CONIMER(E. The domestic trade has been greaily stimulated by the rapid growth of rail ways, render it easy and cheap to dis tribute the products of the factories throughout the country and particularly in the main island. This fact is causing some decline in the home industries. which, however, still supply a very large part of the C0111:11011 needs of the people. In the foreign trade the imports have regularly exceeded the exports since 1895. owing to the large railway equipment and other material which Japan has purchased abroad in the development The principal imports into Japan from the United States are raw ginned cotton and kerosene oil (more than half the value of the whole) ; also engines, locomotives, electrical apparatus, and other kinds of machinery. Nearly all the kero sene oil and most of the lubricating oil and paraf fin wax come from the United States. The larger part of the raw cotton is obtained from British India, the price of whose short staple is usually about 11 per cent. lower than that of American
cotton. Raw cotton. however, is largely imported from the United States, and the shipments of 1392 were nearly double those of 1891. The United States supplies nearly all the flour, hut Australia competes in supplying wheat. The United States leads in shipments of alcohol, leather, telephones, lumber. and steel and iron materials for bridges and buildings. Hong Kong and Germany supply nearly half the sugar im ported. the remainder coming chiefly from other Asiatic countries. The United States buys more than three-fourths of the tea exports, and is the heaviest purchaser of raw silk, which in 1901 was in value three-sevenths of the entire exports of Japan. Japan's cotton yarn and tissues are sold in neighboring countries of Asia. The exports of coal, principally to China and Hong Kong. are important.