The Idaho scimitar. [volume] (Boise, Idaho) 1907-1908, 1908-01-25


cotton goods.
According to the Financial Annual of Japan No
issued by the Department of Finance for 1900, fac
tory operatives receive from to Is cents per day
carpenters, % cents; tailors, % cents plasterer
2S cents; stone masons 33 cents, shoemakers, 2
cents; backsmiths, &c cents; compositors 20 cents
farm hands, Is cents; male weavers, 20 cents fe
male weavers, 10 cents; day 1aborers 10 cents; ser
wants. per month"; $165, and maid servants ST o.
per month. Children receive 81 cents per day. Al
operatives work from eleven to twelve hours pe
day.
They have IN Japan the material out of which
to manufacture almost all of their products and
when they have not with few EXCEPTIONS the material
is at hand. For their wool they can 90 to
Australia or to the Monaghan plains of China
With their vast deposits of coal and iron, both in
China and JAPAN it will not be long before they will
manufacture all the products of IRON
They import their cotton and a good portion of
this comes from the United States
With this condition of affairs in Japan how Chi
merical and utopan it is almost for us to talk about
our great trade in the Orient The Japanese under
stand the needs and tastes of the Oriental people
and with their skilled mechanics and cheap labor
they already supplying not only their own people
but are sending goods into China and other Oriental
countries. We cannot compete with them in these
markets.
They are raising some cotton in JAPAN and no
doubt Will go more extensively into this production
The industrial development of Japan during the
past twenty-five years, starting from nothing ought
to be sufficient object lesson to convince us that
extended trade with the Orient is an idle dream
Now let us turn to China.
China is about one-thrd larger in area than the
United States and has about six times as manv
people China has great resources and is we'll sup
Piled with agricultural and mineral wealth The al
luval lands produce cotton in large quantities.
Tobacco is grown in many of the provinces, and
sugar is grown with considerable success in the
southeast.
The coal fields of China are very extensive and the
quality of the coal is good The deposits of coal in
Shansi are said to be the most extensive in the world
They extend over many thousands of square miles
and could supply the world all the coal it could use
in thousands of years.
Iron deposits extensive coal, and lead tin
mercury and copper found. Gold is mined in
Manchuria and is found in some of the southern
provinces
The Chinese are the most industrious workers in
the world, and when working can exist on what a
white man would starve
The Chinese have always been very conservative
They have always been opposed to railroad build
ing, and to the opening up of their country to for
eigners, and to the development of their own re-
sources. Foreign nations vying with each
other to the nation to industrial activity
Many railroads projected.
There but little commercial intercourse be-
ween China and the outside world and none at all
o speak of with the United States until after the
var between China and Japan.
Modern commercial methods began with the treaty
etween China and Japan in 1895, made at Shimono-
eki, at the close of the war between these nations
yhich was followed by commercial treaty. in 1896