640 , POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to that of China.' East Africa and South Africa have already shown 

 a marked preference for certain lines of American manufactures, but 

 West Africa is for our exporters a new and more accessible market, 

 the possibilities of which have heretofore attracted but little attention. 



DISTRIBUTION OF OUR EXPORTS. 



A glance at the accompanying map of the world, showing the 

 distribution of our exports of manufactures, reveals the significant 

 fact that, as yet, the widest range of consumption of our goods is 

 found in the leading industrial countries, such as Great Britain, Ger- 

 many, France, and their willingness conjoined with their greater ca- 

 pacity to take our products raises the interesting question whether 

 our activity in competing for neutral markets, such as China, Africa, 

 South America, etc., is not, for the present, restrained by the fact 

 that our energies are largely employed in manufacturing for the 

 European demand. The seriousness of our competition in the devel- 

 opment of trade in countries which, as yet, are but imperfectly ex- 

 ploited will begin to be fully felt, it would seem, only when the 

 European demand shall have slackened or we shall have more than 

 met its requirements. In that case, our exporters would undoubt- 

 edly address themselves more systematically and with greater energy 

 to trade regions which our European rivals are now so industriously 

 seeking to control. There is food for thought also in the possible 

 consequences to our European trade of a rivalry on our part which 

 may be so crushing as to greatly impair the purchasing power of 

 those who are now our best customers. If we permanently cripple 

 their chief industries, we deprive them, to a greater or less extent, 

 of the means of buying from us, and the consumption of our food sup- 

 plies and our raw materials, as well as of our finished goods, may 

 be greatly curtailed. The solution of the problem may perhaps be 

 found in the gradual specialization of commerce and industry, ac- 

 cording to the peculiar capacity of each competing nation — the sur- 

 vival, in other words, of the fittest conditions for this or that country — 

 and the gradual subsidence of competition into healthful exchange. 



