panese smiled, looked at the label and read it aloud.

"All straight goods, eh, John?" asked the manufacturer. The Japanese
answered in the affirmative and retired.

Then the manufacturer called for his manager.

"Mr. Smith," he said, as the manager came in, "this is Mr. Brown of
Tokio, Japan. He tells me that if we do up tacks in two third of an
ounce lots and stick that label on each package, we might do some good
business out there. That label--it don't matter which is the top of the
thing--calls for a price that figures out to us at about two cents a
pound more than our regular export rates. I want this gentleman to have
a trial lot shipped out to him and he'll see what he can do. Just go
ahead will you and see to it?"

"Yes, sir," said the manager; and when the trader sailed from San
Francisco a couple of weeks later the same vessel carried out a trial
order of tacks consigned to him at Tokio, made up in two thirds of an
ounce packages with mysterious hieroglyphics on the labels. It only took
the trader a few days, after his return, to satisfy himself that the
sooner he cabled the American manufacturer to duplicate the order the
better. There never has been anybody in the American works who has been
able to read what is on that label; but when instructions were given for
printing new labels after six months of trial the order was for a
quarter of a million, and British manufacturers were astonished to
discover that by some unexplainable chicanery they had lost the Japanese
market for tacks.

I have said that I do not know whether the story is true or not; but
fifty similar stories are. And in the aggregate they explain a good
deal.

But let me say again that the conservatism of British manufacturers is
not now my theme. But I do most earnestly believe that Englishmen as a
whole--even English traders and manufacturers--unwisely underestimate
the commercial power of the United States. What the United States has
accomplished in the invasion of the world's markets in the last ten
years (since the trade revival of 1896-97) is only a foretaste of what
is to come. So far from there being anything unsubstantial--any danger
of lack of staying power, any want of reserve force--the power has
hardly yet begun to exert itself. Of Europeans who have recently written
upon the subject, it seems to me that none has shown a truer
appreciation of the situation than M. Gabriel Hanotaux, the former
French Minister for Foreign Af