Back to: Their Homes Fae Our, Pochow Connnsronnexr.
Pochow, An., Oct. 31, I have recently had eleven days in different parts of the county of Jungcheng. Travelling out of the city one day, I came in company with a young fellow who looked to be a forlorn traveller from a distance. He was one of the many who had gone, in great hopes, come weeks before to help Gen, Chi with his job. This boy was from near here in Pochow and hiad been a coolie. He went to carry -amunition on one of the lines out from Shanghai but had run away and walked and begged his way back here. He had nothing except the two meagre garments he was wea ing and when asked how much he was paid in money, he replied, "Money! I was paid nothing, They! only gave me a little rice to eat," and with many people up here, used only to flour, this is almost the same as. starvation. T could not help thinking of Marshal Chi's readiness to offer $50,000 for Lu Yung-hsiang, dead or alive but nothing to give to these poor fellows who were taken away from home just when, they could be making some money.
The boy told me of a whole train. load of coolies who had been lured in Pukow with the promise that they were to go to the better land and prospect in Wu Pei-tu's domin-fons, but at Nanhsuchow were unloaded and given 50 coppers each and told to clear out! That was sufficient for fairly decent food for tone day only and many of them were from two to six days from home! No wonder many of the people do not specially love these war lords.
I found the country generally very quiet—more so probably than for three or four years—and a very fall crop of wheat planted and up. On all the trip I heard of only one ease of kidnapping and -that wi a region where they will probably, till many heads fare taken off." Not many of the people knew or cared much about the war. In one or two plac if foreign soldiers come and for what. I explain that we have warships and marines in China all the time and that these had been called ashore Shanghai to protect the settlement in which there were many Chinese to every foreigner. I was asked in several places about what some report as a meteor, others as a shooting star and others as an airplane which was seen on Sunday night, October 19, passing from southea to northwest and some people port having heard a roaring neis with it. I did not see it—no for eigner here did. One countryman said that something like that occurred the year Li Hung-chang died and they wondered if this meant that Wa Pel-fu was dead or to die The Lack of Schools Our Mission has some 20 emall primary schools in different country places, most of them in Jungchenghsien, and so I am made aware of the generally awful lack of school advantages. On this trip I found two well-to-do towns, with about} 100 families and many' owning some 100 mow of ground and yet in one there was no school at all and in the other only one on the Confucian plan with only nine pupils.
One farmer told me last week thinking of moving town to get the benefit of one of our schools, and said "our boys may go to the old-fashioned schools for five to 10 years and unless they get a similar school.t> teach"for a few tens of thousands of cash a year' they are not fitted for other positions; even your schools turn out girls that can do aemething toward their own expenses."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.