Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1909)
I) THE OMAIU SUNDAY BEE: AUGUST 1. 1000. Grain Fields of Manchuria to Be Tilled Under American Methods IP . . )T tfJ vvi. . . . - , . - - --- - -ttt: .. . ... y - . . , Wi..m ' .. J E II ft. S K V V HI K.I H i Hi -I- - jEl. THRFSHINO MILLET IN MANCHURIA. DirtECTOR CHAN AND THE PRILL INSTRUCTOR AT THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEUB AT VUSDEJt- TARTAR STUDENTS AT MUKDEN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, Mi (Copyright, lflOB, by Frank O. Carpenter.) UK HEN, Manchuria, 1909. (Spe cial Correspondence of The Bee.)-Vlthtn two miles of this city, nwrriiiiwloci by lands a i lr. lh Uvl Uiver valley. mid rmrnlnK methods as old aa ttiope, of the clta of Egypt, a moOern agriuuliuial aca-.erny has been atarted by tim nfovernmen-. officials of this back woods of Clilna They have appropriated tVJ,(xJ) a ytar Ivr lie support and have a live experiment! farm of 300 acrea con nected with It Tfila ngrlculti ral station was founded by Tang bhao H the former governor of Muktion, who -icently went to America to thank ua for the return of the Boxer Indemnity. I Understand that a part of kla mlsflon wan to look up educational taient for his agricultural academy, and that he will bilng a dozen or ao young Americans bacll with him. He has al ready Induced two of our well known agri cultural experts to come here. These are Mr. E. C. Parker and Mr. W. H. Tom have, who have both been connected with the University of Minnesota. Both have performed good experimental farm work In the United States. Prof. Parker has written several books and has also dons excellent work for the government at Washington. These young men are now on the ground. They arrived some months ago and since then have been traveling over Manchuria on horseback and in carts, studying the country and Its agricultural possibilities. They have covered a large part of south ern Manchuria and have srone thrnnrh at the Fame school. The new aftricultural academy has as Its director Mr. C. B. Chan, a young Chinese graduate of tha University of California, who speaks Eng lish as well as any reader of this news paper, and the text books he uses ur bawd upon the work of our agricultural department In Washington. On the Way lo the Farm. It was through the kindness of M. T. Llnng whom I had previously met at tha viceroy's yamen, that Director Chan called upon me at my Inn and arranged for nie to visit the farm and school. Messrs. Par ker and Tomhavo went with us, and It was In two old Russlnn droschkles which were stranded here by the war that w galloped through th wide streets of Muk den and out Into the country. On our way we passed much farm produce coming into the city. There were great loads of sorghum seed hauled In Chinese carts by rough Manchurlan ponies and carts piled high with bags of soy beans. Now and then we passed a grain shop where millet and sorghum seed were set out for sale In round basket bins the size of a hogs head, and again went by men and anlmala bringing bean stalks and sorghum cane Into the city for fuel. Aa we did so Prof. Parker remarked: "That Is one of the curses of Manchu rlan farming. These people skin the land of Its natural fertilizers. Every corn stalk, every bean vine and every weed la saved for fuel. Even the stubble of the sorghum Is pulled up by the roots by the poor people, who are allowed to go over the fields after the crop Is harvested. rV it - Sam mwwmm iito:- 1, -fi .fi 5 V. , ' jLV. H A. M V 117 tif . . it? l' ' , ,irr if: w til '1 T "TTl'illtf"ll'hiril stack to watch the farmers thrash out the sorghum seed. They took the canes from the stack and cut off the heads and laid them on a, thrashing floor. A stone roller, hauled by a mule, was then driven round and round over the seeds until they were crushed off the stalks. The refuse was then winnowed in the wind and the stnlks were piled up for fuel. Before the seed is ready for food it must be again ground to get off the hulls. Sorghum grain la the staple diet of the Manchu. It la the rice, wheat, corn and meat of the people. The grain growa everywhere, and that on talks twice a high as corn grows equally well. Director Chan tells me that the boya are greatly Interested In their work. They enter the college for five years, having a preparatory course of two years, after which comes a three-year course in the academy proper. They are not charged for ti.ltlon or board, and the matter of en trance la largely hy the favor of the offi cials. Their education