39° POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with whom they pleased. This was soon extended to subjects of the 

 United States and France, and since then the rights of foreigners in 

 China have .steadily increased. There are now over thirty ' treaty 

 ports/ the gateways of Western trade and influence. 



American commerce with China began in 1784, the first ship leaving 

 New York on Washington's birthday of that year, and taking fifteen 

 months for the round trip. Our trade with China has been successful 

 from the start, and is greater in importance and value than that of any 

 other nation except Great Britain. With all the rapid developments of 

 modern commerce and the pressure which every commercial nation is 

 exerting in that quarter, our sales to China have quadrupled in the last 

 decade. This rapid growth, together with other recent events in the 

 far east, has warranted the U. S. Department of Commerce and Labor 

 in publishing a quarto volume of some hundred and twenty pages on 

 ' Commercial China in 190-t.' Some of the introductory sentences of 

 this monograph are significant in the present connection : 



With an area of 4.000,000 square miles and a population of 400,000.000 

 people, its written history, covering thousands of years, shows that its doors 

 have been firmly closed against foreign trade until within the memory of the 

 present generation, while during the short time in which foreigners have been 

 admitted to its commerce no period has been so marked with important com- 

 mercial developments as that of the past three years. With hundreds of miles 

 of railway now in operation and thousands of miles projected; with telegraphs 

 connecting its capital with every province and even its far away dependencies 

 and also with the outside world; with steam navigation and foreign vessels 

 penetrating to the very head of its many navigable waterways; with new treaty 

 ports opening upon the coast and far inland, and with foreigners permitted to 

 travel for business or pleasure to the remotest corners of the Empire and carry 

 with them their merchandise and the machinery with which it is manufactured, 

 the changes in conditions are such as to attract unusual attention. 



The expansion of the great powers of the world has culminated in 

 the armed strife on China's northern border which is holding the atten- 

 tion of the civilized world. The issue in the east may be briefly stated, 

 but it concerns hundreds of millions of the human race. ' Shall 

 Japan,' Siam, Korea and China be free to work out their own national 

 destinies ? ' * Japan and Siam have already made great strides, but 

 while they may seem to be beyond outside domination, their fate is still 

 involved in no small measure with that of China. The issue in the 

 orient is sharply drawn : ' independent national development for China, 

 and continued progress of the other two free Asiatic states ; or the sub- 

 jection of China, and the endangering of all free nationality in Asia. ' 



The loss of free nationality in Asia would probably be a calamity to 

 mankind. However justly the occidental may pride himself on his 

 mastery of the art of living, however truly he may rejoice in his achieve- 

 ment throughout the whole reach of life, a sane modesty, taught him by 

 his own science, should keep him from regarding western peoples as the 



* See ' To Save the Chinese Empire,' by O. D. Wannamaker, The South China 

 Collegian, Canton, China, Julv, 1904. 



