Business circles are considerably interested in the fact that recently Japanese merchants have been purchasing cotton goods in Shanghai. The object is now said to be their sale in Siberia. Of late there has been a good deal of scepticism as to the ability of any part of Rus: including Siberia, to pay for what it may want in the way of commodities, and accordingly these purchases open up the question of whether some attempt is now being made to bring the country's great wealth to the surface. Gold exists in abundance in the Amur, and before the war the government reaped a fair profit from it, but nothing like what it should' have done. At present one dredger is known to be on the site of the gold-bearing streams and not so_ Jong ago was working, but whether inexperience and have inefficiency not led to its ruin as a piece of _machinerrs—a very likely state of affairs—nobedy exactly knows. What. however. is Known is that the Russian authorities in possession of the goldfield have recently been casting about for ways and means to purchase additional dredgers, apparently hoping to utilize the country's wealth at this late hour. This, incidentally. without reference te Mr. Vanderli concession. should it indeed include that potentially opulent territory. Shanghai during the past few years has supplied Siberia with much cotton cloth woven by handloom, so much in fact that at one time it became a drug on the market and was being exported back to its place of origin. The present trade, however, is in material of_a much more expensive variety, and. consequently. suggests a changed siate of affair
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.