The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-01-29

Considerable importance was given to the unquestionably interesting fact that the banner floating over the Mi kado's palace, and the Union Jack on | Windsor Castle, were both held to the breeze by a flagstaff cut near Puget Sound. It seems amazing that such statement should beguile the Ameri- 1 can mind from the serious statistics | of totals in foreign commerce. Such bizzarre triumphs can easily be mat | ched in exports from other lands to America. Our Fourth-of-July celebra- tion of the founding of a Christian democracy is made glorious with | fireworks exported from the pagon Mongolian Empire, for instance.
 If the traveller will look vigilantly enough he will find American cotton
 on the coast of Somaliland. In Abys- sinia q certain kind of American cot ton is standard of money, probably because of it's scarcity in that region It is pleasing to the American ear this news that the slaves of Africa, the camels of the desert, the reindeer ot Lapland, the llamas of Peru, the yaks of Thibet, and the dogs of the Arctic Circle take up freight where the roads terminate and carry American goods to the limits of human habitation; but whatever goes to these distant parts of the earth from the United States is a triumph of enterprise on the part of the buyer. America has not sought this traffic. We are indifferent even to the trade opportunities that lie at the door of the Atlantic. We have per- mitted our exports to Brazil to decline; our entire trado with South America is a pitiful fsco, Argentina alone buys more taxties from Europe than we export to the, whole world, and the va lue, moreover, of these textiles bought by Argentina exceeds the value of American commerce of every descrip- tion going into all the ports south of the Isthmus We have not even se- cured the trade of our own colonial Islands of Asia. The trade we have there is in the main the result of sales to Americans who have gone to the Philippines, and who, if they had remained in America, would have pur- chased the same commodities, at a greater profit to the purchaser in this country. Our foreign commerce has
 been made largely of raw materials needed by the other nations With
 our raw copper, Germany has been
 electrifying the world; with our raw
 cotton, England and Germany, Swift
 zerland and France, and even Italy
 have been making garments for al
 Christendom and the pagon East
 "The cause of all this spectacle oi
 foreign nations turning out the finish.
 ed goods from raw materials indus
 triously supply by America, is tha'
 our whole external commerce has
 been merely incidental in our progress
 and prosperity. The majority of thu American people has been indifferen
 to foreign trade, and consequently tt
 reciprocity, because so deeply preoc
 cupied on our own continent, figuring
 up the totals of our own industrial financial, and commercial successes
 Am. American in New York whC sought in 1905 to inagurate a new re gime in foreign, discovered a big open ing for a certain article in Russia, an(
 forthwith wrote to 150 American manl
 lecturers, telling them of the oppor tunity and asking them to quote
 prices Only fifteen replied and 1T
 substance they all said that they wert
 too busy to consider foreign demands A. former Assistant Secretary o1
 State, upon his return from visit tC the grain fields of Argentina and tho
 greater prairles of Brazil, told me that he urged his father-in-law, a manu
 facturer of blows, to look into tho
 South American opportunity The swif reply came that the agricultural i'm, plement makers of the United States could not supply the insistent demands of American farmers.
 Tt is not that America is behind other countries in enterprise. A rall way from New York to Chicago, oI from Chicago to Omaha, yields greater returns than a steamship line around the world. We have posted that Ameri can locomotives whistle past the Pyra mids and frighten condors in tn Andes; that American-made engine pull trainloads of pilgrims to batl in the sacred waters of the Ganges and we have said much about Ameri can locomotives in Japan and Russia and those that will go into China; bu I've forget that this likewise means tn awakening and prosperity of tn countries that buy them. In every in stance, extension of our commerc means a corresponding increase in tn purchasing power of the world. In tn case of majority of our cargoes go ing abroad, the secret is suction iron the foreign shore, not propulsion iron