Total $4,414,651


While cotton goods, kerosene oil and flour are our chief exports
to China, there is a growing demand for many other
American products. The utility of the American locomotive
has become so apparent that in 1899, engines costing $732,212
were sent to China and additional orders are received every
few months. With the enormous forests bordering the Pacific
Ocean in the states of Oregon and Washington, and with the
development of cheap water transportation, there is a rapidly
widening market in China for American lumber. Eastern Asia
is too densely peopled to have large forests, and those she has
are not within easy reach. Native lumber, therefore, is scarce
and often small and crooked. That in common use comes
from Manchuria and Korea. I was impressed in Tsing-tau to
find that the Germans are using Oregon lumber and to be told
that it is considered the best, and in the long run, the cheapest.
Oregon pine costs more than the Korean and Manchurian, but
it is superior in size and quality. The transportation charges
to the interior, however, are a heavy addition. Manchurian
pine can be delivered at such an interior city as Wei-hsien, via
the junk port of Yang-chia-ko and thence by land, for twenty
dollars, gold, per thousand square feet, which is considerably
less than the Tsing-tau retail price for Asiatic lumber. Oregon
lumber costs in Shanghai, thirty-two dollars gold, per thousand,
but an importer estimated that it could be delivered at Tsingtau
for twenty-five dollars gold per thousand in large quantities.

The exports of the United States to China, according to the