---------------+--------------------+------------------+----------------- | | | Balance against | U. S. Imports from | U. S. Exports to | U. S. ---------------+--------------------+------------------+----------------- Brazil | $120,155,855 | $42,638,467 | $77,517,388 Cuba | 126,088,173 | 70,581,154 | 55,507,019 British E. I. | 116,178,182 | 15,108,956 | 101,069,226 Japan | 91,633,240 | 57,741,815 | 33,891,425 China | 39,010,800 | 21,326,834 | 17,683,966 Switzerland | 23,260,180 | 826,549 | 22,433,631 Mexico | 77,543,842 | 54,571,584 | 22,972,258 Colombia | 15,992,321 | 7,397,696 | 8,594,625 Venezuela | 10,852,331 | 5,737,118 | 5,115,213 Egypt | 19,907,828 | 1,660,833 | 18,246,995 +--------------------+------------------+----------------- | $640,622,752 | $277,591,006 | $363,031,746 ---------------+--------------------+------------------+----------------- There is no such relationship with the Philippines, which during 1912 imported $20,770,536 worth of merchandise from the United States to offset the $21,619,686 worth shipped to that country. The Philippines could readily produce all of these products in quantities sufficient to meet the demands of the United States if there were proper development of the resources of the islands, which have rich land, good labour and suitable climate, but lack capital and competent, skilled supervision. The situation has been admirably summed up in the following statement issued some time since by the Manila Merchants' Association:-- "The Philippines will consume of imported commodities what they are able to pay for. Their purchasing capacity will always be measured by their production of export commodities. There is nothing that they produce, or are adapted to produce, that the United States is not at present under the necessity of buying from foreign countries whose import trade it does not, and never will, control. Thus it cannot hope for such advantages in other fields yielding tropical products as it already possesses in these Islands." The Philippines should furnish the bulk of the tropical products imported into the United States. The commerce between the two countries should in the very near future increase to $100,000,000 per year each way and should go on increasing more and more rapidly thereafter. CHAPTER XXXIV PEACE AND PROSPERITY Unexampled material prosperity has come to the islands, partly as a result of the establishment of peace, and the improvement in means of communication; partly from a very different cause.