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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (May 23, 1909)
Changes r:"-iTrff-f t " t ' r - (""" . ' ' ' 1 4 - - . i .-..ii . i ' '---, 7,, KKW KOREAN (Copyright, 1909, by Frank O. Carpenter.) EOUI-, Korea, 1909. (Special Cor- S respondont of The Bee.) I want I to tell you what the Japanese are doing in Korea. They nave taken the hermit kingdom by the nerk. and are shaking it dry bone Into action. They are establish ing courta, abolishing iqjeeilng and reor ganizing the finances. They propose to build roads, to reforest the mountains to open the mines and to turn this half-barren country Into a gnrden. All these things" are in their beginnings, but a start hng been made and signs of prort;ss are every where to be aeen. The IVeir Vttr ot Seonl. The capital, Seoul, Is fast becoming a new city. When I came hero twenty years ago the trip from the seaport, Chempulo, took over twelve hours, and I had to have a pony and eight men to bring myself and wife to the walls. I redo the pony and the mad-ime came In a chair, borne on tho shoulders of four coolies, with a relay of four others to help them. Toward the end of the Journey we had to push on for fear we might not get to Seoul before the gates closed. The city la surrounded by a mas sive wall nine miles In length and thirty feet high. At that time this wall was en tered only by gates, and these were closed at night by heavy doors plated with Iron, which were not opened again until the next day. We got In Jjst In time to see the gates close. There was no hotel, and we bad to be met by the soldiers of our lega tion, a.nd were quartered there during our tay. The city still has lta walls, but the gates now stand open day and night, and an electrlo street car line runs through two of them and on out Into the country. An electrlo light globe prevents the closing of one which we entered, and another gate has proved too small to accommodate the traffic and has been cut put by the Jap anese, wide roads being made through tho walla on each side. The gate Itself, which Is a temple-like structure with a doublo roof of heavy tiles, has been faced with atone; and it is now proposed to put a commercial museum In the soldiers' guard room above It. In that old gate all the In dustries of the naw Corea will be shown side by side with those of other nations, ami the people will thus be taught the va rious methods of manufacture and sale. Signal Flrraiitalnst Electricity. As we came Into Seoul that night we could see the Blgnal fires blazing on the mountains which surround the" city, and were told that they were the last of the long series of watch fires built upon the hills of the other parts of Korea to notify the king that the country was quiet and all was at peace. Today there are watch fires no longer, but in their place Korea has Its wireless telegraph stations and the capital is covered with telephone wires. One of the oldest buildings of the palace, In which the emperor now lives, has been turned Into a telephone booth, and Japan ese hello girls sit there and take messages from all parts of the city. There are tele graph wires to every large village, with more than 1,000 miles of line open, and cables across to Japan. Electrlo LlBhtTTd Street Cars. The old Seoul was pitch dark at night The law were that the ordinary man should not go about after dark, only offi cials and foreigners and their servants being permitted to do so. Women were never seen on the streets in the daytime and the night was supposed to be their time for calling. When we went out we took the keso of the legation to carry our lantern, and this consisted of a framework, holding a candle with a red. white and blue gauze cloth thrown over It. The Seoul of today Is fairly well lighted. Many of the stores keep open during the evening and most of the houses have an oil lamp or an electric tight globe at their front gate. Looking down the wide main streets of the oily makes one think of one of the larger towns of our country, for the lights alone are to be seen, and the low one story buildings are lost In the darkness. Seoul has now an electric car line run by Americans. It was put In long before the Japanese took hold of the government, and about half of the stock belongs to the re tired emperor, who has refused to sell out to the Japanese capitalists. The Koreans are now patronizing the road. At first they said It was magic, and a mob de stroyed some of the cars. Their theory was that the line would prevent the spirits giving them tain. They said the car were boats, and that the gods, looking down from the skies, seeing them swimming to and fro through the streets, would say: "These people need no rain, for their city is swimming In water." A somewhat similar feeling prevailed as to the magic In the telephone and telegraph systems. Many of the Korean women, knowing that speech went over the wires, thought the poles must contain spirits ami that the sound buzzing on the wires was their voices Indeed, some said their pray er to the telephone poles at the time. rhlai-ti-Kal. Have you ever heard of Chln-Qo-Kal? It is a section of S oul which contains 10,000 Jspanese people. It has big official buildings, many two-story houses and long streets of stores, w hich would be a' credit to Toklo. 