Is patterned after the short course schools of America, with the Idea that the Institution will soon be advanced to the grade of a flrst-olass agri cultural college, in which instruction will a man. Indian be given by American professors SORGHUM GROWS TWICE A MAN'S HEIGHT. Manrhnrln's ew Farm School. Passing onward through scenes like these, we at laat reached the school. It consists of a number of one-story brick buildings surrounding a large court, In which is a beautiful garden. The buildings are devoted to the clans rooms, laboratories and dor mltories of the students. They are well built, and indeed would be quite respect able .in any of the better class agricultural schools of America. There are rooms for bacteriological work and plant breeding; and the lecture halls are equipped with maps and diagrams such as are used In the United States. At present one-half of the instructors are Chinese, some of whom have been educated in America, the other half Japanese, the latter having been chosen through the pressure exerted by the Japanese consul at Mukden. some of the sparsely settled northern por- They pu" "v,ry ""lk leavln Mother lions, wnicn they tell me promise to be come one of the great bread baskets of Asia and possibly its meat basket as well. Indeed, this new agricultural movement Is one of the most encouraging evidences of the awakening of Asia, and that It should be so far advanced In Manchuria, beyond the frontier of China, Is remark able. It is also to be noted that the move ment has Its origin In America, and that it Is being backed with the American education of Chinese brains. His excel lency Tanc Shao Tl, who Is the prime mover and head. Is a graduate of Yale university, ard M. T. Liang, who Is the chief counselor of the viceroy, and also Tank Shao Yl's assistant, was educated Earth naked and the land as bare as your hcand. This has been done from genera- have ro fences, and their boundaries are marked only by stones. The roads whch cut their way right through the farms look more like ditches than roads, and turn this way and that across country. Now our droschky was tilted at an anglo tton to generation, and notwithstanding all of forty-five degrees, and now we bounced this the soil Is still rich." high as we went over the drains crossing $ ; the roadway. We frequently passed be- the Farms. tween great ditches, and I was told that mile from the hotel the farmers, dug them to keep the traffic Among We drove about before we reached the city wall. This is thirty feet high. It has a great gate on the Bide of the town near which the farm lies. We wound our way out through this, and then went perhaps two miles fur ther, passing many new tiled houses, until we reached the mud wall which incloses the suburbs. We were soon In the country rnd In the midst of such farming as Is common In central Manchuria. The fields out the fields and destroying their crops. I asked where were the houses and barns, and was pointed to a farm village which stood on a little hill off by itself. The Manchus do not live on their farms. They herd together In villages of mud houses and go out to the fields. There are no barns, In our sense of the word; and neither hay nor straw stacks. About some of the settlements one sees licks of sorghum can-i and piles of bean stalks. Such stuff is often corded up on the roof a and some times against the walls. This stuff Is not Intended for food. It If the wood and coal of the farmer. All the heating of the home Is done hy the kang, a sort of a ledge two feet high, which fills one part of a room, and which has a series of flues beneath It. Thefce flues are heated by the kitchen fire. A little bundle of straw or corn stalks will send the flames running through the flues and make the brick ledge quite hot. It is upon this ledge that the farmer's family sit during the daytime, and there, sprawled out, side by side, they fleep at night. The houses are nlmost all small, but many have outbuild ings which are used for the donkeys and ponies. Among the villages, rising high over the houses, are many ragged trees filled with great bunches of what I at first thought were crows' nests. Every tree we saw was full of such nests; and I asked Director Chan as to the birds which made them. He replied: "Those are not nests; they are bunches of mistletoe, an air plant which grows all over Manchuria. You will find thousands of such bunches In every part of the country. They are very destructive, and are even worse for the trees than are the orchids of tropical