Fearon, Chairman of the Municipal Council of Shanghai, and for thirty years an extensive importer of American goods for China, is at the Palace. He sayy that wonderful changes are taking place in the Chinese empire, and that there never was a time when opportunities for Americans to extend their trade in China were so good as now, but Russia is encroaching rapidly on the country and seeking to control its commerce.
Mr. Fearon is a British subject, but he has handled the products of this country so long that he looks at the matter largely from an American standpoint.
"Shanghai is the principal distributing jint in the empire," he said. "As such, it has grown to have large importing houses and to bea very prominent manufacturing contre. It has eight cotton mills, which employ 20,000 hands and twenty-two silk mills, employing 10,000 more. The cotton industry there is in its infancy. The mills are using Shanghai cotton principally, but get some from Bombay and some from America. - We need more American cotton there. At present the mills only spin the yarn, The cloth is woven by hand by families living around Shanghai. Seven-eighths of the cotton used is grown in the Yangtze valley.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.