ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM C. REDFIELD. 383 



foreigners to buy or because they are of better quality. The business houses 

 grouped in the American Manufacturers' Export Association, over which I 

 have the honor to preside, do a regular foreign trade in their goods of approxi- 

 mately two hundred millions, and among us it would be rather amusing 

 were one to say that we could not compete because of our wages when as a 

 matter of fact we are doing it all the time. The old belief that the product 

 of a man whose pay was $3 must cost more than the product of a man whose 

 pay was but $2 dies rather hard, but if ever there was a pernicious falsehood 

 this is it. 



I had in my hands a few days since a list of 177 different lines of Ameri- 

 can manufactures in which a good and growing trade is done abroad. 

 American shoes are sold in every European country ; so are American tools ; 

 American clothing is sold in London, American cotton in India and China. 

 American machinery runs European plants; American machinery operates 

 in the Far East. Talk with German and English manufacturers in their 

 candid moments and you may be surprised at their views. They know, and 

 there are times when they will say, that America is fast becoming their most 

 threatening competitor in the markets of Europe. 



Three great facts therefore exist : 



First, the need for a keen appreciation of the national value of a mer- 

 chant marine. 



Second, the growth of this appreciation, because of the enormous expan- 

 sion of our foreign trade and its changing character. 



Third, a remarkable change in the competing power of America, which 

 is advancing by rapid steps. 



The last two of these three great facts did not exist twenty years ago 

 and even ten years ago were not potent, but now they are rapidly becoming 

 the controlling factors. 



A fourth great fact affecting our study is the opening of the Panama 

 Canal. I confess to believing that the effect of this upon the world's com- 

 merce will be greater than the most hopeful figures state. For to my mind 

 it means that as a resistant to navigation the American Continent is removed, 

 while as an incentive to navigation it may almost be said that a portion of the 

 American Continent is created. I believe there will come to be round the 

 world lines, not going from hither to yon and back, but continuing around 



