These commercial agents travel through all sections of the country to solicit business; they call upon those who can give them orders; they look up those who are engaged in similar businesses to their own, and, if they are retailers, they invite their orders, or ask them to become sub-agents.

These gentlemen practically live on the trains: they eat, sleep, and do their business while travelling.

One of them told me that in one month he had covered 38,000 miles, and that he had not been back to his firm for three months.
There is no doubt that the American people are active, strenuous workers.

They will willingly go any distance, and undertake any journey, however arduous, if it promises business; they seem to be always on the go, and they are prepared to start anywhere at a moment's notice.

An American who called on me a short time ago in Shanghai told me that when he left his house one morning at New York, he had not the slightest notion he was going to undertake a long journey that day; but that when he got to his office his boss asked him if he would go to China on a certain commission.