American Trade Competes With Itself

American commerce, after a period of foreign expansion that astonished our citizens fully as much as it startled those of European countries, suddenly finds itself face to face with toppling exports. Not only is there an almost unprecedented falling off of orders for machinery from Europe, but we are once more importing pig iron Instead of sending it abroad. This becomes possible again in our history because our marvelous prosperity abroad was caused largely by the re-equipment of the factories, foundries, mines and machine shops with American machinery, enabling Europe today to manufacture cheaply American tools and commodities, even to our name plates on implements of all kinds, equal In every respect to the original article which they now supplant every where, because owing to our lack of foreign banking facilities and tax methods of business in securing and holding foreign trade, we fail to hold against those we have enabled to compete with us for the markets of the world.

The American manufacturer of machinery seemingly has no fellow feeling for the Yankee maker of commodities. Entire shoemaking plants are sent to England for Installation, and leased on royalty to the British manufacturer, and so popular is the American "boot," as it is called abroad, that the Yankee manufacturer of shoemaking machinery is successful in compelling the British shoemaker to abolish all other machinery from his factory. These American shoe plants in Great Britain, being much nearer the Continental market than our own, are successfully competing in many quarters where "American shoes" (made in England) are becoming quite as popular as the genuine article.

When America began to lay down tools in Vladivostok and Port Arthur for the Russian government, at a less price than it cost to manufacture the same articles in Germany, there was an immediate overhauling of German machine shops, and while the process of re-equipment with American installations progressed, our exports of machinery increased by leaps and bounds. Now, however, it is Germany that lays down tools in the far east at the price it costs us to manufacture them, and we are doing the overhauling and installation of new machinery to compete with our machinery in German workshops. The days of our "commercial walkover" have passed. We did wake Europe up and she now fights us with our own weapons.- Alexander Hume Ford In Collier's Weekly.