The age-herald., 1897-11-10
The Cotton Exnort Trade.

th~ ONNNNH
 Doubtless the most inteEesting paper recently read before the New England Manufacturers association at Philadel- phia was that of Prof. Wm. P. Wilson, of the Philadelphia Commercial Muse, ums. It relates to this country's foreign trade in cotton goods. It is yearly sending more goods to China. In 1896-7 it marketed in that populous country 1SS,0OO,OOO yards, against 7S.ooO,000 yards in the previous year; but in 1896 Great Britain sent there 542, 100000 yardsi But Prof. Wilson is hopeful. This country made beginning, and he thinks it can go on until it controls the trade in inn ported cotton goods in China. The people in the interior of that country are very poor, chiefly wearing home spun made from native cotton. Amer ican and British goods are luxuries to them; and yet they do not want as lux uries anything better than new makes of shirtngs and other coarse cottons. Englands control of the trade of India is now contested by Germany. It is an open field and England mills have no advantage on account of the govern mer'aal control of the country. So it is in Australia where our trade is steadily increasing. To other countries of Asia, besides China and India, We sent last year '33,7oO,OOO yards, against 5,9O0,OOO yards in the year before. Altogether we are doing Reasonably well in Asiatic countries and in Australia. The coarser goods are freely taken in all those coun- tries-such goods as the southern mills are turning out--and no one can under sell us.
 | But the people here are not doing we'll | nearer home, strange as it may at first seem. They are actually losing ground in Mexico, in Brazil, in Argentina, and generally among the 500O0,000 of people that live south of our boundaries. In round figures England sells to those millions $4O,O0O.0OO in cotton goods year; this country sells them $4,400,0O0. To Mexico, for example, England sent last year cotton goods to the value of $2,-
 
 244, ,OOO; we sent goods to the value of $s66, ,763, less by 40 per cent. than was sent in the previous year. In other words, this country permitted England to take Texas cotton, carry it to Lan- cashire, manufa cture it, and make money by sending it in the form of goods to 1 Mexico to be consumed perhaps across l the river, in sight of the fields where the cotton grew. The story of Brazilian imports is much worse, although we buy in that country immense quanti- ties of coffee. Our sales in Argentina were $27O,00O, against over $S,000000 by Great Britain.
 The inters sting problem of Prof. Will sons paper is this-why is this country able to increase its sales in Asia, Africa and Australia, and yet cannot hold it's own, small though it be, in American countries? It is one of the strange things in trade. Prof. Wilson says this country's commercial agents do not speak the Spanish tongue; that they do not study conditions and circumstances as they should. This country lacks steamship lines, local warehouses and banking facilities, but the lack of these is not greater in South America than 1t is in China or Australia. So Prof. Wilson reaches the conclusion that the people here do not seek orders in the countris south of us in the way they should be sought, and the Englishman and the German have therefore deprived this country of a trade that it should monopolize.