Nanking, May 24.
It is learned at the Ministry of Communications that the automatic telephone installation (Strowger system) for the capital is nearing completion and the service will be in operation by next month. The istry is also sending deputies to Shanghai and Hankow for the purpose of installing similar automatic telephone services in these two important cities.
Four experts of the Ministry are to leave shortly for America with a view to studying latest developments in telephony. These deputies attend post-graduate courses at Harvard University and later enter the works of the Chicago Automatic Telephone Company so as to acquire It is learned that the representative in Mukden of the Foreign Office in Nanking, on May 20, handed the Japanese Consul-General, Mr. Hayashi, a Note protesting against the Sotith Manchuria Railway's Yen 20,000,000 plant at Fushun, twenty miles east of Mukden, for the distillation of oil from the shale covering the Fushun coal seam, 'The protest is based on the claim that the S.MLR. concession, while permitting coal-mining along that railway, does not mention oil. There fore, the Chinese authorities demand that' the plant shall shut down on a @ate named for the opening of negotiations in connection with its disposition, The shale-oil plant at Fushun is the result of many years planning and experimentation. It is planned manufacture about 70,000 tons of crude oil and by-products, 18,000 tons of ammonium sulphate and 7,000 tons of paraffin a year when in full operation, The Fushun oil-shale runs east and west for ten miles and north and south for one mile above the famous coal-seam. The oil-shale strata is 450 ft. deep in the thickest part and approximates 5,800,000,000 tons containing an average of six per cent. of oil Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.