The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-05-05
OUR WAR WITH JAPAN
A Brief history of Events Ending March, 1917
BY

on tobacco, long a government monop-
oily, since it shrewdly froze the Amerf-
can Tobacco Trust out of it's borders
1t increased its taxes on all luXurles
and, as in the war with Russia, hef
people met these taxes more than haIt
way, cheerfully, in order to provide
their country with the sinews of com"
mercial warfare. It even went fur-
Their, for. however the Pacific NAL
dropped its rate to meet Japanese COM
petition. japanese shippers refused to
ship by it, Chinese shippers, under
Japanese influence, renewed their boy
colt on American goods and American
sh ps more quietly and more effectual~
~. The Philippine trade, which might
have kept this line alive, had already
been strangled by our refusal to grant
our wards any preference in our tariff
restrictions, so after two years of strug~
gle the various ships of the Pacific
Mail went under foreign control and
our flag disappeared from the Pacific,
as it had from the Atlantic a genera
ton or two before.
All this time the Manchurian wheat
fields had been yielding crops which
were being ground in japanese mills.
Japan's and, to add insult to injury.
Japan began sending her flour to the
United States and underselling us in
our own country. Having the crops
gathered by coolie labor, the wheat
ground in mills using American patent
ed machinery that paid no royalties
operated by yellow labor at fifty cents
per day. and the -four transported in
| 20 a la
it possible to lower the freight rates
fully one-half the first industrial blow
was struck at our wheat-fields and at
the American farmer, who Thereafter
found the smiling face of prosperity
turned rigidly away from him. what
was true of wheat became also true of
cotton, and our sole market in the ORR
ent remained that of agricultural i'm
Elements, though even here favoritlsm
and other causes sent the Oriental GUS
toner to Scotland and Belgium.
1t was about this time that the Uni~
ted States awoke to the fact that our
consumption, great as it was, had not
increased as rapidly as our production,
and for the first time in our history we
were obliged to seek foreign markets
for our goods. The unexampled pros
per1ty of our country from the year ISoZ
to 1909 had so stimulated industrial ac-
tivity that we were over-producing In
all commodities, and when we sought
an outlet in the East, japan, with its
cheap labor, had already closed the
open door of the Orient to us, not by
diplomatic measures which could have
been resented by force of arms, but by
commercial strategy. The European
markets had long since been denied us
because of our ''stand-pat' policy on
the tariff, which had made it impossible
to compete with the pauper labor Of
Europe Our tariff wall, originally
erected for protection, had become the
wall of our industrial grave, wide and
deep, but encompassing all.
The last years of President Roose-'
velt's third term were serious ones.
The Industrial depression following the
years of unprecedented prosperity was
laid wholly at the door of the Admins
tration. President Roosevelt's prestige
had grown enormously after his APP
parently successful fight against the
Standard Oil Company, until it was