236 



THE INDIA . RUBBER WORLD 



IF 



survived — and como back to find tlieir cmintry stripped. Would 

 we supply to Belgium homes ? Would we supply to Northern 

 France homes ? It is probable a million dwellings must be built 

 in Continental Europe alone this coming spring and summer. 

 From somewhere they must get cement and lumber and hard- 

 ware, and none has so much of all to spare as we. But how 

 shall they be paid for save by credits which we shall ourselves 

 extend in addition to what we have already done? And you 

 must be prepared, you men of affairs, to be asked and to consent 

 to the purcliase of strange and novel securities in your home 

 towns ; for unless America shall buy the securities of foreign 

 corporations, industrial, municipal and others, it seems that it 

 would be very difficult indeed to build up the world again to 

 anything like its former status. 



The war is over, say you? No, no. The explosion of the 

 camion has stopped, but the stern service of war ishere yet; and 

 in food and credit and in materials and in machinery, it must 

 still go on. 



EARLY REMOVAL OF CABLE CENSORSHIP AKD TRADE RESTRICTION. 



That leads to another thought, which I am sure you have all 

 been thinking. What about cables? What about censorship? 

 What about restrictions that still exist on trade? First of all, 

 then, it is my desire, it is all the thought of Washington, to get 

 rid a.s rapidly as may be of every restriction on every trade of 

 everv kind. But there are certain things in which we are not 

 free to tnove alone. By the very terms of the armistice, the 

 blockade remains, and that blockade we are not free to move 

 to lift by ourselves, for we are bound with others to act in good 

 •faith with them. A part of that blockade is the cable censorship, 

 and it is not in the power of the United States alone to act upon 

 that matter. We must act concurrently with those with whom 

 we have agreed to act. Nevertheless, I have within a few days 

 cabled to Secretary Lansing in Paris, saying to him that it is my 

 earnest hope that he may get concurrent action of our asso- 

 ciates in the war, and release the cables and the censorship 

 freely for .\merica. 



PROMOTION OF UNITED STATES FOREIGN COMMERCE. 



I want to speak, for my time is properly limited, very 

 ■briefly, of the future work we are planning to do. It takes 

 three" forms. It takes the direct form of promotion of the com- 

 merce by which the country lives. We have within this week 

 been given by Congress double the sum that we have ever had 

 before. 



I do not speak a word of criticism at all when I say that on 

 ■going to Washington six years ago I found the sum annually 

 .appropriated for the promotion of American commerce abroad 

 the vast annual figure of $60,000. I presented to Congress the 

 statement that many an advertising firm even in my home Bor- 

 ough of Brookl.\m spent more than that in selling dry goods to 

 the women of "the town. I pleaded only a few weeks ago at 

 least a sum equal to the payment of the soldiers of one regiment 

 be given to develop American commerce abroad. We asked three 

 times what we had. It had grown from the $60,000; it had 

 grown more than ten times. We asked three times what we 

 had and we got twice, and we are glad to have it; and now 

 with the funds given by the President himself that our commerce 

 may have eyes and ears abroad, the men are going out until 

 we have already covered most of the world and we hope to cover 

 it fully with trained business men of affairs, speaking the lan- 

 guages of the countries to which they go, always, and_ trained 

 in vour factories and others to do the work of American in- 

 dus'try throughout the world until we think we shall be able 

 by the summer-time, for the appropriation does not take effect 

 until the 1st of July, to put abroad in all the round globe, bright, 

 earnest, capable young American business men, eagerly carrying 

 the flag into every land on which the sun shines. 



GERMAN SCIENTIFIC TRADE METHODS. 



Secondly, we aim to bring to you something you have never had, 

 and not having had have hardly missed, for Germany built her 

 industries on science, gentlemen. Her great success all around 

 the globe was based on actual knowledge. It did not raise a 

 laugh in any German factory to mention the name of a strange 

 country. It has often made me feel queer to speak of some 

 foreigti city of importance in an American shop and have the 

 men laugh as if the very name itself had something funny 

 about it. 



I remember discussing once the great Dutch East Indian Port 

 of Soerabaya to an American audience, only to discover shortly 

 thereafter that very few of them had ever heard of a port in 

 which hundreds of vessels lie all the time. 



