FOOTNOTE:_Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May 1899 Volume LV, No. 1, May 1899

[A] Rupee, 32 cents. For Straits Settlement and Ceylon, Mexican

dollars @ 47 cents.

_III. Trade of Foreign Possessions of all other Countries than the

United Kingdom._

Key:

(A) Number of inhabitants in thousands.

(B) Importations in thousands of dollars.

(D) Imports per capita. Dollars.

(E) Exports per capita. Dollars.

------------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------

COUNTRIES AND THEIR | (A) | (B) | (C) | (D) | (E)

------------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------

| | | | |

Asia | 21,821 | 16,000 | 25,000 | .73 | 1.14

Algeria and Tunis | 24,500 | 13,000 | 22,000 | .53 | .50

America and Oceanica | 460 | 14,500 | 12,600 | 31.50 | 27.40

| | | | |

| | | | |

Africa | 10,200 | 2,189 | 1,078 | .21 | .10

New Guinea | 400 | 72 | 50 | .18 | .12

| | | | |

| | | | |

Africa | 400 | 5,600 | 3,000 | |

| | | | |

| | | | |

East India | 34,000 | 61,000 | 89,600 | 1.80 | 2.63

| | | | |

_E._ | | | | |

| | | | |

Philippines | 7,600 | 11,000 | 20,000 | 1.50 | 2.63

------------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------

_Summary of Statistical Tables of the Trade of Colonies and

Dependencies of European States and of Independent States other than

of Europe and the United States._

Key:

(A) Number of inhabitants in thousands.

(B) Importations. Thousands of dollars.

(D) Inhabitants. Per cent to total.

(E) Imports. Per cent to total.

(F) Exports. Per cent to total.

----------------------+----------+---------+---------+-----+-----+-----

COUNTRIES, COLONIES, | (A) | (B) | (C) | (D) | (E) | (F)

----------------------+----------+---------+---------+-----+-----+-----

I, II, and III |1,584,099 |1,587,758|1,540,858|100 |100 |100.0

| | | | | |

Under British flag | 343,520 | 765,320| 797,232| 36 | 48.3| 50.0

| | | | | |

Under all other flags | 605,180 | 818,779| 790,527| 64 | 51.7| 49.8

| | | | | |

descent | 69,430 | 909,020| 831,984| 7.3| 57.4| 52.4

| | | | | |

Peoples of other races| 879,271 | 675,079| 755,774| 92.7| 42.6| 47.6

| | | | | |

Anglo-Saxon | 17,130 | 519,300| 407,584| 1.8| 32.8| 25.7

| | | | | |

Latin-American | 52,300 | 389,700| 424,400| 5.5| 24.6| 26.7

| | | | | |

Asiatic races | 806,611 | 618,079| 706,274| 85.0| 39.0| 44.0

| | | | | |

African races | 72,500 | 57,000| 49,500| 7.7| 3.6| 3.6

| | | | | |

wool chief export | 11,100 | 441,300| 394,500| 1.2| 27.8| 24.9

----------------------+----------+---------+---------+-----+-----+-----

In examining these tables carefully the reader can form an idea as to

how the world's trade is divided, and see what the world is arming to

its teeth about.

The only Asiatic country about whose trade the possibilities of war

may be entertained is China. Japan has shown her teeth and claws. The

history of Poland, Port Arthur, or Kiao-tchow is not likely to find

repetition on her territory. Only the defenseless tempt the avidity of

the civilizing nations. The import trade of China, an empire with one

fourth the population of the entire world, is but half as much again

as that of Japan, with but one ninth of the population of the

Celestial Empire. Japan's trade has trebled within the last dozen

years. Her imports of merchandise are over two dollars _per capita_.

Those of China are thirty-four cents. It will be said that China

parceled out to modern nations will vastly extend in trading

opportunities. So it may. We have, however, national disposition to

take into consideration. England has devoted her best efforts to

India. After a century spent in bringing the various races to

submission, the process of "benevolent assimilation" is helped along

by a never-ending flow of capital from England. She has become the

teacher and administrator of the people of Hither and Farther India.

It is doubtful whether under existing conditions any better government

for their three hundred millions could be devised by any outer force.

Though England does her utmost, as she understands it, to make the

people under her dominion happy and prosperous, although the rule of

law and a degree of local independence are established, yet she finds

small thanks from her wards. They have their own notions of happiness,

and seem to prefer misery of their selection to the advantages of the

white man's ordering. The fact is, the brown man and the yellow man

have different notions and desires from the white man. No amount of

jostling, pushing, and urging will make them take up our views, our

tastes, our working methods, except in the due development of time.

