Science and Progress 
59 
and Jai^an, 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 titter 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 comes 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 