Germany built her business on scientific work, and in her 

 business houses of large size were men w-ho spoke all the 



civilized languages and some besides ; and she knew with perfect 

 certainty what she was to do. Let me give you a trifling ex- 

 ample. In a certain Central American country is an Indian tribe 

 that buys large quantities of cotton. America failed to sell them. 

 So did Great Britain. So did Germany. But the Germans went 

 back and sent from the textile mill to a university for an ethnolo- 

 gist. What has an ethnologist to do with trade? niey put to 

 him this question: "liave these people certain sacred symbols 

 and lucky designs? Have they sacred colors and unlucky ones?" 

 He told them. The German salesman went back and presented 

 to the tribe textiles woven in designs that were familiarly sacred 

 to them and in colors that were consonant with their ideas of 

 good fortune ; and he sold them and nobody else ever did. It is 

 common sense, isn't it? Would you send a salesman to South- 

 ern Ireland to sell orange-colored goods? Would you send a 

 salesman to Asiatic Turkey to sell textiles with the design of ttie 

 Sign of the Cross? And yet, we do not think, you and I, we 

 do not think of these things. 



EXACT KNOWLEDGE A TRADE NECESSITY. 



It is only a month since a great American concern was about 

 to send a color card to China, offering for sale to those Chinese 

 merchants, whose ability to buy and sell those of you who deal 

 in Singapore know perfectly well, offering to send to that class 

 of Chinese trade color cards in which the blue was the coolie 

 blue of China. 



When will we learn to apply exact knowledge to our business 

 life? That knowledge in science as well as in research abroad 

 we are able to bring to you ; and if there be in your establishment 

 a problem in your own business which you have neither time nor 

 ability-, having to earn your living, to work out, we are ready to 

 put a staff of rubber experts, scientific men, trained in our own 

 rubber mill, at work upon the problem in your behalf; and I be- 

 lieve you would say that there is no such industrial research 

 laboratory in the world as tliat for which President Wilson has 

 recently given to us $1,150,000 to construct the building alone. 



INDUSTRIAL COOPERATION SERVICE WILL GAIN WORLD TRADE. 



Thirdly, through the gracious courtesy of the War Industries 

 Board, we have become the beneficiary of a fine legacy for them 

 in our industrial cooperation service. We want to go step by 

 step with you in the conservation work and the standardization 

 work. We will work with you side by side as long as you will 

 do that with us. We have not the war power ; we do not wish 

 it; but we believe that sweet reasonableness will appeal to 

 American business men, and we believe that there is something 

 else that will appeal because the vision of America has grown 

 larger these recent months. You and I have got to go out 

 into the big world beyond the three-mile limit to earn our live- 

 lihood henceforth, because such is the capacity of American in- 

 dustry that when it runs continuously full time, we have not the 

 purchasing power in this country continuously to take its 

 product. We have got to sell abroad, all around the world. 

 That means that your shops and mine — for I am interested as 

 you are in factories — that means that your shops have got to be 

 trimmed like an athlete, down to the bone of power and strength, 

 and that individual fancy and individual love for this or that 

 or the other specialty, may Iiave to stand aside because of the 

 country's need for athletic industry, in which there is no waste, 

 in which there are no fancy trimmings, not because the Govern- 

 ment has aught any longer to say, but because the country needs 

 the trained soldier of industry just as it has had the trained 

 soldier of war. 



.^nd you and I have got to remember that in our industrial work 

 we must be stripped for battle and set aside weights of personal 

 pride and personal desire in order that the great industries 

 which we represent may take their fair and proper place in the 

 peaceful contests of the world. And this conservation service, 

 this industrial cooperation service in almost any form that in- 

 dustry needs, whether it be scientific help or commercial help, 

 whether it be men or information, is at your command. It is as 

 broad in its possibilities as your needs can be. 



And finally, the war powers have gone, let us hope not to re- 

 turn. I do not represent the police power of the Government. 

 I want none of it. I would to God it had never to be used. But 

 if you will cooperate closely with the department whose duty it 

 is to help yourself, help you across the globe or in the laboratory 

 or by its scientific men sent to your own shop, if you will pull 

 with us in this common effort, there is very little danger that 

 any police power can ever come near you. And so I bid you 

 welcome to a department's work in your service that is or- 

 ganized. Do you want a man sent abroad to study your prob- 

 lems? Suggest the man. Take from him his personal interest. 

 Separate him from his personal and selfish duties. Send him to 

 us and let him go freely out into the world, if so be only that 



