42 o The National Geographic Magazinf 



The Air and Water Currents of the Pacific. See page 422 



But there are special reasons why we 

 may expect to increase our share in the 

 trade of the Orient, and especially our 

 share in supplying its imports. The 

 Orient produces large quantities of the 

 class of merchandise which we must im- 

 port, and imports equally large quanti- 

 ties of the class of merchandise which 

 we produce and desire to sell. Our im- 

 ports of raw silk, and tea, and hemp, 

 and jute, and tin, and goat skins, and 

 other articles of the class produced in 

 the Orient amount to hundreds of mill- 

 ions of dollars annually, and our im- 

 ports from Asia and Oceania have grown 

 from less than 32 millions of dollars in 

 1870 to 190 millions in 1904. The 

 Orient is a large importer of cotton and 

 cotton goods, mineral oils, manufactures 



of iron and steel, flour, and meats, in all 

 of which the United States is the world's 

 largest producer. |; 



The imports of cotton goods alone 

 into the Orient amount to 250 million 

 dollars per annum, and in this trade we 

 should have a large share. We produce 

 three-fourths of the world's cotton, and 

 our factories are turning more and more 

 of it into the manufactured form each 

 year, and there seems no good reason 

 why we should not supply at least one- 

 half of the cotton goods imported into 

 the Orient instead of less than one- 

 tenth, as at present. Our production 

 of mineral oil, fit for use in lighting, of 

 which the imports into the Orient are 

 about $35,000,000 annually, is larger 

 than that of any other country, and we 



