Whenever a group of the early acquaintances of Dr. Mateer talked together about him, one thing certain to be mentioned was his achievements with apparatus and machinery, both with the making and with the using of them. Out in China his reputation for this was so great that it at times came near to being a burden to him. We have already seen that the temporary superintendence of the mission press at Shanghai was thrust upon him, contrary to his own preference, and because, as he expressed it in a letter at that time, the men in control considered him a “Jack-of-all-trades,” able to do anything at which he might be put. If they then did really think of him as no more than a man who with machinery could do a great many things without performing any of them thoroughly well, they did him a great injustice, which their subsequent knowledge amply corrected. As the years went by, and in this sphere of his multifarious activity he rose to larger and more difficult achievements, his fame as to this spread far and wide among both natives and foreigners. At no time, however, did he permit his efficiency in this line to loom up in such a form or in such a degree as to seem even to others to put his distinctively missionary labors into the background. It is a significant fact that in the eulogiums pronounced on him at his death this feature of his character and work is seldom even mentioned. He was—first, last, and all the time—a man whose life and whose abilities were so completely and so manifestly consecrated to the evangelization of the Chinese that when those who knew him best looked back over the finished whole, his remarkable achievements with apparatus and machinery scarcely arrested their attention.

Dr. Mateer himself regarded his efficiency in this sphere as due in some measure to native endowment. He had an inborn taste and ability for that sort of work; and stories have come down concerning certain very early manifestations of this characteristic. It is related that when he was a little boy he was suffering loss through the raids made by the woodpeckers on a cherry tree laden with luscious fruit. He pondered the situation carefully, and then set up a pole, close by, with a nice lodging place for a bird at the top, and armed himself with a mallet down at the foot. The woodpecker would grab a cherry, and immediately fly to the pole in order to eat it; but a sharp blow with the mallet would bring him from his perch to the ground. So the boy saved his cherries. It is also related of him that when a mere boy he had a friendly dispute with his father over the question whether a sucking pig had the homing instinct. He maintained that it would return to its mother under conditions that proved the affirmative; and in order to satisfy himself, he placed a pig in a sack, and took it a long way from its familiar haunts, and turned it loose. It had been agreed that the result was to decide the ownership. To his delight, immediately the pig started on a bee line for home, and never gave up the race until it was back in its old place.

For the development and application of this natural gift he received almost no help from others. Probably if that old workbench in the barn at the “Hermitage” could speak, it might tell something as to oversight and guidance of the boy by his father, in making and repairing traps and tools for use in recreation and in work; but beyond this he had no instruction. In his day at college a chemical or physical laboratory was supposed to be exclusively for the professor to prepare his experiments; the student was expected only to be a spectator in the classroom when the experiments were shown. The man who occupied the chair of natural philosophy at Jefferson when we were there had a gift for supplementing his scanty outfit of apparatus with the products of his own skill and labor, and if the student Mateer had found his way down into the subterranean regions where these were wrought, he and Professor Jones would have rejoiced together in sympathetic collaboration; but no such unheard-of violation of ancient custom occurred. In the academy at Beaver he first turned his hand to making a few pieces of apparatus which he craved as helps in teaching. But it was not until he reached China that this field for his talent opened before him, and continued to enlarge all the rest of his life. In fact, even when he was absent from China, on his furloughs, he did not get away from his work with apparatus and machinery. During one of his earlier furloughs, while he was looking up everything that could be helpful to his Chinese boys, he spent some time in the Baldwin Locomotive Works, by special permission, in studying the construction of locomotives, so that he might be able to make a model of one on his return to China. In connection with this he showed such an acquaintance with the structure of these engines that he could scarcely convince some of the skilled mechanics that he had not been trained to the business. Dr. Corbett wrote concerning him, after his death: “It was my privilege to meet him at the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893. He had spent nearly a month there examining minutely many things of special interest to him. As my time was limited he kindly became my guide for a while, and gave me the benefit of his observations. We first visited the department of electricity, which he had carefully studied in all its various applications. We next went to Machinery Hall, where he had spent days making drawings, measurements, and so forth, of the most complex machinery. He seemed to understand everything as though this had been the work of his life.” Dr. Hayes says: “Dr. Mateer’s ability to meet exigencies was well shown a few years ago in Wei Hsien, when suddenly the large dynamo failed to produce a current. He unwound the machine until he located the fault, reinsulated the wire and rewound the coil; after which the machine furnished its current as usual.... Electrotyping was hardly in general use in the west until he secured an outfit of tools and taught a class of native artisans. When electric fans came in vogue he purchased a small one as a model and proceeded to make another.”

