an American schoolboy or office-boy, who is thinking of becoming a salesman, were to spend some of his time studying the Spanish language (or Portuguese, for Brazil), and learning something of the history, customs, etiquette (good manners sell more goods than "hustle," in the tropics) of the other republics in this hemisphere, he would be giving himself some of the training that the English and German salesmen are put through before they are sent to South or Central America, where they have built up an immensely profitable trade. A generation ago, Horace Greeley said, "Go West, young man, go West!" To-morrow the word may be, "Go South!"
Eventually, the Panama Canal may help restore the long-lost American merchant marine. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, more than ninety per cent, of American goods were carried in American ships; in 1912, we paid a freight bill of over two billion dollars to foreign shipowners. At the outbreak of the Civil War, we had the greatest merchant marine in the world; fifty years later, we had less than a dozen ships trading to foreign ports. This was due partly to the replacing of wooden sailing vessels with steel steamers, but more to our faulty navigation laws,—for steel can be made in Pittsburg more cheaply than anywhere else in the world. All the big European and Japanese liners are subsidized, or partly paid for, by the governments of their countries, who use them to carry the mails in time of peace, and for cruisers or troop-ships in time of war. If a great war should break out in Europe or Asia, many of these vessels would cease to come to our ports, and we should have a hard time doing business with the rest of the
