A Railway that Has Achieved an Agricultural and Industtial Revolution in Manchuria: Policy of Helping the Farmer nowt our OWN ConnespoNDent.
Harbin, The original promoters of the Chinese Eastern Railway, were content that the great iron-way should merely prove to be & section of another system. They did not in the slightest, endeavour to assist in the development of the country. But with the advent of the recent adminiistration five years ago. those in charge of the destinies of the railway soon realized, perhaps not un-dishly, that it was necessary to Aevelop the country through which it runs.
Tt was with this object in view that a complete survey was made of the territory contiguous to the railway and the rivers, This work lone by a corps of economic specialists, who determined the" exact number of acres of agricultural Tand, what the forests consisted of and what minerals could be extracted from the earth, Through. financial reverses perienced immediately after. shipment of cargo from America to Russia during the war, the main me running from a small point near Vladivostok to Manchuli St tion, (the connecting link between the 'Trans-Siberian and the Ussuri Railway) became a dead loss to the promoters. Considerable enterprise Was needed to restore the dying Hlant. The survey, made by the Economical Bureau' under Mr. Michaloff in charge, was the first step {n'a policy of functioning not only fs an agent of transportation, but fan animating factor in the industrial fand commercial growth of the eountry. The achievement of the present general manager, BIN. Ostromouff, in Building up the line has been likened to those of the expansionists and Tenders of conquest in American railway history, such men as James 3. Hill and H. Harriman, who engaged respectively for 40.
the northern and middle sections of the United States.
Just as during the early history of the GER, its sole purpose had been form but a link with another system, the administration now isles themselves with local needs and industries, Tt was found by the Survey made that in a large area of 400,000" square miles transport facilities could be handled by the railways or rivers which flowed close to or past the C.E.R,, and that at Toast one-half of this was first class agricultural land. Of the 14, 000,000 tons of produce mined or out, at least 4,000, could be exported, all of which could fu time be directed and sent by the railway. Probably three-eighths of that amount was shipped by the natives over the modern system, but the remainder was desired also by the administration and a policy of education as to the advantages of the faster and surer transportation was adopted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.