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THE
mSIC TRADE
VOL. LXIII. No. 7 Published Every£Saturday by the Estate of EdwardUyman >Billet 373 4thfAve., New York, Aug. 12, 1916
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World's Markets
I
T is not unnalural that the great world movement now working out its calamitous course should bear for
us many lessons; some of immediate and intense import, all serious.
We have most of us done our best, partly from our native habit of treating the unfamiliar lightly,
partly in reaction at the horror of the past two years, to forget what is going on beyond our borders; but
we have not succeeded in forgetting the unforgettable.
We have no business, no matter how much the whole thing be horrible, to avert our gaze from the great
lessons of the world-calamity.
We talk about Preparedness and have the word dinned into our ears till it becomes familiar, to lose with
familiarity, all significance. How many of us realize that the immediate future holds for us the issues of
national prosperity as against national depression, of national progress as against national stagnation, of our
national ideals carried into effect as against those ideals overthrown?
Apart from all thought of national defense in the military sense, what are we going to do about national
economic defense? We talk about military preparedness. Are we thinking of industrial preparedness?
After this war is over—and it will be over some day when we are not expecting anything like sudden
cessation—these United States will find themselves in a new world. Old ideas will have disappeared. The
financing w r hich we have come to think essential in our international transactions will have to be modified, for
Europe will have modified her ways of doing business, necessarily.
We shall find that if we are to continue in the enjoyment of prosperity after war orders are finished up,
we must find ways for doing business with the rest of the world. We must begin to think now—to-day—about
what we are going to do.
We cannot improvise prosperity, any more than we can improvise a navy.
Prosperity is a condition which depends on the combination of many circumstances, partly physical, largely
mental, determiningly economic. At present the nation enjoys relatively a considerable measure of what is
called prosperity. But the present condition is abnormal, and not even altogether healthy. It must be trans-
formed into a natural healthy condition as soon as possible.
That state of healthy natural prosperity which we all desire is only to be attained by a process of preparation
whereby we shall gradually exchange the artificial conditions for others more natural.
It is not natural for us to depend for relative prosperity upon the chance of a War.
When Peace again reigns over the earth, we should be in a position to take advantage of the extraordinary
economic situation.that will prevail. We should be able to turn it to our advantage.
This means simply and concretely that our agencies for the formation of opinion, our chambers of
commerce, our trade associations and, not least though last, our trade press, should begin now, from to-day,
the work of planning, urging and putting into motion the entire machinery of economic and industrial
preparedness.
The American people must be ready to jump into the whirlpool of world business and seize the prizes that
will be whirled past them, before other competitors, not less active, if less powerful, prove themselves to be
more alert.
This nation cannot forever depend on its own consumption. We cannot forever do all the buying and all
the selling among ourselves. We must, in years to come, do more selling abroad, more and again more, while
our potentially unlimited resources give us also control of markets in lines which hitherto we have permitted
others to monopolize.
(Continued on page 5)