Our Achievements and Prospects: Transvaal and China

The port of New Chwang is in the extreme northeast, and while the volume of American goods has not been great, the consular report for 1899 throws light on the probable extensive growth of our trade throughout the whole empire. It states that "the value of this trade during the year was 176 per cent. more than ten years ago. American kerosene oil has increased from 89,000 gallons to 1,730,000 gallons. Russian oil was not known ten years ago, so that the 92,000 gallons of this oil which were imported this year cannot be set against any figure of 1888. The American oil is naturally in most favor. Cotton cloth has increased in ten years from 40,000 haikwan taels in value to 677,000; and raw cotton, from 239,000 haikwan taels to 1,045,000. Both American drills and American sheetings have come into great favor here, the demand for them having became quite phenomenal. Ten years ago American drills were valued at 219,000 haikwan taels; in 1898 their value had reached 1,270,000, and American sheetings had grown in the same period from 426,000 to 2,154,000. On the other hand, English drills, which were valued in 1888 at 70,000 haikwan taels, had dwindled to 5,000, and English sheetings had declined in value from 70,000 haikwan taels to 52,000."

There is sharp competition among several nationalities to get concessions for the laying of railways through China. Americans stand well with the authorities, and are pushing these and other interests which are to open the way for ever-expanding business between our merchants and the Chinese people. On the other hand, it is probable that China will realize before long her own vast latent power as a producer and competitor in markets. In view of this Americans are getting their hand in by establishing improved means of developing the resources of the country. A friendly co-operation offers a happier outlook than rivalry from the outside. A population of four hundred million in an area of four million square miles offers a market for other besides material wares. About 386,000,000 of these people are crowded into about one and a quarter million square miles. When we have gridironed their country with railways and taught them our high farming, the Chinese may easily prove to be our dangerous rivals in food production for the nations. The outcome of the wholesale thrusting of modern Western ideas and methods upon this ancient and unprogressive people is yet to be tested, and American industry must regard the commercial invasion of China as one of the great problems of the new century, fraught with momentous issues to our domestic welfare.

Africa is four times as large as the United States, with a population supposed to be more than double our own. Its long-unexplored interior has quickly been divided up by the great powers of Europe. Great Britain, whose sons first made its wonderful possibilities known to the world, controls an area larger than that of the United States; France, and area almost equal in extent but comparatively unprofitable, and other nations hold smaller tracts. The Transvaal and Orange Free State, nominally annexed before actually conquered by Great Britain, comprise an area of about 170,000 square miles. Our export trade with Africa is as yet small, some $18,000,000 a year; but it has increased over three-fold in ten years, and would have reached its highest point but for the Boer war. America is interested in the diamond and gold enterprises over which the quarrels arose, by capital invested, by the export of mining machinery, and the local establishment of commercial agencies and employment of American civil engineers.

American capital has gone out to many nations during the later years of the century. Independent of the $80,000,000 loaned by this country to Russia, England, Germany, and Mexico within the last year, there have been about $30,000,000 of American capital invested abroad since 1890.

Among the other securities of foreign governments now held by Americans are those of Sweden, Switzerland, Wurtemberg, Servia, Bulgaria, Hungary, South Australia, and Tasmania. One of the New York insurance companies held $100,000 of Transvaal bonds when the recent war began, and another company held $50,000 of the same loan. Both these companies also held $100,000 of Cape of Good Hope government bonds.

Canadian bonds have always found favor in this market. A recent compilation by one of the Montreal banks developed the fact that $4,250,000 in bonds of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia governments, and of the cities of Toronto, Quebec, and Winnipeg, were the property of New York City investors.

The great business combinations popularly called trusts are a sign of the times. Whatever may be their economic significance, there is no mistaking the enormous progressive transformation going on in the realms of trade and finance when it is possible within five or six years to form about four hundred large combinations, with an aggregate capital of something like $6,000,000,000.