The first engagement between the two immense sugar refineries (Butterfield’s and Jardine’s) at Hongkong and the great refiners of Formosa has been won by the latter, which were helped until recently by indirect Japanese subsidies. When the Sugar Trust, after the government fine and municipal suit, jumped the price two cents a pound, in 1911, if America had a Price Board at the head of affairs to induce Congress to act as was done in the coal shortage, Formosa and Hongkong sugar could have flooded the country until the price was restored to the five cents rate, or about that rate. The immense Hongkong refineries (Taikoo and China Sugar) use Javan raw sugar. The Formosa refineries use their local raw. They not only supply Japan under a protective tariff, but have enough to supply China. Formosa produces 600,000,000 pounds a year, and could handily double the amount. America has the Louisiana, Hawaii and Philippine cane fields to protect, it is true, but if sugar rises over five and one-half cents a pound retail, the insistent knockers at the high door, Formosan and Hongkong sugars, might be allowed to come in, as the tariff-enslaved countries are going to heed the new cry that food, clothing and building material must be duty-free, or nearly so. Flake and amorphous graphite are mined in the Ping An section of northern Korea, and Japan will, therefore, enter into the manufacture of crucibles, lubricants, pencils and steel-paint. China continues to use the earthenware jar and the paper bottle, reinforced with bamboo withes, to transport her valuable nut, bean and seed oils. Sometimes staves are brought in by foreigners and set up at Hankau, Newchwang, etc., in barrels, but it would seem that tin would eventually come into use, with the idea of conserving wood. The earthenware and bamboo paper containers are the ideal from a conservation point of view, but they are too tender and risky for movement abroad. The Hanyang plant will probably have the first tinware factory. The royalty imposed in Korea for mining by the Japanese government is thirty per cent. of the net revenue. The Chinese royalty is twenty-five per cent. in general, plus an additional twenty per cent. in the case of precious stones, ten per cent. in gold, silver and quicksilver mines; five per cent. in coal and iron; and export duty of five per cent., and likin (inland customs and provincial transportation tax, literally “cash a catty”) two per cent. As China’s mines are more lucrative, this royalty is not so onerous as the comparison would seem to make it, and the tendency is to reduce it, under the new government.