The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-07-03
OF THE N0RTHw[EST

looking today for their best customers
to the Orient instead of to Europe.
The new demand has sent UP the price
OF their grain. 1t has decreased the
Liverpool supply by an equivalent
amount. 1t is not only creating new
traffic, but it is blessing old industries:
so that the farmer of our own North
west is today undoubtedly receiving
from to 10 cents per bushel more for
his wheat than he would if there were
no market opened in the Orient And
the work has only just begun.
In 1894 the official commercial re-
ports of the government show that not
a pound of raw cotton was sent from
the United States to any quarter
through the port of Puget sound. 1t
would have been thought as ridiculous
to dream of it as to watch for the ex-
port of bananas from Bangor, Me-
But in 1885 we sent from that port as
our first contribution 100000 pounds,
valued at $225,000; and in the incredi-
oily short space of seven years this total
mad swelled to 64,000,000 pounds, with
value of $6,600,000. By 1903 we were
also sending to the Chinese empire
manufactured cotton goods through the
port OF Puget sound to the value of
$I5,lUO,OOO. "A response so sudden and
SO noeral to the opening of the new
trade route and it's inducements prom
Uses to transfer to America the great
market for cotton goods that Great
Brltaln has long enjoyed in the East.
In 1894 the port of Puget sound eX-
ported 100000 bushels of wheat, worth
$2,2OO,0O0; by 1902 it sent out 1850, 900
bushels, worth $S,625,000. In 1894 it's
exports of wheat flour were 277 900 bar
rels, valued at $750,000; in 1903 they
had become 100000 barrels, valued at
$6,OOO,OOO. Of leaf tobacco there was
exported through this port in 1894 only
1000 pounds, worth 81 1000 but by nine
years later this trifing item appears as
an export of 100000 pounds, with a
valuation of 100000. The total ex-
ports of this collection district, through
which passes all the oriental traffic
carried by the northern route, rose
from a total valuation of 100000 in
1889 to nearly $33,000,000 in 1903.
For the first ten months of the fiscal
year 1904 our exports to Japan were
$20,900,000, as against $1S,00OO00 for
the same period of the year preceding.
This increase is at the rate of about
l per cent a month. Our exports to
Asia and Oceania combined, which is a
fair measure of the tranSpacific bust
ness, rose from $27 100000 in 1893 to
$95,000,000 in 1903. Sometimes there is
talk of the American commercial in
vaSion of Europe; but neither there
iloi III eliiy OllCI quoi lOI VI IilS WI III
does the foreign trade Of the United
States show rate of increase to be for
a moment compared to that of it's COM
merce with the Orient. Yet the latter
is only in it's infancy, and is to be slim
ulated powerfully by three influences,
whose first effects may already be
traced: first, the awakening to modern
ideas of the Oriental peoples and their
initiative desire to adopt the habits and
modes of life of civilization: second
the peculiar relations of friendliness
and confidence which exist between
these peoples and ourselves and third
and most decisive of all, the low freight
rate which is now in the making and
which promises to give to this country
an unassailable control of a market so
vast that if each person should con-