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The first day which J.W. spent in Shanghai was a big day for him.  Even amid the strangeness of the scene he felt almost at home.  The people who had the Cummings agency had received their instructions, and were prepared to help him every way.  He could begin an up-country trip at once if he wished.  Then he met the first of the men to whom Pastor Drury had written, Mark Rutledge, and at once he saw that this well-groomed, alert young missionary, who used modern speech in deliberate but direct fashion, would be of immense service to him.

Rutledge received J.W.’s gospel of tools with almost boyish enthusiasm.  “I’ve always said,” he exclaimed, “that if the other business men of America had as much sense as the tobacco folks they would hasten the Christianizing of China by many a year.  Not that tobacco is helping; far from it.  But it’s the idea of fitting their product to this particular market.  And your house has evidently caught that idea.  You must have a real sales manager in Saint Louis!  Of course I’ll help you all I can.”

Some of the help which Mark Rutledge gave him was of a sort that J.W. could not rightly estimate at the time, but he knew it was good.  As long as he stayed in Shanghai, and as often he came back to the city as a base, he and Rutledge were pretty frequently together.  The missionary kept his own counsel as to the Drury letter, merely dropping a hint now and then, or a suggestion which fitted both the Cummings agency’s program and the pastor’s desire.

The inland trips for business purposes kept J.W. busy for weeks; he found himself in so utterly novel a situation that he saw he could not work out anything without careful study and expert Chinese cooperation.  As he came and went he saw, under Rutledge’s guidance, much of the inside of mission work.  In Shanghai he found a Methodist publishing house, sending out literature all over China, as well as two monthly papers, one in Chinese and one in English.  Many missionary boards had headquarters here.  From Shanghai as a business center every form of missionary work was being promoted, reaching as far as the foothills of the Thibetan plateau.  Hospital equipment was distributed, and school equipment, and supplies of every variety.  He saw that it was the financial center too, and mission finance is a special science.  Shanghai seemed to J.W. to be one of the great capitals of the missionary world.

Rutledge’s own work, many sided as J.W. saw it was, had two aspects of special significance.  Rutledge was sending back to America all the information he could gather from the whole field.  With the skill of a trained reporter he showed the missionaries how to write so as to make a genuine story seem convincing, and how to subordinate the details to the importance of making a clear and single impression.

The other work of Rutledge’s which caught J.W.’s eye was his activity in behalf of the young people of China.  Until lately nothing at all had been done comparable to the specialized development of young people’s work in America, but now the Epworth League was beginning to be utilized and adapted to Chinese ways.  Funds were available—­not much, but a beginning.  Leaders were being trained.  A larger measure of local, Chinese help was being employed.