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English as an asset to medical work among their own people. Servants are
unbelievably cheap. While we were in Foochow a cook received $3.50 (gold)
per month, a laundryman $1.75 (gold) per month, and other wages were in
proportion.

In Fukien Province the missionaries receive two months' vacation. Anyone
who has lived through a Fukien summer in the interior of the province will
know why the missionaries are given this vacation. If they were not able to
leave the deadly heat and filth and disease of the native cities for a few
weeks every year, there would be no missionaries to carry on the work. The
business man can surround himself with innumerable comforts both in his
home and in his office which the missionary cannot afford and, during the
summer, life is not only made possible thereby but even pleasant.

Yen-ping is eight days' travel from Foochow up the Min River and it is by
no means the most remote station in the province. Very few travelers reach
these places during the year and the white inhabitants are almost isolated.
Miss Mabel Hartford lives alone at Yuchi and at one time she saw only one
foreigner in eight months. Miss Cordelia Morgan is the sole foreign
resident of Chu-hsuing Fu, a large Chinese city six days from Yuen-nan Fu.
In Ta-li Fu, Reverend William J. Hanna, his wife and two other women, are
fourteen days' ride from the nearest foreign settlement. In Li-chiang,
Reverend and Mrs. A. Kok and their three small children live with two women
missionaries. They are twenty-one days' travel from a doctor, and for four
years previous to our visit they had not seen a white woman.

These are some instances of missionaries whom we met in China who have
voluntarily exiled themselves to remote places where they expect to spend
their entire lives surrounded by an indifferent if not hostile population.
Can anyone possibly believe that they have chosen this life because it is
easier or more luxurious than that at home?

Some of the men whom we met had left lucrative business positions to take
up medical or evangelistic work in China where their compensation is
pitifully small--not one-third of the salary they were commanding at home.

We did not meet any missionaries who were engaging in trade with the
natives even though in some places there were excellent business
opportunities.

Consider the doctors as examples of the civilizing influences which
missionaries bring with them. We saw them in various parts o