8onie of the stores have plate glass windows, and nearly all carry Urge stocks of goods. Here Everything is clean. The roadways are swept, and most uf them are as smooth as a floor. The'e are banks, brick school buildings, a postofflce and ail sorts of business establishments. At one side of tht s ct'on is a g eat frame office structure devoted to the resi dent general, who governs Korea, with the emperor a the nominal bead, and back of It is the home of this high official, with a thousand acre or more of Nam-8an inoun Uiu xLoin It. The oU mountain bad lain Are Taking Place 1 1 . , I If """' km- t, ,v7,v,'t!'. .- ....r-r''-". i, ' - SUPREME COURT BUILDING. there a wilderness for thousands of years. It had seen the wall built more than 500 years ago. and had watched the generations rise and fall from then until now. It re mained for the Japanese to make It a beautiful park. They have cut road through the pines and have built many pavilions, until now It Is one of nature' most beautiful gardens. I had the good fortune to be Invited to a garden party given there by the resident general the other day. Mere than 2.000 of the high class Koreans and Japanese offi cials were present. His excellency received us out in the open, and there were lunch rooms and tea houses throughout the grounds whose waiters were beautiful Japanese maidens. At the close we had dinner In a great tent, covering tables suf ficient to seat the 2.000 guests, and the Japanese military band sang a song com posed by Viscount Sone In honor of the occasion. Mod. v, Brick. Twenty-five years ago there was not a brick In Korea. The houses were all made of mud, of wood or of stones piled up one on Up of the other and covered with roofs of heavy black tiles, or straw thatch, held down with straw ropes. When I vljlted Developments Honaecleanlus; hy Electricity. VEN the time-honored methods of sweeping and dusting have been vanquished and banished by electricity and In a few years m re, so they predict, the house wife, clad in apron and dust- cap and carrying broom and dustpan will exist in pictures only. No longer Is It necessary to sprinkle down the floors before sweeping so that a larger percentage of the dust can be kept In the dirt heap and not go flying about the house to settle on the furniture, pict ures and woodwork. Nor do the ma'e mem bers of the family fear to return home m the evening lest they have to take the rugs out and beat them. The sweeping and dusting can now be done by electricity, eliminating most of the 'work, nearly all the dust and a large amount ot the trouble. It would make almost any housewife angry to tell her the house wasn't clean. She would be Inillgnant might even threaten you with her broom which Is said to be such a handy weapon for domestic defense as well as offense. And yet It has been fully demonstrated that no woman can clean a house with mop, brodm and dustcloth bait as well as electricity can do It. For the electric cleaner sweeps and dust with the aid of a vacuum, produced by a small motor-driven centrifugal fan, Which sucks up every particle of dirt and dust. , Take the room that ha been pol ished until It fairly glistens and go over it with the vacuum cleaner and you will get twice as much dirt as the housewife did. Out of the cracks, crevices and cor ners she missed, the electric house cleaner will suck up whole handful of dirt The urface of the carpets, rugs and draperies look clean, but the vacuum cleaner will uck the dust and dirt from beneath the rugs, cleaning .the very fabric of the ma terial. You can beat carpets and rjgs all day and still they will not be clean, What the housewife really does la to chase the dirt from the floor to the furni ture and back again. Clean, to the house wife, means that there is not dust and dirt enough left after she gets through to alter her standard of what she designates dS "clean." The most destructive element In the home is the continual wear and tear of trying to keep things clean. The electric house cleaner operates