Part 11 (1/2)

What Confucius thinks, no literary man, and much less the great unwashed, would ever dare to dispute. In great moral questions the maxims he has transmitted for twenty-five centuries are accepted by all as the very inspirations of Heaven, whilst in matters of government and the guiding of the affairs of the nation, the great principles that he and Mencius have enunciated for the ruling of a people have been accepted by nearly every ruler that has ever sat on the Dragon throne.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FARM HOUSE.]

It is for this reason that the only aristocracy that exists in China is that of learning. Wealthy tradesmen or artisans have no right to become members of it, and the only possible way by which they can enter the privileged circle is by buying literary degrees and pa.s.sing themselves off as scholars. This is sometimes done when the Government is in want of funds, for the rich merchants are willing to pay fabulous sums for the honour they gain by being allowed to wear the hat and b.u.t.ton of a mandarin, and to attend receptions where only the literati are permitted to be present.

Next in rank and in importance are the farmers, who in their own special line are no less honourable than the scholars. One of the great kings in the remote times of Chinese history was a man who was taken direct from the plough, to be a colleague with the famous Yau, a fact that has shed a l.u.s.tre upon the calling of the husbandman ever since. One of the very greatest names in history was a farmer who subsequently sat upon the Dragon throne, and the rulers of the various dynasties that since his time have governed China, have all seemed to think that the farmer king has left them a legacy in the land which was to be as much one of the glories of the throne as any other that has descended to them through the long range of the past centuries.

Every year, as the spring time comes round, and Nature proclaims to the world in the awakening of tree and herb and flower that she is going to begin her work for the year, the Emperor comes out of his palace with his retinue of ministers and high officials, and guides a plough across a field that has been prepared for his royal coming. By this act he a.s.sumes the leaders.h.i.+p in the agricultural work of the nation, and just as he stands on the sacred hill by the Temple of Heaven once in the year and becomes the High Priest for his people, so in this annual ceremony he is for the moment the supreme farmer that would invite the golden harvests that are to be reaped by and by, and which will fill the homes throughout the wide extent of his Empire with abundance and prosperity.

The great ma.s.s of the farmers in China own their own land, which has in the main descended from father to son for many generations, though in consequence of the poverty of the people a very large amount of buying and selling of farms is constantly going on all over the country. The absolutely insolvent character of Chinese society is to the foreigner one of the most remarkable features about it, and one that contains so many perplexing elements, that after many an effort to solve it he drops it as a puzzle to which he can find no answer.

It may be a.s.sumed as an undoubted fact that fully seven-tenths of the whole nation are in hopeless debt, from which they will never be able to release themselves as long as they live. Another tenth owe money, and though these have the means of freeing themselves whenever their bills become due, the tendency to borrow seems to have become so inwrought into the very blood and fibre of a Chinaman that he cannot resist doing so on the least provocation. The remaining fifth are the men of means that have capital at their disposal, and who are the money-lenders to any one that can give the least shred of security that the interest and capital will be forthcoming at the particular times that are agreed upon.

But even these last are borrowers as well as lenders. No Chinaman would ever dream of possessing money and not putting it out to interest. It would be considered the sheerest waste to let it lie idle for a single day, and so they are continually on the look-out for impecunious people to whom they can lend with safety. In addition to this, he will borrow at a certain interest, and then relend at a higher rate, and so money keeps flowing backwards and forwards into his coffers, and though he loses occasionally, his gains are so large and on the whole so certain, that his wealth slowly but surely increases, whilst the seven-tenths I have already spoken of become more and more hopelessly involved.

There are several reasons why the farming population should be so much at the mercy of the money-lenders, though it must be understood that these are not a special cla.s.s of people that get their living by letting out money at any extravagant rate of interest. Every man or woman that has a spare dollar, at once becomes a money-lender, so that the creditors to whom they are in debt are those in the same position in life, but who are fortunate in having a little more spare cash at their disposal.

