Page:The Triumph of an Idea.djvu/127

THE REBUILDING OF AN INDUSTRY 115 only try to prove by his products what he could not prove by words, that his aim was to standardize the production of something to make life easier rather than to standardize life itself. Of the results of his expansion abroad he wrote:

Our company has had a measure of success in foreign business based on two principles: first, taking to the nations a commodity that they needed and the use of which assisted them to develop their own affairs, and second, an absolute renunciation of every form of exploitation. That is, our purpose was not to make American business greater at the expense of other nations, but to help make other peoples more prosperous by the aid of American business. There can be no other abiding basis for foreign business by any company or any country. And even then there will be no abiding relationship of seller and buyer between nations. International exchange of goods will always exist, of course, but not always of the same goods or in the same quantities. One great effect of American business abroad may be to teach our foreign customers how to supply themselves with the goods they now buy from us. Undoubtedly many countries now more or less dependent on industrial countries for supply will themselves become sufficiently industrial to supply their own requirements. That is, in commercial language, we will lose the market. But that is all to the good. As progressive beings we should look forward with approval to the time when new nations or backward nations shall outgrow their dependence and feel little or no further need for us. At that time international trade will then settle to the natural basis of need and supply, each nation supplying others with that commodity which it is most fitted to produce. This outlook is probably little relished by the heated salesmanship of the times, but it seems to be what is coming.