practically
live on the trains: they eat, sleep, and do their business while
travelling. One of them told me that in one month he had covered
38,000 miles, and that he had not been back to his firm for three
months.

There is no doubt that the American people are active, strenuous
workers. They will willingly go any distance, and undertake any
journey, however arduous, if it promises business; they seem to be
always on the go, and they are prepared to start anywhere at a moment's
notice. An American who called on me a short time ago in Shanghai told
me that when he left his house one morning at New York, he had not the
slightest notion he was going to undertake a long journey that day; but
that when he got to his office his boss asked him if he would go to
China on a certain commission. He accepted the responsibility at once
and telephoned to his wife to pack up his things. Two hours later he
was on a train bound for San Francisco where he boarded a steamer for
China. The same gentleman told me that this trip was his second visit
to China within a few months.

American salesmen are clever and capable, and well know how to
recommend whatever they have to sell. You walk into a store just to
look around; there may be nothing that you want, but the adroit manner
in which the salesman talks, and the way in which he explains the good
points of every article at which you look, makes it extremely difficult
for you to leave the store without making some purchases. Salesmen and
commercial travellers in the United States have certainly learned the
art of speaking. I once, however, met a remarkable exception to this
rule in the person of an American gentleman who was singularly lacking
in tact; he was in China with the intention of obtaining a concession,
and he had nearly accomplished his object when he spoilt everything by
his blunt speech. He said he had not come to China for any
philanthropic purposes, but that he was in the country to make money.
We all know that the average business man is neither a Peabody nor a
Carnegie, but it was quite unnecessary for this gentleman to announce
that his sole object was to make money out of the Chinese.

Up to a few years ago business men in America, especially capitalists,
had scarcely any idea of transacting business in China. I well
remember the difficulty I had in raising a railway loan in America. It
was in 1897. I had received positive instructions from my government