Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/124

, the mule, the power-loom, and the steam-engine all spring up in formidable array. Commercialism makes the very life of the West depend upon her finding markets for her goods. Her role is now to sell, and that of the East to buy. War is declared from her factories, and the protests of her more humane statesmen are drowned in the noise of thundering mills. What chance has individualized Eastern trade against the sweeping batteries of organized commerce? Cheapness and competition, like the mitrailleuse, under whose cover they advance, now sweep away the crafts. The economic life of the Orient, founded on land and labor and deprived of a protective tariff through high-handed diplomatic action, succumbs to the army of the machine and capital.