climes. Indeed, they are the orchids of Manchila." Coming closer I had a chance to ex amine these trees. The mlBtletoe bunches are scattered all over them, and their yellow and red berries may be seen shin ing out of the green. No rosy-cheeked American belle would dare to wander about Manchuria. She would be under the mistletoe half the time, and her lips would surely wear out, At another place we stopped at a grain Tartar Boys Learning Farming-. After a cup of tea. Director Chan called in the commandant In charge of the school and asked him to put the boys through thtir drill in our honor. He did so. There were altogether 150, ranging In age from IS to 20. The older students are big, burly fellows, and aa they came forth, dressed in their uniforms, they looked strong enough to cope with almost any problem, military or farming. At the command of their leader they went through a series of gym nastic exercises with as much skill as I have seen In the Japanese schools, and in their marching they exhibited the goose Makden, Experimental Farm. Leaving the School, we took a stroll over the farm. This comprise about 300 acres of as good soil as any in southern Ohio. It has upon It mulberry plantations to raise leaves for the silk, worms of a de partment to be started next year. The trees are growing well, and, aa wild silk 1 already produced In southern Manchuria, Director Chan thinks that an Industry fur nishing good silk may be founded. In an other part of the farm I was shown or chards of native fruit trees, together with several hundreds of apples, pears, peaches and other trees from the United States. There were walnuts from California and grape vines from a nursery on Long Island sound. All seemed to thrive. The farm Is experimenting on Wheat, tobacco and cotton, aa well aa on other vegetables and grains. It is raising sugar beets which are IS per cent sugar. This la 8 or 4 per cent more than Germany's crop, and It is thought that the Manohur lan market may be eventually be supplied by the home grown material. The diffi culty is that the people prefaa a can sugar, and that unrefined. t !" 'im t Stock Mreedlaa. The Mukden authorities are attempting the breeding of fine stock. They have sev eral Ayrshire and Shorthorn oowa and bulls and are crossing them with the na tive cattle. They will try to breed bet ter horses and to Improve the native step after the most approved manner of the German Infantry. I understand that a military drill is now taught in all the mod ern schools about Mukden, so that the edu cated Manchus will be a nation of well trained soldiers. Mr. Parker tells me that tha chief cattle In this part of the world now come from Mongolia. The natives use the wild prairie sandy uplands as grazing grounds (Continued on Page Three.) Up-to-Date Building Methods Make Busy Scene on New Theater Site fi ..." ; . ";Ss xrtf yj - . a 11 1 - k-si. T-;r,A i ? - 3 MASONS ON THE NORTH WALL OB" THE NEW BRANDEIS THEATER. u I. . ) - ........ .... , - i yt i '7f ------ - ' - w..... .. . . EXCAVATING FOK FOUNDATION tlElKA fOli NEW BRANDEIS THEATER. .HAT Omaha may have a new TT I theater tor the first prcduc- I tlon of the "Merry Widow" In In n ill this city on Monday, December fCr,l 27, 310 men, empoyed l:i two shifts of eleven hours each, are working night and day in a big hole at the corner of Seventeenth and DougUx streets under the supervision of F. W. Burnhum, superintendent for Thompson & Ktarrett, contractors with offiets In New York and Chicago. Since lust Thursday when the night fore was permanently installed not an hour has been lost on the work, and until the theater proper Is ready far occupancy in December tho contractors will continue to rush the job, perunuint; not a single, hour to be wasted. To Insure good men for the work the firm is paying from 20 to 30 cen.s an hour for common labor, and is giving men with teams fc.ol) per day. For a while, at the beginning of the work, ihe contrucuirs hHd a haid time Retting hand, but wltiiit: lue idsl !.' c-ks they nave ecu nd us man u uiey can use. Willi the conipletioii of the busemeiu and found ation work tne present fuie wul pioou bly be increased. Kur this Krundeis theater building uT5 carloads of brick will be required. In th-j walls up to the first story alone, l,5u0 OOJ brick will be used. Two hundred thous and cubic ft et of re-enforced coitureie will be placed In the structure. It will take forty carloads of steel for the frame work and other parts of the building. The cement placed In the building will amount to 