Dr. Esson Gale's American top hat contrasts with oriental garb of Chinese salt transportation officials in this 1926 photo. Bay City Diplomat at Center of Founding of Republican China in 1913
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Every time I look at a label on a product that says "Made in China," my concern over our global competitiveness grows. And it grows even more when:
--Stores in the United States are filled with inexpensive goods made in China;
--Local industries in the Saginaw Valley are losing business and can't compete with China, despite the shipping costs;
-- Jobs of American workers, including those in Michigan, are lost to offshore countries like China;
We all should have great cause for concern.
But we don't -- mainly because we know little of China and do not have a referent point for the threat that China poses.
It may be that journalists have not done their job thoroughly enough, or perhaps the journalistic fraternity is as much in the dark as the general public about China.
We intend in this column to offer a few facts, spiced with a brief historical portrait a Bay Cityan who knew a great deal about China in the early part of the last century, the scholar, diplomat and administrator, Dr. Esson McDowell Gale.
China is a country of 1.27 billion people, largest in the world and comprising one fifth of the world population. That fact alone should give us in the U.S., with our puny 278 million people, pause.
China is second largest in land mass, with 9.3 million square kilometers, in turn dwarfed by Russia's 17 million square kilometers. The U.S. is fourth, close behind Canada, with 9.1 million square kilometers.
These may be prosaic facts, but the impact of globalization is only now beginning to be felt in our cities, sprawling suburbs and rural areas. Our way of life is changing, and we cannot fully grasp it because the change is incremental. Creeping change will soon come to change crashing all around us. We already see the federal government and all the states in crisis-point deficits as we attempt to maintain an incredibly high standard of living with a shrinking economic base.
All this would have been academic to Dr. Gale, a Bay Cityan who served the U.S. State Department and the Chinese government in China from 1908-1945. He was a member of the American Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Defense Force during the first and second revolutions, 1911 and 1913, and stood at the vortex of one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history.
From a peaceful start, Dr. Gale's career in China encompassed the rebellions, establishment of the Republic, ruthlessness of the warlords, a brutal Japanese invasion and, finally, conquest of the mainland by the Communists.
Dr. Gale was a towering figure in our Bay City pantheon of giants of achievement. His career in China and inthe academic world is chronicled in an obscure book, "Salt For The Dragon: A Personal History of China from the Last of the Emperors to World War II."
You can get the book at your local library, but a cursory reading has inticed me to readmore, although the politics and culture of China prior to the People's Republic, which was founded in 1949, are bizarre to say the least.
Nonetheless, the Chinese culture and politics of the time were plumbed well, and fathomed completely,by the distinguished Dr. Gale, a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Unfortunately, there are only a few tantalizing bits of personal information in Dr. Gale's book; a short bit about schooling here with the German Lutherans; a mention of his knowledge of the Chippewa Indians; a fleeting glimpse of the love of his life, "a girl with dark grey eyes and dark flowing curls" whom he met on a gorgeous October in Michigan; and, most tellingly, a recollection of his familiarity with salt and its production, gained at the salt blocks of his great-uncle's saw-mill on the Saginaw River.
He wrote in his memoirs: "I vaguely recalled reading somewhere that the mandarins used salt as a source of public revenue; it was in Messer Marco Polo's narrative."
Ironically, it was this spare knowledge of salt gained from Bay City that helped prepare Dr. Gale for the post of Chief Foreign Auditor for the Salt Revenue Administration in four Yangtse provinces in China.
Additionally, there was a family connection in the Far East. Esson's uncle, James Gale, was a missionary in Korea and author of a Korean-Chinese-English dictionary.
Another irony is that Dr. Gale had not been engaged in oriental studies atU-M, but rather earned his degrees in the history of medieval Europe. That was, however, enough to gain him an appointment as a student interpreter for the State Department in 1908, assigned to the U.S. Legation in Peking.
The Chinese had been required to use all their revenues from the salt tax to guarantee the Reorganization Loan of 1913, to be issued by British bankers. Funds were desperately needed for food, medicine and government services as revolution raged but the bankers would only grant loans if non-Chinese were in charge of the salt revenues. The Chinese had levied a tax on salt for 2,000 years.
As the 20th Century dawned, the old order of the mandarins was disintegrating in China. The young Republic of China (ROC) of Dr. Sun Yat Sen took over in 1911 from the Ching Dynasty, which had been in power since 1644. The time from 1912-20 is described as "the republican period" in China.
However, the Chinese had no preparation for democracy. A struggle forpower continued and included assassination of a former revolutionary, Sung Chiao-jen, main organizer of the Kuomintang.
To quiet the conflict and get the new republican government financed, strongman Yuan Shih-k'ai, sought a $125 million "reorganization loan" from a consortium of foreign banks, called the Six Nations Banking Group, headed by the British.
In the midst of the turmoil, enter Dr. Esson Gale, late of Bay City, Michigan, who was to become a key figure in guaranteeing repayment of the huge loan. One reason for his appointment to this important post as auditor was his experience in dealing with Chinese warlords in the provinces where salt was produced.
Dr. Gale reveals in his book that he was privy tothe negotiations for the loan by the Chinese government, which first sought Wall Street capital, but soon lured British, French, German, Russian and Japanese money. Squeamish Americans withdrew in favor of Belgium but later re-entered under pressure fromthe administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
Finally the "Five Power Loan" for $25 million came from Germany, France, Russia, Britain and Japan, secured by the salt tax of all China. The salt tax administration was reorganized under foreign control to provide security for the loan.
Dr. Gale's challenge was to subvert the imbedded corruption and bribery and introduce modern systems of administration and accounting. The success of the foreign administration was demonstratedby the fact that government revenues from the salt tax grew almost immediately by four times their previous total.
Dr. Gale returned to the University of Michigan in 1927 as a visiting lecturer on the history of the Far East, then served four years as chairman of the Chinese and Japanese languages department at the University of California. He called these five years his "academic interlude" before returning to China to be greeted by the opening shots of the conflict between Nationalist China of Generalissimo Chiang K'ai-shek and Japan. His incredible adventure continued until 1947 when the Communists drove the Republic of China to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan.
Dr. Gale spent his remaining years in Bay City with his home at 1900 Center Ave. He wrote his memoirs, published in 1953 by the Michigan State College Press, taught science for a while at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and died in 1964.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: the book, "Salt for the Dragon," by Esson M. Gale, is available for $25 on the biblio.com rare book website. His papers, 1926-65, are in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Gale and his wife, Annie Heron Gale, who died in 1975, are buried in section 19 of Elm Lawn Cemetery, behind the chapel.)
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mcdowell Says:
On March 17, 2015
at 03:22 PM
Hi Dave,
I am a relative of Esson Gale. I teach at Ann Arbor's Pioner High School. Email back if you get this. |
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Dave Rogers |
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