Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 34, Number 91, 7 February 1909 — Page 8
THE RICHMOND PALLADIUM AND SUN-TELEGKA3I, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1 1909.
PAGE EIGHT. WAR TIME PRICES WERE LOWER THAU AT PRESENT TIME rpashionable Haultless Li oot wear Wholesale end Retdl OF THE
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Investigation Just Made in New York by Competent Expert Reveals Astounding State of Affairs. NO EXPLANATION MADE FOR THIS CONDITION While Prices of Commodities Have Been Soaring Upward Incomes of Workers Have Increased Slowly.
By Ford L. Thorpe. New York, Feb. 6. As a result or the general complaint against the high prices of food stuffs, a competent investigator set out last week to learn just how much foundation' there was to the stories. Not only was the investigator astounded, but the published results of his investigations have astounded New York. He used for comparison the prices prevailing at t he height of the civil war when every commodity was at a premium and the war-time prices averaged lower than the New York prices of today. , Offer no Explanation. No. one yet has come forward with anything like a satisfactory explanation of this condition. Under all economic laws which have governed in the past, this should have been a year of low prices. Crops have been abundant, it has been a twelvemonth of financial stringency and there has been peace throughout the world, In the past this combination always has made for low prices and it is up to the economist to explain why the natural order of things has been reversed this year. " Incomes Don't Soar. It is all too true, of course, that incomes have not traveled upward at the rate prices have. This applies to the incomes of both rich and poor. The former have had to give up many luxuries. The latter have had to give up many things they had regarded as necessities, sufficient food being the most vital of them. On the upper west side fresh eggs are selling at 60 cents a dozen, a higher price than they ever reached in war times Many families in New York live on an income of a dollar a day. They can't eat many eggs, when eggs are selling at five cents a piece. The butter brings 40 cents a pound. Chickens bring as high as 35 cents a pound, and even pickled side pork, the meat mainstay of the poor, has advanced to 20 and1 S3 cents a pound. ' The prices of beef have not increased during the past year, but they are enormously high as compared with five years ago. Very few food stuffs show a lower price and the general average is 20 to 23 per cent, higher than even one year ago. The average of incomes is lower today than it was twelve months ago. Everyone believes the country is
on the verge of boom times. Ordin
arily higher prices accompany booms
If they do in this case a great many
more people will go hungry before
incomes catch . up with the increase
Jn prices. "Old Foggies" Excited.
A number of "old foggies" are quite
wrought up over a line of work that
is being done at the National History
Museum of New York. Children, boys
and girls alike, are being taught to
make pets of and fondle snakes and toads and other reptiles of which man
has an instinctive horror. "The the
ory is that children must be taught
not to fear these things. As one pro
fessor puts it: "They are God's crea
tures and as much entitled to human
sympathy and understanding as birds
or oats or any other of the lower ani
mals. Don't Need Sympathy.
The old foggies the term is applied to them by those who ' support this latest educational fad profess to be unable to see that the snake and toad have need of human sympathy and
understanding or that they will bene
fit by them. Ihey do believe to
teach a girl to be fond of snakes and
toads is to take away from her some of those finer sensibilities that make
of woman's Creation's highest work and to render masculine In her views if it does nothing more. They declare that to teach a girl to coddle a toad is to unfit her to mother a baby, and they refuse to believe that even the
toad enjoys it. Thus doth progress have to battle against the prejudice of
. old-fashioned ideas.
pjfiimg tio tthe entieGnsDve cemniodelliiuDg uue ace ' coinrDpeDDedl to deOay tilhe
K10K1
'OS- wheirD we aim
ynrtoD aboutt February UStifa,
say tlhiaft we have tiHue foesti equipped shoe store odd tthe Kindly watch newspapers for definite date
tiato
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THE LATE EMPRESS DOWAGER OF ALL CHINA ; ; ( A in HJ7 JlfO TYO V Wire She the Greatest Woman of the Century? A Six IMU ntl,t 70 KJl I Million Dollar Funeral By Henri Korthagen
"It does seem stranare." said the man who seemed to be thinking aloud. "What seems strange;". queried the Innocent bystander. "That after getting a man into hot water a woman can't understand why he should boll over." i explained the noisy thinker.-Chicago Sieva,
The funeral ceremonies of the Em
press Dowager and Emperor of China j are being celebrated. Six millions ofj dollars will be expended as an ac
knowledgement of the great esteem
in which their subjects held the late rulers. The ceremonies will last three years. Overshadowing the personality of the emperor looms the figure of
the late Dowager. Reviled and hated by nearly every foreign court in Christendom, the grand old woman of China has stood as the greatest in
telligence and bulwark between her people and tbe would-be ravagers and despoilers of her ancient empire.
