OCR Text |
Show MANCHURIA AND TRADE. Consul Straight of Mukden recommends that in view of the present progressive administration of Manchuria, American merchants and manufacturers should enter the field at once and place their goods on the market before their competitors have become too permanently established. He proceeds to say that the Liao valley is one of the richest agricultural areas in the world, and the broad plains, stretching from Neuchwang to the north, are capable, with improved methods, of greatly increased production. He says that rye. barley bar-ley and sorghum millet yield large annual crops, and it is proposed to introducp alfalfa, sugar beets, cotton and various cereals. He thinks it would he a good idea (and several of the hisrher provincial authorities au-thorities have suggested the same thine) if manufacturers manu-facturers of agricultural machinery would send their representatives with a number of implements to tour the country, demonstrating their use at frequent fre-quent exhibitions; he thinks it would be an enterprise enter-prise that would meet with the approval of the Viceroy, and would doubtless be undertaken under the auspices of the provincial administration. Hut Manchuria is practically a virgin territory, with great opportunities for trade as well as investment. That would be all richt. but how lone after Americans took agricultural implements to southern Manchuria before the .Japanese would be selling precisely similar nine'iincry at half the price, and selling it; too. with the American brand on it? And when that great valley ami those table lands are under full cultivation, producing their own wheat and rvf and barley and cotton, it will he i discovered th it the .American trade in that region will fall off. because it is the purpose of .Japan to put the sod of China under cultivation in such a way as not only to feed the people there, but to export ex-port vast amounts. |