Commercial Prize of the Orient 



work of developing its commerce by 

 constructing canals, roads, and rail- 

 roads. In 1869 the Suez Canal was 

 opened, shortening by several thousand 

 miles the water route between the Occi- 

 dent and the Orient. 



But there are other great changes 

 during the century just ended which 

 had an equally important effect upon 

 the commerce of the whole world and 

 upon the exchanges between the Orient 

 and the still expanding Occident. Prior 

 to 1800 most of the manufacturing of 

 the world was still performed by hand, 

 and largely in the household. Now 

 machinery, driven by steam or the 

 power of the waterfall, performs, under 

 the guidance of a single individual, 

 tasks which would have required hun- 

 dreds of persons to perform a century 

 ago. Then the products of the interior 

 could only be carried to the seaboard by 

 man or animal power, or at the best by 

 floating them in oar-propelled boats 

 upon the streams which made their way 

 to the ocean. Now railways penetrate 

 all parts of the great interior and carry 

 the natural products to the water's edge 

 for exchange with other countries and 

 continents. At the beginning of the 

 century all exchanges between the con- 

 tinents were carried by slow sailing ves- 

 sels, whose carrying capacity was small 

 and danger of loss great. Today the 

 bulk of the international commerce is 

 carried by great vessels propelled by 

 steam, and the cost of transportation is 

 reduced to a small fraction of that of a 

 century ago. In 1800 there were no 

 methods of communication on land save 

 by the post-rider, and none on the ocean 

 other than that furnished by the slow 

 sailing vessel, whose speed was subject 

 to the caprices of nature as expressed in 

 winds or storms or calms. 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF COMMERCE 

 HAVE BEEN MULTIPLIED 

 BY INVENTIONS 



Today the producer at the most in- 



terior point of the Occident may speak 

 with the consumer in the distant Orient, 

 the message flashing across the land 

 and under the ocean in less time than is 

 required to describe the process. The 

 merchant of New York who a century 

 ago sent his order to China by sailing 

 vessel might consider himself fortunate 

 if he received the merchandise within a 

 full year, while now the dealer in the 

 most distant city of our great interior 

 may wire his order in the morning with 

 the knowledge that the goods may be- 

 fore night be placed on board a fast 

 steamer and reach him within less than 

 a month. 



In 1805 the world had not a single 

 steamer upon the ocean, a single mile 

 of railway on land, a single span of tele- 

 graph upon the continents, or a foot of 

 cable beneath the ocean. In 1905 it has 

 over 18,000 steam vessels, 500,000 miles 

 of railway, and more than 1,000,000 

 miles of land telegraph, while the very 

 continents are bound together and given 

 instantaneous communication by more 

 than 200,000 miles of ocean cables, and 

 the number of telephone messages sent 

 aggregates 6,000 millions annually, and 

 one-half of them in the United States 

 alone. 



The effect of this enormous increase 

 in the power of production, transporta- 

 tion, and communication has been to 

 multiply commerce in all parts of the 

 world. The world's international com- 

 merce, which a single century ago was 

 less than two billions of dollars, is now 

 22 billions, and the commerce of the 

 Orient, which was less than 200 million 

 dollars, is now nearly 3,000 millions. 



THE COMMERCE OF THE ORIENT IS 

 INSIGNIFICANT WHEN COMPARED 

 WITH THAT OF THE REST OF 

 THE WORLD 



But this commerce of the Orient, 

 amounting to nearly 3,000 millions of 

 dollars annually, is yet small when com- 

 pared with its area and population, and 



