Massacres of Christians by heathen Chinese, and horrors of the Boxers; containing a complete history of the Boxers; the Tai-Ping insurrection and massacres of the foreign ministers; manners, customs and peculiarities of the Chinese .. . ploddingpatiently for a trifle. European and American journals have oftenmade fun of this antidiluvian way of carrying coal, as they call it,but it suited the people who lived by it well enough. The unemployed—at least the chronic unemployed—wereunknown in China before the arrival of the steam engine andfreight car, but for the last twelve or fifteen months the
Massacres of Christians by heathen Chinese, and horrors of the Boxers; containing a complete history of the Boxers; the Tai-Ping insurrection and massacres of the foreign ministers; manners, customs and peculiarities of the Chinese .. . ploddingpatiently for a trifle. European and American journals have oftenmade fun of this antidiluvian way of carrying coal, as they call it,but it suited the people who lived by it well enough. The unemployed—at least the chronic unemployed—wereunknown in China before the arrival of the steam engine andfreight car, but for the last twelve or fifteen months the territorybetween the Gulf of Pechili, Changting-Pu, and Pekin has beenoverrun with them. And the disfranchised men have not been in good humor—hungry people generally are not. Still, they might have continuedto suffer patiently—for at bottom the Chinaman loves peace andis capable of much endurance—if it had not been for the mili-tant class of must-be-idlers. For the railway hurt the professionalprivate police, also known as Boxers, no less than the industrialand laboring classes already mentioned. In this country the Boxers would probably pass under thename of athletes—thats what they really are—strong men drilled. F. GUTEKUNS WU TING FANG CHINESE MINISTER TO WASHINGTON CHEAPEST MANUAL LABOR KNOWN. 341 These men unfurled the flag of social war upon which waswritten in large letters : Down with the Railways that are Responsible for ourStarvation! From that to Down with the Foreigners, Who Foisted theRailroads upon us, was but a step. To sum up: Fear of starvation roused the anger of theChinese population against a useful innovation ; the bread questiongrew into a political grievance and culminated in the hatred offoreigners and in open revolt against the government, for theManchu dynasty is as foreign to the country in Chinese eyes as ifit were Prussian or Anglo-Saxon. These are facts; they show conclusively that the greatesttroubles were caused by unhappy social
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