TEE WAR AND FOREIGN TRADE 357 



therefore, "now a reputation to overcome as well as a reputation to 

 establish. 



Germany faced the problem, when almost without foreign trade some 

 forty years ago, with a thoroughness bom of extreme need and a wonder- 

 ful appreciation of opportunities. She organized, tlirough govern- 

 mental and trade agencies, for trade, even as she organized her fighting 

 forces of war. She sent out, at government expense, as the agents of 

 all the people, to develop her industries, her payrolls and her wealth, 

 men carefully chosen from the respective trades into each of the great 

 foreign markets. These men made exhaustive studies of the require- 

 ments of each market. They sent home samples of goods used, together 

 with lists of responsible buyers and quantities purchased. These samples 

 were placed in commercial museums; the information distributed, 

 sometimes very freely and at other times confidentially, where it would 

 do the most good. Our governmental agency for this work is naturally 

 the Department of Commerce and its Bureau of Foreign and Domestic 

 Commerce. Following the German example, it is for this department 

 to discover precisely what farm implements, for instance, are used in the 

 Argentine ; to secure samples and place them, for example, in the Field 

 Museum in Chicago, the center of the farm-implement industry, where 

 the makers frequently gather from all parts of the country. Imagine 

 the change of attitude of the men who have been careless of the single 

 distant individual who wants a plow, when these men can take their 

 foremen and others to Chicago and there see exact samples of various 

 tools and learn fully of buyers who all told use $50,000,000 annually 

 of these tools. Such information visualizes vividly an entire market 

 and delightful opportunities. It leaves the very minimum of hazard as 

 respects packing or any other feature. The single government expense 

 is utterly inconsiderable as against the individual expense and the 

 hazard of mistakes if each of two hundred manufacturers is to go by 

 himself for this information. 



With such information as a basis, there would be need of restraint 

 rather than of encouragement as the American industry goes after the 

 market thus disclosed. 



The Department of Commerce after this fashion sent an expert in 

 the cotton trade to China some years ago. He sent home 5,800 samples 

 with a world of definite, necessary information, with many surprises. 

 Among other things England had been sending millions of yards annu- 

 ally of an extremely thin and open cotton fabric loaded with sizing 

 that gave it apparent weight and character. Some of our manufac- 

 turers had felt too proud to make anything that seemed to them so 

 valueless. It was disclosed, however, that this cloth was for only two 

 purposes, to clothe the dead and to wear next the skin to prevent the 

 scratching of the very coarse outer garments worn by the poor. Our 

 cotton makers were greatly stimulated, but for a time unable to take 



