ANGLO-AMERICANS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3508, 4 October 1882, Page 4

ANGLO-AMERICANS.

Chambers' Journal. Shrewdness and speed are combined by tho best Bort of Ainercans ; but speed takes preference. While an Englishman is weighing the probabilities of business, his Cousin has effected his purpose, or smashed in the attempt. Business needs to be done smartly, and a man must have a reputation for so acting, if lie seeks to advance. ISo matter what the field of enterprise, a paper collar store or a bank, a man must ' run it' in a go-ahead fashion or the business will langnish. Anglo-Americans fully understanding this often prove more than a match for the native. Many instances came under my observation, where my capable compatriots had dominated a particular business by their superior perception of the conditions of success. Americans have considerable imagination, and can project cyclopean enterprises, and often carry them to a brilliant consummation. Still, when an English immigrant gets hold of a 'big thing,' lie can keep it against most competitors. Indeed, nothing is more common than to find English brain directing or assisting transatlantic mercantile and manufacturing establishments to developments beyond the daring of t , urope. As anonymous partners, as managers, as chiefs of departments, or other spheres of control, capable and docile Englishmen exercise a great portion of that influence in tho present progress of the United States which is attributed to the fear-nothing Yankee. In short, Englishmen and English capital are gigantic factors in the phenomenal success to which the United States have attained. Broad as the native mind is, the English is broader; great as native skill is in money-making, English skill is at least «'is great. The addition of a more circumspect morality gives Anglo-Americans frequent advantage over the sons of the soil. Commercial conflicts are often waged more pitilessly than those of intereine war. This is the case in America. 'Smartness' too often means unscrupulousness. What are reckoned crimes in London are regarded as peccadillos in New York. If one of our commercial men lead a client into a financial ambuscade, or commits highway robbery on the Exchange, he is shunned, and his career damaged, if not destroyed. Not always co in America. Successful frauds go frequently unchallenged, is sometiii-es openly applauded in certain circles. For the victim, there is little sympathy, He was too confiding—so much the worse for him. He will not make the same mistake when he gets up from his fall. For he is expected to get up. To lie still under a swindle is more reprehensible than to get up and swindle others. This sort of morality is fatal to trade, and the best sort of Anglo-Americans know it. Instead of playing scoundrel in turn, they become wary of scoundrels, and keep them at safe distance. The bitter-agony period from 1873 to 1879 has created a number of business safeguards that did not exist before, and they are due in some measure to English example and English astuteness. Anglo-Americans want to keep their money safe ; a traditional veneration for capital runs in their veins. Hence the tightening of the systems of credit. While eager for gain as any Yankee, they are still more eager for the solidity of their customers. Clever Anglo-Americans would not waste time on perfecting wooden nutmegs ; they know the end of such things. This trait counts enormously in their favor, in the conflict for business with natives, and with immigrants from Germany, France and Italy.