on the centrifugal power exhaust principle. It cre ates a very strong suction or "draw." The machine is compact and can be easily re moved from room lu room or from floor to floor. A small but powerful General Electrlo motor, drive the centrifugal fan which supplies the vacuum. This motor can be attached to the electric lighting socket, In place of a lamp, by a long flexi ble cord. The metal parts of the device are entirely ot aluminum, which makes It light snd portable. At the bottom and front of the machine is a rotary brush which revolves rapidly, driven by belt from the motor. As the machine Is moved over the surface to be cleaned the brush loosens all the clinging dirt and a strong current of air worklnj up around this brush sucks up all the dirt and dust thai Is In or under the car pet, depositing all accumulations In the collector. In addition to this method there are hose connections, so that every nook and cranny can be cleaned. This hose is equipped with a tool which sucks up the dual and dirt from rugs, curta.ns, mould ing and everything about the house. The dirt sucked up in Uils way Is deposited In the accumulator, wnlch is e-aally detacha ble. The main point about sweeping with electric power with the vacuum cleaner Is that there Is no flying dust. The electric cleaner reaches every crack, corner and crevice of the room; the cracks in the alls, the celling 4 and moulding and all that dust which shows when you draw your fingers across the waiipaper or woodwork. It remove the dust lrum pic ture frames, ( statuary, bric-a-brac; It cleans carpets, upholstery, curtains, tapes tries, shades and blinds, without remov ing them from their fixings. It cleans and -renovates bedding, comforters, blankets, mattressua and pillows; the cracks and crevices in wooden or iron beds and even reach and cleans' such Inaccessible place r : 1 : " , - : 1 Nrii (llf? I; sit ; P-jn -' - i$f v .'r'i-sr;.-v ,. . .-.i- - .-?;'! .. . ...'. . . ' y. '.. I - y y -, f , , . , ,r - ; ; : :;V , . .-. ..r - ,. the city twenty year ago outside the homes of the missionaries and the palaces of the king there was not a two-story structure to be seen anywhere. The place contained 200,000 or 800,000 people, the most of whom lived In mud huts with roofs of straw thatch. The 'huts wre all made In the shape of 1, horseshoe with quarters at the back for the women. There were larger houses roofed with tile which formed tho home of the n&bles, and these were shut off from tho street by low stable like structures, in which the servants and re tainers were quartered. The houses were all heated by flues which ran under the floorc and emptied their smoke into the streets through openings cut at about the height of one' waist from the ground. At meal times, and more especially mornings and evenings, these holes poured forth volumes, making one think of a irreat forest fire. The air was so thick th;vt one could almost cut it and the passerby bad to cough. Today Seoul has thousands of slmllni houses. Of the 200.000 and odd which make up the native population 99 per cent live In such quarters. They have no seweri and the slop run out Into open ditchci which have been cut through thi streets in the Ever Widening- Field of Electrical as trunks, linen closets, desks, tiles, pigeon holes, radiators and registers. Electrlo Lighting Industry. During the last six months 195 new electrlo lighting companies have been formed In the United States and twenty In Canada and Mexico. The present total for the United States Is 6,264 companies and 6,740 including Canada, Mexico and the West Indies. These figures show a total gain of 276 plants for the corresponding figures of a year ago. Of the total 6,740 plants included, no fewer then 3,193 carry electrical supplies, which Implies the handling In the aggre gate a very large quantity ot electrical ma terial. As many as 4.1&4 of the plants have alternating current while apparently 1,669 are direct The spread cf alternating methods Is shown to be astonishing. Of the plants enumerated, 126 report them selves as pure transmissions, while 694 others are either lighting and transmission, or else Include railway work as well. Illinois has, still the largest number ot plants, C98, though outside of Chicago few of them are of considerable magnitude. New York has 368 and Pennsylvania 3t!, the lant state gaining fourteen In six months, which is rather remarkable for so settled a commonwealth. Ohio has 183, Michigan 263, and Texas the large number of surpassing Indiana with 213 and Iowa with 207. Oklahoma has already 76 Gossip and Lew Wallace and Abdnl Hamld. HEX General Lew Wallace was W a rl appointed minister to