Fifty years have elapsed since the adoption of free trade by England.
It was hoped that the free entrance of commodities extended to all the
world would pave the way to an era of mutual peace and good will. But,
judging by the political situation, and taking the armaments as an
outward sign of good intentions, the era of peace and good will among
nations is certainly far off. To get a trading advantage here and a
concession from a semibarbarous country there is still the ambitious
striving of the cabinets and the diplomacy of Europe. To give the
striving emphasis, industry is taxed to the breaking point and labor
to the starving point. Russia exhausts her resources in a railroad
through the Siberian waste in her endeavor to obtain an outlet to the
sea, which is jealously closed to her at the southwestern end of her
dominions by England. The trader of Manchester, fearing for his
markets, grows frantic at the prospect of Russian cotton goods being
brought to China or to India. The mere acquisition of a port in
Manchuria by Russia threatens to seal his doom. But he might look on
with complacency. Russia's labor is very dear, capital is dear, wages
are on the Asiatic level, famine still stalks through the land,
intercommunication is made difficult by the lack of roads, and her
wonderful natural resources lie unimproved because the eyes of greed,
like those of the dog crossing the stream, are turned on the coveted
piece of meat he sees reflected in the water, and to grasp which he
drops the one he holds in his mouth. France bristles with bayonets,
and is constantly at pains to increase her naval armaments, about
whose seaworthiness her own minister of marine expresses suspicions,
in obedience to a nervous restlessness for foreign acquisition.
England, after her feat in civilizing savages and barbarians in the
customary fashion, shown again at Omdurman, is ready to turn her war
dogs on France, because the latter has the temerity to demand a slice
of Soudanese territory. Well might she have given as hush-money, or
for the mere grace of the action, a few thousand square miles of a
country closed to access except by the permission of Great Britain,
which has successfully pre-empted every desirable bit of land in
sight.
Germany, instead of using her newly liberated energies at home in an
endeavor to elevate the miserable condition of her working classes,
taxes their bread and meat, never too freely supplied, to increase the
size of her armies and the number of her battle ships. The defense and
expansion of her colonial empire is her leading thought. A strange
paradox: The workingman and the peasant are overburdened with taxes on
the necessaries of life, so as to procure markets for a limited
quantity of factory products outside of the field secured in open
competition.
While professing friendship and brotherly love, they all have their
eyes on their neighbor's throat, fearful only lest the other might
clutch first.
As we are in danger of being drawn into this vortex, it is well to
examine the range of possibilities and see what the trade amounts to,
to obtain which the scientific intellect of Europe and America has
been strained to its limits to discover new means of destruction for
attack and defense unknown to the other brothers in the common bond of
civilization.
It is a matter of course that trade among European nations does not
come within this circle, nor of European nations with the United
States. It does not depend on battle ships. In the annexed tables I
have classified the countries in three classes: (1) Independent
states; (2) colonies of European countries, populated by people of
European stock; and (3) colonies and dependencies of European
countries, but of non-European stock.
I have reduced the values of imports and exports of the different
countries, published in their own currencies, to American dollars. As
the values are paper currencies, silver currencies, or conventional
values, and of fluctuating rates, I have in such instances taken a
yearly average, which will be found in the footnotes of the tables.
_I. Trade of Independent Countries other than of Europe and North
America._
Key:
(A) Number of inhabitants.
(B) Importations. Thousands of dollars.
(C) Exportations. Thousands of dollars.
(D) Imports per capita. Dollars.
(E) Exports per capita. Dollars.
---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------
NAMES OF COUNTRIES. | (A) | (B) | (C) | (D) | (E)
---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------
_Asia_ (1895). | | | | |
| | | | |
China[A] | 383,253 | 128,772 | 107,499 | .34 | .28
Japan[B] | 42,270 | 90,681 | 62,443 | 2.14 | 1.47
All other states | 27,000 | 30,000 | 82,000 | 1.10 | 1.18
| | | | |
_America._ | | | | |
| | | | |
Argentina[C] | 4,000 | 103,058 | 108,671 | 26.50 | 27.17
Brazil[D] | 16,000 | 96,000 | 97,000 | 6.00 | 6.06
Chile[E] | 2,700 | 69,200 | 72,900 | 25.62 | 27.00
Peru[F] | 2,600 | 7,560 | 9,000 | 2.90 | 3.30
Mexico[G] | 12,600 | 42,000 | 22,000 | 3.32 | 1.76
Uruguay[H] | 800 | 25,000 | 30,000 | 31.25 | 37.50
Venezuela[I] | 2,300 | 17,000 | 22,000 | 7.40 | 9.56
All other states | 11,300 | 34,000 | 46,800 | 3.00 | 4.14
| | | | |
_South Africa_ | | | | |
| | | | |
Independent states | 1,000 | 75,000 | 12,000 | 75.00 | 12.00
+---------+---------+---------+ |
Total independent states | 505,800 | 718,271 | 622,313 | |
+=========+=========+=========+ |
Asiatic states | 452,500 | 249,453 | 201,942 | |
American and South African | 53,300 | 468,818 | 420,371 | |
---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------