202 ALEXANDER H. FORD 



In South Africa we proved ourselves equal to the emer- 

 gencies attendant on the peculiar methods of Boer warfare. 

 To Buller, we shipped steel tents to be used in the battle fields 

 for the protection of officers and men from the bullets of the 

 persistent Boer marksmen. Van Waldersee ordered duplicates 

 of these for his compaign in China, and both China and South 

 Africa owe the development of their mines to modern Ameri- 

 can machinery. In Mongolia, our Yankee capitalists are in- 

 troducing millions of dollars' worth of gold mining machinery, 

 while in every part of Siberia, claims long neglected are being 

 equipped with labor saving devices from the new world. 



In fact, it was the quickness of the Russian engineers in 

 the far east in casting aside antiquated European tools and 

 methods to adopt American machinery and equipment for 

 the Chinese Eastern railway that first brought the American 

 idea prominently before the confounded manufacturers of 

 Europe, who suddenly found a most lucrative market com- 

 pletely lifted from their sphere. From cross ties to locomo- 

 tives, the railroad through Manchuria was built with Ameri- 

 can material. American pneumatic hammers that gave 

 Yankee railroad spikes 800 taps a minute caused even the 

 drummers for German factories to wonder, the heavy cranes 

 that Hfted ponderous locomotives all by the power of com- 

 pressed air, caused the engineers to marvel, while it was the 

 American idea of tunneling the mountains of Manchuria with 

 air drills that caused the first railway strike known to have 

 occurred in Asia. The success of the idea, however, brought 

 about the completion of the trans-Siberian railway several 

 years in advance of the time originally set for its formal 

 opening. 



These achievements at once created a great demand for 

 our machinery and machine making tools all over the civilized 

 world. The American idea was abroad in earnest. 



However, the fact that European manufacturers are at 

 last refitting their plants with American installations need 

 give us little fear as long as they are content to imitate — it 

 is only when America ceases to originate that the danger point 

 is approached, but that European manufacturers by merely 

 copying our methods are stimulating us to renewed efforts 