Turkey in I 1M1. relates the Indianapolis . L rr r. , lie VY txo iuuunaic ciiuueit to make a good impression on Abdul Hamld and to win his personal friendship. The latter was no great honor, but as a mere matter of busi ness it was good diplomacy on General Wallace's part. At his first Interview with the sultan, when he presented his creden tial as minister. General Wallace sur prised his imperial majesty and other of ficials present by shaking hands with him. The proposition wua unheard of and almost Inconceivable. The Turks do not shake hands even with one another, and for a Christian, even though an accredited min ister, to propose Uktng his majesty's sa cred hand In his own was a startling In cident. But the Interpreter (Mr. Garglulo, who Is still attached to the American em bassy in Constantinople) conveyed the wish and it was granted, putting Wallace on an unusual tooting with the sultan. Iater on the sultan gave several evi dences of his liking for General Wallace In December, W1, he conferred on the general the first-class of the Order of Im perial Medjledla. The general was obliged to decline the order, but In return sent the saltan a handsomely bound copy of "Ben llur," with a laudatory Inscription. When the sultan found, after tho elec tion of Mr. Cleveland, In 14. that there would probably be a change of, ministers, he offered to write to the president-elect asking that General Wallace be retained, but the latter gave him to understand that would not do. He then Invited Wallace to remain In Turkey and take service un der thai government, adding: "I will make you ambassador to Paris or London.',' Thl offer also the general declined with thanks. After General Wullace received his recall as minister the sultan again offered him the imperial decoration of the Medjiedle, and, being no longer in office, the general accepted It. He also gave the general a costly souvenir ot gold - and diamonds. Finally, after his return to the United Slates, the general, In 1S90, received through the Turkish minister at Wash ington, an offer from the su'.tan ot a high salaried position In the palace or in the arsenal, at bis option. This offer also was declined, on the ground that the general was growing old and Intended devoting the rest of his life to literary work. Talents sf Marlon Crawford. Mr. Crawford as a young man was the ovy of most of bis circle ot intimate THE OMAHA SUNDAY BEE: MAY 23. in Seoul KOREAN CABINET MINISTERS. The Japanese have covered some of these ditches and they are now putting in drains. As to the buildings, a new class of struc ture I rapidly rising and the people stand and gaze at them In open-mouthed wonder. The Young Men's Christian association ha Just completed a brick horns of two stories, which is heated by steam. It la a wonder of wenders to the average Korean, who cannot tell whence come the heat. The bricks for that building are being made outside the city. Yards have been there constructed, which are now turning out bricks by the millions. The clay Is excellent and a large part of the new Sooul will be built ot these bricks. There are other brickyards at Yong San, the military city on the edgo of Seoul, and there U no lack of fine building material. The New Government Dnlldlnsn. Among the large buildings are many which are going up for the government. These are nominally Korean, but are really Japanese. The cabinet minister act as the nominal advisers" to the emperor, but under them are Japanese vice ministers who really control and whose clerk are almost all Japanese. Not far from where I am living In the foreign section of Seoul is the new finance department. This Is a fine two-story brick and New Mexico 16. The largest gain In the half-year is In New York, with 17, which compares with the 14 in Pennsyl vania, and would Indicate that to the new comer, public service commissions may not be so terrible after all. As a matter of fact, the gains are distributed all over the country, few states being without some new enterprise of this kind reported. A Trackless Trolley. At Fberswalde, Germany, In 1901; there was an experimental trackless trolley sys tem installed by a Berlin engineer, but after being in operation a little more than five months It was withdrawn. There la a trackless trolley line In operation be tween Plotzlelnsdorf and Snlmannsdorf. suburbs of Vienna, about 1.37 miles In length. It passes through an unusually small and narrow street with many sharp turns, broken by steep grades and sudden declines. It Is necessary for the omni buses along the route to climb many long stretches having a grade of V to 10. This Is a double line, arranged so that the cars going back