The smallness of the great ma.s.s of the farms is one great disposing cause why their owners are always in such a perilous financial position. Under ordinary favourable circ.u.mstances, these small farmers can work their holdings so that they can make ends meet. Still, even then there is only a very small margin left for the contingencies that this Eastern climate and its great red-hot fiery sun are always producing. Should there be a deficiency in the rainfall, and the rice be left in a waterless field, or should the great typhoons blow with hurricane force, and the flood-gates of Heaven be opened so that the growing crops shall be beaten down and submerged beneath the deluge of waters, then indeed the condition of the farmer is pitiable in the extreme.

There is no resource left them but to borrow, and with the fatal facility of the Chinese for adopting this plan to relieve their immediate necessities, they resort to it with a carelessness of spirit that is perfectly astonis.h.i.+ng to a Westerner. An Englishman, for example, with an ordinary sense of honour will shrink from borrowing money, unless he has in his mind some definite plan of being able to repay it at some period in the near future. A Chinaman's mind being afflicted with turbidity is not troubled with thoughts of this kind. He seems to be able to grasp but one idea at a time, and that is that he is desperately pressed for money, and that by bringing along the deeds of his farm, and depositing them with a rich neighbour, sufficient money will be advanced him to meet his needs.

Beyond that he does not take the trouble to think, but he hopes that in some indefinite way he will be able to pay the debt and redeem his deeds.

The light and airy way with which a man will borrow sums that he must know he can never hope to repay is most charming for its nave simplicity, especially when the high rate of interest that is demanded everywhere is considered. Twelve per cent. is a moderate charge, and is asked where the securities are of a first-rate character. Where these are slightly doubtful, double amount is demanded and obtained, and even as much as thirty-three per cent. is paid by persons who are in great straits, and who wish to be accommodated for a short period of time. An ordinary farmer that borrows at this ruinous rate of interest, unless he has a series of exceptionally good years during which his crops have been most abundant and luxuriant, can hardly hope to pay anything beyond that, and happy will he be indeed if he has not occasionally to add some of the unpaid interest to the original sum he borrowed, and thus add to the liabilities that he is unable to discharge now.

This widespread existence of debt, which I may say is just as prevalent in the cities as in the rural districts, is the cause of a great deal of suffering, especially amongst the farmers, and comes very heavily upon the girls. A farmer, for example, borrows fifty dollars (5) from a well-to-do man, with the stipulation that fifteen per cent. be paid for the use of the money. When the time comes for the payment of the interest there is not a spare dollar in the house. The year has been a bad one, and sickness has been in the home and medicines have had to be bought. The result is, all the money that had been gradually put aside to give to the money-lender has vanished. The creditor insists, however, upon being paid; he will not be put off, and when he is a.s.sured that they have no possible way of raising money before the taking in of the next crop, he quietly points to their little daughter, that with the guilelessness of childhood is amusing herself in her own childish, simple way, whilst the discussion is going on with her father and mother, about the money that has fallen due.

This child is a sweet-faced little girl of about eight years old. She has large black eyes, and a round fat little face, and a merry smile that flashes across it and that gives it such a sunny look that she seems like a sunbeam as she darts in and out of the house in the course of her childish gambols. Both the father and the mother understand exactly what the money-lender means by that significant motion, and without any further discussion they promise that if he will come again in three days more, they will pay not only the interest due to him, but the fifty dollars they had borrowed from him.

Next morning the little girl, who is their only child, is asked if she would not like to go into the great city a few miles away, and see the sights and buy some rare toys that she knows can be got there. She dances for very joy at the idea, and after breakfast she sets out in high glee with her father to see the wonderful things in that great town and to bring back a present for her mother, who bids good-bye to her with tear-dimmed eyes, and a weight upon her heart as she takes a last lingering look at her little one that she knows she will never set eyes upon again.