1& carloads, or over JS.iwO barrels, in the basement and other pans there will be Ufa colums or piers. At night, for limiting every nook of the structure, twenty solar electric uic lights will be distrlbuied over the entire placj. One man gives his time to keeping tnese lights in older and removing litem to various placts as the work demands. At night the same number of teams, iwen.y, as are used in the day will be kept busy hauling lumber, brick, steel und outer material needed In putting up the best theaier buildup weM ot Cliti agu. With sucii a lii force or nidi working In this small apace the law vl ueodenis would pioLubty call for una or more deaths before the building Is finished A writer In Chicago, in fact, has figured il out that for evi ry story of u sky scraper one life is taken as toll. In all cities where great steel girders are placed In the structures and wheie considerable machin ery Is employed in the work no contractor starts out with a J.b without expecting t lose some f Ins workmen by accidents before the work Is finished. But In the Brandels Theater building Superintendent Burnham declares there will not be one life lost. A smart looking young fc-llow, who evidently hau heard about the accidents on Chicago's skyscrap ers, approached the superintendent the other day and a.ked whether il would pay him to hang around the building in hope of seeing some one killed. The query affected, tu superintendent's pride, for he has had only one death on his work since he has been In the business, and he spoke to the young fellow in the following language: "Hang around here If you want to, but yours will probably be the only death It you do. We don't have any accidents on this Job worth mentioning, and I'll bet 100 to 1 that there Is not a life lost here. "We take special precaution to prevent accidents, and you can count all that we do have on the fingers of one hand. In making the foundations we shore up the dirt walls; that is, we put up strong braces of planks and pillars to keep the dirt from falling In on the men. If we didn't shore we might have" one or two deaths before we got through with the foundation work. "No, sir, young'fellow; there are going to be no serious doings around this job. So far. In over a month's work, we have had but one accident, and that was not a serious one. A negro accidentally struck one of his fellow workmen In the leg with a pick and forced him to quit the Job for a few days. That, though, is the only accident so far." For tho foundation of this new theater building It was necessary to go but twenty six feet below the level of the street. Nearly every man who has watched the work of excavation has declared the foun dation was not being laid deep enough for an eight-story building. Superintendent Burnham says such talk Is foolish and declares the foundation to be deep enough to hold up a thirty-story sky rcraper. "We put this foundation down but twenty-six feict," explained Mr. Burnham, "because the ground here In Omaha Is polld and gives a firm base for a building. The Brandels store building was allowed to go down sixty feet below the street level, but that was done 111 order to give the store a large basement. In this build ini we have Just gone down far enough to get below the basement, which, In this cise, is not to be nearly so deep as In the first structure. "I have been on Jobs In several cities In the United states and I know what depth is needed for a substantial building. In Omaha It Is not necessary to go deeper than twenty-five feet for a firm founda tion. This one we have in the theater would hold thirty stories or more. "In New Orleans there Is a soft clay, and It is necessary to go down many feet and then to drive plllnir down about sixty feet more to get a firm bottom. In Cin cinnati there Is gravel In the earth, and you can stop anywhere In the work. For a foundation In Chicago a depth between ninety-five and lis feet Is needed." The actual work of getting ready for laying the foundation for the theater building was begun July 1, and by August 11 the building will be as high as the first story. This does not mean that the floor of the basement will be laid, but all the foundation work will be done und the walis of brick will stand completed up to the beginning of the first story. After that time Philip E. Ward, the fore- (Continued ou Page Tores.) - : i .'-.. -. ... n CONCRETE! MIXER AT WORK ON NOW BRANDEIS THEATER. e-SV- . -II. txr - . 7 ' AAV MIXING MORTAR AND LATINO BRICK ON WEST WALL Off NEW BRANDEIS TttEATJJUL 1