Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1900 — PERKINS. [ARTICLE]

PERKINS.

CALIFORNIA SENATOR OR OUR EXPANSION. Astounding Growth of the Trans* Pacific Trade. Reasons Why the Pacific Coast Will Cast Its Electoral Votes for McKinley and Roosevelt. (By George C. “Perkins, United States Senator from California.) No portion of the country is more immediately concerned in sustaining the expansion policy of President McKinley than the States of the Pacific coast. While the South produces the cotton which is being shipped in such enormous quantities to the orient, while other sections are sending manufactures of every description, the coast is sending across the Pacific its own flour, fruits and manufactures. Besides this, we are handling the ships in which the exporting is done. Our own manufactures have ranged from mining and other machinery to a completed five thousand ton steel man-of-war for the Japanese government. Every line of industry has benefited and we expect by the establishment of closer commercial relations to increase both our population and prosperity. The Pacific coast has long been on the edge of the country. To-day it is the center of the American transpacific trade. We have reached out beyond for business. We can control the trade of the Pacific. That is why we are all expansionists. The growth of the transpacific trade is a matter of very recent years. Not more than ten years ago the Canadian Pacific Company established its first line of transpacific steamships. Prior to that there were six steamers plying from San Francisco in the Japan and China line. They brought from the orient tea, matting. silk, rice and the endless lihe of articles that are imported from Japanand China. They carried back silver in the form of Mexican dollars and bullion, some provisions, and flour which was taken along for ballast as well as to till up the cargoes. The establishment of the Canadian line—primarily for military pui-poses and secondarily for traffic, threw a good many San Franciscans into mourning. To them, they thought, the end had come. Sau Francisco was to lose its Asiatic business. Theu followed in rapid succession the establishment of uew Hues from Portland, the Puget sound ports and §an Diego. Our merchants awoke. Instead of six steamers plying from San Francisco the number has lteeu added to. The demand now is for larger boats and better, boats, and the trade from the Pacific slope is many times wbat it once was. The incoming cargoes are much what they formerly were, but the exports include "every conceivable article of American produce and mam^teture —cotton goods, electrical goods, Incycles, cotton literally by the trainload, alcohol by the trainload for use in the manufacture of smokeless powder in Japan, agricultural implements, canned fruits, canned vegetables, canued meats, almost everything that the mind can conceive. And the demand on the steamship companies is always for room and then for more room. What is true of the Asiatic trade is equally true of the Australian. The Oceauic Steamship Company is about to add three 0.O(H)-ton vessels to its fleet and to begin steamer connection with Tahiti. I am assured that the available freight carrying facilities of the Australian steamers are engaged for montha ahead. These are the material evidences of trade expansion. The sentiment of this Pacific coast is overwhelmingly in favor of closer business relations with the orient. We do not favor giving up the Hawaiian Islands, which have been developed by California capital; we do not favor Mr. Bryan's policy of surrendering the Philippines.

GEORGE C. PERKINS.

San Francisco. Cal.