Upon their arrival in the city, the father, instead of visiting the toy-shops, makes his way to a large imposing-looking mansion where a wealthy family resides, and after some bargaining the little girl is sold to them to become their slave, and to be their absolute property to treat and dispose of as they may deem right. When this transaction is finished and seventy dollars have been transferred to the father, he tells his little girl, who has been looking with wondering gaze at the glories of the house to which she had been brought, to rest awhile and he will call for her by and by when he has seen to some little business that he has to do in a neighbouring street. She little dreams as he goes out of the great door that she will never see him again, and never more will her mother's eyes look down upon her with the light of affection beaming in them, nor ever again will she see the flash of love illumining her face as she runs to her with some childish grievance or some question that she wishes her to answer. She is a slave now and has lost her freedom, and her new master can dispose of her as he thinks best; and all this she suffers that the debts of the home may be paid and the homestead may be saved from pa.s.sing into other hands.

The Chinese farms as a rule are small. This is almost entirely due to the custom that prevails in China of the land being divided amongst the sons when the father dies. The constant subdivision that has been going on during the centuries of the past has resulted in the great diminis.h.i.+ng in the size of the holdings, and the leaving of many of the rural population without any land at all.

There are of course many rich landowners who have invested their capital in land, and who have a superabundance of it. Where the native banks are uncertain and the modes of investment few and precarious, it has been found that to buy up farms brings in after all the highest interest, and is more to be relied upon than any other method of disposing of surplus funds.

A large number of farms are just large enough to support a family, say, of four or five people, but should the seasons be unfavourable, and the crops be parched by the fiery-faced sun and gradually be scorched to death in the fields, then sorrow comes upon the home, and the money-lender has to be sought to give relief. A still more considerable number of farms are too small even under the very best conditions to support the family. The fields are too few, though cultivated with the deft and cunning hand of the Chinese farmer, to produce food enough for the home, and so plans have to be thought of by which the deficiency may be met, and food and clothes provided for the wife and the little ones.

It is this widespread condition of affairs that has made the farmer in this land one of the handiest men in all the four great divisions into which society has been divided. The pressing needs of his home, and the absolute necessity for some mode of increasing his income if he would keep it together, have taxed his wits to the very utmost, and consequently have developed his thought and his ingenuity.

Some of them open little shops, where they sell miscellaneous articles that do not require a large capital to the neighbours and others who do not care for travelling as far as the neighbouring city to make such small purchases. Others, again, who have no money whatever to invest in even such small enterprises as these, start for some great centre of trade and there act as coolies. They become the beasts of burden of the whole city.

Their muscles have been toughened by toil on their farms and their minds have been developed in their struggle with nature, so that they become valuable auxiliaries in doing the heavy work connected with the business of the town.

The favourite resorts of these farmers that are striving to keep a home above their heads, are the great s.h.i.+pping ports, where foreign vessels bring their cargoes from the four corners of the earth. Here labour is abundant and better paid, and consequently the chances of saving money considerably greater.

In Shanghai, for example, and Hongkong, the two greatest s.h.i.+pping ports in this extreme East, it is intensely interesting to watch how the farmers flock to them, to do the rough and dangerous work of loading and unloading the steamers and sailing s.h.i.+ps that come in almost daily from their ocean voyages. Thousands of them congregate on the wharves and jetties waiting to be called off to the s.h.i.+ps that are lying in the stream. Usually they are a rough-looking crowd, and, judged by a similar cla.s.s of men that are seen in our home ports, they would seem to be of a much inferior character to those that we are accustomed to see there.

They are poorly clad, and their clothes are of such an unpicturesque description and so badly fitting and usually so full of patches, that they give one the impression that they must be the very refuse of the neighbourhoods from which they have come. If they were Englishmen, we would call them loafers and tramps who had gathered round the dock gates, not really to get work, but to pose as members of the unemployed in order that charity might be doled out to them.

But every man there is a _bona fide_ farmer, who has so studied the mysteries of nature that he is able to wring her secrets out of her, and cause the fields to be covered with luxuriant crops. They nearly all have farms, and the wives and children are working them whilst they are away, and living on the barest subsistence that will keep body and soul together until they return with their hard-earned gains to drive away the wolf from the door, and to satisfy the inexorable money-lender, who will have nothing less than his pound of flesh.