Traveller.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 4 August 1904, Page 7

Traveller.

♦MADE IN JAPAN:' \fqKßEffi wonderful trade advances that wsfc have been made by Japan since IXfcf the concluaioa of the war with China should stake oar manufacturers and merehaats keep their ejee open, or they may find some morning ther occupation gone in markets they thought they had secured. This enterprising people has in the past two years almost secured a monopoly in the Eastern market sof the match-trade. Some twenty or twenty-five years ago the import of matohes in India and Burma was largely English and exclusively European. English imports gradually declined, beitef replaced by Swedish matches. These in their turn are being ousted by the Japanese match, equally good and sold at fifty per cent, lower prices. la Burma, a province which last year imported matches of a value of over five lakhs of rupees, or some .£83,000, Japanese matches are almost exclusively used now. They pay an import duty of five par cent., and yet can be purchased retail in the streets of Rangoon at one anna, or about one penny, per bundle of ten boxes. The English match ten or fifteen years. ago cost in Bangoon about five times as much, and at that time there was no import duty. Burma is a »ery damp country, with, an annual rainfall varying from 100 to 200 inches. The English match in the raise was difficult to burn. If the box was kept in flannel it would ignite; but the wood of the match was thick and generally damp, and failed to keep alight. The Swedes first. «nd afterwards the Japanese, saw what was required, and made a thinner match, thus using less wood, and meeting the requirements of a province with a moist climate. Between them they have ousted the British match altogether; and a trade in this single Eastern province alone of a yearly value between £30,000 and J40.000, which will probably be doubled when the Bangoon and Mandalay Bailway is extended to the borders of China (as it was before the end of 1899), has been lost to England, probably never to be regained. The loss of the match-trade in India may be a small thing to grieve over, but where a single province of that great dependency takes in a year over .£30,000 worth, manufacturers' profits, must be something tangible over the whole area. In Burma and the surrounding countries nearly every man, woman, and child smokes, and matches are now to be found in the remotest Burotan, Shan, and Karen hamlets hundreds of miles from the coast or railway communication. No jungle man or woman fails to provide himself or herself with a box of matches when they are bo cheap. Their forefathers either borrowed a light from a fireplace in a neighbouring hut or procured fire by rubbing briskly two pieces of dried bamboo together, with some dried bamboo shavings —a process the writer, when foresting twenty years ago, often saw applied at an encampment on a wet night before supplies had been brought up by elephants, or when, as was often the case, the thick English match of that period was too damp to Btrike successfully. Umbrellas, which were largely manufactured locally of oiled paper, are being supplanted also by Japanese articles, excellent copies of the European umbrella; and these are sold in the Bangoon bazaars at one rupee and four annas each, or about . one shilling and eightpence. Similar umbrellas, before Japan took to manufacturing them, cost at least four times the price in Burma, and in this article, as in matches, no European country apparently can hope to compete with the Japanese in producing an equally good-looking and low-priced umbrella. The 'Burmans are largely taking to the imported umbrella, whilst their own paper umbrellas are often patronised by Europeans as a good protection against sun and rain; although they are not so convenient to carry unopened as the ordinary umbrella, as they are too buiky when closed to be used as a walking-stick. The local article can be bought for eight annas, or about eightpence, and if carefully used lasts for one rainy season. Bicycles and sewing machines of Japanese make at half European and American prices have also been imported into Burma from the Straits. Doubtless before long we shall have Japanese merchants, and possibly a Japanese bank, established in Bangoon. Stveral cargoes of rice have already been sent from the Barman rice porta to Japan; and that astute people will doubtless soon realise that the'best way to push their manufactures and the cheapest way to buy their rice cargoes is to have Japanese firms established at the rising capital of Bangoon, where there will soon be railway communication to the confines of China itself, with its hard-working millions of population. Japanese clocks are new sold throughout the East; and Japanese coals are highly thought of in Bombay. Whilst Englishmen offer equal advastages to every nationality in trade with the East, it is not a pleasant tight for Englishmen to see British trade passing away into the hands of the foreigner resident in British possessions.. A fair field and no favour' is a good motto, and one that in trade in British dependencies we have always endeavoured to carry out.. If Japan can undersell-us and meke equally good articles, we cannot hope to persuade the consumer to buy English articles because they are Esglish. An opposite policy has not proved such a success in Saigon and French Cochin China that we should ever think of or wish to imitate it. The British manufacturer may rest assured it is more difficult to regain a lost trade than to keep an existing one. By having trustworthy agents on the spot, and by altering his manufactures where they do not meet the wishes and wants of his customers; by being obliging and courteous, in fact; and by having his goods always up to sample, he may hope, even in these days of keen competition, to do a good trade. But he must not lose sight of the fact that times have altered a great deal in the last quarter of a century, and that he has many competitors now where formerly be enjoyed almost a monopoly. Under such circumstances, if he wishes to keep and extend his trade in the East, he must prove that he can, like his competitors, adapt himself to circumstances, and not expect his Eastern customers to alter their habits and customs to suit him. In short, the best manufactures will win the moat markets, and best includes goodness of the article aa well as economy in price. We have a good many brisk competitors in Germany, Belgium, and ether European countries, not to speak of the Americans, all quite alive to the exigencies of the hour. But probably in the next quarter of a century we shall find articles ' Made in Japan' imported all over the East to a much greater extent than they are now; and it is to be hoped that we shall not have them (as in the match-trade) eclipsing British manufactures.—Chamber's Journal.