AMERICAN PREFACE. 
xv 
States imported embroidered goods from Switzerland to tlie value 
of 82,095,234,— a call for 4,000,000 bushels more of Illinois 
corn. Again: tlie same year and from tlie same country we im 
ported silk and silk goods to the value of 15,224,116, — a call for 
10,000,000 bushels more of Illinois corn : making, in round num- 
bers, 19,000,000 bushels of corn whicli would have been neces- 
sary, had the payment been made in corn, as supposed, to pay for 
three kinds of skilled, artistic manufactures obtained from little 
Switzerland alone in one year. Tliough without a port, yet 
has Switzerland by means of her skilled, artistic manufac 
tures secured for herseif a commerce larger, when compared vvith 
her population, than that of any of her Continental neighbors. 
This astonishing feat she could not have accomplished witli rüde 
manufactures. Cost of transportation alone would have prevented. 
In the third place, skilled, artistic manufactures are more 
desirable than rüde manufactures, since they give a better popula 
tion. The population is better, beeause it is more intelligent, 
intelligente being the prime condition of such manufactures. It 
is better beeause it is more prosperous, has more money to spend 
in the procurement of all that is essential to the comfort and 
embellishment of life. Churches, schools, farmers, gardeners — all 
share in the prosperity of the educated, thrifty artisan. Compare 
the city of Worcester, Mass., full as it is of skilled workmen of 
many kinds, with a city wliose manufactures are rüde, and the 
difference between the two will arrest the attention of the most 
casual observer. 
COMPETITION WIDENED AND INTENSIFIED. 
Again : the fact must not be ignored, that the market of to-day 
is quite a different thing from the market of fifty ycars ago. 
Competition has been both widened and intensified by steam- 
carriage and telegraphic communication. Formerly the price of 
most products was determined by the liome market, by local 
competition : now the price of most products is determined by the 
market of the world, and one’s competitors are not Ins neighbors 
alone, but they are often found beyond seas and even on the 
opposite side of the planet. Distance counts for less and less in 
the transportation of all things. Indeed, it counts for next to