Our ideas as to necessaries of life and theirs are widely different.

Their simple needs are easily supplied from native hands, who

understand far better than our potters do the clay they have to deal

with. The progress in trade will not be rapid, and will certainly be

disappointing to those who expect to see it extend into general lines

of merchandise. The import trade of India and its dependencies (1897)

is $284,000,000, inclusive of Ceylon and the net trade of the Straits

Settlements. This amount, directly catering to the wants of fully

three hundred millions of people, is but about one third more than the

net import trade of Australasia, with a population of less than five

millions of people. The _per-capita_ consumption of imported

merchandise of the Asiatic possessions of England is ninety-seven

cents; of Australasia, $41.66. I must say here in explanation that the

values of importations of merchandise, as published in the English

returns and lately reproduced by the Bureau of Statistics of the

Treasury Department, Colonial Systems of the World, is $305,000,000,

which would make a showing of $63.33 _per capita_. But in the English

returns the intercolonial trade figures are included. The Treasury

Bureau did not mention this in its publication, and gave thereby a

basis for erroneous deductions. I have deducted all the intercolonial

trade figures of imports and exports from the returns of each of the

Australian colonies, so as to bring the figures to a basis of parity

with the accounts of Canada, and other colonies and dependencies where

no duplications of this kind are possible. The figures of importations

remaining over are reduced by this process to £40,500,000, or about

$200,000,000--$41.66 _per capita_. The inhabitants of the Anglo-Saxon

colonies of the world number but seventeen million. Their net imports

of merchandise are $460,000,000. The seven hundred and thirty millions

of Hindu and Mongolian populations import $530,000,000. These are the

lands of fabled wealth. Antiquity and the middle ages dreamed of

riches inexhaustible in connection with their names. To-day still the

popular belief is that the wealth of nations is dependent on the

conduct of direct trade with the far East. The country can not be rich

whose millions find happiness in a sufficient supply of millet or

rice, whatever the wealth of a small favored class may be. But these

nations were the teachers of the barbarians whose descendants now

populate America and Europe. The disciples have improved on the

masters. We have improved the tools which they invented and applied

new forces of production. We have cheapened the processes of

production. We have quintupled, we have decupled time. But whatever

our improvements in the tools, they are still our masters in the work.

Any one who would endeavor to substitute the product of our mills in

cotton, in silk, in wool, in wood, iron, clay, in lacquer, cloisonné,

or enamel, for theirs, and not see at a glance the hopelessness, would

indeed prove his incapacity for grasping the situation. Our best

producers study with profit the work of China and, chiefly, of Japan,

and are grateful for the inspiration they derive from it. But they do

not attempt to copy. Neither in color effect nor design could they

stand the test of comparison. Five thousand years have been recovered

from the sepulcher under which they had been sleeping. But the oldest

traces unearthed in the valley of the Euphrates still take us back to

the farthest East as the originator of what we cover by the term

"civilization." The Mongolian shares the lot of all who have benefited

the race.

If we can not expect great openings for our mill products in Asia,

Africa is a new field for the civilizing efforts of Europe, and will

repay cultivating, perhaps. The negro has neither factories nor

workshops. There at least is an unlimited field for trade expansion.

Germany, the latest comer, with the zeal of all fresh missionaries, is

eagerly taking up her colonizing mission. The result is not very

encouraging. There is a fine set of buildings with garden spots and

harbor improvements in the settlement at Cameroon, and a well-stocked

graveyard of what were once good German boys, victims of the deadly

climate and of the expansion fever. So far this is the only net

showing to the credit side of the ledger. The territory in Africa

covers nearly one million square miles. The possession of such an

empire is worth a sacrifice, apparently, and Germany is not

parsimonious in this direction. The contribution of the German

Government to the administration fund of the African colonies was

$2,194,000 in 1896-'97. This does not include the expense of

maintaining the military and naval forces stationed in the African

settlements. The annual importations of all the colonies amounted (in

1897) to $2,261,000, inclusive of New Guinea. So it costs the

Government more than one dollar to enable its citizens to do a

dollar's worth of trade. The population is estimated at 10,200,000.

