Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/74

42 what a regenerated China may mean to posterity. On May 13, 1908, President Roosevelt, in a powerful speech at a conference of the Governors of the States of the Union, denounced the prodigality with which the wealth of natural resources of the United States was being squandered. I extract a single sentence only: "We began with coal-fields more extensive than those of any other nation and with iron ores regarded as inexhaustible, and many experts now declare that the end of both iron and coal is in sight." Contrast with this state of affairs the case of China. Here natural resources, immensely greater in all probability than those of the United States, are being sedulously hoarded up for a future generation. Baron von Richthofen has spoken with authority upon the mineral deposits of China. Again let me give but a single quotation: "I was not a little surprised to find the southern half of the province [Shansi] ... constituting one great coal-field of incredible wealth; ... and besides, the seams accompanied by beds of excellent iron ore in abundance, and a variety of clays fit for many technical purposes.... All the conditions required for enhancing the value of a coal-field are here combined in such a remarkable manner as to make the extraction of a very superior coal easier and cheaper than in any other known instance.... And the quantity of coal available for this cheap extraction is so large, that at the present rate of consumption the world could be supplied from south Shansi alone for several thousand years." (See 'Ocean Highways,' New Series, vol. i. p. 314.) At Ta Yeh, to give but one other example of the enormous mineral wealth of the empire, stands a mountain of iron ore 3 miles long and 400 feet high, capable of supplying 700 tons of iron a-day for a thousand years. Yet we find "worn-out London horse-shoes coming out Even the present generation will see