Dec. 13.
Corton, especially when _associated with great industrial eentres—innumerable humanity working: day and night in mills and factories—would hardly seem a romantic subject, yet to-day in China a romance attaches to it that is more than fascinating. It is, moreover, closely allied to business, to considerations of hard cash and all the rest, and for such a reason it becomes the more wonderful. The story starts half a dozen or 30 yea buck when the manufacturing interests of Shanghai resolved upon an attempt to improve the cotton grown in China, and gained the cooperation of the University of Nanking (College of Agriculture and Forestry) in the work. To convert those most conservative of men, the Chinese farmers, to an apprecia tion of other and better methods, to make them believe that they ould earn more money by the adoption of measures hitherto foreign to them, was no light) task, yet it was" boldly under taken and an amazing degree of success has been achieved. A sample of cotton grown under the auspices of this campaign was shown in Shanghai a few. days! ago, and when contrasted with broach—one of the best Indian vurleties—the balance was all in favour of the Chinese product. Furthermore. an American variety, which was experimented with, has been made to do so well that a report from one of the Jocal mills described it' as better than many deliveries of. good middling American, This is so much to the good, so great an achievement that the means by which Chinese farmers are being, brought to an appreciation of how the cultivation of superior cotton will benefit them cannot fail to prove of interest, In studying the literature of this subject the layman becomes very quickly impressed with the following feature, that in the midst of reports on the progress of cotton-growing are paragraphs about Sunday schools and meetings devoted to preaching. A natural query would be," What possible connexion can these matters have with the business of persuading the Chinese farmer to produce a superior variety. of cotton? Ann examination of the situation reveals this connexion its..own specially peculiar manner.;, The wider the: tract of country which the University can cover in its campaign the greater and more rapid will be. the results. It would be a=physical impossibility for- the instructors; to cover more than a very small area, especially _rémembering how intensive the teaching must be, and the students who take the University course are not unlimited.in number., In these Aistricts, however, Chinese preachers are found who - travel the country inculcating the doctrines of Christianity, and these have been employed for the distribution of improved cotton seed to the farmers in the remoter districts, besides which they frequently lecture on the benefits to be obtained from their use.
Then many of the students who take the University's agricultural course are also Christians, and when they start their work they, frequently not only combine such work as school-teaching with improved cotton-growing, but also devote a certain amount of their time to Christian missionary effort. "What at first sight may have seemed a strange combination will thus readily be understood, and a perfectly good description for it would appear to be practical Christianity—the betterment of the lot of the people, not only materially but morally as well.
A case illustrative of this was recently described in the "Chinese Recorder" by Mr. John Griffing of the College of Agriculture and Forestry, who has been one of the leaders in the cotton improvement campaign. In an unusually degenerate district in the Yangtze Valley some thirty miles from Nanking, a cotton-growing station was established, in charge of it a young man who had been with the Labour Corps in France and who had had a year's course at the University. "Prior to his appearance the farmers were in the habit of removing the bolls from the plants before they were fully ripe and picking the cotton in their door yards to save it from being stolen. A free distribution of seed had been largely declined by the farmers for the reason that after a local magistrate had distributed mulberry trees free of cost he proceeded to collect three times' the amount. Naturally any further attempted donations would be looked on with suspicion. The only course was accordingly to open a station, so land was rented at $90 a year and an ancestral temple at $6—a striking contrast to what any building of any sort almost would cost in Shanghai. The work of the student comprised not only the actual work of cotton cultivation to demonstrate to the farmers what could be done, but also a school for the chikiren of the farmers, a night class in popular education, a Sunday school (not necessarily religious) and ocean sional preaching on Sunday. Thanks to the operation of these varying factors, the outlook of the district entirely changed; the distribution of seed was hailed with eagerness; first-class cotton is being produced; and the moral tone of the place has been im Proved beyond measure. What is more the scheme falls only slightly short of being self-supporting, it being calculated that all but about $75 -can be obtained from the sale of seed cotton and school fogs. It is a wonderful achievement, and we do not yet see its greatest results, These will only come when such work has been extended over all the cotton belt of China and devoted to other fields as well. The principle seems to be that agricultural improvement must go hand in hand with education of a. general character, and this Suet should be remembered not only: in-maintaining. the desired
fsithilar.work is started in conser we in cotton but when nexion with other branches. of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.