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Show mi A LOOK AHEAD Do the American people especially es-pecially those who produce or sell such goods as are always in demand for domestic and foreign consumption realize the immense opportunity that by and by will be theirs ? The home market of course will take care of itself. Every man knows that of late both lie and his neighbors have been buying with caution whatever they needed, and that, as far as possible, they are still using what they have on hand. It follows that the stock of com-If modities that consumers hold'? is steadily diminishing. The process cannot go on indefinat-oly. indefinat-oly. AVhon it roaches a cortain point, buying on a large scale must he resumed, and a 'boom" in domestic business ;J will begin. i But our great opportunity j is that of immensely expanding expand-ing our foreign trade. Take a survey of the world. Several - things are necessary to give us, or any other nation, an incroas-. incroas-. od control of the foreign mar ket the capacity to produce more than we need at home, largo financial resources, business bus-iness intelligence and enterprise, enter-prise, friendliness between ourselves and the peoples with whom we seek to trade. Most of these things we have had for some time, and our foreign trade has made a notable increase. in-crease. But we have labored under two disadvantages. AVe have had to compete with other oth-er countries as well equipped as ourselves, and long in possession pos-session of the great markets; and we have suffered from a widespread national unpopularity. unpopu-larity. Now, the war greatly modifies modi-fies the terms on which other nations compete with us. Great Britain, Germany arid France are so occupied with the Avar that they can neither produce as before for their foreign customers, cus-tomers, nor give their attention atten-tion to keeping the trade that they have. The door is open , to us. J Although. -the nations of Eu-i rope are surcharged with hatred ha-tred for one another, all of them are friendly to America. Indeed, there is today no country coun-try more generally popular than ours, jiiven me oversus-picious oversus-picious peojole of South America seem, for the time at I least, to believe in our sincerity and disinterestedness. The immediate present is not the time for our merchants and manufacturers to invade the countries of tire world with the products of industry; for every important country, whether neutral or belligerent, is, like our own land, passing through f a period of hard times, of economy econ-omy and suspense. But the present is preeminently the time to plan the invasion and to prepare for it. i . |