The fact is that the alien thinks the Englishman is a fool of a very notable kind, and in many cases he is right.
It is not in the excellence of their goods, or even in the cheapness of their tariff, that the Germans are forging ahead of us in trade. It is in their attitude towards those with whom they deal. They make an art of selling a yard of red flannel to an elderly negress. The negress feels the compliment, rather despises the complimenter, but likes it on the whole—and comes again.[32]
While the German studies the people who are to buy his goods in a spirit of subtlety, the Englishman makes up his mind without considering anybody save himself and his own ideas. In the days before competition assumed its present proportions this was all very well, perhaps; or at least it was not the commercial suicide that it certainly is to-day.
From the standpoint of the employer, the Englishman does not know his work. He has no money. He must, therefore, earn something. He expects to be allowed to earn and learn at one and the same time, which is an absurd notion.
The cause of all this is the same as that which sends out first-rate goods but to the wrong market.
The fact is, we do not study our markets seriously either for mercantile or for human exports.
If the South Sea Islanders want red cloth we send them yellow, and if in Patagonia there is an opening for men who are decent practical blacksmiths, we send them a stream of youths who have never fullered a shoe, but who are well up in the rudiments of Greek.
APPENDIX A
The expedition sent out to Patagonia under my charge by Mr. C. Arthur Pearson owed its origin to the discoveries made in that country by Dr. F. P. Moreno of certain remains of an animal, the Pampean Mylodon or Giant Ground Sloth, long believed to belong to the category of extinct prehistoric mammals. The marvellous state of preservation of the remains found at Last Hope Inlet seemed to give some ground for the supposition that the animal might possibly have survived to a recent period. Professor Ray Lankester, the Director of the British Museum of Natural History, in commenting upon the chance of the Mylodon being still alive in some remote and unknown region of Patagonia, said: "It is quite possible—I don't want to say more than that—that he still exists in some of the mountainous regions of Patagonia." These words from such an authority carried weight, and the question assumed an importance that made it worth all practicable examination. I have in the following pages put the whole case as clearly and as definitely as lies in my power.