If it be conceded that Japan will absorb the bulk of the shipping of the Pacific as it develops, valid reasons for fearing Japan as the trade competitor of the United States do not exist. Unquestionably Japan is to exploit the industry of her people; but the same poverty of resources making this imperative insures for Uncle Sam a valuable partnership in the program. Japan is bristling with workshops and mills in which a hundred forms of handiwork will be developed--and in a majority of these the adaptive labor of the empire will fabricate, from materials drawn from America, scores of forms of merchandise, which the Japanese propaganda will distribute throughout China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan--the "Great Japan," British publicists are calling it. Methods, materials, machinery, tools--all will be American. Having made no systematic appeal for the trade of the Far East in its broadest sense, America enjoys but small share of it. In the past few years our exports to Japan, however, have grown rapidly--chiefly in raw cotton and other unmanufactured materials. With Japanese selling agents canvassing lands inhabited by a half billion people, the products of America are to have enhanced consumption. This trade in Mongol countries, although vicarious, may run to large dimensions. The leading item of Japan's industrial promotion program is to become manufacturer of a goodly portion of the textiles worn in her vast "sphere of commerce." The Japanese have seen that the British Isles, growing not a pound of cotton, spin and weave the staple for half the people of the earth, and wish to profit by the example of their prosperous ally. To this end, cotton mills have sprung into being throughout Japan, in which American-grown fiber is transformed by the cheapest competent labor in the world into fabrics sold to China's and Japan's millions. It is certain that the controlling manufacture of Japan will be cotton, and the production of woolen cloths may come next. It is interesting to know that Japan increased the value of her exports of cotton manufactures to China from $251,363 in 1894 to $16,126,054 in 1904. "Why not fabricate her own raw silk, and send it to market ready for wear?" asks the foreigner reluctant to believe that Japan can hope to compete with Lancashire in the spinning of cotton. The answer is simple--it is because America is the principal purchaser of the raw article. Were it brought across the Pacific in manufactured form, the duty on it would be almost prohibitive; in its unwrought state it enters the country free.