``We arranged with a line of steamers to connect with our road so that
we could get the Oriental outlet. I remember when the Japanese were
going to buy rails, I asked them where they were going to buy, and they
said in England or Belgium. I asked them to wait until I telegraphed.
I wired and made the rates, so that we made the price $1.50 a ton lower
and sold for America 40,000 tons of rails. Then I got them to try a little
of the American cotton, telling them if it was not satisfactory I would pay
for the cotton, and the result was satisfactory.''


In these ways, the interrelation of nations is becoming
closer and closer, their separation from the world's life more
and more difficult. Dr. Josiah Strong well observes:--


``Until the nineteenth century, there was but little contact between
different peoples throughout the world. They were separated, not only
by distances hard to overcome, but by differences of speech, of faith, of
mental habit and mode of life, of custom and costume, of government and
law, and isolation tended steadily to emphasize the divergence which already
existed. Thus increasing differences of environment perpetuated
and intensified the differences of civilization which they had created. In
other words, until the nineteenth century, the stream of tendency down
all the ages was towards diversity. Then came the change, the results
of which are, in their magnitude and importance, beyond calculation.
Steam annihilated nine-tenths of space, and electricity has cancelled the
remainder. Isolation is, therefore, becoming impossible, for the world is
now a neighbourhood. This means that differences of environment will,
from this time on, become constantly less. The swift ships of commerce
are mighty shuttles which are weaving the nations together into one great