money to increase their holdings, to buy machinery and stock, and we have to let them have our machines on long credit, or to be paid for on the instalment principle. But,” said my informant, “we are absolutely sure that we shall reap our reward, and a very rich reward, within a year or two.” The commercial travellers told me the same story. They are doing a great and increasing trade in the new cities that are springing up at the rate of one a day along the lines of railway construction. “But,” they said, “at present the traders, the farmers, the business men, have to be putting all the money they can make or borrow into the land, into building and into stock. They will give us their orders on condition that we allow them a year, two years, three years to pay for the stuff. We know they will pay and we let them have the stuff, confident that we are getting in our footing for a trade that will be enormously and increasingly profitable as years go by.” Travellers of Canadian and American firms told me that here is where British firms are being beaten just now. They have not taken the trouble to understand the conditions in which trade has to be done in a new country with a rapidly increasing population and with its resources only beginning to be developed. British firms want to do trade as in the Old Country and with their European continental customers on practically cash down or short credit terms, and if they cannot do trade on these terms they do not think it worth while doing it at all. The consequence, so the Canadian and American commercials assured me, will be that the trade will be almost monopolised by the Canadians and Americans and European firms that recognise the necessity of meeting Canadian customers on their own ground. Long credit and easy instalment terms must be regarded in the light of initial capital expenditure. Waiting for the money for what seems to English traders an exasperating and inordinate time is the only condition on which Canadian connections can be built up. British traders will have only themselves to blame if they refuse to conform to the conditions and find within five years or so that the ground has been hopelessly cut from under their feet.