Her Tumultuous Reign. Measured by events and years, her
reign has scarcely a parallel In the world's history. Her rule beg"an be
fore the civil war was fought, the has witnessed the passing of Lincoln,
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley and
Cleveland. Nearly every European throne has been many times made vacant while this wonderful woman
has held sway. And she has ruled, as the headless trunk of many a Chinese statesman and courtier will bear testimony. And now that she is dead the world is slowly awakening
to the fact that one of the worlds greatest women has passed.
Her Humble Origin. Lake a page from the Thousand-
and-One-Nights is the history of T6iAn. There is enough of mystery to
satisfy the Orientalist. The most authentic sources of information give her birth-place as the frontiers of
Manchuria.
She was the daughter of a petty
official. Na-Ha by name, who. losing
his political preferences, was finally
reduced to the condition of a wandering beggar, and was frequently forced to change his place of residence. Finally, suffering, the extremes of poverty and want, he sold his daughter, the future empress, then four years old, to a millionaire of Canton. At this point the father disappears and is
never heard from again. The Canton millionaire acquired a great affection for the infant girl, and gave her a classic C.iinese education, openinsr a path for her to the Imperial throne. She Becomes a Concubine. Periodically competitive examinations are held in China for the position of Imperial consort, the candidates being selected from Manchurian
maidens between the ages of 13 and IS. Tsi An. unattended, proceeded to Pekin and passing the severe examination was declared the successful candidate. When the Crown Prince ascended the throne the concubine, Tsi An. gave birth to a son, thus becoming, following Ciiinese usage, the Western Empress, the then Empress Dowager claiming the title "Eastern Empress." Tsi-An was 27 when the Emperor died. From that time, until her death at the age of 74, she remained a widow. The Opium Traffic.
That the rulers of the Chinese Empire found little time for internal organization and modern methods was small wonder. England was forcing the opium trade upon the people of China. The Chinese rulers opposed with all their power the introduction of the drug. But the English shop
keepers were determined to fasten
en the use of the poppy juice upon the heathen. The final result was two disastrous wars in whicli China was the loser, the saddling of an enormous indemnity upon the empire, the session of Hong Kong and other treaty ports, and the greatest iniquity of all, the legalizing of the opium traffic. Civilization's Greatest Sin. Scholars, statesmen and humanitarians have stood up and given their opinions of this great national crime. The concensus of their findings is to the effect that history knows no parallel in centuries that have past. No people in the world's history have been subject to greater hurt. At last, after a hundred years have passed, civilization has acknowledged its great crime and is preparing to make amends. But it is doubtful if this great curse can be lifted. Half of the population are virtually slaves to the pipe. Entire villages are populated with weak, emaciated, blear-eyed, dullminded and starving humanity. Once
prosperous cities are masses of neg
lected ruins. Households are bare of
furniture, even the ancestral pots and brasses have gone to feed the mav of the opium monster. Opposition to Christianity.
We have heard much of the opposition to Christianity. Have you ever heard the Chinese version? Here it is: In the days when the Chinese struggled against the forces of Eng
land and fought to keep clear of op
ium evil, they hooed for the unanini'
ous support of the missionaries, but
failed to receive it.
