Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-01-31
Our Goods Are Highly Els.
teemed by the Dutch.
SHREWD IN BUSINESS
THEY RANK SIXTH AMONG THE
COMMERCIAL NATIONS.
The Modern Port of Rotterdam-What
They Buy From Us-To
Increase Trade.

Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.
Copyright, 1902 by Frank G. CarpenterD
ROTTERDAM.
I stubbed my toe on the American inva-
sion the moment 1 landed in Rotterdam.
The obstruction was square box marked
Organ"
From Meriden. Connecticut, U. S. A.
C. Keltners Groote Magazijnen van Pianos.
Kalverstraat Amsterdam"
A little further on were barrels of machine
oil from New York. and next to them lot
of American sewing machines In crates
Out in the river Mas anchored to floating
buoy were great steamers unloading Mime
apolis flour into two huge barges to be sent
up the Rhine, and all along the Boompjes
were American goods of various kinds
l took carriage and drove for several
miles up the wharves, crossing the bridges
to the Noordereiland and on to the left
bank of the Mas. We went by warehouse
after warehouse. and everywhere l saw
more or less stuff from the United States.
On the Holland-American quay there was
an acre or of cotton bales from Calves
ton awaiting transshipment for the Dutch
cotton mills. Nearby was a yard filled
with resin barrels from Savannah which
gave forth a smell like a canning factory,
which stuck in my nostris until driven out
by the coffee warehouses where the rich
smelling beans of Java and Sumatra were
being loaded on ship for New York.
At one place l stopped my carriage and
photographed wagon load of Standard Oil
barrels, and at another L took a snapshot
of a gang of Dutch emigrants about to
board ship for New York. l saw car
goes of American lumber, buckets and
boxes of American meats, wagon loads of
lard and tallow and all sorts of crates hold
ing American machinery. One item was a
cargo of Chicago moving machines being
loaded on barges for the interior of northern
Europe, and another was barge after barge
of American cotton seed oil which passed
through under one of the drawbrldges as
/ waited to cross.
At the same time saw a score of ocean
steamers loading for Asia, Africa and the
Dutch East Indies, and rode past miles and
miles of river and canal craft.
Hollands Big Trade.
AS went on could see something of the
enormous business which the Dutch have
with the rest of the world. They are the
little giants Of commercial Europe They
do not number as many as three times the
population Of Chicago. but they have twice
as much foreign trade as the 120,O00,0g0
Russians, three times as much as the Span
iardS or Italians and twice as much as the
whole South American continent. Holland
stands sixth in the point of business done
among the commercial nations of the world,
and about One-tenth of its trade is with the
United States. 1t makes foreign exchanges
TO the extent of more than a billion dollars
a year, and it annually buys more than q
hundred million dollars worth of goods
from us.
Let us stop a moment and think what
this means. This little country has in
round numbers just about five million peo-
pie. one million families, but 1t buys one
hundred million dollars worth of Uncle
Sans goods every year. This means that
on the average every family buys one hun
dred dollars worth annually and this not
n II -
more than S12 or S15 per family. OF course
much of the goods are bought to sell again.
and some go to the Dutch East Indies
which are eighty times as large as Holland
itself but the trade is there all the same,
and the business is 50 big that it will pay
the most careful nursing and the most en-
thusastic pushing. The South American
continent Is less important TO us than Hcl-