and forth can pass each other without interruptl'm. From sta tistics furnished by the director of the street car system of Vienna, the total cost of the construction of the plant, ex clusive of alteration of roads which may be rendered necessary and which the road officials would be obliged to provide for, Stories About Noted People friends and acquaintances; tall, straight, formed In perfect physical proportion, he was extremely handsome; and In addition he had a brain which could grasp giant tasks with cae tasks which for the rest of us were either Impossible or only at tainable after months or years of effort. He had a special facility for acquiring languages, writes George P. Brett in Out ing, and he is the only man that I have ever known who has been taken for a Frenchman in France, for a native of Italy by the Italians and for a German In Berlin. I remember that he was on one occas on thinking of spending a winter In one of the countries of central Burope whose language was unknown to him In order to obtain local color and atmosphere for one cf his novels, and that In the short space of eight weeks he had acquired by constant study a mastery of the language, so that he was easily able to make himself under stood when he afterward went there. The same facility which he had for ac quiring languages also extended to other things. He mastered, I remember, the difficult art of navigation In the course of a short winter season In New York, In spite of the calls of his regular literary work and his many social engagements, so that he was not only enabled to navi gate his own yacht an old New York pilot boat, partially rebuilt under his dl ruction across the pcean himself, but he worked out a voyage that I made with him afterward the sights day by day Independ ently of the officers and afterward com pared them with the ship's records, and the officers came to talk over with him matters of navigation as with one of them selves, so Impressed were they by his mastery of their craft. Almost a Croesus. Champ Clark, democratic leader In the house, came nearer to being a multi-millionaire than anybody now In sight. Instead he went to Missouri and became a politi cian; lator he became a congressman, and finally he has become a statesman. When he was 23 years old, relates the Washington Times, Clark was president of a West Virginia collbg. and he was a good one, too. At the end of two pr three years he had saved IM. and a friend con fided to him that it was enough to make a fortune. "Let mutake that money you've got in the bunk." said his friend, "snd buy you some of this coil lund around here. It can be had tor So cunts an acre, and it'll be worth thousands In a tew years." Clafk thought about It, but be had long lpnp. Under Japanese Goverment structure covered with stucco. It la built on sin elevation, overlooking the palace in which the retired emperor Uvea, so that the clerks can see all that goes on Inside the palace grounds. This I very offensive to hi majesty, who has always objected to anyone looking over his walls, and has bought several foreign structure because they commanded such a view. Ho paid $300,000 for the French legation for this very reason, and he has, I am told, several times tried to buy the American consulate whloh is on a hill, lower down. Soma men have even bought lots and started buildings In order to make bis majesty buy them at high prices. Another fine government building Is that of the supreme court. This is acme what similar to the structure of the finance de partment. It is situated on the main street, which runs between the east and west gates, and not far from a big two-story brick which Is being built for a native Korean bank. How the Officials Raised Money. That bank, by the way, marks one of the most wonderful changes which is go ing on here. Until lately no Korean was supposed to have any right to money that the king was bound to respect. Every official squeezed the man below him, and amounts to $44,253. The same authority estimates the annual running expenses of the line at J9.S73, and the receipts from passengers at (6,394, 'a loss of J.1.8J-9. The particular system of motor used is known as the Stoll or Mercedes system. Electricity on Railroads. The railroads claim that substitution of electricity for steam out on main lines would involve prohibitive losses by making Junk of millions of dollars' worth of steam locomotives. This, however, is misleading and far from true, says Popular Mechan ics, for during the several years neces sarily consumed In changing over, say, 1,000 miles of trunk line, the future would be taken Into consideration. As fast as' the steam locomotives