e ports fly the flag of the
Rising Sun, and Japan's tonnage at this time is greater than that of
Russia, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Denmark or Holland. In the matter of
oversea tonnage, Japan is far ahead of the United States. One fleet of
Japanese mail steamers, the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, whose president, Rempei
Kondo, is one of Japan's most progressive men, is numerically and in
tonnage larger than any ocean line under the Stars and Stripes. It has
seventy ships, aggregating 236,000 tons. A dozen of its vessels, making
the service between Yokohama and London, are fourteen-knot ships.

[Illustration: JAPANESE JUNK, OR CARGO BOAT]

These facts should be considered by every American complacently
believing that the traffic of the countries and islands washed by the
Pacific is open to American enterprise whenever we bid for it. When
Eastern trade develops in magnitude, it may be found that the
Japanese have laid permanent hold upon its carriage and interchange.
John Bull, be it remembered, drove the American merchantman from the
Atlantic; and likewise Japan may capture the carrying business of the
Pacific. It must be obvious that the nation controlling the
transportation of the Far East will seek to control its trade: and it is
sounding no false alarm to cite facts and conditions showing that the
awakening lands of Eastern Asia have more in store for energetic Japan
than for the United States, now fattening inordinately on home
trade--when overproduction comes, as it surely will, it then may be
found difficult to supplant another people in the occupation of
conveying American commodities to Eastern markets. There are persons in
the Orient, none too friendly to America, who expect to see the
commercial flag of Japan paramount on the Pacific eight or ten years
hence.

If it be conceded that Japan will absorb the bulk of the shipping of the
Pacific as it develops, valid reasons for fearing Japan as the trade
competitor of the United States do not exist. Unquestionably Japan is to
exploit the industry of her people; but the same poverty of resources
making this imperative insures for Uncle Sam a valuable partnership in
the program. Japan is bristling with workshops and mills in which a
hundred forms of handiwork will be developed--and in a majority of these
the adaptive labor of the empire will fabricate, from materials drawn
from America, scores of forms of merchandise, which the Japanese
propaganda will distribute throughout C