A few years later, another Hungarian government representative compiled a complete,
long list of the "secrets" of American success. The key to the wonderful
greatness of the United States, argued Emil Zerkowitz after visiting the 1904
St. Louis Universal Exposition in a book in 1905, was the honor and liberty of
labor, the lack of prejudice and conservatism, real democracy, institutions based
on civil equality, the respect of the constitution, the tremendous business spirit,
the lack of militarism, unified national spirit... Zerkowitz was particularly
keen on pointing out the obvious, though cautiously mentioned differences between
the United States and his own country. The list reads like a thinly veiled criticism
of the feudal conditions of turn-of-the-century Hungary, once again revealing
the mirroring qualities of imaging another country. Zerkowitz emphatically suggested
that there were "no power excesses on behalf of some preponderant classes,"
there was no prevalence of old-fashioned conservatism or reactionary spirit. American
society, he concluded, had respect for human beings only when they had the admiration
of their fellow-countrymen through work.
It is natural that in a book entitled Amerikai kereskedOk [American Merchants]
Zerkowitz went out of his way to describe the best qualities of American businessmen.
"'Try again!' is their slogan," he quoted adding that the merchant class
had a role equal to that of the producing and the consuming classes. "Nobody
questions there [i.e. in the United States] the enormous significance of the commercial
profession," stated Zerkowitz with an obvious though coded reference to the
Hungarian conditions.