The time came when Dr. Mateer had a shop equipped to do a great variety of work; and though not on a large scale, yet big enough to meet his needs. Already in 1886 in a letter to his brother William he said: “In order to repair apparatus, and in order to make many simpler articles, I have fitted up quite a complete workshop, entirely at my own expense. I have invested in the shop, in tools and materials quite one thousand dollars. I keep a workman at my own cost, whom I have trained so that he can do most ordinary kinds of work. There are a great many small articles we can make here more cheaply than we can buy them. There are, however, many articles we cannot make, especially those that involve glass or the use of special machinery, or special skill.” That shop continued to grow, and the variety of its output increased. Writing of this, Mrs. Ada Mateer says:

Up there it was perpetuated, the main difference consisting in larger and better quarters, with some improved conveniences. His wife continues:

So far as it was practicable he turned over the actual mechanical labor to Chinese workmen,—a skilled foreman and apprentices under the foreman’s direction.

Why, though a missionary, did he employ so considerable a part of his time in this way? Especially at the outset of his missionary career stern necessity to meet his own needs and those of his associates drove him to this line of work. Had he been set down in China at some such place as Shanghai, where foreign articles could be purchased, very likely his mechanical gifts would have remained largely dormant. But at Tengchow he helped to make a stove out of odds and ends, because one was indispensable in order to keep warm. For the same sort of reason he extracted teeth and made false sets, cobbled shoes, and acted as master workman of all the building trades in the erection of the “new home.” Sometimes he was thus compelled to do things which seemed strange even to him. When, in 1865, little Katie Mills died, he had to act the part of undertaker. He said:

At one point on the way through Siberia when homeward bound on his last furlough the train was halted by some defect in the working of the mechanism of the locomotive. Dr. Mateer, on account of the delay, got out of his compartment and went to see what was the matter. He saw that the locomotive was a huge Baldwin, with whose construction he had familiarized himself when in the United States on a previous furlough, and he quickly discovered the cause of the trouble. He could speak no Russian, and the men in charge of the engine could speak no English, but he managed to show them the cause of the defective working of the mechanism, and how to remedy it; and soon the train was again speeding on its way.

The time never came during his long residence in China when a necessity did not occasionally force itself on him to utilize his mechanical gifts, and not infrequently on the common utensils of life. In Wei Hsien he often spent hours directing in such repairs as were needed for furnaces and the like.

Few of his later and larger achievements in this field could be fairly regarded as works of necessity, strictly speaking; they rather were meant to be aids in the great enterprise of evangelizing the Chinese Empire. He was thoroughly convinced that one of the most powerful agencies that could be employed for this purpose was the school and the college. He was equally sure that of all the studies that could be introduced into the curricula of these institutions, none could be so effective in opening the way for the gospel as that of the natural sciences, and especially physics, inclusive of modern mechanical appliances of its principles. He believed that if bright young men were educated in that kind of knowledge, and sent out under Christian influences among their own people, if they were also converted to Christianity, the outcome must be the dissipation of the existing blind adherence to the superstitions and ideas of centuries long remote in the past; and that with this must come the opening wide of the door for the entrance of Christianity. That was his forecast; and the present situation in China goes far toward vindicating the wisdom of it. But to teach effectively the natural sciences he must have apparatus. The only way he could secure this was by buying what he could, and by utilizing his own ability to set this up, and to add as much as possible for the outfit yet needed. Such was the prime object not only of what in a more limited sense constituted the apparatus of the school and college, but also of such larger appliances as the plant for heating and lighting the premises. These were far more than conveniences that helped to better work; they were themselves constant exhibitions to the students and to the people at large of the principles of natural science, and of their value in the affairs of actual life.

Dr. Mateer utilized his outfit of apparatus and machinery as a means of reaching others besides the students in his own institution, with the influence of modern science, thus opening a way into their minds for the gospel. As to one of his methods of accomplishing this object Ada gives a graphic account:

Occasionally a mandarin of high order came to witness the marvels. The report of the Shantung Mission for 1909 says that through the agency of the chapel and museum twelve thousand people were brought into touch with the gospel during the year; so the work still continues.

