h two-thirds of the coast, etc.

Up to the present the bulk of the export and import trade is handled
by Europeans, who, together with native capitalists, own the most
considerable commercial and industrial productive "going concerns"
in the Islands. In 1904 there were one important and several
smaller American trading-firms (exclusive of shopkeepers) in the
capital, and a few American planters and successful prospectors in
the provinces. There are hundreds of Americans about the Islands,
searching for minerals and other natural products with more hopeful
prospects than tangible results. It is perhaps due to the disturbed
condition of the Islands and the "Philippines for the Filipinos"
policy that the anticipated flow of private American capital has
not yet been seen, although there is evidently a desire in this
direction. There is, at least, no lack of the American enterprising
spirit, and, since the close of the War of Independence, several
joint-stock companies have started with considerable cash capital,
principally for the exploitation of the agricultural, forestal, and
mineral wealth of the Islands. Whatever the return on capital may
be, concerns of this kind, which operate at the natural productive
sources, are obviously as beneficial to the Colony as trading can be
in Manila--the emporium of wealth produced elsewhere.

There are, besides, many minor concerns with American capital,
established only for the purpose of selling to the inhabitants goods
which are not an essential need, and therefore not contributing to
the development of the Colony.

The tonnage entered in Philippine ports shows a rapid annual increase
in five years. Many new lines of steamers make Manila a port of call,
exclusive of the army transports, carrying Government supplies,
and in 1905 there was a regular goods and passenger traffic between
Hong-Kong and Zamboanga. Still, the greater part of the freight
between the Philippines and the Atlantic ports is carried in foreign
bottoms. The shipping-returns for the year 1903 would appear to show
that over 85 per cent, of the exports from the Islands to America,
and about the same proportion of the imports from that country
(exclusive of Government stores brought in army transports) were
borne in foreign vessels. The carrying-trade figures for 1904 were
78.41 per cent, in British bottoms; 6.69 per cent, in Spanish,
and 6.65 per cent, in American vessels. The desire to dispossess
the foreigners