Such orders to America are bound to tell upon our exports, and, combined with the advance in food-stuffs, the loss in cotton values by the outbreak of the war is offset more than twice over.

America must feel the effect of these orders when the goods go forward in increasing quantities.  They are paid for as promptly as shipped.  Many an American factory has been put on three eight-hour shifts for the day’s work on these orders.

A Southern manufacturer received an order for 5000 dozen pairs of socks to be shipped weekly for six months.  The price was under $1.00 per dozen, with ten per cent of wool in them.  He complained that he was making only twenty cents per dozen profit, while if he had not been so anxious for the order, he might just as well have got a price that would have shown more than twice this profit.

In boots and shoes, England, instead of giving orders to this country, has been buying leather in America, and filling all her own factories.  It is the policy of England to fill every workshop in her tight little island before she permits business to overflow.

To-day there are no unemployed in Great Britain, except in the cotton districts dependent upon German trade.  Wage advances and overtime are the rule rather than the exception.  The one country that the warring world must turn to for supplies is the United States, and that in increasing measure.  Orders for $300,000,000 of war goods already received must be duplicated several times.

Every American automobile manufacturer able to deliver motor-trucks in lots of one hundred, has received his orders for shipments to the Allies.

Germany has now no base from which to get many important supplies.  In a long contest the Allies will supply motor-cars, shells, guns, and ammunition to a far greater extent than Germany can manufacture them.  Factories for this work are expanding in both Russia and America.  The English do not speak against the Germans as a people.  They believe them seriously misled by Prussian militarism, which they declare must be crushed absolutely.

Where formerly England was an open door to Germans and suspicions against German spies were laughed at, the bars are now sharply up.  Most of the golfing clubs have voted to suspend the activities of members with German antecedents.

At the clubs in Pall Mall, notices have been posted requesting members not to introduce during the war Germans or those of German descent.

Membership on the Stock Exchange is not continuous as in this country, and at the March elections in 1915 there will be a dropping out of German names.

CHAPTER XII

ENGLISH WAR FINANCE

Protecting Trade and the Trader—­How German Banks Paid—­The English Loan—­England’s Wealth—­The Income Tax—­More Taxes.

A giant Atlas bearing the civilized world on its financial shoulders has arisen between the North and the Irish seas.  That is the picture that stands at the opening of 1915, where before Germany had endeavored to stamp the label “Perfidious and degraded nation of shopkeepers.”