NQUIRIES made in a number of shipping offices in Shanghai during the past few days indicate that Shanghai's export trade, though still a long way from normal health, is beginning to convalesce slowly.
Whether or not it will continue to get better is another matter, but although there are pessimists who view the future with great uncertainty and predict dire things, others point to a happier future.
Exports, for instance, picked up by over a thousand tons last month, efter having been most decrepit for a very long time, Should the present trend continue—and there is every indication that it will—this month should exceed last month's figures by a good margin, Hankow, the, "North-China Daily News" learns, 18 actually flourishing, as far as her outgoing trade is concerned, with export figures far above. normal, Shanghai's trade today is not much more than a quarter of What it is in normal times, but the Opinion is expressed in more than One quarter that most of Hankow's good fortune is not "despite" the closeness of the hostilities, but "be-Cause of" it, Shippers are anxious to get their goods down to Hongkong Gnd out of the country as soon as possible.
At the moment, the chief exports irom Shanghai are beans and cotton waste, with occasional good ship-, ments of wood-oil from Wenchow. "The present state of the money ex-Change market, of course, has helped considerably, and there have been a few good shipments of green tea this month, notably the 1,000 tons which lett ip the P. & O. s, Carthage last Tuesday, and the 900-odd tons sailing in the Memnon today, These tea shipments are all' for the European market—the Memnon's cargo, for instance, is destined to Cesablanca, At the same time, however, the tea trade has not improved of much as it was expected to, earlier "in the week, and there are indications that it is falling off.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.