Page:Carl Schurz- 1902-03-09 Foreign Commerce.pdf/2

 otherwise cool and clear heads politics would turn the very multiplication table upside down.

If we wish further to extend and develop our foreign commerce, these things are necessary:

1. That we should have something to sell.

2. That we should adapt the goods we wish to sell to the requirements and tastes of those to whom we wish to sell them.

3. That we should be able to sell our goods as cheaply as goods of the same kind and quality are sold by other people in the same market.

4. That if we sell to foreign nations we must be willing to buy from them, one-sided international trade being a contradiction in itself.

You will tell me that there is nothing new in this. Certainly there is not. It is an old story, as old as common sense. But it is amazing how far some people contrive to get away from such self-evident truths as soon as the practical application is called for.

As to the first point, we surely have a great many things to sell. There is the surplus of agricultural products. There are almost boundless natural resources of raw material for manufacturing industries. There are several of these industries, the mechanical appliances and the laboring force engaged in which, as has been computed by good authority, are capable of producing in seven or eight months as much as the home market will regularly absorb in twelve. There are, in addition to this, American enterprise, energy and inventive genius, capable of increasing incalculably the production of things to sell and to feed our commerce, if given a fair chance.

As to the second point, the adaptation of our products to the requirements of the foreign market, we find here and there among our business men the lofty notion that the foreign consumer should cultivate his tastes according to our ideas of what is good for him. This attitude may, in some cases exercise the influence desired, but in many others it smells of narrow mindedness. At any rate practical business men, wishing to establish themselves in foreign markets, will not carry their missionary work too far. Let me illustrate my meaning by a personal experience. Last year I was in Europe, and one day dined at the house of a prominent merchant in Hamburg. There were about twenty ladies and gentlemen at the table. The dinner talk brought me one surprise after another. It turned out that most of the ladies present—I think even all of them—had been across the seas, and spoke about Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bombay, Zanzibar, Mexico, Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, Rio, Valparaiso, Havana, etc. as familiarly as our ladies speak about Long Branch, Newport or Bar Harbor. All these ladies had lived at such places with their husbands—merchants who were still