266 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE,
Carlowitz &amp; Co. (German), and Mitsui &amp; Co. (Japanese), are allembracing
 in their activities, importing and exporting every class of
manufactures. The trade in cotton goods represents an important
part of their business and in many instances they are actively interested,
 as general managers, agents, or majority or large stockholders,
in cotton mills. Jardine, Matheson &amp; Co. are general managers and
probably majority owners of three cotton mills at Shanghai, with a
total of about 100,000 spindles. This company maintains engineering,
 insurance, shipping, import and export, and finance departments
all more or less related in the one vast trading combination. (See
Pt. II, pp. 206, 217-218.)
Mitsui &amp; Co. are the principal distributors of Japanese cotton piece
goods in Manchuria! According to the American consul general at
Shanghai, one of the principal advantages enjoyed by other foreigners
over American traders in China is the existence of these large commission
 and trading houses, capable of representing foreign manufacturers,
 with large sales and technical staffs, good financial connections,
 with liberal credit facilities, specialized departments, ownership
 and management of local industries, etc? It is to these
general trading organizations that the success of British and Japanese
sotton goods in the Orient is largely attributable.
For many years prior to the war a combination between British
manufacturers of cotton piece goods and German import and distributing
 houses in China is said to have been one of the strongest
obstacles to the extension of American trade. The war has, of
course, terminated this alliance.?
A method of business successfully employed by the Germans is the
system of technical bureaus. Groups of noncompetitive manufacturers
 in Germany, who are unwilling to incur the expense of individual
 representation in China, send out a joint representative, with
axpert knowledge of their products, to join an established and wellconnected
 merchant firm in China. That firm supplies the representative
 with special knowledge of the Chinese and their ways of
business, and he does the work of advising and suggesting. When
orders are forthcoming they go direct to the manufacturers of the
group.
Japanese competition in China.—The greater part of Japan’s cotton
piece-goods trade in China is with Kwantung, Northern China, and
Manchuria. This trade has been developed largely through the firm
of Mitsui Bussan Kaisha (see p. 150) with its numerous connections,

IW. A. Graham Clark, Cotton Goods in Japan, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Special
\gents Series, No. 86, 1914, pp. 124-125.
1 See Pt. I, p. 221.
Commerce Reports, Hongkong, Dec. 10, 1915, p. 987.
Commerce Reports, Feb. 7, 1916, p. 525.