If China were opened up, free to the commerce of all nations, its four hundred and thirty millions of industrial people, would rise from a five cent wage basis to a 20 cent, 30 cent, or even 40 or 50 cent basis, and the average man, instead of having his present outfit of about a half suit of cotton clothes, would have four or five whole suits, which are pulled on in multiple numbers, according to the coldness of the day. This would so increase the world’s demand for cotton that even with a 20,000,000 bale crop, the price could be hardly kept down to 20 cents per pound. The picture here disclosed is not visionary. Thousands of Chinese worked under my inspection for months reconstructing gun-boats at Hong Kong. The above estimates of their industrial capacity are conservative. Knowing both peoples, I do not hesitate to say that the industrial capacity of a Chinaman is far greater than that of a Japanese, while there are over ten times as many Chinese as Japanese. Moreover, the facilities for communication are advancing. The eyes of the world have been thrown upon China, and the point of the wedge has been entered. A few decades can see marvelous growth in this young giant of a market. I estimate that before this century is half turned, China, properly opened up, will add more than $5,000,000,000 annually to the world’s commerce, and one of the chief staples of this commerce will be cotton, first the goods, then the raw materials, creating a consumption as great as that of all Europe combined. But this greatest of all coming cotton markets is the most sensitive and the most exposed. When war broke out in the Orient last year, it was clear that Japan and Russia, under the exhaustion, would decline in buying power, and that the thriving cotton trade of Manchuria would be cut off entirely, while the fate of China might become involved and endanger the whole Chinese market. Consequently, the day after war was declared, cotton slumped 5 cents a pound, and started on its downward path, going off nearly 8 cents a pound before indications came in of the large crop, which brought about a further decline of about 3 cents a pound.