history, has been the victor in a
great war, has adopted the best features of the western civilization while
sacrificing none of its own, and is advancing in material development with
a rapidity rarely equalled and perhaps never excelled. Five years ago the
first complete census showed thirty-six cotton factories with 377,970
spindles; three years later the number of factories had doubled and that
of the spindles had much more than quadrupled, and there is every
indication that next year's tabulation will show a still more rapid
increase. In 1894 there were 17,000 people employed in that industry.

Hon. Robert P. Porter, who has recently returned from Japan, after making
a thorough study of her progress and resources, tells us that while her
export of textiles of all kinds in 1885 was worth but $511,990, they were
in 1895 worth $22,177,626, the estimate of both years in silver dollars.
Similarly in the same years the exports of raw silks increased from
$14,473,396 to $50,928,440, of grain and provisions from $4,514,843 to
$12,723,771, of matches from $60,565 to $4,672,861, of porcelain, curios,
and sundries from $2,786,876 to $11,624,701, and several other articles in
the like proportion, while the commerce for 1895 showed an increase of
$30,000,000 over 1894, reaching a total of exports and imports of
$296,000,000, or about $7.50 per capita.

The government granted 2,250,000 yen as a bounty to the first iron works,
begun in 1892, and already the products of those iron works in hand-made
articles are underselling American products on our Pacific coast. In five
years, prior to those covered by Mr. Porter's figures above, Japan's
exports rose from 34,800,000 to 68,400,000 yen, and her imports from
27,000,000 yen to 64,000,000 yen. Nor does there appear any reason to
doubt the confident statement of British experts that development for the
coming years will go on much more rapidly. Politics in the empire already
turns upon fiscal and economic questions; of two bills urged in the
Imperial Parliament by the progressists, one decrees the nationalization
of all railways not yet owned by the state, and the other asks for an
appropriation of 50,000,000 yen for the building of a new railroad. While
this is going through the press it is announced that Japan has established
two new steamship lines, one running from Yokohama to our own Pacific
coast, and the other from Yokohama to Marseilles, stopping at Shanghai,
Hong Kong, Singap