Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/646

638 interests there and in shaping our international policies is a question which only the future can answer. In a memorial from the cotton manufacturers of the South addressed to the Secretary of State in November last, commending the 'open-door' policy in China, the statement is made that a large part of the production of the cotton drills and sheetings manufactured in Southern mills is exported to North China, and that "the prohibition or interference in China by any European government would tend to seriously injure, not only the cotton-manufacturing industries, but other important products of the United States which are being shipped to China. For the protection and perpetuity of these commercial relations," it is added, "we earnestly pray that the Administration will take such action as may be proper under existing conditions. It is not only the manufacturers of cotton goods that would be seriously affected, but the Southern planter and cotton grower, who finds a ready cash sale for his products at his very door; and also the thousands of employees and laboring classes who are engaged in the cotton mills and depend on the success of these manufacturing industries for a livelihood."

The developments of the past two years in consequence of our acquisition of the Hawaiian and Philippine islands have brought another factor into prominence in our commercial development, which may be potential of unlooked-for results. The Pacific slope is rapidly being converted from a mere outpost of trade into a great hive of commerce. Not only San Francisco, but Port Townsend, Seattle, Tacoma and Portland, are becoming entrepôts of Oriental and South Pacific commerce, and San Diego seems likely to be an important factor in the development of trade with the west coast of Latin America.

The growth of sea-borne commerce at these points means much for the great extent of country tributary to them and promises to work marked changes in the industrial condition of the vast region west of the Rocky Mountains. In a similar way, our southern group of States may find a sweeping readjustment of their economic relation to the rest of the Union in the fact that Cuba and Porto Rico now offer them easy and convenient stepping stones to Latin American trade.

Even in the now familiar conditions affecting the Atlantic seaboard, which, as we have seen, have recently produced a great increase in our export trade, a new element appears in the statement of our consul in Sierra Leone, Mr. Williams, that, in a few years, West Africa will offer a market for our goods 'only second in importance