Under the headings: 'Strange Tale of Chinese' Swindling. "How Colonel Jefferds lost a Big Railway Contract through Duplicity. Conspiracy between a Confidential Interpreter and an Ambitious Chinese Official. The Road from Peking to Han-Kow. Operations of the Brice Syndicate. Peculiar methods of Chinese Finance and Railroad Building," the San Francisco Examiner in its issue of the 22nd of February_prints a long statement from Colonel Jefferds, explaining how he lost the contract to build the Great Western Railway of China. It is a statement which should be carefully studied by those who come to China full of hope that if they have a proposition to make in good faith, they will find Chinese officials ready to entertain it in equally good faith.
Colonel Jefferds says that on the 6th of February, 1896, he signed a contract for building a railway from Peking to Hankow wi taken, and that before leaving China he showed Mr. Bash his contract, the Jatter agreeing not to interfere with Colonel Jeffords, and Colonel Jefferds agreeing to help him wherever possible. Col. Jefferds went to San Francisco and secured the ce-operation of the Chinese there; he then went on to New York and London and secured all the capital he required. In New York Col. Jefferds was told that Heir was dead and that Sheng was appointed Director-General of Railways, and he received telegrams from his confidential man" Mr. Wong, and from U.S. Consul-General Jernigan, advising him to return to China immediately as Sheng wanted to see him.
"The colonel accordingly returned to Shanghai in September last. to find that Mr. Wong, as ho says, had sold him to Mr. Bash, operating on behalf of a syndicate headed by Senator Brice. of Ohio. The colonel then describes Sheng, characterising him much as most foreigners who know anything about him do, and he explains that Sheng had got hold of his man Wong, and was making full use of him. Wong was riding three horses at the same time ina manner that only a Chinaman of his type could do. He was the confidential against each other. He was under the pay interpreter of three partes all working of Sheng, Bash, and myself, as well as getting money from Hysii, and at the same time selling all the information he could to others who were unscrupulous enough to buy."
Col. Jofferds goes on to tell how, to bring over H.K. Chang Chih-tung to his side, Sheng tools over that white elephant the Hanyang Ironworks, paying Chang a large sutu of money; how he thus secured the endorsement of H.E. Li's successor at Tientsin, H.E. Wang Wen-shao; and how he sent his brother to Peking to "soothe" the Censors and the members of the Tsungli Yamen, which cost him over @ million taels. Meanwhile Mr. Jernigan did his best to protect Col. Jefferds, but without success, Sheng did offer the colonel 'a salaried position as en-inoer to run a line from Peking to the allow River, which would have taken about a month, after which he could promise me nothing. Of course, I declined." Then Sheng made a new contract with Mr. Bash, so. changed that no sane man would. touch it with a forty-foot pole. Sheng was obliged to promise the Emperor that he would build the road with Chinese money and Chinese labour, provided the Government would advance 10,000,000 taels." Chinese will not lend Sheng money, according to. the colonel, becatise they know him too well, and he has Been trying "to borrow from foreigners $10,000,000 on his word of honour." He is.trying, Col. Jefferds adds, to establish the Imperial Bank of China, in order to use the capital to build the railway, and though Wu Ting-fang is his friend, and will try on his way through San Francisco to persuade the Chinese there to subscribe, they are mostly Cantonese and know that ousted their fellow-countryman Hu from the control of the proposed railway.
The concluding paragraphs show the animus of Col. Jefferds towards those whom he regards as his competitors "Sheng has an ancient English engineer, C. W. Kinder, a very good man, I believe, in the school under which he was brought up, who has sent out indentures for materials that are principally made in England, and they must be of the same pattern of the present railway from Taku to Tientsin. As there are not many curio shops in America, it is doubtful whether our country will be benefited directly by what is now being done in the way of railway building in China.
"Sheng has a German architect, Mr. Hildebrand, locating line of railway from Woosung to Shanghai, a distance of about eleven miles. This conforms to his friend Chang Chih-tung's idea of doing things, as he eniployed a doctor to build an arsenal, successful contractor to command a men-of-war, and a school teacher to build last furnaces. As far as concessions are concerned, Russia has got all there i to had."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.