=461. Unwillingness to adopt foreign trade customs.=—(_b_) Finally, when wares suited to sale in any market have been manufactured, they need to be sold, to maintain trade. English exporters were criticised for allowing their wares to be driven out of foreign markets by other wares, no better in themselves but for some reason more attractive to the customer. Here again the commercial traveler was at fault, but part of the blame lay on the exporter. Sales must be made in small lots and on long credit in some countries, if they are to be made at all; and the English had shown a disinclination to adapt themselves to such conditions which had enabled others (especially Germans) to take trade from them. When other things are nearly equal slight differences in packing and shipping may turn the scale. The English lost trade in Australia because they sent tacks in paper packages instead of in cardboard boxes, because they sent cartridges in lots of one hundred instead of lots of twenty-five. An interesting example of an opportunity well met occurs in the career of an Englishman who left the field of manufacture to become a leading statesman—Joseph Chamberlain. He found that the trade with France in his product, wood-screws, was small; he introduced the metric system of measurement, put up the screws in packages of the size usual in France and wrapped in blue paper familiar to the French customer, and developed a large export trade. If there had been more men like Chamberlain in manufactures in England there would have been less need of the protective policy which he advocated as a remedy for the troubles of English business. =462. Tendency to remedy these faults.=—There is no doubt that there was a good basis for these charges against the British manufacturer and merchant, though some of them doubtless were exaggerated, and it is impossible to apportion exactly the weight that should be allowed to any one of them. The crisis of the World War was needed to sweep away the customs and traditions of a long past. The stimulus of a struggle for national existence, with the insistent demand for the highest attainable efficiency, effected reforms reaching deeper and further than those of a whole previous generation. Even before 1914, however, many men in responsible positions in English politics and business recognized the need of mending the pace if England was to keep abreast of competitors in industry and commerce. Interest in elementary and technical education quickened; inquiry was directed to the means by which foreign rivals were getting ahead; the government, associations and individuals worked together or independently to further efficiency.