Another good account to which Dr. Mateer turned this peculiar gift was that of starting industries for native Christians and promoting self-help among the needy. Now it was a loom for weaving coarse Chinese linsey or bagging, or a spinning or a knitting machine, that he ordered; again, he inquired for a roller press to be used for drying and pressing cotton cloth after dyeing; and more than once he sent for a lathe for a Chinese blacksmith. In 1896 he interested himself in procuring an outfit for a flouring mill. He said: “The enterprise of starting the mill was conceived by Chinese Christians, and they are going to form a company to raise the money. I do not think that there is a roller mill in China,—certainly not in north China.... We personally will not make a cent out of it; but we are interested to get the Chinese Christians started in an enterprise by which they can make a living, and introduce improvements into their country.”

His apprentices went out in many instances master blacksmiths, machinists, and electricians, and had no difficulty in finding places. A Chinese general temporarily at Tengchow employed one of these men as a blacksmith, and his order was so evidently filled according to western methods that he paid a visit to the wonderful shop of this wonderful master. The very last man for whom he obtained a place was his most skilled electrician and his latest foreman. This man started a shop up at the capital of the province, and for its outfit Dr. Mateer carried on an extensive correspondence and procured large invoices of goods. Because of the provincial university established there under the new educational régime there was imperative need of such an establishment, and the outlook for success was excellent. Unfortunately for the proprietor, however, the Chinese officials were equally alive to the opportunity and were jealous of a rival. So they managed to compel him to sell out, though they broke the fall a little for him by retaining him as foreman. It is said that the thought of this workman’s troubles lay heavy on the heart of Dr. Mateer in his last illness. It was usually for the poor that he interested himself after this practical fashion; yet he did not refuse to lend aid to others in promoting enterprises that would be of general advantage. For a wealthy Chinaman who owned a coal mine that had been flooded with water he went to a great deal of trouble in order to put him in the way of securing a suitable pump. But whether it was for rich or poor that the opportunity came to render such services, he put aside all thought of his own ease or name or profit, and did the best in his power.

He had special satisfaction in the manufacture of electrical machines, though it was no easy matter to cut and bore the large glass wheels without breaking them, and to adjust all parts so that the greatest efficiency was attained. Ada says:

Dr. W. A. P. Martin, of Peking, related in the “Chinese Recorder” of December, 1908, this incident as to Dr. Mateer: “It was once my privilege to spend part of a vacation in his hospitable home at Tengchow. I found him at work constructing scientific apparatus with his own hands and wrestling with a mathematical problem which he had met in an American magazine. When I solved the problem, he evinced a lively satisfaction, as if it were the one thing required to cement our friendship.” The problem was to find the diameter of an auger, which, passing through the center of a sphere, will bore away just one half of its bulk. It is easy to see that to a man of that sort his work and the scientific and practical problems constantly arising in connection with the making of apparatus and the adjustment of machinery must have been in themselves a rich source of pleasure, though he never allowed himself to be so fascinated by his shop as to break in on what he conceived to be his higher work. Speaking of his last years, Ada says: “He would go out wearied with the baffling search for a way of expressing clearly in Chinese a thought none too clear in the original Greek, his forehead grooved with the harrows of thought. He would come back from the shop an hour later, with well-begrimed hands, a new spot on his long Chinese gown, a fresher pink in his cheeks, a brighter sparkle in his eyes, and his lips parted with a smile. Then, having washed, he would immediately set himself again to the work of revision.”

He loved also to share this joy, so far as it could be done, with others. At the Synod of China with his apparatus he gave several exhibitions that were greatly appreciated. At Wei Hsien he rendered similar services in the high schools, and at Chefoo in the school for the children of missionaries. The Centennial Fourth of July, being quite an exceptional occasion, he celebrated not with ordinary gunpowder, but by setting off a considerable quantity of detonating chemicals. In the early days at Tengchow a home-made electric fly whisk whirled above the dining table, and a little pneumatic fountain playing in a bell glass rendered the room and the meals additionally pleasant to the family and to the guests. Ada writes: