THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



not one^ all the way from Tokio until I got to Singapore. At 

 Hong Kong, I found a Scotchman who had lived in New York. 

 That was tlie nearest approach to an American house on all the 

 Chinese coasts. But everywhere, in every port, under the splen- 

 did hospitality of the English rule, the German was prospering; 

 and in Hong Kong harbor I lay immediately alongside of the 

 German armored cruiser Sharnhorst, now gone to a well-earned 

 grave at the mouth of English 



THE SELnSHNESS OF GERMANY. 



We saw Germany build up her industries that she might make 

 the world tributary to Germany ; for German gain, for German 

 profit, that you and I and all men might so far as possible con- 

 tribute to the power and the domination of Germany. In the 

 first week of the war our minister at The Hague telegraphed to 

 th6 President, "Germany means to breakfast in Paris, lunch in 

 London, and dine and spend the night in New York." And you 

 are perfectly familiar with the fact that the Kaiser said long years 

 ago that on the opposite side of the Atlantic without Germany 

 and the German kaiser no one would dare make any high de- 

 cision. We saw the awful tragedy that ended that dream of 

 selfishness. I trust we have learned the awful lesson that history 

 has again reiterated, this time in our midst. One after another 

 the men and the people that would have ruled the world for their 

 profit have come, have passed their little time 

 upon the stage and gone. 



THE SACRIFICES OF UNSELFISHNESS. 



And we saw here the other thing. I saw it 

 every day these two years past — a vision of great 

 unselfishness, of men having come, forgetting 

 themselves and all the things that men count 

 precious, leaving at home business and personal 

 profit of every kind, and for a trivial compensa- 

 tion or none at all, coming to the seat of govern- 

 ment and working without regard to hours or 

 strain in order that their country might defeat 

 that power which sought its overthrow. Be not 

 deceived, my friends. We are escaped as a bird 

 out of the snare of the fowler. He sought what 

 you and I hold dear. It is by the force of the 

 sacrifice of American men that our daughters 

 have not suffered as did those of northern 

 France, that we face readjustment and not recon- 

 struction. Were you an audience of French or 

 Belgian business men where would you go in 

 northern France or Belgium to find your homes? 

 It would seem strange to you to have nowhere 

 to sleep, to find your business stripped and gone, 

 to go back perhaps to your native town unable to 

 find the site where once your dwelling was. That is reconstruc- 

 tion indeed. Beside this your problems and mine are trivial and 

 they are based all through on the willing sacrifice of American 

 business men who have done more in one year to make their 

 government know that the heart of American commerce was true 

 than CDuId have been accomplished in years of talking and 

 pleading. 



THE INDUSTRIAL POWER OF AMERICA. 



For we have seen you in our very midst at work, and we have 

 seen the power of this nation gathered through you into a force 

 that overwhelmed the enemy. A year ago or more a minister 

 of a neutral power was about to leave his post in Washington, 

 and came to bid me farewell, for I knew him as a friend. I 

 knew he was going where he had a German colleague, and I 

 sent a message by him to his German colleague, not formally so, 

 but saying to him something which I knew he would repeat, and 

 it was this: 



That he would see a spectacle such as the world had not before 

 witnessed of the unrolling of American industrial power, and 

 that he might watch for it : that it would not be rapid, but it 

 would be as certain as fate, and that whatever we might do with 

 »rmy or navy this one thing was sure — that the industrial power 

 of America would present to the world one of its most majestic 

 spectacles, as it was soon to be placed, all of it, freely at the 

 disposal of the nation as one tremendous power for righteousness 

 in war. 



And we saw that power so exerted. I wish it had been pos- 

 sible for you — I wish it had been possible for me — to have seen 

 the physical work that the Army did in France. I knew a little 

 bit of what was going on. Once in a while I caught a vision 

 of things so vast that they staggered me, who have spent my 

 life in American industry. 



One evening we were considering the question of fire in- 

 surance on the factories which were at that time busy backing 

 up the Army, and it was far from being advenced then to what 



are there to find, 

 and I, we may not, like 

 head into our shell and sa\ 

 may not. like 



William C. Redfif.ld". 

 Secret.\hy of Commerce, 



It afterwards became, and it was brought out in tlie evening's 

 talk that we should have to look after fire insurance upon 35,000 

 separate factories working at that time to support the American 

 Army. The spectacle some day will be written, and will be, as 

 I said to my friend, the minister, majestic, but the finest thing 

 ot it all was the human side that forgot itself and faced the 

 selfishness of Germany with the unselfishness of America. 



OUR DUTY TO SUCCOR RtjSSIA. 



And now we look still to the unselfishness of America, for we 

 face great thmgs yet to be done. The military operations, let 

 us hope, are past. Let us hope are past! But you and I sit as 

 It were m a great theater before a curtain that has nut yei lilted 

 behmd which lies, unknown as yet, the dreadful problem that 

 Russia presents to the world. We have seen, thank God, within 

 a week, something that looks like the restoration of sanity in 

 Germany itself, but what the stage may hold behind the Russian 

 veil, we do not certainly know, for there are 18(111(1(1(1(1(1 iniinan 

 souls there of whom 160.000,000 cannot read or write • they can- 

 not be reached by press or by book or by pamphlet, and what we 

 do not yet fully know. We may not, you 

 tie. draw our hands, our feet and 

 We will have none of this." We 

 (e ostrich, bury our head in the sand and say, "We 

 see nothing." Your boys and my bov fought the 

 tight against the autocracy of imperialism. Let 

 us hope and pray we may not have to face the 

 autocracy of anarchy. We believe that Bolshev- 

 ism rests on hunger, and we have abundance to 

 spare, thank God, and we must give of that 

 abundance. We sent last year twice the food we 

 ever thought we could spare. We must send at 

 least one-half as much more food this year 



We have it to send, but if you trouble' as some 

 of you may, on the question of shipping, gentle- 

 men, remember that over twenty million tons of 

 food must go yonder from this country alone 

 before the spring is half gone, lest starvation, 

 which means anarchy, walk abroad. It is walk- 

 ing abroad now. We are through with military 

 operations. We are not through vet with the 

 problems. There is the question, then, which I 

 have thus raised, of ships; and now I speak to 

 you as practical men and manufacturers in the 

 language which you know so well. 



SHIPPING BOARD TO ESTABLISH 

 COMPETITIVE RATES. 



We have not yet a plant, a physical plant, 

 afloat in this country to do the work' 

 that we are called upon to do. Let us not be too im- 

 patient with those who control our shipping. Bear in mind, 

 as I shall tell you in a moment, that I am doing myself, in every 

 possible word and influence, all that can be done "to bring suffi- 

 cient shipping to the immediate relief of the commerce that 

 waits in all our ports ; and to-night, thank God for it, it is 

 announced that the Shipping Board has seen the need of standing 

 the gaff, as you have to stand it, and of reducing its valuations 

 on this vast multitude of shipping, so that the rates it is here- 

 after to charge shall be fairly competitive rates, and your com- 

 merce shall be free to move on equal terms with all the w^orld. 



There have been days, there have been recent days, in which 

 it was deemed possible that an eff'ort might be made to charge 

 American industry with rates at sea so as to earn a profit upon 

 the war cost of American ships. That danger is past. Perhaps 

 the earthquake reported a few days ago was. after all, merely the 

 reaction of certain telegrams passing under the sea. 



None the less, the thing is over ; the danger is past, and we 

 are free to move at sea once more when once we can get the 

 ships to go. Out of twenty-one vessels to be built this month 

 on the Pacific Coast alone, I have succeeded in getting six for 

 our trans-Pacific trade ; for the others are needed for food for 

 the world, and for the transportation of necessary army sup- 

 plies. 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD CREDITOR. 



I should like, if time permitted, to develop still further the 

 great business problems we are now facing, the problem of 

 credits. You know very well, and I, that we must face six 

 billion dollars in taxes this year ; that above it we must face 

 a loan of five billion dollars in the month of April, and that on 

 top of that we must continue our credits to those yonder who 

 have no credits themselves, and who needs must buy and have 

 not that wherewith to pay. Would you leave the people of 

 Servia without homes? They have been driven from their 

 land — all the families, men and women and children, all that 



