Mar. 22, For two months and more now, Chinese cotton spinners and manufacturers have been agitate ing for the placing of an embargo on the export of cotton grown in the country. The Government, after consultation with the Diplomatic Body, is understood to have given a definite refusal to their proposal, but that has not finished the agitation, and day by day paragraphs in the Ghinese newspapers indicate that the local Chinese mill-owners still hope to accomplish something in the direction indicated. When a demand such as this comes from an influential section of a great industrial community it is not to be treated in an' casual fashion, but in this case it is as well to note that it is not from the whole cotton spinning industry. The representatives of foreign capital engaged in the industry have taken no part in it, in fact we seem to be on fairly safe ground in saying that they have not been interested in it, perhaps, in cases, even opposed to it. This at once puts the case in a category by itself, for so far as the industry is concerned it matters not one whit whether the capital is foreign or Chinese. We know that the spinning in-{dustry is passing through a period of severe depression, that the mills are losing money. The price of cotton is high, and has lately been higher, and the price of yarn is low, and for the second factor there is the elementary reason that the offtake is small in quantity. All the mills, foreign and Chinese. are affected by this state of affairs, and yet we find the curious position that only one section is calling for the embargo, and moreover persisting in its attitude in spite of its failure hitherto. We may possibly di cover some interesting sidelights on the Chinese business outlook of to-day by examining the situation.
So far as can be learned the Chinese millowners are in something of a quandary regarding }restriction of output. When
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