left to enjoy them. The practice is much deplored by clergymen, census officials and persons residing in the effete cities. As it happened not long ago, a local preacher decided that, since only a couple of survivors remained of the McAllister-McDermott feud, he might be able to reconcile the two foes. He talked to both, exhorting them earnestly to learn to love their enemies and to forgive each other. So eloquent was he, so eager to make peace between them, that finally, in his presence, they shook hands and agreed to forget the bloody past. The peacemaker rejoiced; yet knowing the vindictive nature of feudists, he longed to behold some further, some concrete evidence of their new friendship. What, then, was his delight.

"A week later, he came upon McAllister and McDermott engaged in a swap-McAllister giving to McDermott an old-fashioned capand-ball rifle in exchange for McDermott's ancient and decrepit mule. Here, indeed, was cause for satisfaction. But he delayed his congratulations until he could speak to each bargainer alone. No sooner had McDermott departed, carrying the old rifle, than he approached McAllister, exclaiming :

"Brother, that was nobly done. I hope and trust you feel that Friend McDermott was generous in his dealings with you just now.' "Generous!' rejoined McAllister. 'Why, say, Reverend, there ain't never been a generous bone in one of them McDermott skunks' bodies. This yere mule he done traded to me is fitten only for the crows. But I got what I made up with him for. That gun he's totin', first time he uses it, is sure to kick his collarbone right plumb through his ear drum.'

"Grieved and chagrined, the peacemaker sought out McDermott, hoping to find him in a more Christian spirit.

"Reverend,' exclaimed McDermott, 'I made up with that cussed old limb of poison ivy when you give me the chance to talk with him friendly; and I'll bet my pore ole gran'father an' my other relations will rest easy in their graves from now on. That mule I left

with him is the surest shot in four counties of Kentucky, and the first time McAllister happens to get where that ole mule wants him, he'll jest naturally kick McAllister's wishbone right through his backbone."

"And that," added my acquaintance in Seattle, "was an example of the perfect bargainone in which each party thinks he has got the better of the trade."

It has seemed to me, whenever I think of the commercial relations which have prevailed between China and the rest of the world, that somehow, while each side imagined it was getting the better of the bargain, both have been losing real advantages, advantages infinitely greater in the end than have been any merely temporary economies or profits. And the time has come at last-whether its advent be due to the inspiration of that spirit of justice and fairness which must underlie any continuous exchange of values or whether it is to be attributed merely to a modern and enlightened selfishness-when China and the world at large must agree to trade, not merely on a basis of nominal fairness, but with the sincere desire on the part of each that every bargain shall actually benefit the other. I may add-and my words can be taken at their full value that China's experience of Americans and of American products and trade has convinced her business men the United States affords promise of proving all they seek.

Let me be quite frank about these matters: The business men of China know that their country has been allotted the unpleasant role. of dumping ground for the old machinery, the old utilities and materials, the inferior products, which the world expects to get rid of at the conclusion of this war. Everyone looks for a thorough housecleaning of the industries in preparation for the intense competitions that are to ensue. The world, to some extent, has already taken stock of its assets for the uses of peace; it is preparing for such a broader stock taking, and for such a stock clearance on the heels of it, as has never previously been known in the history of trade.

The desperate exigencies of this struggle have enlightened Europe as to the overwhelming need, in peace as in war, of the machineries and the methods of efficiency which have been the commonplaces of production in the United States. European industries, European centers, which previously were content with hand labor, with mere approximations of means for maximum output, have awakened to the economies, the scope, and the profits of operations on the grand scale. The United States, now equally alive to the opportunities of the future and having almost completed the absorbing task of subduing the far reaches of its vast continent, is preparing to extend its principle of "scrapping" obsolete machinery to the ultimate, logical conclusion. That tendency, by reason of the very conditions which prevail, is necessarily world-wide; and the past has marked the direction in which a very large proportion of these rejected facilities and inferior products is expected to flow.

Part of that past is China's fault; part of it lies at the doors of the world outside. In the main, China has overflowed with things of all kinds that were unsalable in Europe and elsewhere, notably in lines of machinery. China-in her national insularity-has had no vision heretofore of the modern world or of the possibilities of superior supplies which modern methods hold. Under the old regime, China's government was led to invest in cheap ammunition, cheap supplies for its arsenals, cheap goods generally. So there was official example set for the nation as a whole. The machinery of peaceful industry, when it was introduced into China, was in the nature of so many dubious experiments. Chinese investors followed their government's example by purchasing cheap, inferior machinery, believing that to be the safe course until these strange contrivances should demonstrate their efficiency. Except in certain few plants which have served as notable pilot lights, there has been no replacement of that early machinery.

Foreign merchants, realizing this bent on the part of their Chinese customers, concen

trated their efforts on selling to them only those goods which, apparently, they desired. The Chinese trade has been known in Europe as a "cheap" trade, an inferior trade. Enormous investments of capital have accumulated in Europe which are dependent, for the renewal of their trade after the war, upon the continuance of China's demand for inferior goods. There will be brought to bear on China a tremendous pressure to force the purchase of second rate and even of second-hand machinery which Europe, determined upon resumption of its industries with machinery as good as can be provided, will be constrained to scrap a huge surplus that will have been rendered useless but which its owners will regard as an asset that must yield the largest possible returns to offset their new outlays.

To the Chinese, those few modern plants that are in operation before their eyes at home, have served as so many visible landmarks of industrial progress; and their influence has been powerfully supplemented by the observations made and reported by Chinese students returning from abroad. Never has bread that was cast upon the waters so surely come back an hundred fold as did the return by the United States of the Boxer indemnity with the educational proviso that attached to it.

China to-day is thoroughly alive to her need of superior means of production. But she realizes that she will be in competition with Europe for excellent machinery in the field of American supply. But China, while she knows in the general way what she needs, and while she has the capital available and is willing to lay it out for her needs, still lacks the technical knowledge that shall enable her to set forth the specifications for many of her requirements, and, what is equally to the point, she is acutely conscious of the handicap. She is so clear as to her shortcomings, and also so wisely resolved upon avoiding mistakes that could very easily cost her investors dearly, that she will welcome American experts, accompanied by Chinese colleagues, possessing training acquired in the United States, for the

THE GREAT HAN YANG IRON WORKS AT HANGKOW, CHINA