What possibilities stretch out before us, if they could be made to

wear shirts or uniforms like the native police force, which has been

organized at Cameroon! The extent of the territory, however, precludes

the possibility of successfully conducting the missionary effort to

induce them to wear clothes. The question also remains open what

return could be made, even if the recipients could be brought to

appreciate the advantage of a fuller covering of their nakedness than

the traditional one.

France is in possession of territories in Africa, the population of

which is on a more advanced status. The territories of the Senegal

have been under French dominion for a period of two hundred years and

more, and trade relations with the Senegal and Soudan have been

assiduously cultivated. In Asia, Tonquin and Annam were to open the

road to a very active trade with China. She has held undisputed

lodgment since 1814 in Pondicherry and other towns in India that

remained over to her from her East Indian empire conquered by Dupleix

and abandoned by Louis XV's weak policy. Still, with all the tender

care and an expenditure for the colonial service, as per budget of

1898, of about 80,000,000 francs, and not counting the colonial

expense _êtat_ of the ministry of war and of the navy, the entire

export trade of France to her Asiatic possessions is 35,000,000

francs; to her African dominions, outside of Algiers, 22,000,000

francs; and to her American possessions, with barely five hundred

thousand inhabitants, 35,000,000 francs. The territories to which this

trade caters have a population of about twenty-two million in Asia and

twenty-five million in Africa. If we include the French islands in

America and French Guiana, the exports of French merchandise to all

her colonies amount to about 95,000,000 francs. If we include the

allowance for colonial service from the naval and military budget,

France has an expense that exceeds the amount of her colonial export

trade. How much better off France would be if she would drop this

burden! She could do the same trading and save her money, annually

wasted, and her men annually slaughtered to the mania of colonial

expansion.

The forty-five millions peopling the French possessions in Asia and

tropical Africa consume altogether about $30,000,000 worth of foreign

imports. The French share of this is about $11,000,000, or a little

over one third--eleven millions of trade against fourteen millions of

direct expense. The contributions to the American colonies are but

$2,000,000, inclusive of about $1,000,000 to the penal establishment

at Cayenne.

Italy's demonstration of the extent to which this madness can carry

otherwise sane statesmen is fresh in everybody's memory. Outside of

Russia, the poor--meaning the working classes--are in no country of

Europe as poor as in Italy. If we take the production per acre in all

the cereals as a gauge of interior development, then no European

country west of Russia, not excepting Spain, is in a more backward

state. Wise statesmanship would have found here a field for

cultivation sufficiently large to tax all its energies. The peaceful

acquisitions of industry did not satisfy the ambition of the

Government. Conquests in equatorial Africa were deemed more essential

to the kingdom's material welfare, but lately freed from the deadening

grasp of clericalism and absolutism, than the improvement of

opportunities lavishly present at home. What she has cultivated at an

enormous expense of blood and treasure has borne the ordinary harvest

of failure and disaster. The entire import trade of Massowah, to which

the whole world contributed, and which is largely a transit trade,

amounts to about $5,000,000. The expenditure on account of her Red Sea

possessions for the year 1895-'96 is given in the Statesman's Year

Book as 123,738,064 lires ($24,000,000). The contribution to the

maintenance of this her "white man's burden," from 1882 to 1895, was

303,905,926 lires. At present (1897-'98), after the sobering lesson

received in 1896, the net expense is about $3,500,000 (17,000,000

lires).

The three powers--France, Italy, and Germany--point a lesson of

unmistakable significance. The figures speak for themselves. No amount

of expense can make the African and the Asiatic consume an appreciable

amount of European merchandise. No amount of cultivation can make the

tropics endurable to the northern man. Labor and exertion on his part

under the rays of a deadly sun and a miasma-breeding soil are entirely

out of the question. Those who would make the endeavor in the manner

of the temperate zone would only succeed the sooner in reaching the

end of white man's settlement in the tropics, disease and death.

Many point to the Dutch East India settlements as a successful

commercial enterprise. But, taking the best construction given to the

story from the trader's point of view, the present satisfactory

conditions have been reached after a great deal of disappointment,

loss, and bloodshed. A large revenue is acquired from Government sales

of colonial produce; still, with all this added to the other revenues

from land tax, excise, and other duties, the Government has a

deficiency of over 10,000,000 florins a year in her East India

possessions. The budget for 1898 shows an expense _état_ of

146,150,164 florins, which is met by a revenue from all sources of but

135,204,203 florins.

