The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-28

country spread over one-seVenth or ths
 earth's surface, from the Atlantlc te
 the Pacific, seems destined to carry
 everything before it's mighty sweep, IT
 Asia at least from the icy Arctic Sea
 to the torrid Indian Ocean. England'
 nineteenth century cry against Russian
 aggression in Asia has been drowned
 by the noise of conflict in South Africa
 and the clamor Russia loudly raises at
 home for a Monroe doctrine to apply to the entire Orient. From the Caspian
 and Lake Baikal Russian railways are
 being rushed forward toward india and
 China, while mightym igratlon or the
 white race, the like of which has not
 been known in all history or Asia, is
 setting in from Russia toward the Tar
 East. It is England, not Russia, that is
 now looked upon as the intruder in the
 Yellow continent
 The sleeping Slav seems to have
 awakened at last From the borders
 of the Baltic and Black Seas to the far
 off Gulf of Pechili, new industries are springing up,owing their inception to
 Russian initiative and activity, but still
 dependent for execution upon foreign
 aid Sudden demands for every form of
 material needed in developing the latent
 resources of a vast country are made
 upon the world and while other nations
 have been caught mapping, America is
 wide awake. Her engineers have has,
 tened across the Atlantic, at command
 of the czar to build for the exploiting
 of Russian rivers and harbors the
 mightiest dredges the world has seen. | ~ al.t tor in
 mage than any ever before floated on
 the ocean have crossed from American
 to Russian ports. The Pacific teens
 with vessels bearing material from our
 western seaboard, for shipment
 in Japan, to Siberian ports for the com
 struction of Russias Asiatic railways. American locomotive works and ma chine shops are being installed in every part of the empire, while from Yankee seed grain wheat is grown in both the Russias, to be harvested by American
 machinery and ground into flour by American mills.
 And this seems to be but the begin
 ming, for Yankee tools and southern cotton cloths promise to drive out all competitors from Asia, as Russia ex- tends her domain over the richest of earth's continents. In every direction the Slav is opening up new and boundless field for every form of Yam kee inventions in fact, Russian enter prise goes still further and introduces our wares to millions of consumers that have never before heard of us. Yet in spite of all this, the American manu- facturer seeks only immediate orders in Russia and takes no thought of his fu- ture there, tempting fate and the Ger mans to deprive us of the markets we have had thrust upon us
 American export trade is filled with surprises. In setting out to follow our exports of machinery and other com modities to the final place of destina- tion in European or Asiatlc Russia l was met with most astounding fact at the every start. My first lesson in the export trade was the discovery that often the manufacturer does not know or care to what part of the Russian empire his goods are to be shipped. In fact. unless Russian orders are accom- panied by cash they are still likely to be ignored. Invariably machinery for Russia is bought through brokerage 1lTIDS. l ll' DlDhttS, Wub uShuliS HUI porate themselves under firm name, and pass as manufacturers sell any ar ticle for which they can secure an or der buy their goods, pay for same f. o. b., New York or San Francisco, and take upon themselves all risks of final delivery and collection of payment Of ten the broker knows as little about the final destination of the goods he is l forwarding as does the manufacturer, whose main interest Is to get the cash | and large profits on the first and per haps only order, The marvel is that we can sell through middlemen (who usu- ! ally demand a 20 per cent. profit and 1 still compete with Europe.
 Before leaving America I studied great packing cases on the wharves of New York and San Francisco, the con tents of which I ,Znew were destined ! for oints in Russia, yet these immense cases were invariably marked Hull, Hamburg or Nagasaki, and entered in the government reports as our official l exports to England. Germany and Ja- pan, respectively. It was only after fol- lowing these cases to foreign ports that I was gradually enlightened as to some | of the reasons why s-shipment is usually made of American goods des- | tined for Russian ports. First and [ foremost of course, is the fact that we lack direct steamship communication; | but even when direct steamships are available, shippers who have had one experience with Russia's arbitrary rules as to packing and invoicing prefer to ship through those who have made speciality of untangling the mystifying | lntricacies of Russian tariff regulations and irritating requirements at ports of entry. Often the broker who buys af- ter has has sold and knows the destin- ation of his purchases does not wish the manufacturers in America, or his fellow competitors in other parts of tn world, to know where heAhas found or created a market
 Although most of our exports to Eu- ropean Russia are reshipped at either Hull or Hamburg, sometimes shipload Is sent direct to Reval on the Baltic. Recently special train waited at that port to receive the equipment for the Siberian mines worked by Americans; over a million dollars worth of Yankee machinery was entered free and carried )ver the Russian railways thousands of miles at merely nominal rate; while machinery of an equal value from our western seaboard reached Chinese ports s,,11 L.