| YEAR | IMPORTS | EXPORTS | TOTAL |
EXCESS OF EXPORTS |
| 1902 | 275 | 425 | 700 | 150 |
| 1904 | 300 | 500 | 800 | 200 |
| 1906 | 322 | 514 | 836 | 192 |
| 1908 | 390 | 484 | 874 | 94 |
| 1910 | 490 | 713 | 1203 | 223 |
| 1911 | 600 | 800 | 1400 | 200 |
The exports for 1911 are thirty-two per cent. larger than the average of the five preceding years, and the imports show a gain of thirty-four per cent. The revenue from the customs for 1911, which amounted to $173,000,000, shows a gain of twenty per cent. over the average for the preceding five years. The customs dues of Russia amount to about twenty-nine per cent. of the value of the imports. Nearly half of the export trade of Russia is of grain, the entire export being roughly divided into food-stuffs, sixty-five per cent.; raw material and partly manufactured goods, thirty per cent.; animals, two and one half per cent.; and manufactured goods, two and one half per cent. The export wheat of Russia, amounting to nearly four and a half millions of tons, goes principally to Holland, England, Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium, in the order named. The barley goes to Germany, the oats to Holland and England, the corn to England, and the bran to Germany. The principal manufactures exported are rubber goods, textiles, crockery, glass, and metal goods. The exports of manufactured goods have not increased to a great extent in the last ten years, and probably will not for some time to come, as Russia is developing so rapidly within that the home market absorbs more of everything than can be produced with present facilities. The import trade of Russia for the last six years, expressed in millions of dollars, was as follows:
| YEAR |
FOOD PRO- DUCTS |
RAW MA- TERIAL AND PARTLY MANUFACT. |
LIVE STOCK |
MANUFAC- TURED GOODS | TOTAL |
| 1906 | 55 | 174 | .500 | 93 | 322 |
| 1907 | 61 | 194 | .550 | 106 | 361 |
| 1908 | 65 | 212 | .762 | 114 | 392 |
| 1909 | 60 | 212 | .800 | 132 | 405 |
| 1910 | 63 | 266 | 1.580 | 161 | 492 |
| 1911 | 69 | 266 | 1.780 | 190 | 527 |
As compared with the average of the preceding five years, the figures of 1911 show an increase in the imports of food products of fourteen per cent.; in raw material and partly manufactured goods of twenty-six per cent.; in live stock of one hundred and twelve per cent.; and in manufactured goods of fifty-six and a half per cent. The increase in food-stuff importations was due to the increased consumption of fish, this increase amounting to over $26,000,000. Other increases noted consisted largely of fertilizers, building materials, machinery, and the thousand and one manufactured articles long in use in other countries.
The five-year average of manufactured goods imported into Russia annually tells the story of the growing importance of this trade to the manufacturers of the world. From 1897-1901 it was $92,751,000. From 1902-06 (the period of the war with Japan) it was $84,048,000. From 1907-11 it was $140,440,000. The larger part of the export trade of Russia goes to Germany, England, Holland, Austria-Hungary, France, and Italy in the order named, Germany being by far the largest buyer of Russian goods. According to the figures of direct trade, Russia buys nearly all of her supplies from Germany, England, the United States, France, and Austria-Hungary in the order named; but if the indirect trade be taken into consideration, the United States comes second. Even then Germany, with her Russian sales amounting as they did in 1911 to $250,000,000, is by far the most important trader. The position of Germany in Russia in trade, finance, and diplomacy is very strong. To Germany goes more of Russian produce than to any other three countries, and from Germany are purchased at least half of all the imports of the Russian people. Much of this is indirect business, it is true, the Germans acting as brokers for other nations; but a considerable profit on the transaction remains in Germany, and the mere fact of the enormously strong trade relation constitutes a powerful factor in holding the two peoples in close friendship and in giving to all German enterprise in Russia a predominating prestige.
