Part 22

In studying these Eastern peoples one is also led inevitably to such reflections as Mr. Roosevelt gave utterance to in his Romanes lectures a few months ago. Not only are the Orientals schooled from their youth up to endure hardness like good soldiers, but their natural increase contrasts strikingly with the steadily decreasing birth-rate of our French and English stocks. In Japan I soon came to remark that it looked almost as unnatural to see a woman between twenty and forty without a baby on her back as it would to see a camel without a hump; and Kipling's saying about the Japanese "four-foot child who walks with a three-foot child who is holding the hand of a two-foot child who carries on her back a one-foot child" came promptly to mind. In view of these things it is not surprising to learn that in the last fifty years Japan has increased in population, through the birth rate alone, "as fast as the United States has gained from the birth rate plus her enormous immigration." The racial fertility of the Chinese is also well known; a Chinaman without sons to worship his spirit when he dies is not only temporarily discredited but eternally doomed. As for India, that every Hindu girl at fourteen must be either a wife or a widow is a common saying, and readers of "Kim" and "The Naulahka" will recall the ancient and persistent belief that the wife who is not also a mother of sons is a woman of ill-omen.

Mr. Putman Weale abundantly justifies the title of his new book, "The Conflict of Color"--the seeming foreordination of some readjustment of racial relations if present tendencies continue--when he asserts that while the white races double {271} in eighty years, the yellow or brown double in sixty, and the black in forty.

This last consideration, that of a possible readjustment of racial relations, leads us very naturally to inquire, What are the qualities that have given the white race the leadership thus far? And what may we do for the conservation of these qualities?

There are, of course, certain basic and fundamental reasons for white leadership that I need not elaborate. For one thing, there is the tonic air of democratic ideals in which long generations of white men have lived and developed as contrasted with the stifling absolutism of the East. There is also our emphasis upon the worth of the Individual, our conception of the sacredness of personality, as compared with the Oriental lack of concern for the individual in its supreme regard for the family and the State. And even more important perhaps is the fact that the white man has had a religion that has taught--even if somewhat confusedly at times--that "man is man and master of his fate," that he is not a plaything of destiny, but a responsible son of God with enormous possibilities for good or evil, whereas the Oriental has been the victim of benumbing fatalism that has made him indifferent in industry and achievement, though it has given him a greater recklessness in war. It would also be difficult to exaggerate the influence which our radically different estimate of woman has had upon Western civilization. And here we have to consider not only woman's own direct contributions to progress, but also the indirect influence of our regard for woman, not as an inferior and a plaything, but as a comrade and helpmeet. How frequently the ideal of English chivalry--

"To love one maiden only, cleave to her, To worship her by years of noble deeds"--

has been the inspiration of the best that men of our race have wrought, it needs only a glance at our literature to {272} suggest. These things are indeed basic and fundamental and the question of their conservation, the preservation of the ideals of the Occident as compared with those of the Orient, is supremely important not only to us as a nation but to all our human race. But when one comes to consider only the sheer economic causes of the difference between Oriental poverty and Occidental plenty, it seems to me impossible to escape the conviction, already expressed and elaborated that it is mainly a matter of tools and knowledge, education and machinery.

In the Orient every man is producing as little as possible; in the Occident he is producing as much as possible. That is the case in a nutshell.

With better knowledge and better tools, half the people now engaged in food-production in Asia could produce all the food that the entire rural population now produces, and the other half could be released for manufacturing--thereby doubling the earning power and the spending power of the whole population.

It is universal education and modern machinery, far more than virgin resources, that have made America rich and powerful. Let her make haste then to learn this final lesson that the Orient teaches--the necessity of conserving in the fullest degree all the powers that have given us industrial supremacy: the power of the trained brain and the cunning hand reinforced by all the magic strength that we may get from our Briarean "Slave of the Lamp," modern machinery. We must thoroughly educate all our people. Was it not an Oriental prophet who wrote: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge?" In China only 1 per cent, of the people can now read and write, and the highest hope of the government is that 5 per cent, may be literate by 1917. In India only 5 per cent, can read and write. In Japan for centuries past, the education of the common man has also been neglected, but she is now compelling every child to go into the schools, {273} and her industrial system will doubtless be revolutionized at a result.

In no case must we forget that education, if it is to be effective, must train for efficiency, must link itself with life and work, must be practical. I had thought of the movement for relating the school to industry as being confined to America and Europe. But when I landed in Japan I found the educational authorities there as keenly alive to the importance of the movement as ours in America; in China I found that the old classical system of education has been utterly abandoned within a decade; in the Philippines it was the boast of the Commissioner of Education that the elementary schools in the islands give better training for agriculture and industry than those in the United States; and in India the school authorities are earnestly at work upon the same problem.

Knowledge and tools must go hand in hand. If this has been important heretofore it is doubly important now that we must face in an ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hardship, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and racial readjustment.

