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632 of American manufactures to Europe, in Dart, to the activity of our consular service. "The United States," he says, "has covered Europe with a network of consulates and makes its consuls at the same time inspectors of our exports and vigilant sentinels, who spy out every trade opening or advantage and promptly report it." Dr. Vosberg-Eekow also dwells upon the eminently practical character of American industrial and business methods. "Germany's industrial advancement," he says, "is principally due to the thoroughness of her technical education. It is strengthened by the continuous substituting of machinery and machine tools for hand labor. Still, in this respect, the English industry in some branches is ahead of us. It is worthy of note that in this evolution, too, the United States has the foremost place and has made gigantic strides, not only in applying machine tools, but in inventing and manufacturing them, so that to-day she supplies us. This signalizes in an extraordinary degree American intelligence. Thus, the Americans, though wanting our superior technical education, thanks to their practical eye, improve upon our methods and apparatus. Theirs is rather the activity of an experimentalist than that of a trained craftsman; but a clever faiseur, if he but have assurance and luck, may distance the educated master. The Americans have no thorough education; nor do they possess a modern industrial system as we Europeans understand the term. The American applies himself to a single branch or to a specialty, with utter disregard of European methods and their results; he devotes to his work an amount of energy which stupefies Europeans; and, for awhile, he succeeds in driving us out of the line of articles on which he has centered his energy. Against such peculiar activity a general trade policy is quite ineffectual; we must put ourselves in condition to counteract this artificially forced growth of specialized industry."

Thus we find that expert opinion in Great Britain and Germany coincides in the conclusion that Americans, too eager to be up and doing to apply themselves to preparatory study or to what may be termed a general scheme of education and culture for industry and trade, have, nevertheless, worked out in practise a degree of actual efficiency, not learned from books, which gives them a distinct advantage. It is not to be denied, upon the other hand, that technical schools and special courses of commercial education might greatly enhance our capabilities, if care were taken to prevent them from usurping too far the practical business or industrial training which seems to be the secret of our success thus far. In the more and more strenuous competition which is evidently waiting us, our manufacturers, exporters and trade representatives abroad will need to be