The beginnings of this Russo-German trade date back many years, for geographic and racial reasons, but it has been encouraged at all points by the Germans themselves, or it would not have maintained its phenomenal lead over that of other countries. The effect of this trade is apparent everywhere. German is the most useful language in Russia to those who do not speak Russian. A stroll along any one of the principal business streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg will reveal the names of scores of German firms with large Russian connections, or, in fact, the names of many German firms whose sole business is in Russia. The Germans come, stay, and conquer in foreign trade matters here as elsewhere, because they do not deal through foreign agencies or commission houses, but through their own people on the ground, to sell direct to the consumer. Another point in foreign trading which forces itself upon the attention everywhere is the banking facilities furnished to German traders by German banks or branches of German banks established in foreign cities. The bank and the trader arrive at the same time, and coöperate most successfully in their joint campaign for business. German railroads at home give low through rates on goods to any part of the world; German ships are waiting at the docks to carry the goods; German firms are at the other end of the journey to receive the goods and distribute them; and German banks advance the money to facilitate purchase, shipment, and sale until such time as the money is available from the consumer. Long credits are the rule in Russia, as in many other countries, and financial coöperation is a requisite of successful trading in a majority of cases.
English banks do little or no industrial or commercial business. Years ago there were private banks in England that worked in harmony with the English foreign traders, and it was partly due to the liberality and activity of these banks that the foreign commerce of England gained such headway as it did in far-away places. For one cause or another, these private or trading banks have disappeared in England, and in the financial districts money is now a commodity, as it is in the United States, handled without imagination and with no sympathy or understanding of the needs of foreign business. An English or American bank of to-day is nothing more or less than a glorified pawnbroker, who will cheerfully lend ninety-five per cent. on a gold dollar as security, but will lock his moneybags when a man with orders for goods to be sold on long time in foreign countries comes asking for intelligent coöperation in the production and vending thereof. Able financial experts devote pages of good white paper and pounds of ink in England and America to criticism of the German industrial banking system, but whatever may be its faults at home, it is beyond cavil almost entirely responsible for the tremendous gains made in German and foreign commerce in recent years.
Nowhere is this illustrated more forcibly than in Russia, and here as elsewhere the class of goods sold by the Germans contains larger elements of labor and profit than the foreign trade of most nations. To export raw materials, food-stuffs, steel rails, and other staples at infinitesimal margins of profit when the home markets are slack may bring export figures up into the hundreds of millions, but it does not leave in the country of origin the paid wage-roll or the manufacturing or middleman profit recorded of intricate machinery, novelties, chemicals, and other high-priced products of hand, loom, or other ingenious machines inspired by mechanical and inventive genius.
The United States buys from Russia about seven million dollars’ worth of goods, eighty per cent. of which are included in alcoholic product, glycerin, furs, hides, and skins. Among other important items of Russian export to America are flax, fusil-oil, and wool. In 1911, Russia sent nothing to the island possessions of the United States. There is no branch of manufacturing in which Russia competes seriously with America. Three years ago the Russian steel mills on the Black Sea underbid the American steel mills in the efforts of the latter to secure a large order from the Argentine Government, but since that time the Russian producers have joined the international steel conference, and serious underbidding is no longer feared from that direction. The United States sells to Russia about fifty million dollars’ worth of raw cotton, eleven million dollars in agricultural machinery, five million dollars in leather, three million dollars in general machinery, a million and a half dollars in flour, a million in raw rubber, and the balance of her sales comprise a variety of manufactured products. In this latter classification it is encouraging to note half a million dollars in type-writers, and the same amount in automobiles. Indirect trade in these items adds largely to these figures, but is difficult of exact determination.
A number of great American industries have organized Russian companies and built factories in Moscow and elsewhere. Notable among these is the sewing-machine industry, which employs 4000 people in its Moscow factory, and is said to have 20,000 selling agents in the Russian Empire. The American harvesting-machinery interests manufacture in Russia such implements as fall under import duties in the Russian tariff, and import duty free those which are under the existing treaty of commerce. Should no new treaty be negotiated between Russia and the United States, it is evident that new extensions of the Russian-American factories must result, and importations from the United States must decline.