encountering in months of travel.

This state of things is grievously wrong, for it should be as easy for us to secure trade in the Orient as for any European nation, and assuredly easier than for Germany. We have had such years of material prosperity and progress as were never known in the history of any people, it is true; but every cycle of prosperity has been succeeded by lean years, and ever will be. When the inevitable over-production and lessened home consumption come, Eastern markets, though supplied at moderate profit, will be invaluable. We are building the Panama Canal, whose corollary must be a mercantile fleet of our own upon the seas, distributing the products of our soil and manufactories throughout the world, and Secretary of State Root has made it easy for a better understanding and augmented trade with the republics to the south of us. But America's real opportunity is in Asia, where dwell more than half the people of the earth, for the possibilities of commerce with the rich East exceed those of South America tenfold. Uncle Sam merits a goodly share of the trade of both these divisions of the globe.

The people of the United States must cut loose from the idea that has lost its logic in recent years, that the Pacific Ocean separates America from the lands and islands of Asia, and look upon it as a body of water connecting us with the bountiful East. The old theory was good enough for our home-building fathers, but is blighting to a generation aspiring to Americanize the globe. The genius of our nation should cause our ploughs and harrows to prepare the valley and delta of the Nile for tillage; be responsible for the whir of more of our agricultural machinery in the fields of India; locate our lathes and planers and drilling machines in Eastern shops, in substitution for those made in England or Germany; be responsible for American locomotives drawing American cars in Manchuria and Korea over rails rolled in Pittsburgh, and induce half the inhabitants of southern Asia to dress in fabrics woven in the United States, millions of the people of Cathay to tread the earth in shoes produced in New England, and all swayed to an appreciation of our flour as a substitute for rice—yes, make it easy to obtain pure canned foods everywhere in China and Japan, even to hear the merry click of the typewriter in Delhi, Bangkok and Pekin.

Do we not already lead in foreign trade? We do, I gratefully admit; but it is because we sell to less favored peoples our grains and fiber in a raw state. Confessedly, these are self-sellers, for not a bushel of wheat or ounce of cotton is sold because of any enterprise on our part—the buyer must have them, and the initiative of the transaction is his.

What economists regard as 'trade' in its most advantageous form, is the selling to foreigners of something combining the natural products and the handiwork of a nation—this is the trade that America should look for in the East, and seek it now. It is not wild prophecy that within five years a considerable number of the sovereign people of the country controlling its growth will feel that it is carrying international comity to the point of philanthropy to export cotton to England and Japan to be there fabricated for the wear of every race of Asia, and sold in successful competition with American textiles. In the pending battle for the world's markets Uncle Sam should win trade by every proper means, and not by methods most easily invoked; and let it ever be remembered that shortsightedness is plainly distinct from altruism.

Frederic C. Penfield.

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