Development Company has been made, from first to last, the occasion of a groat deal of misleading newspaper comment, but nothing quite so nonsensical has been said about it asthe assertion, cabled from London, that the acquisition of the Han-Kow-Canton Railway by Chinn means the ug of the open door. That versatile age whose avocation it is to be of the Belgians is, it appears, very loth to surrender, even at a handsome profit, his share in the only asset which fires value to the stock of the American been lsbourine with Mr. J. Pierpont ina Development Company, and has Morgan to induce him to go back on the in made between his New York sentatives and the Chinese Mini ter. With characteristic disinterestedness, King Leopold finds himself unable to allow the controlling American majority in the stock of the company to yield to the wily Chinese, without. pointing out the exceptions! value. of the property with which they are proposing to part. The King goos even further, and, dipping into the future, is ssid to have declared that upon this particular point of the annulment of the American China Development Company's concession depends the whole future of the white race in China, and that its withdrawal is the first step toward the ousting of all the white undertakings in the Empire. Nay, more, in that "very el and precise manner of which the King is master," he has pointed out to Mr. Morgan the inadvisability of taking the cash offer under such conditions, and against national trade' advantages, "the fature profits of which would be prodigious and almost unlimited." Considering that the first contract for.the. construction of the Hankow-Canton Railway by the American China Development Company was made with the Chinese Government seven years ago, and that only s little over twenty miles of the road. has been built, the concessionaires have exhibited quite extraordinary tardiness in utilising the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice which the King thinks they have acquired.
It must be admitted to be a most inspiring spectacle, this of the King of the Belgians sounding in the ear of Mr, Morgan a note of warning, which "it to the highest interests of the white races" toheed, "in the hope that patriotism will stand supreme over the vulgar bait of cash which the Chinese hold out.so temptingly." The materials for a hi torical picture are all there, and like wi ample material for thought, since it appears that, as the selected scribe of the King puts it, "China, emboldened by the success of Japan, and the consequent augmented prospects of yellow races, boldly says to the American China Dovelopment Company, which has a contract which is valuable, valid, and correctly drawn up: You shall take pay and got out; if you don't, we'll force you out." No wonder that His Majesty boldly demands: "Is Mr. Morgan going to allow himself to be paid off at the expense of the future trade of his country with china? Is President Roosevelt going calmly to admit of thie flagrant closing of the promised open door?" Unfortunately for the prospects of placing the question on a plane so elevated, it must be recorded that as soon as a sufficient number of the shares of the China Devel-lopment Company had been repatriated to restore its American character, Mr. Morgan informed the Chinese Govornment that the syndicate ho represented had no intention of insisting on building the Hankow-Ganton Railway, if the Chinese preferred to do the work themselves, All that Me. Morgan asked for himself and his associates was a fair price for a property represented by a section of the railway actually in oporation and the. possible profits of the concession. The Chinese Government, or rather the chief officials, gentry, and mor-chants of the provinces traversed by the railroad, having determined to do work of construction without foreign aid, offered to pay $6,700,000 in full satisfaction of a the claims of the American China Development Company, and the formal acceptance of the: offer only awaits Mr. Morgan's return to the United States.
'The assertion is thus demonstrably false that the action of Chins is quite illegal," and the suggestion that there is a occasion for diplomatic interference is transparently absued. As'a' matter of fact, China has given the Development Company an extremely liberal price for twenty miles of railroad, the recitd Of batch of surveys, and a concession which, under any strict interpretation of its terms, the company has long ago forfeited: If there has been any trickery the relations between the company and the, Chinese Government it is to be found jin the acquisition by. the King of the Belgisns of a majority of the company's stock, and in the efforts of a somewhat unsavoury lot of financial adventurers to. use the protection of the American' Government to further schemes: grossly at nce with the declared principles of American' policy. The - supplementary ement that was made at Washington on the 13th of July, 1900, between: theImperial Chinese Railway Administration and the American China Development Company had, in Article 17, this proviso: "The object of making this supplemental agreement of equal force with the original agreement is to permit of the benefit being. transmittible.by the American company to their successors or assigns, but the Americans cannot transfer the rights. of these. agreements. to other
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.