on one division were re leased they would be transferred to other divisions to take the place of worn-outs there, and at last there would be branch lines of their own, and smaller roads which would absorb a great part of what motive power remained at the finish. There would be some direct loss and some Indi rect, such as placing on branch lines heav ier and faster locomotives than the busi ness required; but the loss from this item would be only a fraction of the whole. There would be other millions of dollars, now Invested In locomotive repair shops, thrown out of use. but this would bring Its own compensation, for ths electric loco- been of the opinion that the bounding west was the place where fortune smiled most amiably. He wanted to go there. "I guess not," he decided. "I'll go to Missouri." He did. The 1,000 acres of land that his (S00 would have bought is now worth mil lions; If he had bought It and stayed In West Virginia he would have been one of the first of the long row of men who have made tens of millions in the development of the natural resources of that newer Pennsylvania. "But anyhow." sighed Mr. Clark, as he turned to his desk and signed a contract for a summer lecture course at $0 a night. "I did never care much about money." Coqnelin Had Uood Memory. "How many parts do you know well enough to play tonight If need be?" some body asked Coquelin. He took a sheet of paper and wrote down the names of fifty three plays of his repertory. His friends laughed. "You are boosting," said the Viscomte do Lovenjoul. "You have every one of these plays In your library," said Coquelin quietly. "Get them all out and put them on the table." The Viscomte did so. "Now," said Coque lin, "let anybody select a cue from any one of these plays at haphazard and give it to me." They tried him with sixteen play out of the fifty-three and he did not make one mistake. Looking; (or His Fifteenth Wife. The careless failure of an Emporia, Kan., woman to get a legal separation from her husband has Just cheated Owen Reeves, 77 years old, also of that city and for years a resident of Duquoln, III., of his fifteenth wife. Although several of his fourteen unions have ended Ingloiiously, Reeves still .regards marriage as a blissful succesa H is now in the field for another wife. "When a man decides he likes a woman he should pop the question right away," said Reeves recently. "Never once did T spark a woman more than five times, and as to the sparking It should never be done In the dark and in secrecy, but straight forward and open. I have proposed several times right In comistny. "Every man needs the companionship of a good woman, and I am going to have an other one as soon as I csn get her. I wedded tot the first time In Calhoun county. Illinois, when I was 11 years old. Preachers have married me th most times, but I hsve been married a few times by squires and justices of th peace. " I FINANCE! DEPARTMENT If ha -did not give up a share of his goods upon demand had him whipped or tor tured in some way or other until he did so. The most common persuader was a flexible paddle about as wide as the palm of your hand and ten or twelve feet in length. The man to be squeezed was stripped to the skin and laid face down ward on the ground and held there by men, or he was tied to a bench so that It was Impossible for him to move. Then the paddlers would strike htm so many blows on the thighs. The second or third always brought blood, ana an hundred was supposed to mean death. Burning and bone crushing were other methods of torture, and men were kept for years In prison on falsa charges as means ot ex tortion. Under such conditions the man who showed he had money was sure of persecution and all loans were secretly made. The Japanese have done away with this squeezing, and the thousands of of ficials who lived upon It have now gone to the wall. The money Is changed. During that trip across country to Seoul I had to have an extra man to carry tn money to pay the coolies at the end of the trip, and for my expenses In the capital I got an order upon a merchant In Seoul. The coins were of copper with a square hole In the center, and It took one thousand of them to equal the value of an American dollar. They were Btrung upon strings of one Experiment motive goes to the shop only two or three times a year, where the steam locomotive must be overhauled constantly. Moreover, the cost of repairs of the electric machine is Insignificant compared to the cost of maintenance of the steam locomotive. Electric Water Heater. Germany has produced the first effective water heater for the bath room. It is six inches in diameter and two feet