The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-10-18

You talk about your merchant
princes in this country, your coal bar
ons and your steel kings, and all the
rest of them said the man who had
just returned from big-game shooting
in Africa, but if you want to find a
real, genuine merchant prince you
must go to Abyssinia and introduce
yourself to Menelik.
Menelik is the greatest of royal
traders. AS trust magnate he can
give American industrial promoters
cards and spades. Throughout Abys-
sinia he is a whole trust in himself. He
controls not one industry or one line
cry line of trade.
There is no autocrat on the face of
the earth more despotic than he, and
he isn't in the king business for his
health. He works it for all it is worth.
He runs stores and factories. buys the
products of the natives at his own
price, and sells his European imports
TO them for whatever he chooses to
ask.
There is no nonsense about inter-
state commerce or restraint of trade
with Menelik. He is the one great
merchant for the whole country, the
buyer of all that goes out and the
seller of all that comes in.
Anybody can compete with the King,
If he cares to try. Menelik does not
object He might send a file of SOL
diers and haul his trade rivals off to
jail if he chose; but he prides him
self on being a civilized monarch, and
he has better scheme than that.
He is the Tariff Commission as we'll
as the Lord High Everything Else in
the country, so he can charge what
customs dues he likes on the goods
that his rivals import, and exempt his
own goods from similar duties. If,
tired of importing, they try to become
exporters, he puts them out of business
with export duties. until they are
glad enough to sell their stuff to him
for whatever he cares to pay.
No other merchant on earth has such
a sure profit as this dusky potentate,
and naturally he is a millionaire many
times over. The dollars come rolling
in to him all the time, but he is very
liberal in spending them for the good
of his people.
Menelik is probably the only mon
arch in existence who is also a great
merchant with a personal monopoly
of the commerce of his country. Most
kings thing trade derogatory, but
Menelik holds different views, though
he has a pedigree as long and a title
as proud as any of them. He claims
lineal descent from King Solomon and
the Queen of Sheba. and his royal title
is "Conquering Lion of the Tribe of
Judah, Menelik, appointed of God,
Negus of Shoa and Negus Nagasti
(King of Kings of Ethiopia" I'm
agine that title on the front of a
store.
But though Menelik has such a
giants power in matters of commerce,
as in everything else in his country,
he does not use it as a giant. When
he buys goods from his people, or
sells to them, he fixes fairly reason
able prices. He has sense enough not
to kill the goose that laws the golden
eggs. He knows that If he paid un-
reasonably low prices, the people
would produce little or nothing for
export: and that If he charged abb
surdly high prices. the consuming
powers of the population would APP
proach the vanishing point in regard
to foreign imports.
1t seems strange that a king who
won his despotic power as an invinci-
BILE warrior should use ii as a shrewd
merchant-and it is the stranger be-
for wealth or luxury He lives as
simply as he did in the days of his
youth when he owned nothing save
his horse and his spear. But Menelik
is seeing, nany-sided man.