his peninsular home. Hundreds of him 

 dropped shovel and seized gun or fought 

 with clubs and axes when the breach at 

 Chateau-Thierry yawned. 



Now some of those Shantung coolies 

 are being returned to their homes with 

 new thoughts and ideals, speaking Pid- 

 gin-French, Pidgin-English, and what- 

 not, but with wonderful tales to tell of 

 the men by whose sides they fought. 



I saw them there in Tsinan and Tsing- 

 tau — a bit cocky over their supply of 

 ready cash, addicted beyond conversion 

 to the cinema, but straighter, cleaner, and 

 more alert than they were before. When 

 China wants railways built or canals dug. 

 here are the boys who showed the best 

 Allied engineers what loyal labor reall) 

 was. 



Nor will the}- have to wait long. An 

 American corporation is only waiting for 

 better transportation facilities before be- 

 ginning to dredge once more the Grand 

 Canal, which was binding China into an 

 empire two centuries before the Great 



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