y known as the
"yellow" press--had strong motives, of a political kind, for making the
case against the packers as bad as possible. It is unfortunate that many
of the London newspapers look much too largely to that particular class
of American paper for their American news and their views on current
American events.

If we assume that any reasonable proportion of the accusations made
against the packing houses were true of some one or other establishment,
it still remains that a considerable proportion of the American business
community is otherwise engaged than in the canning of meats. There is a
story well known in America of a countryman who entered a train with a
packet of eggs, none too fresh, in his coat-tail pocket. He sat down
upon them; but deemed it best to continue sitting rather than give the
contents a chance to run down his person. Meanwhile the smell permeated
through the car and at last the passenger sitting immediately behind the
countryman saw whence the unpleasantness arose. Whereupon he fell to
abusing the other.

"Thunder!" exclaimed the countryman. "What have you got to complain of?
You've only got the smell. _I'm sitting in it!_"

This is much how Americans feel in regard to foreign criticisms of the
packing house scandals. Whatever wrong-doing there may have been in
individual establishments in this one industry in Chicago, is no more to
be taken as typical of the commercial ethics of the American people than
the discovery of a fraudulent trader or group of traders in one
particular line in Manchester or Glasgow would imply that the British
trading public was corrupt. The mere ruthlessness with which, in this
case, the wrong-doers were exposed ought in itself to be a sufficient
evidence to outsiders that the American public is no more willingly
tolerant of dishonesty than any other people. Judged, indeed, by that
criterion, surely no other country can detest wrong-doing so
whole-heartedly.

* * * * *

And I wish here to protest against the habit which the worst section of
the English newspapers has adopted during the last year or so of holding
"American methods" in business up to contempt. It is true that it is not
done with any idea of directing hostility against the United States; and
those who use the catchword so freely would undoubtedly much prefer to
speak of "German methods" or even "French" or "Russian methods," if they
could. All that is meant is that