Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-05-03
WORLD BUSINESS MEN
TO SURVEY TRADE
Great Changes Have Been Wrong hit in
Methods of Doing Business
Today.

Continued From First Page)
ings Of the chamber afford the best op-
portunity for the business men Of the
different nations to become acquainted
with each other and TO work together
not only for material prosperity. but
also for peace and happiness. There
will be discussions Of different views be-
tween these men of many nations, but
much more important will be the
friendly personal contact, the oppor-
tunity to know and understand the
difficulties, trials, hopes, aims and as
pirations OF each other.
Real Life Illustration.
May give homely illustration from
real life of what good such an assem-
blage may accomplish in dispelling mu-
tual distrust, softening bitter rivalries
and ending hatreds?
Once there lived In a small Illinois
town two merchants whose business
rivalry extended to and embittered their
personal relations. In those days bust
ness competitors were much more than
that; they were enemies, to be nodded
at only distantly on the street, to be
avoided or suppressed in every activity
outside OF business, The limit Of their
ambition was to put the other fellow
out Of business. That was business in
the old days.
In this particular instance one of
the merchants fell Ill with typhoid
fever. He had no grown children to
conduct the business, and his wife, who
had helped him in the store, had to
remain at home to nurse him. There
was mourning left to do but to close the
store. The other storekeeper, of course,
felt an immediate benefit. For one day
only that increase of business brought
qualification. This faded somewhat that
evening when his wife remarked, II
wonder what we'd do If you fell sick?"
AT noon the second day the healthy
merchant knocked at the door of his
sick rivals house, the first time he had
ever mounted those steps. When the
merchants wife responded he said: Il
can get along alone at my store If you
want to borrow by nephew to run yours
while John is sick" The offer was
accepted The town again had two
stores, and 1t never afterward saw the
old rivalry that not only bred hatred
but acted as a bar to progress.
have heard Of still another instance
OF the spirit wrought by misfortune
the new spirit of business in time of
crisis. Within the last few months the
planL OF a large city daily newspaper
was destroyed by fire. While the fire
was still burning the owners of the OPP
posing paper offered the use Of part
of their plant for the printing of the
rival publication. This notwithstand-
ing the fact that they stood to benefit
greatly from increased advertising while
the opposition was homeless. The offer
was accepted and for a time the two
papers were published from the same
plant.
How different that spirit from the
one which animated many editors OF
generation ago!
Business men could, of course. con-
tinue to deal with each other at long
range and make things as uncomfort-
able as possible for competitors in other
countries, even though they In turn
were made equally uncomfortable in
their return dealings. They could stir
up all the Ill will and prejudiceS pos
sfble against foreigners" and nurture
the seeds Of international misunder-
standing, distrust. strife and jealousy
out of which might grow another war
That was the old conception of inter
national trade. Anew conception came
into being in 1919 at Atlantic City.
There representative business men Of
the United States proposed to repre-
sentatives Of Great Britain, France. Bel
GUM and Italy that an internationa