Though there were a few who as
sisted China, the great majority were indifferent to the introduction of opium. Here began the perpetual feuls that has worked to the detriment of Christianity in China. Innumerable vprisingj and rebellions have had their inception in the antipathy engendered during the opium war?. Tsi An, quite naturally, entertained a doubt as to disinterestedness of.lhe missionaries, and a doabt as to the efficacy of Christianity. Sre found littt trouble in meeting eve;y argument that could be advanced lv Lhe Christians with answers that stung like the faugs of a serpent, and as a last and vnartswerable argument she called to ihtir attention the condition of her ruojtcts, brought a'xmi as she avermi. through temporizing with false
goos. The War Record, of Ti-An. The first years of her regency were filled wit'a the din of the great TaiPing rebellion, when the empire was rocked to its foundation by an internal war as vast, devastating and far-reaching as our own civil war. When this great internal strife was finally ended by the practical destruction of the opposing forces, it left the Imperial Clan torn and rent, and Tsi-An. for the sake of the Empire, temporarily renounced her authority in favor of Tung Chih. His death soon followed and Tsi-An returned to full power as regent in behalf of the infant KwongHsu. Once again, in 18S7. she attempt
ed to retire, but at each critical pe
riod in the life of the Empire, when great men and crafty statesmen found the situation beyond control, they call
ed for the brains and mighty will of
this wonderful oK 4owagr sad upon
her, alone, the task of saving China fell again and again.
The Tai-Ping rebellion, the war with
France in 1884. the war with Japan
in 1894. with Germany In 1897, the
British occupation of "Wel-Ha-Wei, the
Russian occupation of Laioutang, the cession of the Kow-Loon provinces to
the British, the Boxer outbreak in 1900. These are a few of the wars with foreign powers that occupied her
attention. There were internal wars of great magnitude that scarcely made
a ripple in the outside world. Times innumerable she found it necessary to dispatch imperial troops to quell demonstrations against foreigners, in order to save her exchequer the enormous drain through the payments of indemnities. The secret of Tsi-An's power lay in the fact that she was better acquaint
ed with the affairs of China than any; of her statesmen. Disaster after disaster befell unhappy China, great men gave all their power and energy to stay the march of events, such men as IA Hung Chang, the two Tsengs. the great Tso, Lin Kim-Yl and others worried and worked themselves to the grave in the effort to stem the encroachment of foreign powers upon the ancient rights of China. KwangHsu strove and crumbled up like a crushed reed, but the old woman of iron retained her faculties and powers to the day of her death, and never failed to step into the breach when her realm was in danger. Twice she fled from foreign troops, once from the allied French and British troop3
and once again during the wild days of the Boxer uprising. Though physically vanquished she never yielded her mental domination, and the rumor will not down that runs to the effect
that when the powers had penetrated j
Pekin, finding themselves encompassed by a hostile human ocean as it were, they were glad to yield authority to the fugitive empress. "What Were Her Policies?" There is much disagreement among authorities as to the real policies of the empress. Some hold that she was re-actionary and ultra-conservative and fought every change until events compelled her to yield; while others held that the empress was determined to modernize China by a gradual process that would eliminate the confusion that might ensue through the
use of sudden and drastic reforms.
There is much to certify this latter view. Now that she is no longer at the helm, there is already evidence that the ancient ship of state is heading toward dangerous shoals. Her Death. The secrets of the Forbidden City are not for the ears of China's myriads, muca less are they to become known to the "foreign devils, so the reports of the exact manner of the taking off of the Empress Dowager and her sod are wild and varied. There is one, however, that fits well into the life history of Tsl-An, the slave-girl empress. It is this: Finding her end approaching, and fearing to leave the destinies of China to her weakling son. Tsi-An ordered aim to commit suicidei Some reports say he complied, obeying as a Chinese is taught to do, the dying mandate of his parwit, others that the Empress ord
ered his execution. One can see the venerable empress, her body shaken by the tremors of impending death but with that mighty will that time and again held at bay the Christian nations, blazing from the depths of her sunken eyes. We can hear the gasp
ed commands, the obedience of attendants who knew no word but hers and then, knowing that her last edict had borne its fruits of death; we can see the wrinkled face take on the repose of death, and Tsi-An passes to her ancestors, feeling that she had done her full duty to the Chinese people.
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