undertaking of negotiations and for the consummation of sales. It may help to a better understanding of this huge and eagerly waiting Chinese market to explain the mental attitude of Chinese capital and trade towards Ameri

cans.

Much has been said of the part played by Commodore Perry in opening to the world Japan the Island Empire, self-isolated, to be brought into the family of nations only by his demonstration of armed force. But Chinese still remember, if Americans do not, that the famous Dr. Huffnagel, of Philadelphia, was the first Consul-General from a foreign country whom China ever knew; that it was he, the great American Consul-General, who created the world market for tea when, by his scientific demonstrations-made a century ago -he induced the British government in India. to compel the drinking of tea by its soldiery as a preventative against the cholera that decimated their ranks; that it was he, the supreme pioneer of commerce from the unknown Western land, who received the honors of a prince wherever he journeyed in the reserved, selfcentered Orient. China, through the peaceful penetration of trade instituted by one great American pioneer of commerce, had opened her eyes to the world beyond her before Commodore Perry's guns flashed their message of the modern awakening upon Japan.

The century that has passed since that period has brought a renaissance of China's first. impressions of American enterprise. The business men of China regard the business man of the United States as one unequaled for his breeziness, his initiative, his keenness of perception, his inventiveness and resourcefulness, and also for his precision of method, whether it be in systems of trade or in the field of applied mechanics. More than that, the Chinese have the feeling that the American most readily puts himself en rapport with the Chinese thought and character.

There remains, for those Americans who may discern in China a desirable market for their wares, only the need of acquiring a com

us.

nese.

mercial knowledge of the Chinese tongue. Germans and Japanese, with their urgent need of Chinese markets and their native diligence in utilizing every means to their ends of trade, habitually look to a knowledge of our language as their prime resource in their dealings with Under the conditions that now prevail, it will be well worth the while of any American, who contemplates establishing interests in China, to devote to our language the six months of study and practice needed to make him a fair conversationalist. It is not requisite that he learn what is known as literary ChiThe colloquial language of North or South China will take him into the very center and heart of Chinese circles hitherto denied to Japanese and Europeans, no matter how anxiously they have sought to secure access. I have dwelt at length upon the Chinese situation as it applies to machinery on the whole. I need add only that China will require machinery such as is employed in great constructions; for the dredging of canals; for sawmills, paper mills, silk mills-where our installations have long been out of date; for plants manufacturing cottons, satins and velvets, where a like condition prevails; for railroad workshops, steel plants, shipbuilding plants; and on down through mills for the making of nails, wire, tools and screws to the very thumb tacks that serve for office uses. There is need for plants that shall produce, on an extensive scale, biscuits, candies, cigarettes; for printing and lithographing, in every department of those arts. The field is endless.

The present limitations will be understood when I quote only a few of the figures bearing upon exportations from the United States to China for the year 1915, as reported by the United States Department of Commerce:

Total United States exports to China, $16,402,475, as against $24,698,734 for 1914. The year 1915 being a full war year as distinguished from 1914, a year, half of peace and half of war, the drop of more than $8,000,000 in exports is not surprising, in view of the insistent demands made by Europe upon the

United States. Its details are manifest in a few, very important items, notably in wheat flour, which shrank from $540,344 to $57,066; in unbleached cloths, falling from $5,667,393 to $1,122,257; in leaf tobacco, from $2,004,730 to $612,206; in cigarettes, from $1,746,240 to $1,181,867; and in lumber-boards, planks and deals-$1,164,780 to $555,180.

These items constitute, as well, the leading exports from the United States to China, except for illuminating oil, in which the drop was from $6,348,612 to $5,178,236, a fall in values of more than $1,000,000 but representing no corresponding decrease in volume of that particular commodity. Indeed, the exports of illuminating oil to China, instead of lessening during 1915, actually increasedfrom 86,006,918 gallons to 86,907,372 gallons. It was the price that went down, not the quantity.

The paucity of the United States exports to China is demonstrated, however, much more forcibly in the items of low volume and valuation than in the large, conspicuous individual exports. One can comprehend how little in proportion to its resources the United States sells, and how little in proportion to its needs China takes, in contemplating such figures as these.

Export of passenger automobiles for 1915, $119,635; of passenger and freight cars, including parts, $51,365; unmanufactured cotton, $734,184 which, by the way, was a marked increase over the year 1914, when it was only $588,240; bleached cotton cloths, $11,401; colored cloths, $61,272; and all other cloth manufactures, $65,986; electrical machinery and appliances. $236,697; locomotives, $148,987; millinery machinery, $48,788; typewriters, $37,412; all other machinery, together with all machinery parts, $212,245; manufactures of leather, $50,656; paints, pigments, colors, and varnishes, $63,952.

