Science and Progress 59 



and Japan, in their accomplishments of the last quarter of a cen- 

 tury, we are an old, benighted country. While both Germany and 

 Japan have been reaching out into the future with new methods 

 and practices, our so-called statesmen and laws have tried to bind 

 us hand and foot to an archaic past. 



Fifteen years ago some of our business leaders with vision and 

 courage attempted to organize the railroads of our great Northwest 

 into one company, and planned to connect that railroad system on 

 the Pacific coast with a line of steamships to Japan and China. 

 Under an archaic law our Government attacked the enterprise, 

 declared it illegal, and prevented its being carried out. The project 

 was abandoned, and the ships for the Pacific were never built. Later 

 on, the La Follette law was passed, which effectually disposed of 

 the few ships we had remaining on the Pacific Ocean; and today, in 

 place of our being a potential factor in the carrying trade of the 

 Pacific, we are a negligible quantity, while Japan, which many of 

 our people still regard as an ancient nation, has forged ahead and 

 practically taken possession of the carrying trade of the Pacific. 

 All this is largely due to an utter lack of understanding on the 

 part of our so-called statesmen, and our people as a whole, to the 

 great economic changes that have been brought into the world, not 

 so much through the selfish desires of business men as through the 

 potential achievements of science. 



The modern commercial accomplishments of Germany are too 

 numerous to mention, but the latest one of which I know is the 

 creation in Berlin of what is known as a Federal Purchasing 

 Bureau. I understand that hereafter, when a merchant in Germany 

 wishes to procure some commodity that is to be procured outside 

 of Germany, he will be required to go to this purchasing bureau of 

 the Government and lodge his order. Take copper for instance : 

 If the German copper merchants wish to buy copper, they will 

 each go to the Government purchasing bureau and lodge their 

 respective orders for, say, May copper. When the orders are all 

 in, this purchasing bureau will go into the world to buy, say, fifty 

 million pounds of copper. It will naturally come here, for we pro- 

 duce such large amounts of that metal. When it corries here it 

 will find that our laws require that our copper merchants compete 

 with one another in the sale of copper, while the German law 

 requires that their merchants cooperate with one another in the pur- 

 chase of copper. The method of Germany is, therefore, exactly 



