Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/348

344 to combine abroad so as successfully to compete there against foreign combinations paying much lower wages." So audible is this message in all parts of our land that if there be legislators who have not already heard at least some of its wave sounds, then there must be something wrong with their political wireless telegraph apparatus, or, to drop into archaic phrase, "they haven't got their ears to the ground!" This message comes from an aroused country which has recently become aware of certain entanglements that it wants removed. Rip Van Winkle has awakened from his long repose in the Catskills of home trade, but the first few attempts to stretch himself have revealed that clinging creepers have grown about his limbs. Those creepers will have to go, and if the sharpness of existing legislative wits are not sharp enough to cut them, others will be found to do it.

The country from which this message comes is no longer a country where the farmer sees no further than his boundary fence, or the banker his local customers, or the merchant the home market alone. Not only have farmer, banker and merchant alike become students of foreign trade, but advanced students they know both what they want and also the handicaps that hamper them, and they want those handicaps removed. And this message of theirs was learned by the writer from nearly two hundred chambers of commerce all over the country. It is surprising how much there is for a man to learn when once he gets away from the localism of Manhattan Island and comes into touch with that marvelous campaign for community-bettering now so vigorously carried on by the commercial bodies of our land. My message to them was of South America, the value of its friendship and of its trade opportunities, but the message they send back is of far wider import, deserving the attention of us all and especially of those to whom we have delegated the making of our laws and the conduct of our government. These chambers of commerce have now gone far beyond their old discussions of the need for foreign markets as a field for the expansion of our manufacturing, or as a balance to offset any temporary contraction in home markets. No, they are away beyond that. The study of the railroad rebate evil and its correction led them to learn that those domestic rebates were but trifles in comparison with the rebates given foreigners by the foreign shipping conference combine in ocean freights, which annually transfer from our pockets to foreigners six hundred million dollars for freight, insurance, etc., not only bleeding us financially, but also leaving the foreigners with the possession of the ships, and with their factories protected against our competition. Ten years ago if this statement had been made to a western grain grower or a southern cotton planter he would have replied: "I don't care, foreign ships are cheap ships, and I want my product carried cheaply." But now he knows better, he knows that when as a result of secret rebates to