And these from a country so skilled and productive as the United States!

China, on her side, awaits with intense eagerness the time when she shall be afforded

opportunity to reciprocate in a trade that will be mutually advantageous. She wants to supply the American people with her tea-with tea to which Americans have thus far been utter strangers because their market has been monopolized by the teas of Japan and of Ceylon. As the American advertiser remarks, "There's a reason." The reason has been that, until now, China has not learned the secret of the attractive package in marketing her teas. And the reason she did not learn it was precisely the reason which every American advertising man encounters when, solociting a house famed for the excellence of its output, he receives the reply: "The quality of our goods is our best advertisement." For thousands of years, in its earthenware, its china, its bronzes, in everything it has produced, China has been impelled by an inbred aspiration for permanency and has invariably looked to quality to assure permanency. The universal reputation of the Chinese tradesman for inflexible. honesty is one manifestation of that national impulse towards a level of quality which neither time nor circumstances can alter. The marvelous perfection and the absolute standardization of China's better grades of tea is another such development. But the inevitable fault attaching to that merit—a kind of proud, almost crabbed, reluctance to confess the need of any recommendation other than the quality of the goods themselves-has left the Chinese tea packages as crude as it was a century ago; and meanwhile well pushed competition, helped by shrewd, artistic presentation, has lost to China the one market where, above all others, real quality is appreciated. Americans are familiar only with our Oolong teas. But China has tea delights to offer which hitherto have been reserved for its most exclusive and wealthy classes. There is the Long Tsung tea, of a fragrance so exquisite that the Chinese poet would say that to inhale its perfume is to drink the first delights of heaven. There is the Mandarin tea, wholly unknown beyond China, but esteemed by Europeans who have tasted it there as a drink unequalled in

the East. China, for teas of such quality, now looks to the United States as its initial market and is prepared to satisfy the market's expectation that superior charms shall be suitably adorned.

Then there are bristles. The United States imported last year from Japan such an unprecedented volume of toothbrushes that it was averred the number passed three billionsenough to furnish a toothbrush for every individual tooth in the heads of every man, woman and child in the United States-even allotting 32 perfectly sound teeth to all, from the cradle to grave. As Mark Twain remarked of his reported death, this seems grossly exaggerated. Nevertheless, many hundreds of millions of tooth brushes did come from Japan to the United States; and all of those brushes were made of bristles that came from China to

Japan. China would prefer, infinitely, that the brushes be made in China by Chinese labor and exported to the United States in the completed state; and China is willing enough to purchase in the United States all the machinery that can be utilized in the manufacture of the brushes.

These two instances have been cited simply to particularlize a trade situation that is general. The United States can buy in China with advantage limitless supplies of horse hair and cow hides; sugar, of which there is a marked surplus, peanuts, the exportation of which to the United States is now in the hands of the Japanese; almonds, Shantung silks, furs, including ermine, fox, squirrel and also vast numbers of sheep skins; pigskin in immense quantities; soy beans, now springing into extensive use throughout the United States; egg

yokes, so largely used by bakers; cotton fiber, which is available for countless American industrial uses; grass colths, lace work, crockthan refer to conspicuous items. The minerals ery, fine china-it is impossible to do more of China-coal, iron, lead, tin, copper, wolfram, platinum, of which great deposits lie within half a day's journey of Pekin-have not had their surface scratched as yet.

Compare the immensity of these resources, and the possibilties inherent in their full exploitation, with the Chinese exports to the United States for the year 1915, the figures, like those for the exports to China, having the authority of the United States Department of Commerce.

The total of United States imports from China was $40,156,139, an increase over 1914.

Antimony, in all its forms, increased from $165,952 in 1914, to $562,487 in 1915; ricein all forms-increased from $1,049,120 in 1914, to $1,570,848 in 1915; bristles, from $934,211 to $1,612,574; egg yolks and frozen eggs, from $26,965 to $554,346; uncured calf and kip skins, from $73,686 in 1914 to $215,164 in 1915; cattle skins, from $1,951,169 in 1914 to $2,888,285 in 1915; soya bean from $363 in 1914 to $137,727-representing a leap in volume from 5,983 pounds to 3,072,811 pounds; tea, from $2,755,512 in 1914 to $3,149,308; and carpet wools from $4,428,367 in 1914 to $5,324,509 in 1915.

Over against these import gains there were the serious declines in imports of raw silk, from $15,918,730 in 1914 to $11,433,400 in 1915; in furs, from $773,549 in 1914 to $412,