Asia’s Demand for the Precious Metals
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Among the many errors which distort men’s opinions on the so-called “silver question” is the belief that the gold supply of the present and near future need be considered merely as it may affect Europe and America. Asia and Africa are in most men’s minds entirely excluded from the calculations. The popular belief in the United States may be briefly stated thus: Asia is and is long to be the land of stagnation. Asiatics are unprogressive and will remain so. In contact with the higher civilization of Europe the yellow and brown races are likely to fade away as did the Maori and the American Indian; or if they continue to increase, their trade and government will be conducted chiefly by Europeans.
One finds this belief expressed in many standard works. “The helpless apathy of Asiatics” is a favorite phrase of Macaulay. “Man is but a weed in those vast regions,” says DeQuincey. “In Asia there are no questions, only affirmations,” says another philosopher. And no amount of experience seems to shake the popular faith in this notion that what Asia was she is always to be. And yet enough has occurred within the memory of men still middle-aged to dissipate it. Only a few years ago Americans looked upon Russia as an inert mass, semi-barbarous in large part; and when Kennan pictured the horrors of Siberia most readers thought the condition only such as might be expected from such a government and such people as they believed the Russians to be. But Russia is to-day one of the world’s greatest powers, with 120,000,000 of people, building the two longest railways in the world, developing the Siberian and Transcaspian region with a rapidity only exceeded in our own far West, and drawing gold from this country and western Europe at a rate that threatens the stability of our financial system.
It is only forty-one years since our Commodore Perry astonished the world by securing admission to Japan and proving to the western people that it was at least worthy of their notice, yet that empire has undergone a most beneficent revolution in which the Daimios or local lords consented to a self-sacrifice without a parallel in history, has been the victor in a great war, has adopted the best features of the western civilization while sacrificing none of its own, and is advancing in material development with a rapidity rarely equalled and perhaps never excelled. Five years ago the first complete census showed thirty-six cotton factories with 377,970 spindles; three years later the number of factories had doubled and that of the spindles had much more than quadrupled, and there is every indication that next year’s tabulation will show a still more rapid increase. In 1894 there were 17,000 people employed in that industry.
Hon. Robert P. Porter, who has recently returned from Japan, after making a thorough study of her progress and resources, tells us that while her export of textiles of all kinds in 1885 was worth but $511,990, they were in 1895 worth $22,177,626, the estimate of both years in silver dollars. Similarly in the same years the exports of raw silks increased from $14,473,396 to $50,928,440, of grain and provisions from $4,514,843 to $12,723,771, of matches from $60,565 to $4,672,861, of porcelain, curios, and sundries from $2,786,876 to $11,624,701, and several other articles in the like proportion, while the commerce for 1895 showed an increase of $30,000,000 over 1894, reaching a total of exports and imports of $296,000,000, or about $7.50 per capita.
The government granted 2,250,000 yen as a bounty to the first iron works, begun in 1892, and already the products of those iron works in hand-made articles are underselling American products on our Pacific coast. In five years, prior to those covered by Mr. Porter’s figures above, Japan’s exports rose from 34,800,000 to 68,400,000 yen, and her imports from 27,000,000 yen to 64,000,000 yen. Nor does there appear any reason to doubt the confident statement of British experts that development for the coming years will go on much more rapidly. Politics in the empire already turns upon fiscal and economic questions; of two bills urged in the Imperial Parliament by the progressists, one decrees the nationalization of all railways not yet owned by the state, and the other asks for an appropriation of 50,000,000 yen for the building of a new railroad. While this is going through the press it is announced that Japan has established two new steamship lines, one running from Yokohama to our own Pacific coast, and the other from Yokohama to Marseilles, stopping at Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Columbo.
The western mind has long looked upon China as given over to hopeless inertia and stagnation, but China has awakened at last. In one year the importation of illuminating oil rose 50 per cent., of window glass 58 per cent., of matches 23 per cent., and needles 20 per cent. In six years the tonnage of vessels discharging in Chinese ports rose by one-third. While these lines are going through the press Li Hung Chang is in Europe negotiating for a loan of 400,000,000 francs to be expended in internal improvements, and he gives the weight of his very high authority to the statement that China is no longer opposed to the introduction of railways.
Consul-General Jernigan reports to the Department of State that the prospectus of a new industry is now before the public at his station, Shanghai. It is called the Shanghai Oil Mill Company, and purposes to manufacture oil from cotton seed. It is the logical result of the cotton mills at Shanghai, and the consequent stimulus given to the cultivation of cotton in China. Since 1890 there have been forty-five new manufacturing plants established in Shanghai. They are all in successful operation, especially the cotton factories, in which large capital is invested. He adds:
“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.
Professor Pierson also points out the great error of assuming that the black and yellow races will fade away before the white, and shows it to be far more likely that with the increased security afforded by British and Russian rule they will increase so rapidly as to industrially force the white race back to the higher latitudes of the north temperate zone. Industrial commonwealths will not dispense with great armies—at least not for a long time—but China has passed the militant age, and reached the purely industrial. It may be said that work is a pleasure to the Chinese, as active sports are to Western people. Continuous toil is looked upon as a matter of course. To them it does not seem a hardship that men should work. As a measure of the possibilities of the Orient, consider what has been done in the western world within half a century, where the population is much less than one-half of that of the far East. Over four hundred thousand miles of railroad have been constructed, together with a vast, almost incalculable system of telegraphs, to say nothing of the great cities and common roads, or the enormous mass of productive machinery, which has even outrun the increase of population.
In round numbers, some forty thousand millions in capital have been absorbed in railroads alone. Add the amount absorbed in telegraphs, telephones, steamships, and electric plants, and a thousand and one appliances of civilization, and the total is beyond comprehension. And all these things have yet to be created and adopted in the Oriental countries. How rapidly the development may go on there, and what an enormous mass of capital will be absorbed, is clearly indicated by what has been done in a very few recent years. And so far we have left Africa entirely out of the account, a country with a vast population and richly dowered with natural resources and with a capacity for rapid development.
Possibly the Orientals will not suddenly become progressive to the degree here anticipated, though Russia’s eastern march has fairly rivalled our western march; and it must be borne in mind that to develop the appliances of western civilization we had all the experiments to make, all the crude preliminary work to do in creating the system, which the Orient will receive from us in its present perfected form, and be able to go on without any mistakes, and thus enable them to adopt within a very brief time that which we gave the labors of several generations to discover, develop, and apply.
How enormous, then, will be their absorption of western capital and gold.
Is it still maintained that the Orientals lack the capacity for such development? Then look at their achievements in every country to which they have emigrated, and especially in this. Their progress here in the industrial arts, even while they were but a handful, was so rapid that the government was called on to restrict them. Even now the papers contain alarming statements to the effect that Japan is invading our markets with those specialties in the making of which we, but a little while ago, considered ourselves superior to all the rest of the world. And no tariff is high enough to keep them out. It is observed by all travellers in China and other Oriental countries that there exists in as great a degree as in the West a desire for indulgence in those things classed as mere luxuries which, in all nations, absorb so great a share of its total wealth. Every one who travels through the eastern countries marvels at the extraordinary richness and delicacy of those things adopted by them for ornamentation, luxury, and convenience. And they are of such a character as, far more than in the western world, involves the consumption of the precious metals. Along with the national desire to adopt that which is useful and ornamental, a highly mimetic nature prompts them to seize upon and adapt with singular readiness that which is brought to their notice as being useful and constituting a salient feature of western civilization.