Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/445

Rh has played some part in England and is used in Germany, It has the merit of insuring to the home office accurate knowledge of the tastes, customs, laws and languages of foreign markets, and of keeping the home office and agencies in touch through the transfusion of blood.

Travel has for many generations been used in western Europe as a fitting supplement to the education of a young man at the conclusion of the period of schooling. It undeniably broadens the personality and develops culture through the variety of knowledge it imparts and the contact with people which it involves. It is, however, an expensive way of accumulating knowledge, and the knowledge gained is likely to be of a fragmentary and superficial character unless the traveler have uncommon tenacity and singleness of purpose. Before travel became the favorite recreation of the wealthy and the countries that have much to teach came to be deluged with the never-ending stream of sight-seers it was, perhaps, possible to gain in a short time valuable information regarding the industrial life of a people. Now the avenues of travel have been smoothed to a cosmopolitan sameness and these avenues lead to the 'sights' which, for the most part, convey little information of practical value to the young man preparing for commercial life. Meanwhile, since international rivalry in trade has become acute, the processes of production which might be studied with profit are being jealously guarded and kept secret from foreign visitors. So greatly has the system of news gathering improved and so voluminous and accurate have become the reports of consular officers that the traveler abroad must often return home to learn from literature easily accessible facts that are difficult to acquire through personal observation. Travel is quite appropriate for a people that have everything to learn and desire to import en bloc the system of older developed commercial states, but for a country having marked characteristics of superiority and possessing the lead in many things the problem of keeping this preeminence is not solved by any scheme of borrowing ideas, no matter how systematically and intelligently carried out. It is deserving of notice, however, that travel may be utilized by American manufacturers to a greater degree than it has been to give them a knowledge of the tastes of their foreign customers.

Education abroad is in many ways analogous to travel. It has been employed in recent years with success by Japan and is best adapted to the requirements of a nation taking its first steps in a new culture. For the United States this plan has many of the limitations of foreign travel, and it carries with it the added danger that the young man who remains abroad for a long season in the formative period of life will find himself on return out of touch with the ideals and customs dominating the industrial society in which he is to live, and that thereby the effectiveness of his personality will be greatly decreased.

These are some of the methods which have been devised to improve