This is the richest part of the Malay world, and for centuries has

been in the possession of Europe's most enlightened people. The

results, if the _per-capita_ unit of imports and exports is taken as a

criterion, are not different from those shown in the account of the

Philippines, governed for centuries by Spain. The loss of their

colonies is ascribed to the oppressive rule which the Spaniards

exercised. The Netherlands, devoting all their efforts to the

development of the resources of the islands, at least during the

greater part of this century, do not show much better results. The

imports _per capita_ of the Dutch possessions are $1.80, and the

exports $2.63. The imports of the Philippines are $1.50 and the

exports $2.63 _per capita_.

From this we may be permitted to deduce that the Malay Islands are not

likely to prove a more thankful field for cultivation by our traders

than to the extent indicated in the trade reports set forth above.

Under the conditions here delineated, it would be inviting all the

risks and dangers connected with expansion and colonization, while

nothing is to be gained in a commercial sense that can not be realized

by the means now in our hands.

All the ends of trade can be attained without territorial expansion.

The trade in the hands of peoples under English sovereignty is open to

all commerce on equal terms. Not even the sovereign country, except in

the recent concessions by Canada, receives a preference. The

protection of the British flag is tendered gratis to the colonies and

dependencies. The imports of these countries cover about one half of

the trade of all the world, outside of Europe and the United States.

Though they have but 4.67 per cent of the population, the Anglo-Saxon

colonies do sixty-nine per cent of the trade of all the colonies and

dependencies of the British Empire.

South and Central America absorb about one fourth--24.6 per cent of

imports and 26.7 per cent of exports--of the world's trade here

summarized. The colonies peopled by Anglo-Saxon population and the

Latin-American states together, though but 7.3 per cent of the

inhabitants, do an importing trade of 57.4 per cent of the trade of

the world here reviewed. The countries trading under the protection of

the British flag and the Latin-American states combined have about

seventy-three per cent of that trade among them. All this trade, as

well as by far the greatest part of the rest, is incontestably

accessible to-day on an equal basis to all the world. The key to it

lies in the best terms, the best value. The trader and not the admiral

governs the field. Prince Heinrich will not succeed better than

Admiral von Diederichs in convincing China of the advantages Germany

can offer if Mr. Carnegie's rails are cheaper than Mr. Krupp's. A

whole fleet of American battle ships will not convince the Asiatics

that our cotton goods are as desirable as the English so long as the

latter make goods suitable to their markets, and the Americans offer

only products calculated to cover the home demands.

The golden rule is a more effective trade opener than the cannon's

mouth. Fair and square dealing among nations does not entail expense,

but brings in good returns. Our national policy, however, has been one

studiously calculated to array the world against us. Like every policy

in behalf of a selfish interest, it injures the foreign people against

which it is directed far less than the nation which devises it.

The trade of Australasia, Argentina, and Uruguay, and the Cape is

based chiefly on wool and hides. The imports of these countries,

numbering but eleven million inhabitants, amount to $440,000,000,

equaling in amount the trade of China, Japan, Persia, and India, with

their seven hundred and fifty million inhabitants. Though but 1.2 per

cent of the population of the world (outside of Europe and the United

States), their imports are 27.8 per cent of the totals of the figures

in the tables. In exports they do about $400,000,000, or 24.9 per cent

of the total sum of exports here given. It would be worth cultivating

friendly relations with them. They are inhabited by people of European

stock, and come nearer to the standard of life of Americans than any

of the other nations of the globe. Our latest effort to draw them

closer to us was the Dingley tariff, with its duty of eleven cents a

pound on greasy wool and of fifteen per cent on raw hides. The action

can not be construed as a very friendly one. But neither is the effect

as calculated by the wise heads who insisted on the provisions of the

wool tariff, the woolen and worsted manufacturers of the East, and the

wool raisers of the West. The wool and woolen trade of America has

suffered many vicissitudes during the thirty-five years of high

tariffs. It has gone through many periods of depression. But it is

doubtful whether at any time more disastrous conditions existed than

have marked the twelve months ending at this writing (March, 1899).

The situation can be appreciated from the fact that wool, imported

prior to the passing of the Dingley tariff, is being reshipped to

England, where it is bringing better prices than can be obtained here

under the ægis of the protective duty of eleven cents a pound. Three

and a half million pounds were shipped in the seven months ending

January 31st.

We should profit by this experience, try to cultivate friendly

relations in parts of the world where advantageous trade connections

can be established, instead of following the _ignis fatuus_ of Asiatic

expansion.

Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May 1899 Volume LV, No. 1, May 1899 · 第 28 / 46 题