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EASURED by the yard stick, the world today is as great as in the days of the Pharaohs. A hundred years ago it still retained that formidable girth. Today, measured by the hour glass, the planet has shriveled into a mere miniature of its former self. Under the compressure of electricity, steam and steel bridges, a spectacle is presented of practical time and space annihilation.

Seas have been dried up, continents pushed together, and islands wedded. that this might be. Nations once isolated are now in earshot of one another, and the markets of all peoples line a single street. American wheat fields are days, not months, away from British bake shops. French wines are hours, not weeks, removed from American dinner tables. New York is on the outskirts of London, and Paris not a block away. Deep sea cables and land wires hem the buyers and sellers of the world into a vortex of competition, whose diameter is a minute, and within whose circumference is gathered all the products and all the purses of mankind.

Into this vortex American energy has plunged, and the splash has been called. "American Invasion." Compared with future possibilities in the game of international barter the recent activities of American men of affairs abroad are merely preliminary and almost experimental. That American ingenuity and vigor have contributed much to the dwarfing of the planet is an earnest that Americans will take a keen advantage of every opportunity to produce a still smaller periphery to the globe.

Mean

time the shortened circumference has brought complications which have a bearing of great importance on the commercial prospects of the United States.

A century has been a revolution in time annihilation. And America, young as it is, has caused many sparks to fly in this greater activity. In 1800 the world was sluggish. Thoughts traveled in saddlebags, and men crawled at a snail's pace over land and sea. In America there was no such thing as expedition. Kentuckians knew nothing of the election of James Madison to the presidency of the United States until three months after the last ballot had been counted. There would have been no Chesapeake & Ohio canal, but for the argument that by means of it the decrees of congress were to be speedily transmitted to the cities beyond the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies.

The pony express was the acme of rapidity in the days of George Washington, who required more time to ferry a message from New York to Brooklyn than an American does today to flash a message around the globe. Imagine the amazement of Benjamin Franklin if he could have stood the other day, as many modern scientists did, and seen one of the most remarkable exploits of time annihilation on record. It was a test of thought transmission half way around the globe. A thirty-word dispatch sung over the wires to San Francisco, then to Vancouver, from there to Nova Scotia, whispered under the waters of the Atlantic to London, and back to New York. Every wire had been cleared for the test,

and before the operator had reached the last word of this test message another operator in the same room was taking the first word of the same dispatch, hot from the cable, direct from London.

The whole world has caught the electrical contagion of America, and the globe is enmeshed in thought-freighted wires. The brine-swept cables tied together, end to end, girdle the globe eight times. The wires that swing and sway in the wind over every land, all told, would make eight steel pathways to the

moon.

The telephone has withered the space that separated cities and towns, counties and states. Trillions of steps have been saved by this voice conductor, for two billions of telephone messages are exchanged every year. Over plains, above the buffalo wallows of fifty years ago, farmers telephone along barbed wire circuits. In Kansas City, every day in the year, a business firm talks for five minutes with its branch in Boston. Chicago stock traders do business on the New York stock exchange and complete an entire transaction in thirty seconds. London brokers, eager to deal quickly on the Paris Bourse, finding the channel cables congested with business, cable to Paris via New York, and win many a pound sterling by this long distance but absolutely prompt transaction.

Sanguine as he was about the success of his steamship, Robert Fulton would undoubtedly have been a bit amazed at the spectacle, the other day, in midAtlantic, of two great ocean greyhounds of rival lines, tremendous speed and palatial appointments, carrying on a chess game by means of wireless telegraphy. What the future of this wireless telegraphy is to be, one can not safely promise. Conservative men refuse to subscribe to all the bewildering predictions made for this latest of time and space

annihilators. Yet commerce today is taking out patents on the

dreams of yesterday. The commonplaces of this decade were a half century ago cynically declared to be extravagant and impossible vagaries. Skepticism is no longer safe. News that a cable is being laid miles below the surface of the Pacific on an ocean bed ten thousand miles in width is accepted as a matter of course, without a syllable of unbelief. To 'speed human thought along the ocean depths is no longer a theme for poets, but a matter of cable tolls.

