THE HISTORY OF COMMERCE
perience, his knowledge of foreign markets and his connections enabled him to secure prices which Japanese, working on their own account, could not possibly have obtained, and he paid to Japanese producers ready cash for their staples, taking upon his own shoulders all the risks of finding a sale for them beyond the sea. As an importer, he enjoyed credit abroad which the Japanese lacked, and he offered to Japanese consumers foreign products laid at their doors with a minimum of responsibility on their part. Further, whether as importers or as exporters, the foreign middlemen always engaged in such keen competition with each other that their Japanese clients obtained the very best possible terms from them. Yet the Japanese have always been anxious to oust them. In a measure the ambition is quite natural. If a community of aliens settled down in the United States or in England, and obtained a dominant place in the management of the country's foreign trade, Americans and Englishmen would certainly endeavour to wrest the business from their hands. Every nation must desire to carry on its own commerce independently of foreign assistance, and since a community of strangers is not to be found discharging similar functions in any Occidental land, the Japanese would prefer that their land should not be exceptional in that respect.
There are, further, some special features of the foreigners' methods in Japan which render his
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