Page:James Hudson Maurer - The Far East (1912).pdf/44

 "Open-hearth furnaces will be erected at the mines and a railroad will be built to the colliery, so as to enable deep draft steamers to load direct from the cars, for it is proposed to open up the coal industry also to compete with the poor and unserviceable present product of Japan. Fuel will be transported to Shanghai and even to Hong Kong. It is the intent of the management of this new industry to expend at least a million dollars in improvements this year (1907)—an indication of the scale on which this plant is operated."

Mr. W. H, Donner, president of the Union Improvement Company, and formerly president of the Union Steel Company, in part says: "Less than a year ago during the course of a world's tour, I visited at Han-Yang, China, a modern steel plant in full operation and exporting steel rails and pig iron to Japan, and some of the latter product to the Pacific Coast of the United States."

This same gentleman is quoted by The Gazette-Times, of Pittsburg, on February 18, 1912, as having said that if the steel industry in China is properly developed the Chinese manufacturers will be enabled to deliver the finished product to the eastern coast of the United States upon the completion of the Panama Canal.

Mr. Donner said that China has everything in her favor where the iron and steel industry is concerned.

"They have enormous deposits of iron ore," he said, "very much higher in iron than the ore we now use, and running from 62 to 65 per cent, in ore. This ore is almost free from sulphur and is low in phosphorous. They have an abundance of excellent coking coal, which can be mined at very low cost, because they have the cheapest labor in the world. To one who has never visited China this may appear an exaggeration, but it is a fact. I believe it is possible to produce pig iron and finished steel more cheaply in China than in any other country in the world.

"The Hanyang Iron and Steel Works employs more that 5,000 workmen in its plant and several thousand others in its ore and coal mines. The company is now filling a pig iron contract of iron 36,000 to 72,000 tons annually for 15 years, with a steel plant building on Puget Sound.

"The plant is owned entirely by a Chinese company;