Japan. I saw Russian and American oil tins in the remotest
villages of Korea. Strolling along the river bank one evening
in Paknampo, Siam, I heard a familiar whirring sound and
entering found a bare-legged Siamese busily at work on a sewing-
machine of American make. Nearly five hundred of them
are sold in Siam every year, and I found them in most of the
cities that I visited in other Asiatic countries. When I left
Lampoon on an elephant, six hundred miles north of Bangkok,
a Laos gentleman rode beside me for several miles on an American
bicycle. There are thousands of them in Siam. His
Majesty himself frequently rides one and His Royal Highness,
Prince Damrong, is president of a bicycle club of four hundred
members. The king's palace is lighted by electricity and the
Government buildings are equipped with telephones, and as the
nobles and merchants see the brilliancy of the former and the
convenience of the latter, they want them, too. In many
parts of Asia people, who but a decade or two ago were satisfied
with the crudest appliances of primitive life, are now
learning to use steam and electrical machinery, to like Oregon
flour, Chicago beef, Pittsburg pickles and London jam, and to
see the utility of foreign wire, nails, cutlery, drugs, paints and
chemicals.

Many other illustrations of a changed condition might be
cited. Knowledge increases wants and the Oriental is acquiring
knowledge. He demands a hundred things to-day that his
grandfather never heard of, and when he goes to the shops to
buy his daily food, he finds that the new market for it which
the foreigner has opened has increased the price.