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Page 30
"The area suitable for cultivation of cotton in China is almost as
limitless as the supply of labor, and labor being very cheap,
there can be no doubt that China will soon be one of the great
cotton-producing countries of the world, and that this product,
produced and manufactured in China, will command serious
consideration in all calculations with reference to the cotton
market. It will not be safe to discount the cotton of China
because it now grades low, for it is certain to improve. At
present it is estimated there are 3,000,000 tons of cotton seed,
equal to 90,000,000 gallons of oil, now yearly lost to commerce
which would find a ready market. The company will start with a
capital of 250,000 Mexican dollars. One company has already
ordered its machinery from the United States."
The population of the Chinese Empire is estimated at 400,000,000, but Li
Hung Chang declares, and experienced western observers confirm it, that
the country with modern improvements could sustain more than twice its
present population in a very high state of comfort.
Of all the popular errors, however, the greatest is that of regarding
India as an overpopulated, stagnant, and unprogressive land. Suffice it to
say here that the population has trebled under British rule, and that the
country is abundantly able to sustain in great comfort twice its present
numbers by agriculture alone; that the extension of the railway system has
recently been rapid, and along with this has gone on a growth of
manufactures that is simply amazing. Only recently Burmah borrowed in
London $15,000,000 for railway construction, a sum that was subscribed in
that market five times over. In these vast fertile regions, which in
comparison with what they are destined to be might be called new and
undeveloped, live 290,000,000 of people, who are increasing at the rate of
something like 2,000,000 per year. And these are but a few of the facts I
might present to show that the early development of the Orient is the
great fact America must take into account, and that it is almost a
certainty that the world's greatest possible production of gold in the
future may be absorbed in the East, leaving the West to struggle with an
increasing scarcity. Indeed, Prof. Eduard Suess, the great German
authority, after giving reasons for his belief that the larger part of the
gold product is used in the arts, and that all of it will soon be, points
out that Asia will soon, in all probability, absorb almost the entire
silver product, and that we shall then have a "crisis" indeed.
In my travels through India and the Orient generally I took notice of her
enormous capacity to export wheat. As a result, I predicted that the
export, then but fairly begun, would soon menace our supremacy in the
British market. I began at the same time to study the social and
industrial condition of Russia, and was soon satisfied that she was in the
dawn of a great day. I predicted the eastern extension of her enterprises,
and increased political influence, especially with China, and the
consequent absorption of western gold and capital generally. It appears
from the latest summary of the United States Bureau of Statistics that
Russia had, on the first of January, 1892, $324,828,300 in gold in her
banks, and on the last of last May $424,193,700. If she carries out her
present policy, this is less than half of the amount she will require. On
a strictly gold basis we must allow her at least $10 per capita, which
would make for the empire $1,200,000,000. But if we greatly reduce the per
capita, in view of the undeveloped condition of her subjects, the amount
still to be required will be enormous. During the same four years and five
months the Bank of France has increased its holdings of gold from
$260,888,299 to $391,519,658; the Austrian-Hungarian Bank from $26,634,400
to $133,006,312, and the Bank of England from $109,342,800 to
$232,791,709, while the Banks of Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and the
Netherlands have also increased their holdings some $30,000,000. Thus we
see that in these few years the leading nations have added nearly
$500,000,000 to their previous hoards of gold, which shows too plainly
that they are looking forward to a gold famine. How much more will Asia
demand? In my opinion, India, notwithstanding British rule and influence
there, has developed less rapidly than China will when she once comes into
as intimate contact with western nations as has India, for the rigid
system of caste which prevails in India and which does not exist in China
has been and will be the cause of greater immobility. It is not possible
to say how long it will operate as an impediment to a high industrial
development, but from the lessons taught in other countries where race and
religion create similar castes, we may believe in its long continuance. I
take pleasure at this point in referring to the late able work of Prof.
Charles H. Pierson, of Oxford, who passed twenty years in the Orient. In
his "National Life and Character" he points out that China in 1844 had
doubled her population in eighty years, and there since has been a great
increase; that Russia has doubled since 1849, very largely by natural
increase, the Russian peasant being the most prolific of human beings; and
the Hindoos, who had doubled in eighty years, have recently gained
20,000,000 in ten years.
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