Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/210

186 year 1876. That exhibition had not only been insignificant as to quantity but inferior as to quality. It bore the marks of the old time before the new birth of the Empire, when in the dismemberment of the Fatherland, Germans lived the narrow life of the small principalities and their thoughts were provincial; when the idea of competing for the first place in the contest of nations still seemed to most Germans like presumptuous audacity; when in business enterprise the narrow methods of making a small profit by underbidding prices debarred the spirit of enterprise and a bold grasp of future contingencies.

The new German Empire had, indeed, existed for five years, at the time of the Philadelphia Exhibition and Germany had already become the leading power of the continent, but these five years had not sufficed for the national industrial growth to overtake the national political development. The consequences of two great wars had to be overcome, and that old curse of the German, a certain spirit of pettiness and narrowness, had to be broken completely by the development of broader views, more daring aspirations and higher aims. And this development has come, as it must, to a sound, capable people under the most powerful of all inspirations—the inspiration of a noble, proud, national self-esteem. It is with a nation as it is with an individual; self-respect is character.

In the struggle of business competition there are two kinds of business policy which are indicative of the character of the business man and of the business he is engaged in. One is, as I have already indicated, the narrow policy of underbidding in price with the motto, “Cheap and Nasty.” This is the policy of the narrow-minded provincial who seeks his profit by means of petty cunning and appeals to a petty custom; a narrow, cowardly, short-sighted policy, overreaching itself by its own tricks. It