A series of industrial motion pictures by Mr. David P. Howells, which were exhibited at the M. C. A. last week, are just what is needed for the dissemination of information to improve China's trade, and agricultural position.
Besides illustrating the latest European methods of production, particularly in the iron and steel trade, this series of films can be used as a means of popular education. The reel which depicts the young farmer's childhood days, his life in college taking a scientific course in agriculture, and his final return to the land, where he sees the adoption of modern methods of agriculture on his father's farm, tends towards conditions which will eliminate poor crops and frequent famines in this country.
Methods of rearing, spinning, and weaving silk in Europe are far. different from those in use in China, but the pictures explained to the almost exclusively Chinese audience were watched by them with keen interest. The possibilities of evaporating sea water in the salt industry on modern lines ware depicted in' the series showing the preparation of this commodity by evaporating sea-water, as carried on in Sicily.
Other subjects included views of tobacco plantations in Cuba, the manufacture of Sevres porcelain, and views of southern Franco.
The films were originally ordered by the Far Eastern Republic for industrial propaganda work in Siberia, but it is hoped that sufficient native enterprise will be forthcoming to enable them to be shown widely in China. Titles to each subject will be written in Chinese. which will considerably add to their value.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.