AMERICA AND THE COLONIES.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15977, 20 November 1919, Page 4

AMERICA AND THE COLONIES.

A weiteb in the Sydney Morning Herald points out that the United States to-day occupies a unique position. Her vast resources are fully developed, her factories and farms are adequately equipped with a huge total of machinery and mechanical appliances for all production, and she has now the ships to carry her goods into every port in the world. . But it became necessary to educate the American business man. • The American is extremely docile, and a few years ago, when the American campaign for the capture of South American trade began in earnest, every second person in New York seemed to be learning Spanish, because clerks and others were informed that to push American wares and trade energetically in South America a knowledge of Spanish was necessary. In New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other great cities there are of course plenty of trading firms which know all that is to be known concerning export trade, but the pre-occupation of most American manufacturers and business men with*domestic requirements left the bulk of them profoundly ignorant of the customs ‘ and requirements of international trade. To remedy this a comprehensive educational campaign has been conducted for several years past by the Foreign, Trade sections of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers and great banks, like the National City Bank and the National Bank of Commerce of New York, and, above all, by tbe Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce—a subdepartment of the Department of Commerce, whose operations might well bo imitated by Australia, The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce has a world-wide organisation. Its attaches and commercial agents are in every country, investigating and reporting; and their reports are published in the daily bulletin of the Bureau for the information of American business men. Tlie consular service not under the Department of Commerce, but, by arrangement, the consular reports, where these touch on business, also appear in the bulletin. Prom China to Peru the openings for American trade are thus charted and surveyed. In the bulletin the questions of perplexed business men are answered. And the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce is quite courteously impartial. If an Australian or New Zealand business man or firm desires American connections the bulletin will announce him gratis, and assist in bringing about the desired agency, provided the necessary guarantees are assured. America to-day is puttiug into operation the policy of commercial penetration which Germany practiced with such spectacular success before she gambled all on the hazard of the sword. But America is doing it openly and fairly, and, however menacing it may be to American trade competitors no objection can be taken to the methods employed. Tbe colonies are forewarned, and it is their own fault of they are not forearmed.