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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



tionships, he holds it by knowing how to 

 meet both credit and shipping conditions. 

 The German who marries ni a foreign 

 community becomes a Dun or a Brad- 

 street to the home exporters, and they are 

 safe in extending long credits on these 

 reports — and in many parts of the world, 

 especially in Latin - America, the long 

 credit is the first essential of business. 



When it comes to meeting shipping 

 conditions the German is ready to pack 

 hi? goods so that they will not break in 

 transit, even with the roughest handling; 

 the American packs his goods so that 

 they will not break if they are handled 

 with care. One may stand by the rail of 

 a West Coast steamer and watch goods 

 go out of the hold and into lighters, and 

 spot the German goods every time. There 

 are no labels "Handle with Care" on 

 them, for the exporter knows that the 

 Latin-American cargo handler would not 

 pay any attention to it even if it were 

 there and he could read it. This cargo 

 handler can give pointers to the Ameri- 

 can baggage smasher ; for he never lets 

 things fall into the lighter — he throws 

 them down. Pieces of American-packed 

 machinery are frequently broken that 

 must take six weeks or two months to 

 replace. 



Germany's success as an export nation 

 has been due mainly to three things — 

 making what the world wants, giving its 

 foreign buyers the credit they demand, 

 and packing their goods properly. 



GERMAN TRADE IN GERMAN BOTTOMS 



The expanding German trade called for 

 a German merchant marine, and, being 

 called for, it was not long in coming. On 

 January i, 191 3, there were 4,850 ships, 

 having a cargo-carrying capacity of 3,- 

 153,000 tons net register, flying the Ger- 

 man flag. They carried 78,000 sailors. It 

 costs about 10 cents a net register ton a 

 day to keep a ship on the sea, so that Ger- 

 many's daily outlay for her merchant ma- 

 rine, before the war, approximated a 

 third of a million dollars. 



Germany did not limit its commercial 

 activities only to countries that could be 

 reached by a merchant marine, but fi- 

 nanced the building of railroads into Asia 

 which reached to the very borders of 

 India, and through which it sought a 



shorter route to the heart of the East than 

 either the sea route to India or the Rus- 

 sian Transcontinental Railroad through 

 Siberia. The Bagdad Railroad is German- 

 Arabian, and the whole history of trans- 

 portation indicates that this new German 

 activity pointed to the ascendency of Ger- 

 man influence in Southwestern Asia. The 

 Shantung Railway in China was probably 

 the ultimate outlet to which the Germans 

 proposed to connect the Bagdad road. 



THE RAIEROAD SITUATION 



In Germany the railroads are nearly all 

 State-owned, and they were laid out with 

 their military use as the first considera- 

 tion. A small town that might need a tiny 

 little tiled-roof station, with a single side 

 track, in France or the United States, 

 may have in Germany a great station, 

 with a dozen sidings, and facilities for 

 entraining or detraining hundreds of peo- 

 ple for every one who uses it in normal 

 times of peace. Everything has been 

 planned with an eye to the quick handling 

 of the men and the munitions of war. 



The German view of rebates and dis- 

 criminations in railroad rates has been 

 diametrically opposite to our view. The 

 small shipper always is required to pay a 

 higher freight rate than the big shipper ; 

 the domestic shipper must pay a higher 

 rate than the export shipper. The Austro- 

 Plungarian shipper gets a lower rate on 

 trans-Germany shipments than the Ger- 

 man shipper. When the toy makers of 

 Nuremberg want to assist the Hamburg 

 Kris Kringle the rate is $9.33 per ton be- 

 tween the two cities ; but when they want 

 to assist the American Santa Claus, via 

 Hamburg, the rate is $5.83 per ton, al- 

 though the two consignments may move 

 in the same car from Nuremberg to 

 Hamburg. 



Likewise, the rate on cloth from Co- 

 logne to Hamburg is $6.38 per ton when 

 it is for domestic consumption ; when it is 

 for export the rate is $3.64 per ton. 



BUSINESS AND BATTLESHIPS 



"Germany is no longer the land of 

 thinkers and poets — it is a nation of busi- 

 ness and battleships," declared one of the 

 aged German writers in commenting upon 

 the transition of his country from the 

 days of Goethes, its Schillers, its Schopen- 



