Documents of that time clearly indicate that the discovery of gold in California and the westward expansion of the American nation, as well as the growing prospects of the China trade and the increasing application of steam in navigation, were the motives which prompted the United States Government to open negotiations with Japan in 1853. Footnote 101: To-day there seem to be about 84,500 public schools in Russia, of which 40,000 are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education [compared with 30,157 public and private schools in Japan in 1902]. Toward the maintenance of the 40,000 schools, the ministry appropriates only about $2,000,000, or a little over one eighth of the annual cost. The teachers number 172,000 [in Japan, 126,703, in 1902], and pupils and students, 4,568,763 [in Japan in 1902, 5,469,419]. 7,250,000 children of school age are without any education [while in Japan, in 1902, the ratio of attendance to the number of children of school age was 95.80 per cent. for boys and 87.00 per cent. for girls, or, on the average, 91.57 per cent.]. See the U. S. daily _Consular Reports_ for February 8 and March 4, 1902 (Nos. 1871 and 1892), [and the _Kwampō_, April 8, 1904]. Footnote 102: As an evidence for this striking state of things the reader is referred to Dr. E. J. Dillon’s article in the American _Review of Reviews_ for October, 1904, pp. 449–454. The whole subject should be more carefully studied than it seems to have been thus far. Footnote 103: “The whole northern part of _Asia Minor_, according to the treaty between Russia and Turkey, is now placed under such conditions that Russian capitalists have the area open to them, to the exclusion of foreign enterprise. A situation analogous is found in _Persia_, where the entire northern portion is acknowledged to be under the exclusive economic influence of Russia.”—Consul Greener at Vladivostok, in the U. S. daily _Consular Reports_, April 22, 1903 (No. 1627). Footnote 104: For example, the normal freight per ton from Russia to Eastern Siberia would be about twenty-one rubles, while that from Japan or Shanghai is three or four rubles. If Russian goods were sold to the artificial exclusion of articles exported from nearer countries, the consumer’s burden would be greatly increased. Footnote 105: Count Cassini, the present Russian Ambassador at Washington, wrote, in the _North American Review_ for May, 1904: “... But let us suppose for argument’s sake that Russia, triumphant in this war, finds herself dominant in Manchuria. Japan, her enemy, could look for no favors; she could not expect to find encouragement for the importation of her manufactures” (p. 688). Footnote 106: