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.