kinds are needed everywhere. The merchants of the Near East have valuable raw products to send us in exchange for the manufactured goods which they so urgently need."
This estimate of the situation was confirmed by the
American Chamber of Commerce for the Levant when,
in urging upon the Department of State the vigorous defence
of the "open door" in Turkey, it said: "The opportunities
for the expansion of American interests in
the Near East are practically unlimited, provided there is
a fair field open for individual enterprise. . . . In fact,
with the conclusion of peace, there is the economic structure
of an empire to be developed."[42]
The rapid development of American economic interests in Turkey can be most effectively presented by reference to the trade statistics. American exports to Turkey at the opening of the twentieth century amounted to only $50,000. In 1913 they had risen to $3,500,000. But between 1913 and 1920 they showed a phenomenal increase of over twelve hundred per cent, reaching the sum of $42,200,000. Nor was this trade one sided, for during the period 1913-1920, American imports from Turkey increased from $22,100,000 to $39,600,000.[43]
The Chester concessions are another important step in the development of a new American policy in the Near East. They provide for the construction by the Ottoman-American Development Company—a Turkish corporation owned and administered by Americans—of approximately 2800 miles of railways, of which the following are the most important:
1. An extension of the old Anatolian Railway from Angora to Sivas, with a branch to the port of Samsun, on the Black Sea.
2. A line from Sivas to Erzerum and on to the Persian and Russian frontiers, with branches to the Black Sea ports of Tireboli and Trebizond.
