same year Japan
caused China to yield a secret agreement prohibiting any new line "in
the {87} neighborhood of and parallel to" the South Manchurian Railway
or any branch line that "might be prejudicial" to it. Japan, under
threat of arms, forced China to abandon the plan for the
Hsinmintun-Fakumen line after arrangements had been made with an
English syndicate, and later Japan and Russia on the same pretext
prevented the proposed Chinchow-Aigun line across Mongolia and
Manchuria, although a hundred miles or more away from the South
Manchurian line.

V

That Japan, then, holds the whip hand in Manchuria, and expects to
continue to hold it, is very clear. With China as yet too weak to
protect herself, Japan is virtually master of the situation. Let us
ask then--since this is in an American book--whether the Open Door
policy is being enforced even now; to ask it of any one in Manchuria
is to be laughed at. I tried it once in a Standard Oil office and the
man in front of me roared, and an unnoticed clerk at my back,
overhearing so absurd a question, was also unable to contain his
merriment. It is not a question of the fact of the shutting-up policy,
Chinese and foreigners in Manchuria will tell you; it is only a
question as to the extent of that condition.

The truth is that the ink was hardly dry on the early treaties before
the discriminations began. The military railroads, which Japan was in
honor bound to all the world to use only for war purposes, were used
for transporting Japanese goods before the military restrictions with
regard to the admission of other foreign goods were removed. The
Chinese merchant and his patrons were famishing for cotton "piece
goods" and other manufactured products, and the Japanese goods coming
over were quickly taken up and a market for these particular "chops"
or "trademarks" (the Chinaman relies largely on the chop) was
established. By the time European and American goods came back their
market in many cases {88} had already been taken away. In some cases,
too, their trademark rights had been virtually ruined by the closeness
of Japanese imitation. Even on my recent tour, among consuls of three
nations, at Manchurian points, I did not find one who did not mention
some recent case of trademark infringement.

Then came the period of freight discriminations and rebates, when the
Japanese (principally the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, the one great octopus
of Japanese business and commerce