Mr. Horace W. Houlding, one of the directors of the South Chihli Mission at Fuyintsun, Chibli, is at present in Shanghai in connexion with the famine relief work that has been undertaken and has made to the Relief Committee of Shaughai several excellent suggestions, based upon experience gained in the famine regions, as to the best way of administering relief funds Kuangpingfu and Tamingtu, the two southern prefectures of Chihli.
Mr. Houlding states that all who have had experience in flood or famine relief are quite agreed that the indiscriminate giving out of food to the populace is more or less demoralizing. Regular wages, he points out, go to more than the one to whom paid, and money wilt go further and reach more people if paid in regular wages than in any other way.
uch work should be undertaken as will help effectually to prepare for and guard against similar disasters in the future. Transportation facilities are easily recognized as the great need. Waterways, railroads and cart-ronds_ are inter dependent and should keep pace with each other in as rapid a development as may be possible, and there is no way of bringing relief money to the people generally better than in the grading and building of rural roads.
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Mr, Houlding, speaking from practical experience in. the Mission's headquarter village at Fuyint sun, where some four miles of road have been graded, says that the Tamingfu magistrate was invited to call and discuss the situation and has now undertaken to secure a straight strip of land, 80 it. wide, for a connecting road' between river and rail, beginning a6 Kantan, taking in five cities, including Tamingfu, eastward to the river port of Lungwangmiao, on the Wei River. The fact that the magistrate, as well as others, wishes at once to put on motorcars for regular transport is the best assurance that the road will be kept in repair, if once built.
These approximately 35 miles of road building would furnish some 600,000 days of labour, and such
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.