Measured in thought transmission this old planet is no bigger than a dot. Steam and electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic inventions, have so annihilated space that there is but a small earth to clamber over. According to Dr. Emory R. Johnson, Professor of Transportation in the University of Pennsylvania, it takes steps only one-fifth as long to get around the world today as it did in 1800. In the sunrise of the century it took all but sixty-five days in the year to get once around the world. That was when men traveled in sail-boats, post chaise, on horseback, and on foot. Ocean steamers came in 1838, and they cut the ancient time table in two, for then it took only one hundred and sixty days to embrace the girdle of mother earth. In 1869 the Suez canal shrunk the world still smaller, and an enterprising man was able to get around the world in one hundred days. Since then Jules Verne has been outdone, for by the development of the speed of steam vessels and railroad trains, one can box the compass and get home in sixty days. yet. American energy will take girdle of mother years one may be able to run around the planet in six weeks without becoming breathless in so doing.

And the end is not enterprise, brains and another tuck in the earth, and in a few

American commerce is vitally interested in the fact that a traveling man can flit about the world in from sixty to ninety days; that he can make a half

dozen trips a year, and sell goods all the way from Japan to Madagascar. Industrial America is no less interested in the fact that you can telegraph from San Francisco to Hong Kong, or from Nova Scotia to London, get an answer, and sell the bill of goods, start the goods on their delivery, and they will nearly reach their destination before word can be sent from San Francisco to Honolulu direct, by way of the Pacific, that the goods are for sale. With the completion of the new Pacific cable, Honolulu, in thought transmission, will be no farther away from San Francisco than Oakland is, across the Golden Gate. Manila, then, in the transaction of all business, will be as near to Wall street, the purse of America, as are the commercial ports of Europe and South America. Thus the planet is still shrinking beneath the onslaught of modern methods.

All these things mean new conditions for the American merchant of today, and the American merchant of the future. Every facility at his hand is at the hand of his competitor. The successful American will have to be quick on the trigger. He must stand with his ear to the telephone, his finger on the telegraph key. He must be extemporaneous in all business, and never meditative. The American merchant, if he will succeed, must speak quickly, and, above all, speak first. The time for deliberation and waiting for foreign markets to come to him, has gone. The shriveling of the earth has forced his competitors onto his street, and it behooves him to be original if he would win.

Two things he must have: First, absolutely accurate and timely information as to the industrial pulse beats and commercial temperature of the world. Secondly, he must have a system of distribution by which he may take advanage of this information, and deliver to their destination, with the least delay, the products most suitable for the

needs of that particular community. In the United States, today, it is practically impossibe to go far wrong on crop conditions. The United States government keeps track of every inch that a stalk of corn grows, and it knows with certainty the condition of the bread basket of the country. Under the supervision of the agricutural department the government each month issues the most careful and remarkably complete report that has yet been devised, of the condition of the growing crops in the United States. Absolutely impartial, unbiased by bullish or bearish sentiment of the compiler, the report is an invaluable sign. board to the commercial and industrial interests of the United States..

While the government stands, tape measure in hand, recording the growth of crops within the borders of the United States, there is practically no information of a similar nature regarding that of the granaries of other countries of the world. Russian, Argentine and French wheat fields are almost as far away today, so far as information is concerned, as when the circuit of the globe required three hundred days. It is true that there are crop reports of foreign fields and vineyards, prepared by private houses, and cables come daily giving the condition of foreign corps from the view-point of some private individual. Manifestly, in the very nature of things, these cannot be impartial. What is true of the crops and the crop conditions is true of all other commodity-producing interests of the United States. There is a lack of direct, minute, accurate information as to the commercial and industrial health or sickness of the world at large.

The United States has ready at its hand all the inachinery for the collection and immediate distribution of this information. In the event of great famine, war, pestilence, or other crises, our consular representatives are empowered to cable the government in

formation that might be of value to American commerce. Such a service by cable might well be extended to include daily or at least weekly statements of the growing crops in all parts of the world, as well as every possible suggestion for the investment of American capital; in the employment of American energy and brains. Our chief consular agent in each country could easily organize, if so empowered, through the consular representatives of other towns, a complete and actual crop service, a summarization of which could be cabled at stated intervals.

This could be so arranged that it would cooperate with and form a part of the crop service of the United States as now issued. The United States government is tardy in this movement. Some of its own citizens have already undertaken, on their own motion, what the government should do for all. A commercial institution in San Francisco has arranged to secure cable dispatches concerning the citrus crops in Sicily and other Mediterranean countries. This knowledge is of much value to the fruit growers of California, and enables them to dispose of their products on the most advantageous basis. Norway has far outdistanced the United States in this important aid to commerce and industry. That northland of progress has established a national trade intelligence bureau to procure information from various countries for the purpose of promoting the welfare of Norwegian commerce, navigation, industries, agriculture, fisheries and handicraft.

