There are now one or two industrial facts of less importance to which attention may be drawn. The United States, with the completion of the Panama Canal, will be the greatest industrial Power of the Pacific. Her manufacturing interests are grouped nearer to the east than the west coast--partly because of the position of her coalfields,--and the fact has hitherto stood in the way of her seaport trade to the Pacific. With the opening of the canal her eastern ports will find the route to the Pacific reduced greatly, and they will come into closer touch with the western side of South America, with Asia, and with the British communities in the South Pacific. The perfect organisation of the industrial machinery of the United States will give her a position of superiority analogous to that which Great Britain had in the Atlantic at the dawn of the era of steam and steel. Western Canada is a possible great industrial factor of the future when she learns to utilise the tremendous water power of the Selkirks and Rockies. The Canadian people have the ambition to become manufacturers, and already they satisfy the home demand for many lines of manufactured goods, and have established an export trade in manufactures worth about £7,000,000 a year. Australia, too, aspires to be a manufacturing country, and though she has not risen yet to the dignity of being an exporter of manufactures to any considerable extent, the valuation of her production from manufactures (_i.e._ value added in process of manufacture) is some £180,000,000 a year. To sum up: in neutral markets of the Pacific (_i.e._ markets in which the goods of all nations can compete on even terms) the Asiatic producer (the Japanese and the Indian at present, the Chinese later) will be formidable competitors in some lines, notably textiles. But the United States should be the leading industrial Power. British competition for Pacific markets will come not only from the Mother Country but from the Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Neutral markets will, however, tend to be absorbed in the spheres of influence of rival Powers striving for markets as well as for territory. A position approaching monopoly of the markets of the Pacific could only be reached as the result of a campaign of arms. FOOTNOTES: