Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 256, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1916 — CHINA WANTS OUR GOODS [ARTICLE]

CHINA WANTS OUR GOODS

American Manufacturers Are Meeting Favorable Reception at Hands of Orientals. The Chinese are beginning distinctly to favor American goods and regard America as a model from a manufacturing as w'ell as governmental viewpoint, according to Maurice Benjamin, general manager of the Olives Import and Export company, Shanghai, China. In spite of the famine in freight, he says, American manufacturers are not only gradually finding their way into China, but are being sought by the Orientals. “The tremendous disturbances In Europe have not failed to leave traces in China," he said. “In this the high freight rates have played no small part. China wonders w r hy so large a nation as America should have no mercantile marine. In some lines where only $lO per ton was paid before the war for transportation from the United States west coast to China, as much as S4O per ton has recently been paid. “I believe the day is not tary distant when we will see a new China. When the 400,000,000 people there begin to want machinery, railways and other requirements of civilization, America will benefit. It is a common error to think that the Chinese are too inveterately conservative to adopt Western civilization. 'Hie cost of living of Chinese in towns where there are Europeans has probably doubled In the last few years.”