The personnel of the selling force must be high grade. Many firms make a capital mistake in disre garding this. It is impossible to exaggerate the im portance_ of it. The representative abroad is no less than a business ambassador. He cannot possess too much general and professional education. Only a man of the world with sound business knowledge can successfully compete with the highly trained repre sentatives of German and English firms. Naturally, such men are difficult to secure and expensive to keep. They must live in good hotels, dress well and entertain generously. It must not be forgotten that they con stitute the personal link between the customer and the house. The house is judged mainly by the ap pearance, manners and air of prosperity of those who represent it. /Parsimony in this respect is the worst kind of economy.
If to these heavy charges are added the cost of travel to and from the foreign country, the loss of the employe's time during the voyages, the expense of cable message and of postage, it becomes ap parent that the foreign field should not be entered without a due appreciation of its financial demands.
3. Foreign trade requires specialized knowledge.— In most European countries, foreign trade is the goal of all ambitious business men. There the small man of moderate means and narrow horizon may be sat isfied to confine his business to the home market, but the bigger man is not satisfied until his letterhead is known in the four corners of the world. As a youth he prepared for this consummation. He studied lan guages, commercial geography and the technique of international commerce in the schools. He served years of apprenticeship at ridiculously low salaries with exporting firms at home and abroad. In short, he prepared for foreign trade as another would for the profession of law or medicine.
In the United States until recently, commercial education has been wholly inadequate. Foreign travelers are astonished at the hap-hazard, slipshod way in which business transactions are too often car ried on in this country. The need for better trained men in domestic business, however, is being felt more widely, and this need is ever more urgent in our for eign trade. The school of experience is too expensive an institution.
To meet the newly felt need, many of the larger high schools and universities are developing courses. They are still in the formative period and in thoro ness and scope are not to be compared with similar courses in the commercial schools of Holland, France, or Belgium. But they represent steps in the right
direction.
A number of commissions are also at work con sidering the kind of instruction needed for domestic and foreign business. The National Commission for the Reorganization of Secondary Education has, thru its committee on business education, outlined a cur riculum for secondary schools. Similar bodies are at work to bring a certain degree of uniformity into the curricula of institutions of college and university standing. Chambers of oommerce have established such courses, those of Cleveland and New Orleans being among them.
The American Manufacturers' Export Association, in 1918, passed a resolution recommending that the Committee of Fifteen on Educational Preparation for Foreign Trade Service, appointed by the Commissioner of Education and attached to the United States Bureau of Education and other Governmental agencies, be empowered by act of Congress, with specific appropriations of money for that purpose, to investigate for Congress the problem of training for foreign trade service and to report recom mendations to Congress of the national educational policy in this respect which shall indicate the most efficient ways and means of realizing it.
The resolution shows the new attitude of American business men towards commercial education.
It cannot be impressed too strongly upon the readers of the present volume that the completion of this Text is but the first step upon the road! In order to qualify as a specialist in foreign trade a. thorn study of economic resources, commercial creog Japhy, ocean transportation., marine insurance, inter national law and allied branches must follow thisin troductory work. Knowledge of a foreign language is highly desirable. But if the study is not under taken until late in life it is open to question whether the time required to secure even a moderate command of the language cannot be better spent in studying other subjects equally as vital to foreign trade.
4. Foreign trade profitAle.—If, notwithstanding the exacting requirement and the obstacles men tioned, business men, nevertheless, do enter the for eign field, it must be because the rewards are in some measure proportionate to the outlay necessitated. This is indeed the case. Thru foreign trade, coun tries with very inadequate natural resources have ac cumulated great wealth.