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Show TOO CARELESS. American shippers new in the foreign trade evidently have much to learn and some part of their education is likely to prove costly. Their main fault 6eems to be slip-shod methods of packing, and they lose a portion of each shipment or a good customer. The British, French and Germans are more thorough and painstaking, aud as a result there is lit tie or no complaint on the score of breakage when their products are transported trans-ported thousands of miles. to some out-of-the-way corner of the world. On the other hand, complaints have been general gen-eral ever since the trade of the United States began to expand. The consul general at Shanghai has warned the Americans they must pack their goods better if they expect to hold Chinese trade, and the consul at Karachi, Kara-chi, India, suggests that the shippers in this country be educated by means of moving pictures showing the dangers to which freight is subjected in the Orient unless properly packed. The baggagemen bag-gagemen on the railroads in the United States have long enjoyed a reputation as engines of destruction, but they enjoy no superiority over the freight haudlers of the Orient, whose work is thus described de-scribed by the consul in advocating the use of the moi ies: "If single photographs of a smashed packing case., or a lighter full of goods being laqded, or other illustrations are good, a picture showing how the case came to be smashed or how the goods were put into or taken out of the lighter would be better. Everyone knows that cases are smashed and a single photograph photo-graph shows only the result, which any shipper can imagine. "If, however, a shipper of flour, let us say, could see a lot of Levantine stevedores swing a loop full of sacks dver the 'side of a ship and let it down on the run to a flatboat bobbing about id the waves, the sight of what happens when the boat rises suddenly to meet several hundred pounds of muslin-sacked flour would be an education to the shipper. ship-per. "If an American furniture merchant could see a muring picture of his packing cases dropped from a cart tail to a stone floor by a gang of Maltese dockers, he would appreciate the cause and effect. " This American consul in far-off India is evidently of a practical turn of mind for he not only points out deficiencies, but suggests remedies. Rut that is part of the duties of American representatives representa-tives abroarl in these days of commercial commer-cial rivalry, and the reports they make to the department of commerce are usually very interesting to those who are watching trade expansion. |