We must not forget the immensity of the need calling on those who have the power to help those Who cannot help themselves. In some of cur appeals we have said that the Population of China increases at the rate of thirty or forty millions every ten years, and that without new means of support these must perish at the rate of three millions annually from sheer starvation and exposure or become daily more wretchedly poor. Only afew days ago the Secretary had a painful confirmation of the amazing poverty of China from a Chinese Mandarin—" Magistrate who had sole charge of a county. During one year alone, he said that no less than 200,000 unawployed wandered through his county and of course had to be supported as they passed trough to prevent them taking the jaw into their own hands. From this we may have an idea of how many millions are homeless und starving throughout the whole Empire. He farther added that the struggle for existence is so desperate immediately to the north of the great Yang-tsze-kiang that people ure known to commit murder to get even 10 cash—only one cent! In the north of China roads ave only open during the dr season of the year; in the wet season all transport overland stops for a month or two. Business men know the enormous loss this entails in a country so vast and so densely populated. Again, at least half or probably three-fourths of the transport in such @ pr vince as Shantung is done by wheelbarrow' some very large ones, one man pushing while another mau wud a beast are pulling Often in the fields nen, and sometimes women, are yoke with a cow or a donkey to pull the plough; in the south of China andin the west as fat ax Szechuan there are no roads at all for carts or even barrows, but only paths; all transport overland for the teeming millions of these provinces must be done on the shoul: ers.of men who.toil day and night for the barest necessities of life, often trying to liv on what is only fit for beasts, "Thus many millions are mere beasts of burden and are harder driven than any slaves by their ever-present taskmaster—hunger,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.