p. 10 | HOW SOME PEOPLE LIVE by William N. Brewster

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · May 31, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 22.

HOW SOME PEOPLE LIVE.

By William N. Brewster

HINGHUA is in the province of Fuhkien, of which the well-known tea port of Foochow is the capital. Its latitude is about that of Key West, Fla. It is washed by the waters of the Formosa Channel on the east, and is almost directly opposite the northern extremity of the great island of Formosa. It is almost seventy miles south of Foochow, and about equally distant from the port of Amoy, on the south.

It is not strange that your school atlas does not show it, for it is only about fifty miles across from north to south; and from the eastern side of the island, at the extremity of the long peninsula, to the most western point it is not more than one hundred miles as the crow flies. This, if a full rectangle, would make 5,000 square miles, but owing to the great irregularities of the cost line, there are not probably more than 3,000 square miles of land.

After careful investigation I think that 3,000,000 is a conservative estimate of the population. This makes an average of 1,000 per square mile. The whole population of Ohio concentrated in the Miami Valley, in the southwestern corner of the State, would not average more than that. And yet there is scarcely anything but agriculture to sustain the people; little general commerce and manufactures, and no mining, to give variety of occupation to the people.

"How can such multitudes live in so small a space?"

Well, the fact is that many of them do not live—they simply exist, dragging out a miserable, half-starved subsistence from the cradle to the grave. Fully one-fourth of the people eat little or no rice, because they can not afford to. They eat sweet potatoes and other cheap vegetables. But the marvel is that they are able to live so well.

This is accounted for by the immense industry of the people, their genius for economy, their skill in agriculture, and the natural fertility of the soil, together with the semi-tropical climate, that admits of cultivation the year round. —Rev. Wm. N. Brewster.