THE END

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INDEX

American commerce abroad, 87-8, 91-2 American goods sold lower abroad, 101 Ancestor worship, Japan, 7-8 Area and population, Manchuria, 78; Philippines, 163; India, 211 Artistic Japanese, 40, 48-9

Beans in Manchuria, 75-6 Beasts, India's wild, 258-60 Benares, 202 Boxer troubles, 125-26

Camels in China, 116-17 Canton, 142 Caste system, 226-35; effect on labor, 229; robber caste, 231; defended, 232 Child marriage in India, 237-8 Children, Hindu, 223-4 China, premonitions of revolution, 93, 102-6. China Sea, 153 Chinese hardiness, 187-8 Chinese immigration, 114-15 Christian vs. Hindu philosophy, 199, 204-5 Christian vs. Oriental philosophy, 271 Cocoanut planting, 189 Confucianism, 103 Conservation of forests, 262-4 Cooperative credit societies, Japan, 25; India, 222 Crops-- Rice, 23-5; cotton, 23, 76, 140, 168, 254-7; India's crops, 219 Currency reform in China, 97-98

Diseases and sanitation, 56-64, 72, 135, 170-71 Dress, Japanese, 10-11; Indian, 216

Education, 272; Japanese, 17; Chinese, 99, 109-11; Filipino, 168-9; Indian, 210 Elephants, Stories about, 193-5 Extravagance, American, 264-6

Factory child labor, 268; Japan, 33 Family government, 7, 149 Famines in India, 218-20

Farm animals, Japan, 22; Manchuria, 74; Philippines, 159 Farming-- Japan, 21-28; Manchurian, 76; Chinese, 122, 126-8, 140-41, 177; Philippine, 155-6, 165; Indian, 218-23, 255-7; tools, 23, 190, 218; houses, 26, 127, 156, 212 Fatalism, 227-8 Filipino character, 172 Filipino houses, 156 Foot binding. Chinese, 133-84 Funeral and burial customs, 77, 124, 128, 144-5, 203-4, 243

Ganges, 203 German commercial activity, 190 Government, Japanese, 4; Korea's corrupt, 65-7; Chinese, 108 Great Wall, 120-21

Himalayas, The, 208-9 Hindu gods and goddesses, 200 Hindu village described, 212

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India, English rule in, 248-52 India's diversity of races, 248 Individual, repression of, 55-6 Industrial efficiency, 37, 40, 141

Japan control in Korea, 67-8; Manchuria, 78-92 Japanese city described, 9-11 Japanese-Russian War, 70-72; 90-91

Korea, 60-69

Language-- Japanese spoken, 3; written, 9-10; Chinese, 129-30 Lawrence, Sir Henry, 246 Love of nature, Japanese, 27

Machinery, Asia's refusal to use, 183 Manchuria's fertility, 73-4 Manila, 154 Manufacturing, Japan, 31, 34-47 Marriage customs, Japanese, 5-7, 139; Korean, 63; Chinese, 134; Indian, 236-43 Missionary work, 59, 69; Japan, 61; Korea, 68; Philippines, 164 Moral standards, 134, 136 Music, 5

Odd customs, Japan, 3-6, 12; Korean, 65 Okuma, Count, interviewed, 44-5; 266 Open door in Manchuria, The, 78-92 Opium, China's crusade against, 94-6; 108

Parcels post, 101 Peking, Glimpses of, 123-25 Perry's Expedition, 58 Persecution of Christians, 51-2, 125-6 Philippine government, 167-70 Philippine resources, 165-7 Philippine scenery, 155-6 "Pidgin English," 150-51 Politeness, Japanese, 12, 13 Postal savings banks, 169 Poverty of Oriental people, 175, 210, 252 Practical education, 99, 273 Punishments, Chinese, 145-6

Racial fertility, 7, 11, 270-71 Railways, Manchurian, 83-6; Chinese, 139-40 Rangoon, 190-91 Religions, Shintoism, 49; Buddhism, 49-50, 151, 122-3; Confucianism, 130-31; Hinduism, 198-208, 227 Roads, 74; in Philippines, 171 Rubber speculation, 188

School term, Japan, 17-18 Size of farms, Japan, 21; China, 126 Slavery in China, 132 Social gradations, Japanese, 16 "Squeeze" system in China, 96, 112 Story, A Chinese, 146-7 Superstitions, 77, 128-9

Taj Mahal described, 244-5 Tariff-- Japanese, 30, 44-6; Chinese, 112 Taxes in Japan, 30 Torrens land titles, 98, 169-70 Tropical vegetation, 186

Wages-- Japan, 29, 34, 36, 42, 174; China, 126, 141, 174, 177; Burma, 196; India, 210, 223, 253-4 War spirit, 267; Japan, 35, 72, 266; China, 111-12 Wedding, A Hindu, 239 Welfare work in Japanese factories 31-3 Woman's degraded position, 271; Japan, 6, 52-6; India, 236-44 Women laborers, 39, 43, 177, 253-4 Wu Ting Fang interviewed, 139

Yang-bans, The, 66 Yangtze River, 138-9

End of Project Gutenberg's Where Half The World Is Waking Up, by Clarence Poe