JAPANESE JUNK, OR CARGO BOAT
These facts should be considered by every American complacently believing that the traffic of the countries and islands washed by the Pacific is open to American enterprise whenever we bid for it. When Eastern trade develops in magni
magnitude, it may be found that the Japanese have laid permanent hold upon its carriage and interchange. John Bull, be it remembered, drove the American merchantman from the Atlantic; and likewise Japan may capture the carrying business of the Pacific. It must be obvious that the nation controlling the transportation of the Far East will seek to control its trade: and it is sounding no false alarm to cite facts and conditions showing that the awakening lands of Eastern Asia have more in store for energetic Japan than for the United States, now fattening inordinately on home trade—when overproduction comes, as it surely will, it then may be found difficult to supplant another people in the occupation of conveying American commodities to Eastern markets. There are persons in the Orient, none too friendly to America, who expect to see the commercial flag of Japan paramount on the Pacific eight or ten years hence.
If it be conceded that Japan will absorb the bulk of the shipping of the Pacific as it develops, valid reasons for fearing Japan as the trade competitor of the United States do not exist. Unquestionably Japan is to exploit the industry of her people; but the same poverty of resources making this imperative insures for Uncle Sam a valuable partnership in the program. Japan is bristling with workshops and mills in which a hundred forms of handiwork will be developed—and in a majority of these the adaptive labor of the empire will fabricate, from materials drawn from America, scores of forms of merchandise, which the Japanese propaganda will distribute throughout China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan—the "Great Japan," British publicists are calling it. Methods, materials, machinery, tools—all will be American.
Having made no systematic appeal for the trade of the Far East in its broadest sense, America enjoys but small share of it. In the past few years our exports to Japan, however, have grown rapidly—chiefly in raw cotton and other unmanufactured materials. With Japanese selling agents canvassing lands inhabited by a half billion people, the products of America are to have enhanced consumption. This trade in Mongol countries, although vicarious, may run to large dimensions.
The leading item of Japan's industrial promotion program is to become manufacturer of a goodly portion of the textiles worn in her vast "sphere of commerce." The Japanese have seen that the British Isles, growing not a pound of cotton, spin and weave the staple for half the people of the earth, and wish to profit by the example of their prosperous ally. To this end, cotton mills have sprung into being throughout Japan, in which American-grown fiber is transformed by the cheapest competent labor in the world into fabrics sold to China's and Japan's millions. It is certain that the controlling manufacture of Japan will be cotton, and the production of woolen cloths may come next. It is interesting to know that Japan increased the value of her exports of cotton manufactures to China from $251,363 in 1894 to $16,126,054 in 1904.
"Why not fabricate her own raw silk, and send it to market ready for wear?" asks the foreigner reluctant to believe that Japan can hope to compete with Lancashire in the spinning of cotton. The answer is simple—it is because America is the principal purchaser of the raw article. Were it brought across the Pacific in manufactured form, the duty on it would be almost prohibitive; in its unwrought state it enters the country free.
Great progress must be made before Japanese business may be considered a "menace" to any nation enjoying Eastern trade, for the yearly value of Japan's manufactures is now only about $150,000,000, an average of about $3 per capita of the population. America has single cities that produce more. The combined capital of all organized industrial, mining, shipping, banking and agricultural undertakings in Japan is $475,000,000, or less than half the capital of the United States Steel Corporation. The Mikado's empire is bound to Great Britain by a political alliance of unusual force, but industrial Japan must of necessity be linked to the United States by commercial ties even stronger. Distance between Europe and Japan, and excessive Suez Canal tolls, give unassailable advantage to the United States as purveyor of unwrought materials to the budding New England of the Far East.