high. Water is admitted at the bottom. Turning the electrlo switch permit enough water to enter to fill the ystem of pipes, thus Insuring them against burning out, and this Is heated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit In about forty seconds. The stopcock below the switch Is then opened, when a steady stream rises over a series of water tight surfaces Inclosing the heating colls and emerges at the overflow quite hot enough for tha buth. The current can be either that of twelve slxteen-candle power in candescent lamps of the ordinary kind or half as much, the latter giving correspond ingly slower heating. The cost of the cur rent necessarily varies, but even at the high rate of 10 cents an hour the expense for a hot bath would be small. Story of the Electrlo Fan. Of all the hot weather comforts the electric fan Is easily the first. A bit of shade brings a little relief from the heat ot the July sun, a bit of cracked ice properly applied to certain hot weather beverage helps to keep the suf ferer a few degrees below a dangerous temperature; but It Is the little electrlo fan which bring the cool breezes of the hills Into the hottest apartment, Into the swelt ering city flat or the hot office. No matter how hot tha sun shines, no matter how much electricity In tho air, no matter how striding and stagnant the atmosphere the touch of a button and the cooling breezes are at the command of anyone In any quantity or velocity desired. Electricity Is the magician which holds captive th rays of the sun snd lets thein out after nightfall to drive away the som ber shades of night; who takes the heat of the coal and brings it into the house to cook the foods and heat the rooms; who takes the power from the falling water and carries it miles and miles to turn with the wheels of Industry and transportation. And, not content with all these wonders, electricity has stuffed into its wonder bag the four winds and releases them at your command. The electric fan was an American Inven tion which has been developed within the last few years until millions of the fans are in use throughout the world. Back In the early '80s Dr. 8. S. Wheeler, an elec trical engineer of New York, was experi menting with a small electric motor. In the course of his experiments the doctor conceived the Idea that steamboats might be run with electricity If the propellors could be direct connected to high-speed electric motors, doing away with all the gears then in use In stoam propulsion. With this idea in mind he had a small screw-propellor constructed and fastened it to the armature shaft of his small motor. To his surprise the experiment resulted In a fine breeze of cooling air which more tflan delighted the experimenter, for th day was decidedly hot. It Is needless to add that the experiments with screw -propellers ended right there and the engineer took up the study of the electric fan with th result that he soon perfected the devics until It was a commercial succesa At that time all the fans were run by batteries. Later they were connected with the series are lighting circuits, but this was found to be as dangerous as it was unsatisfactory. Little advance was made until 1K88 when a successful attempt was made to connect them with the new In candescent lighting circuits, each fan to take the place of a lamp. Battery current was too expenslvs for this ventilating de vics, but as soon as central station current was available tha fan became popular at once, and about 1S90 the manufacture of electric fan began In earnest A couple of years later the celling fan was Intro duced and since that time the production of desk, bracket, celling and oscillating faia has grown by leaps and bounds and Ameri can fans are now supplied to every civil ised country on the map. BUIL05INO. hundred each, and whenever I went out shopping I had to take a servant along to carry my purse. Such cash were In usn here when I crossed Korea In l!94, and they continued for some time after the Japanese-Chinese war. Then the Korean nickel was marie; but this was counter feited both here and 111 Javan t such an extent that It fell to hnlf Its orU'nnl value. The Japanese have now Introduced their own coinage, accepting the Korean nickel at the market rate; and from now on the country will be on a g M basis. Japanese bank notes are everywhere tak en and Japanese sliver, nickel and n per coins are In common use. This reorgan ization of the finances has been one of the great problems that the JapaneF- h.ivn had to deal with, but the vice minister of finance, Mr. Aral, tellB mo that It Is now practically solved nnri that he anticipated no further trouble. lie fays the govern ment has lost money In taking the Korean nickels at half rate nnd that tho counter feits they hive hail to accept havo amounted to millions. They have nlrcndy exchanged about seven tnlll'nn yen of them, the average Hcko' Icing worth something like thiee-fin etliF of lis val'io Instead of thr twenty-flve-flMeths at which It Is taken. A Modern Ilnnklna; System. Mr. Aral has organized a hanking sys tem for Korea. The central treasury is n"W the Dai Ichl Bank, a::d ti.ere nr.