As regards the present and future prospects of the cotton trade, I! should say the mills in Chihli, Hupeh, Shantung, Honan and Shansi have a better chance of profitable trading under present conditions than the mills in this province. They have greater opportunities of purchasing cheaper cotton, their labour force is less expensive, and coal is much cheaper; and in addition to the production costs being less, transit charges for marketing their yarns and cloth' are much lower than those of the Shanghai mills.
When we take into consideration that there are three-quarters of a million new spindles in those provinces as compared with four years ago, supplying the demand hitherto filled by the Shanghai mills, it means the latter will-have to find fresh markets, and for yarn this does not appear very hopeful, with cotton prices remaining as they are.
: studying the whole situation, I have come to the conclusion that probably one half of the cotton required for the mills will have to be imported; consequently it will be far the best policy to purchase the better grades of Indian and American cotton for manufacturing. There is an unlimited field as regards textiles. Every concern in this province should take up weave ing. You are not restricted to greys, there is now close at hand the China Dycing and Bleaching Company, where you can obtain practically any finish you require, and no doubt competitors in these branches will make their appearance in the near future.
The present position here to-day is similar to that of the mill industry of India some ten years or more ago. As the yarn trade with China diminished, many -of the mills started cloth manufacturing and became very successful. "Those concerns which doggedly kept to the yarn trade got into financial difficulties.
There is another branch of the cotton industry which has not received the consideration it deserves, and that is waste manufacturing. If you could only see a small portion of the beautiful textiles. produced to-day with the aid of bleaching and dying from cotton wastes, you wou.d be amazed. With cotton at its present high price, and the absurd prices offered for your wastes, it would pay you all to go seriously into this matter, even if you have to export your manufactured products.
One cannot help being pessimistic at times about China, and the political chaos, but there is one outstanding redeeming feature; wherever you go, the man who is producing wealth is hard at work tilling the soil, and to see the thousands of miles of wheat and other crops, means that some of the money realized for them will go to purchase the productions from your spindles and looms, in spite of any government.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.