tates. And
yet we are blessed with the presence of sundry Americans here who,
without having examined our contributions, without knowing anything more
about them than they have gleaned from _The Times_ and _Punch_, aided by
a hurried walk through the department, are busily proclaiming that this
show makes them ashamed of their country!

Here is the great source of our weakness--a want of proper pride in and
devotion to our own Industrial interests. Every sort of patriotism is
abundant in America but that which is most essential--that which aids to
develop and strengthen the Nation's productive energies. No other people
buy Foreign fabrics extensively in preference to the equally cheap and
more substantial products of their own looms, yet ours do it habitually.
I had testimony after testimony from American merchants on the voyage
over, as well as before and since, that foreign fabrics habitually sell
in our markets for ten to twenty per cent. more than is asked for
equally good American products, while thousands of pieces of the latter
are readily sold on the strength of fabricated Foreign marks at prices
which they would not command to customers who would not buy them, if
their origin were known. This is certainly disgraceful to the
seller--what is it to the buyer? The mercantile interest naturally leans
toward the more distant production--the margin for profit is larger
where an article is brought across an ocean, while the cost of a home
made article is so notorious that there is little chance of putting on a
large profit. Give American producers the prices now readily paid
throughout our country for Foreign fabrics and they will grow rich by
manufacturing articles in no respect inferior to the former. But with
only a share of the American market, and this mainly for the coarsest
and cheapest goods, while the purchasers of the more costly and
fanciful, on which the larger profits are made, must have "Fabrique de
Paris" or some such label affixed to render them current, our
manufacturers have no fair chance. While fools could be found to buy
"Cashmere Shawls," costing fifty to a hundred dollars, for five hundred
to a thousand, under the absurd delusion that they came from Eastern
Asia, the fabrication and the profits were European; let an American
begin to make just such Shawls and the secret is out, so the price sinks
at once to the neighborhood of the cost of production. So with De
Laines, Counterpanes, Brussels Carp