ed 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--t