While it is true the State department, through its consular representatives, collects information by mail which is valuable to the commerce and industries of the United States, it is equally true that much of this information is of no practical use to the industries interested because of the delay between the time the information is first secured and its final delivery. By the proper organiza

tion and utilization of the present consular force, the United States government can secure for the aid of its farmers, its artisans, its manufacturers and its miners absolutely accurate and timely information of the utmost value. If the United States is to be a world power, its greatest achievements will be commercial ones. No modern army attempts to win a battle when it knows nothing of the country in which it is trying to operate, and nothing of the resources or equipment of the opposing forces. The United States government should not expect its merchants or manufacturers to go into a commercial battle less carefully equipped. That the federal government is beginning to realize this duty to its citizens is indicated by the action of the Agricultural department, which, under the authority of the last session of congress, has taken steps to widen its scope of operation. It is negotiating with representatives abroad to obtain information concerning crop conditions in Europe and South America, India, and elsewhere. However, this service as now planned is to be only occasional. Such a service should be extended to specific reports at frequent intervals not only of crops, but of all great commodities.

Little is known of the conditions of wheat growing in Russia. Still less is known of the manner in which this wheat is put upon the market. Argentine wheat fields are fenced about by mystery likewise. So are many of the commodities of the great continent of South America. The harvesting period of every year demonstrates more and more the necessity of a complete service such as outlined here. To insure impartiality, thoroughness and expedition, the government, and the government alone, should undertake this work. Such knowledge disseminated broadcast would open up the world to American exploitation and put to an end the

present somewhat haphazard enterprise through which many American products are sent where they are not wanted, and through ignorance withheld from places where a demand does exist.

The whole consular service of the United States should be permitted to utilize the cable and telegraph. Information should be given to American commercial interests while it is still hot; while the need still exists which American industry, American brains, and American energy can fill.

Opportunities for American commercial supremacy with a dwindled and shriveled earth furthermore consists in the control, directly or indirectly, so far as possible, of a system of distribution, world-wide, developed by American methods to the highest of American standards.

"Let me organize a line," said one of the greatest of steamboat managers to me recently, "and I can shrink the time tables of the Old World fifty or a hundred per cent. The trouble now is that you cannot be certain of connections unless, for purposes of establishing records, you cable ahead for steamships to wait for you and order trains to be on time. This, while it has been done, requires great expenditure, is impracticable for the ordinary traveler, and out of the question for the shipment of freight. Let the American government place swift steamships at my disposal to meet me at seaboard termini and then, with the ordinary trains of Europe and Asia today, which are not particularly speedy, I will undertake to circle the globe by the very longest route in less than fifty days.

Opportunities for the investment of American capital at home are beginning to be circumscribed as the country becomes developed. America has done wonders in its short life in shriveling up the earth which lies between the Atlantic and the Pacific. American brains have

squeezed California and New York close together. Looking for opportunities to secure remuneration from invested capital, Americans find, or should find, an attractive field in the heterogenous transportation system of the eastern hemisphere. A good many spots still exist on the old half of the world that refuse to crowd together; hard lumps that have resisted all attempts at time-annihilation.

Distribution has not been reduced to a science on the eastern lobe of the earth. Railway systems are independent, each making time tables for its own purposes, without regard to any other system. Steamship lines are not affiliated with great land transportation plants. Multitudinous reshipments prevail as a rule, and the economy of the long haul is often ignored either wilfully or through ignorance of its possibilities. The small "goods" car and the unsystematic handling of freight and commodities of all kinds on the railroads of Europe are too patent to require much argument.

Recently, in Belgium, I asked a prominent engineer who had traveled a great deal in Europe and was familiar with the conditions in America, by actual investigation, why his country still retained freight cars of insignificant size. He replied:

"Well, they are as big as the country. They haul away all we produce. They bring us all that we can consume. Why should they be changed?"

I endeavored to show the opportunities throughout Europe for transportation on an American basis. I suggested a car ferry across the Channel to England similar to the one operated all the year around across the Great Lakes between Milwaukee and the points across the inland sea on the shores of Michigan, and that the consumptive power of Great Britain would easily justify the employment of large cars, more modern locomotives, and the longer haul from the wheat fields of Russia, Hungary and