VI.
SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON
PEOPLE.
The Tosa Maru brought us again into Shanghai March
20th, just in time for the first letters from home. A
ricksha man carried us and our heavy valise at a smart
trot from the dock to the Astor House, more than a mile,
for 8.6 cents, U. S. currency, and more than the conventional
price for the service rendered. On our way we
passed several loaded carryalls of the type seen in Fig.
61, on which women were riding for a fare one-tenth that
we had paid, but at a slower pace and with many a jolt.
The ringing chorus which came loud and clear when yet half a block away announced that the pile drivers were still at work on the foundation for an annex to the Astor House, and so were they on May 27th when we returned from the Shantung province, 88 days after we saw them first, but with the task then practically completed. Had the eighteen men labored continuously through this interval, the cost of their services to the contractor would have been but $205.92. With these conditions the engine-driven pile driver could not compete. All ordinary labor here receives a low wage. In the Chekiang province farm labor employed by the year received $30 and board, ten years ago, but now is receiving $50. This is at the rate of about $12.90 and $21.50, gold, materially less than there is paid per month in the United States. At Tsingtao in the Shantung province a missionary was paying a Chinese cook ten dollars per month, a man for general work nine dollars
