OCR Text |
Show THB CHINESE TRADB. Ex-Minister Wu tells the men of San Francisco about Chinese trade. But he did not mention the real troublo whch presents a great trade from growing up between the United States and the Orient China is naturally very rich. She could supply the world with wool, with rice and probably prob-ably with coal. But in her exclusiveness she fights back every attempt to push railroads because if once introduced they would run through the burial places of the Chinese and they will not have their dead disturbed. Hence there is no transportation with the interior except by water or by camel pack trains. But the great obstacle in the way is want of money. All China can do is to sell to foreign powers her products or to trade product for product, prod-uct, while the difficulty of carrying from the interior in-terior to the coast is so great that only a tithe of her products can ever reach a foreign market. She needs railroads and money. This latter need Is so great that the question ought to force itself upon the merchants and manufacturers of the United States in a way to cause them to wonder why they were ever induced to join in the interest-gather's interest-gather's cry to have silver demonetized. If silver was money at some ratio with gold, primary, independent money, they could loan it to China, taking Chinese products in return for principal prin-cipal and interest, and not only control the Oriental Orien-tal trade but in a few years increase the dimensions dimen-sions of that trade to proportions never dreamed of. Silver, by the way, is all the money that China can use, that is the Chinese people. Their daily transactions are too small to be rated in any other substance known to mankind. British cruelty in destroying silver as money in India caused the deaths by starvation of millions of the poor wretches in that country and restored the jungle to many fields that had. for centuries, been prosperously prosper-ously cultivated. The cruelty of American money lenders, which was at the bottom of the destruction of silver as money in the United States, has lost to the trade of the merchants and manufacturers of this country coun-try all but a mere trifle of the trade of the Orient. Think of it. All the silver taken from American mines since the discovery of the Comstock forty-four forty-four years ago would give the people of China only about $5 or ?6 per capita. In, that light, think how idiotic was the cry that we were being overborne by a great flood of silver. If that amount were loaned to China and distributed among her people, peo-ple, Jim Hill's dream of selling to the Chinese goods to the value of $5 each per annum might be realized. If It could be half realized it would mean a market for American products of 1000 millions of dollars per annum. What would that be for the fanners, artisans, railroads and ship owners of the United States. To kill that possibility the so-called so-called statesmen of our country struggled for thirty-five years before they made it a success. It started with the interest-gathers of London, Berlin and New York. They exult still over their triumph and do not yet realize that it is the first time in modern history that the sharp devices of Pawnbrokers have passed for statesmanship. |