In these enterprises the paucity of results
was due to the shortcomings of the agents to whom he entrusted
their management. The same reproach and the same apology might be
made for the Empress Dowager who, like the Roman Sybil, committed
her progressive decrees to the mercy of the winds without seeming
to care what became of them.
Next after the education of his people the development of their
material resources has been with Chang a leading object. To this
end he has opened cotton-mills, silk-filatures, glass-works and
iron-works, all on an extensive scale, with foreign machinery and
foreign experts. For miles outside of the gates of Wuchang the
banks of the river are lined with these vast establishments. Do
they not announce more clearly than the batteries which command
the waterway the coming of a new China? Some of them he has kept
going at an annual loss. The cotton-mill, for example, was standing
idle when I arrived, because in the hands of his mandarins he could
not make it pay expenses. A Canton merchant leased it on easy terms,
and made it
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such a conspicuous success that he is now growing rich. It is an
axiom in China that no manufacturing or mercantile enterprise can
be profitably conducted by a deputation of mandarins.
Chang is rapidly changing the aspect of his capital by erecting
in all parts of it handsome school-buildings in foreign style,
literally proclaiming from the house-tops his gospel of education.
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