- In nilriltlon, Industrial bnrks which tire loan ing money against land to th? fanners. They make long loans nt 12 nnri 15 per cent a year, which are consiib reil ei c lally low rates for Korea. Tliese indus trial banks have savings tl pari incuts c m-nect-d with them, and there are ill ;:st office savings bank--, which h iv i.io.'e than 1,400,000 yen on de;os.i. M.r.iy Koreans are putting their nioi.e;- .n o these banks, although tho Interest Is iom paratively low. In addition to this the government Is now organizing a system of sinail c.tpltal associations. These will have a central head, with about ono hundred brunches, and will issue small loans to petty farmers. The loans will be as low as $23, and may be secured by crops and chattel mortgages. All these things will tend to create thrift among tho Koreans, which heretofore has been Impossible on account of the squeezing nnd Insecurity of ail money. Indeed, one of the common Korean bink of the past has been old Mother Earth, and this espt dally so during the winter. When a farmer sold his crops and wanted to keep the money over until spring he wou.d dig a pit six feet deep and four or more feet square; and at the first frost he would put down a layer of cash and sprinkle earth and water over It. By morning It would be frozen stiff. The next night he would put down another layer of coins with mud on top. This would freeze and so he would go until he had a block ot frozen earth as hard us ice, tilled with these coins at a thuMand to the dollar. The work wan d ine rn.cn.t y and the result was such that It would take day to recover the coins, lltlih I uterest. I am urprlscd ut the enormous Interest which tho Kotcans ure paying. Leans oa good security arc made at from 2 to 6 per cent a month, and tho unscrupulous Japa nese money lenders are getting much more. It Is only fair to say that the natives rij likewise. A common way of loaning on property Is to hand over tho doeil tu the house or lot In case the loan I not pa d and a, until now, there have been nu means of registration, this means tne transfer of tho propiity. The Japanese should protect the Kureans as to xucii transactions. If they do not, all the lands and house of the country will soon gj Into the hands of the former. The Kureaiu are great borrowers aod they cannot re sist tho money temptation. They du nut think of pay day until It comes, and as i result are not able to meet their obli gation. Nnllou of Children. Indeid, It lb up to tho Jap .ncse govc. fin-ten t to protect the Koreans from uiiu class of Its subjects who are now over running this country. The Koreans are a nation of children. They have bei n s ground down In the past that they hivu not learned to hustle und to look out for themselves. They are wonderfully gentle and trusting, and the shrewd Japanese can easily take advantage of them. Hi 1 doing so today, notwithstanding the gov ernment tries to prevent It anl the authorities should put on thw screws und punish severely all such offenses. ITInce Ito has tried to dq this, even to the ex tent of sending back a lirge number of the Japanese who have come here, saying that they were not fit to bo In the coun try. It Is this clement that knocks the Ko rean about, cheats him out of his wagex, and if possible, by mfnns of loans, taket his houses snd lands. It Is the low clisi element among the solrilirs scattered In small bands over the country away froit their superior officers, which Is leading t th killing of many Innocent Koreans un der the name of Insurgents; ami which, If the government does not pursue u mora rigid policy, Is likely to lone J a pin Its reputation as having tho best, the kindest, the most refined and the most humane sol diers on earth. Indeed, It. seems to nr that Japan has In this low class element, which ha coma to Korea a problem (r more serious than the peo;le think. It Prince Ito could transmit to the Japanese In Korea the same feeling of brotherly love and charity which he and the better class Japanese have they would ion make the Koreans the strong friends nt Japan, and build them up as sn lndi-i end nt but powerful element for good In the Jananese empire. FRANK Q. CAKPIONTlilC