Page:The empire and the century.djvu/795

 social evolution of Japan progressed steadily and quickly—so quickly, indeed, that her enemies still remained blind to it until they suddenly found themselves confronted with the stem reality they had so lightly challenged.

Meanwhile our refusal to join in the coercion of Japan after the Treaty of Shimonoseki had been the first step towards a political rapprochement, to which Japan made willing and practical response by lending at our instance, her invaluable cooperation, as prompt as it was efficient, in the relief of the Peking Legations and the restoration of order in Northern China in 1900. The more openly the aggressive policy of other Powers in the Far East stood revealed, the more fully did Great Britain and Japan come to realize their own community of interests. Japan had become in contact with the West a great commercial and industrial power. I have already alluded incidentally to the growth of her foreign trade. Twenty years ago it did not amount to £10,000,000; in 1893 it had increased to about £30,000,000, and in 1903 it reached over £60,000,000. It had grown more than sixfold within two decades. This immense expansion of foreign trade has been only commensurate with the economic development of Japan's resources in every other direction. The tonnage of her shipping, excluding junks, grew from 225,000 tons in 1893 to nearly 1,000,000 tons in 1903. During the same period her railway system, built entirely out of her own resources, grew from under 2,000 to over 4,500 miles; the production of silk, cotton, and other textiles was trebled; the number of male and female operatives employed in her cotton-mills alone increased from 25,000 to 72,000; and what, perhaps, most graphically illustrates the general growth of commercial activity, the amount of bills cleared at various clearing-houses rose from