YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Expansion By Josiah Strong OUR COUNTRY : Its Possible Future and its Present Crisis. With an Introduction by Prof. Austin Phelps, D.D. 173d Thousand. Revised Edition, based on the Census of 1890. Paper, 30 cents. Cloth, 60 cents. THE NEW ERA ; or, The Coming Kingdom. 49th Thousand. Library Edition, Crown Svo, Cloth, Gilt Top, S1.50. Plain Cloth, i2mo, 75 cents. Paper, x2mo, 35 cents. THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY CITY. 15th Thousand. Paper, 25 cents. Cloth, 50 cents. EXPANSION, under New World-Conditions. Paper, 50 cents. Cloth, $j.oo. RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL BETTERMENT. i6mo. Cloth, 50 cents. The Baker and Taylor Co., Publishers, 5 & 7 East Sixteenth St., New York. o Expansion Under New World- Conditions By Josiah Strong Author of " Our Country," " The New Era," " The Twentieth- Century City," etc. " Nbw occasions teach new duties."— ioweB. " We LtVB: IN A new and EXCEFTIONAI. AGE. AMEMCA IS ANOTHEB WORD FOR OPPOBTTTNITT. OUE WHOLE HISTOBT AP PEARS LIKE A LAST EFFORT OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN BEHALF OF THE HUMAN RACE ; AHD A LITERAL SLAVISH FOLLOWING OF PRECEDENTS, AB BY A JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, IS NOT FOB THOSE WHO AT THIS BOtTB LEAD THE DESTINIES OF THIS PEOPLE." — JPmersoji, New York The Baker and Taylor Company 5 and 7 East Sixteenth Street CopTright, 1900, BY THE BAKER AND TAYLOR CO. CrJ 2-7 BOBEBT DRDHUOND, PRINTEB, HEW YORK. PREFACE The twentieth century is confronted by conditions which are new in the history of the world, which con cern the nations in general and the United States in particular. In this book the subject of Expansion is discussed in the light of these new conditions. Students of ciTilization are attaching more importance to physical conditions now than formerly. Says Pro fessor William G. Sumner of Yale University: "The notion that progress proceeds in the first instance from inteUectual or moral stimuli, or that progress is really something in the world of thought, and not of sense, has led to the most disappointing and abortive efforts to teach and elevate inferior races or neglected classes. The ancestors of the present civilized races did not win their civilization by any such path. They built it up through centuries of toil from a foundation of surplus material means, which they won through improvements in the industrial arts and in the economic organization." Civilization is shaped by as many causes as there are motives to which men are susceptible, but industry — the way in which men get their living — is dominant with the million. Man is capable of reaching a spiritual elevation such that he is controlled by the loftiest motives. He has toiled for years in the galley; he has rotted in the dungeon; he has charred at the stake, 9 Preface rather than speak the word which would have liberated his body and chained his spirit. He has shown himself gloriously superior to all outward conditions — to all that appeals to the flesh. But these are the shining spirits that have revealed the splendid possibilities of human nature; they represent the potential rather than the actual in the multitude. Aa yet the great bulk of man kind live on the physical plane; and, therefore, physical conditions, as yet, exert the most powerful influences in shaping civilization. The movement is upward, and the greater altitudes will surely be gained. We must keep the noblest ideals constantly in mind and unceasingly struggle toward them; but as sober men, dealing with present facts, we must acknowledge that physical con ditions still dominate the nations. New physical conditions and the industrial revolution have created a new situation, and are producing a new world life, which is profoundly changing national re lations and which must inevitably change national policies. I am indebted to Senator William P. Frye for public documents kindly sent, and for information furnished. I desire also to acknowledge the courtesy of Captain A. T. Mahan, the eminent writer on naval subjects, who read several chapters of the book which traverse the fleld in which he is acknowledged to be the highest authority, and who was so good as to give me the benefit of his valuable criticism. J.S. New Yoek, September, 1900. 10 CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands 17 Importance of the questions involved in the general subject. Vacant government lands. Arable lands taken. 1. Meaning to the nation. Energy and capital will increasingly go abroad. That energy meas ured by the work accomplished during past cen tury. Sir Henry M. Stanley quoted. Mulhall's estimate of national energy in foot-tons. Com pared with that of other nations, a Increase of capital in one generation. Decreas ing field for investment at hon^ 3. Meaning to the world. wSward migrations as old as the race now brought to an end. Two results : a sharper competition among the great races, and a movement toward the tropics. Ac quisitions of Great Powers in tropics. M. Beaulieu quoted. Change in the great lines of commerce. Difference in development of advanced and be lated races. Prof. Drummond quoted. Com merce between temperate zones and tropics to increase. CHAPTER II Our New Manufacturing Supremacy 40 Three steps : conquering the home market, JJj^ colonialmajjjgt, the European market. Excess fi^^^lgpflKsoveT iflnTOrtSr^^access _oL^4iaaagan manuf aiCturps phma.d ; illustrations. •^TfTSommanathe conditions of permanent suc cess. 1. Coal; 3. Iron; 3. Low labor cost; 4. Cheap raw materials; 5. Access to markets. Mr. Gladstone quoted. Our commerce to be carried in American bot toms. Americans as ship-builders. The "Oregon." Lord Beresford's opinion. Tonnage which passes through the Sault Sainte Marie. Senator Frye quoted. 11 Contents CHAPTER III PAGE Foreign Markets a New Necessity 73 Influence of machinery. Its multiplication. The substitution of mechanical for mascular power. Half-way to the industrial millennium. Problem of production solved; that of distribution awaits solution. Production has increased more rapidly than population. Hon. Carroll D. Wright quoted. Enlargement of manufacturing plant inevitable. Congestion must follow failure to in crease foreign markets. New inventions throw men out of employment. The cry "ft,ck to the soil" fallacious. Effect of applying machinery to agriculture and of making it a paiH of organized industry. The artisan out of work may not become a farmer, but may become a revolutionist. Lord Macaulay's ' ' appeal to the twentieth cen tury." Danger of a large unemployed and dis contented class. The coming industrial conflict. CHAPTER IV The New China 104 China looking backward for at least twenty- seven centuries. Effect of isolation. Influence of Chino- Japanese war. The Chinese people a great factor in the world's future. Changes since 1840. Railroads. Cotton fac tories. Changing habits and industries shown by tables of imports. Schools to teach Western learn ing. Distribution of literature. Native news papers. Effects of China's awakening. China's re sources. Influence of railways; India's expepi- ence. Colquhoun quoted. Introduction of ma chinery. It creates commerce and elevates standard of living. Effect on the United States. Commerce present and prospective. Five new Americas. Wu Ting- Fang quoted. 12 Contents CHAPTER V PAGE The New Isthmian Canal 135 Interest in canal. Important results. 1. Geographical. Reduction of the size of the earth by one-third. President Hayes quoted. Connecting the Mississippi Valley with the Pacific. 8. Commercial. Henry Clay quoted. Distance, time, and cost saved. Creation of new commerce. WiUiam H. Seward quoted. Table of distances. Pacific practically shifted 7, 500 mUes. Hon. A. R. Colquhoun quoted. 3. Political. Connecting our two coasts. Should be owned and controlled by our government. Commodore MelviUe quoted. Eastern coast of North America and western ftoast of South America. Effect on West Indies. Captain Mahan quoted. Cuba. CHAPTER VI The New Mediterranean 163 Pacific to be supreme in the twentieth century. That supremacy final. Population of Pacific lands. Expansion of the race to take place in these lands. Daniel Webster quoted. New and Old World compared. Hon. James W. Taylor quoted. Resources of Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, East Indies, the Philippines, Japan, China, and Siberia. Effect of trans-Siberian rail way. Hon. John Barrett quoted on Pacific trade. Production of world's staples by Pacific lands: wool, gold, silver. Thomas H. Benton and WiU iam H. Seward quoted. CHAPTER VII The New Mediterranean an Anglo-Saxon Sea.. 185 Battle in ManUa Bay. Benjamin Kidd and Prof. Franklin H. Giddings quoted. The su preme question of the twentieth century. Resemblances between the Anglo-Saxon and the Slav. 1. Numbers. 3. Growth. 3. Power 13 Contents FAQE of assimilation. 4. Genius for organization and government. 5. Growing-room. Radical contrast between the two races. The Russian essentially Asiatic, WUliam Durban quoted. Russia's aim. fimile de Laveleye quoted. Which race to command the Pacific ? Sir Walter Raleigh quoted. Pacific coast-line belonging to the two races. Importance of Anglo-Saxon island possessions in Pacific. Stra tegic importance of Hawaii and PhUippines. Captain Mahan, Hon. L. A. Thurston, and Com modore Melville quoted. Admiral Walker's opinion. Four of the six Anglo-Saxon homes ranged around the Pacific. These homes protected by water ; thus salted from mUitarism. Need of supreme navy. Providence in the history of Pacific lands. CHAPTER VIII A New World Life 214 The village world. Effect of raUway, tele graph, and press. Society a living organism. Industry the fundamental factor in civUization. Profound effects of introducing mechanical power. New industrial civilization produced a new national life and is producing a new world life. British empire an iUustration of new nar tional life. Oneness of the world's life. A world public opinion. International law. Navigation rules. Postal Union. World sympathies. The interde pendence of nations. A world sensibility. Far- reaching effects of Prussia's bounty on beet- sugar. This world life to be further developed. Con tinental and intercontinental railway systems projected. Effect of international competition. New world life creates new rights and new duties. New dangers. Contagious disease. YeUow fever. Bubonic plague. 14 Contents PAGE World Powers to assume more responsibUity for the world's order. CHAPTER IX A New World Policy 247 Advice of Washington's FareweU Address. Hon. Richard Olney quoted. New conditions since Washington's advice was applicable. Brief summary of preceding chapters. Political isola tion impossible amid the new world conditions. Political questions inseparable from industrial and commercial interests. Three possible courses open to us. 1. We may drift, believing we are anchored. 2. Possible to sail into this unknown sea reck lessly with false chart. Machiavelli the exponent of traditional views. Such views un-American. 