The Portland daily press., 1895-05-29
ASlATIC COMPETITION.
Already 1t Is Making European Manufac,
turers Shiver.

(Matthew Marshall in New York Sun
The partial transference of cotton man
ufacturing from Europe to Asia, which
has so alarmed the Manchester mill own
ers that they are clamoring for the adop-
tion of the silver standard as a means of
arresting it's further progress, may be the
beginning of an industrial revolution
which, for extent and Importance can be
compared only to those caused by the dis
covery of America and by the invention
of the steam engine. The abundance and
the cheapness of human labor in Asiatic
countries have long been proverbial, but
they have not, until lately, availed to
counterbalance the superior energy and
skill of European artisans and the greater
productiveness of European machinery.
silver, relatively to gold, has greatly re-
duced the wages paid in the East in silver
as compared with the wages still paid in
Europe in gold, or, to state the fact in
another way, wages in Europe have pfacti-
cally risen, while wages in Asia have re-
mained stationary. The Hindoo laborer
gets no more rupees than he did 20 years
ago, the Chinese no more dollars, the
Japanese no more yen, but the European
gets as many shillings or francs or marks
as he did, and even more, so that while
the goods the Asiatic makes sell at the
same nominal prices as European goods
of a similar character, they actually cost
only about half as much. Hence, cotton
mills are springing up in India, China
and Japan, which are taking the market
away from the mills of Europe, and the
same stimulus is bringing into activity
| works for the production of iron and
COAL
| Obviously, the way for Europe to meet
| this competition is either to improve its
machinery or to reduce the wages it pays
| but the Oriental, now that he has started
| cry as fast as the European can his, and
the only thing left is a reduction OF
wages. Against this reduction, however,
the labor unions of Europe will stand as
an impossible barrier SO long as the at
tempt to effect it takes the shape of re,
duction in the amount of money paid. If,
however, the money itself could be de.
based by substituting the silver standard
for the present gold standard, the wages,
though nominally remaining unaltered,
would in reality come down to the Asiatit
| level. 1t is for this reason that the Man,
chester cotton spinners are so ardent in
their advocacy of what they call bimetall-
ism, but which is really the substitution
of the silver for the gold standard.
The success of bimetalism is vet a long
way off, and the preponderance of the
indications is that it will never in ou1
time be achieved While the discussion
of it goes on the Asiatics are every day
enlarging their manufacturing enterprises
and fixing them upon a firner basis, SO
that very soon it will be impossible To
overthrow them, if, indeed, it is not i'm
possible already. Appetite grows by what
| it feeds on. and now that few thousand
of Hindoos Chinese and Japanese have
tasted of the profits of these new en-
ployments they will not meekly renounce
them. The result of the recent triumph
of Japan over China cannot fail to be a
vastly freer admission into China of mod
ern ideas and modern Improvement than
has hitherto been permitted, and, when
to 800. 900. 900 Hindoos, accustomed to earn
ten cents day and less, shall be added
400, 0O0, 900 Chinese, whose notions of
compensation are equally meager, they
will constitute a new mine of human
labor as extensive and as valuable as
were the fertile lands of America when
it was first discovered, or the gold fields
OF California and of Australia. European
talent will not be wanting, if native skill
proves inadequate, to teach those myriads
of hands how to employ themselves to
the best advantage, and the ruin that has
oyertaken Assyria Babylonia, Persia,
Egypt and Turkey from the transference
OF their industrial, commercial and mill
| tary supremacy to other countries, may
| yet. be shared by Europe Years, and
probably centuries, must yet elapse before
this catastrophe arrives, and unforeseen
causes may avert it altogether; but it is
not a chimera to be waved aside as i'm
possible.