344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to combine abroad sp 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. Eip 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 tra.de, 

 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 b}^ 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 mar- 

 velous 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 opportuni- 

 ties, 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 discus- 

 sions 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 do- 

 mestic 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 finan- 

 cially, 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 