3. A true chart, and good courage. A new world policy, whose aim shall be the noblest ministry to the new world life. A new world conscience. Development of same. Milton's ideal. Time to adopt new political philosophy and ethics. A world police. Use of force. Sac rifice of reason to reasoning. Use of force may be benevolent. Illustrations. New use for armies. Change in character of war. Cling to ideals, but recognize facts. Distinction between freedom and independ ence. Progress of civilization involves decreas ing independence and increasing freedom. Our relations to the Philippines. Practical question is whether Filipinos are capable of self- government. Testimony of expert witnesses. Our duty ; how to discharge it. The liquor traf fic with dependent races. Great Britain and the United States stand ing together for Christian civilization, Emerson quoted, 15 EXPANSION Under New World-Conditions CHAPTER I Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands With nations as with individuals the unintended and unforeseen results of ac tions are often vastly more important than the objects aimed at; for instance, the Crusaders, going out to rescue the Holy Sepulchre and bringing back the seeds of Eastern civilization ; Columbus, seeking a new route to India and finding a New World, In like manner, the unexpected and wholly unintended results of the late Spanish-American war are unspeakably 17 Expansion greater than the liberation of Cuba, im portant as that was. The shock of battle between the Old World and the New, between medisevalism and modern progress, together with its momentous issue, has precipitated discus sions which have been long preparing. Nothing so becomes one who would arrive at a just conclusion touching these far- reaching questions as largenes^ of vision. Not rivers and provinces and^^peoples are implicated, but oceans and continents and races — not parties and policies, but hemi spheres and civilizations. The world itself is involved. On the hinge of these ques tions may turn — is Ukely to turn — the his tory of centuries. I The forging of nations is a long process. Often the fires which bring the great mass to the right temperature are slow, and the changes which take place are obscure. Then suddenly on God's great anvil of war are 18 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands struck the mighty blows which shape the nation to higher uses. The nation emerges from the late war with a new temper, a new national con sciousness, a new apprehension of destiny. New responsibilities confront us, new pos sibilities invite us, new necessities compel us. But these new conditions were not al together unforeseen. The essential change which has taken place was rendered inevi table by causes long at work and long since recognized by many thoughtful minds. These causes are now seen to issue in new conditions which must shape the future course of the nation. Among the new conditions which con front the new century is the exhaustion of our arable public lands — a fact of both na tional and world significance. It is true that, exclusive of Alaska and our new island possessions, there are more than 500,000,000 acres of vacant govern- 19 Expansion ment land, but the mad rush for Oklahoma and the Sioux Reservation, when thrown open to settlement a few years ago, showed how little of the remaining govemment land is arable. This land is by no means worthless. Much of it afEords good gracing, and is at this moment supporting vast numbers of sheep, cattle, and horses ; and much of it is rich in minerals. Moreover, Major Powell estimates that 100,000,000 acres can be re claimed for agriculture by irrigation. But storage reservoirs and canals would be required of such proportions as to place the work beyond private enterprise ; while the interstate character of irrigation problems relegates any undertaking on a large scale to the General Govemment ; and there is no reason to believe that Congress will ap propriate vast sums for the reclamation of arid lands in the West so long as there are many abandoned farms in the East which 20 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands can be had for less than the cost of the buildings on them. Practically, therefore, our arable public lands are exhausted. 1. Consider what this fact means to the nation. It does not mean of course that we are becoming crowded. It will be many centuries before the United States will be as densely peopled as England. It means that great tracts of unoccupied land have passed into the hands of corporations and of private owners, and, because they are no longer free lands, have ceased to attract settlers. It means that the energy and capital which heretofore have been devoted to developing a continent will now be turned in other directions. That we may better appreciate how great is this energy, it is well to remind our selves of the magnitude of the task accom plished by the American people during this century now closing, the prodigious char acter of which was happily unknown to 21 Expansion those who on the Atlantic seaboard faced the continent and the century together. With the triumph of the railway, time rather than the surveyor's chain has come to be the measure of distance, and the shrinkage of the continent mabes it diifi- cult for us to appreciate how endless were the reaches of woodland and prairie and mountain ranges which separated the At lantic from the Pacific a hundred years ago. We may now cover the distance from New York to San Francisco in four days — four passive days of luxury. A hundred years ago — and indeed fifty years ago — that journey exacted strenuous months of hard ship. In the winter of 1842-3, Marcus Whitman, with a vision broader than the continent and a purpose loftier and more unyielding than the Rockies, rode from Oregon to Washington in five months. The earth has become quite too small to express a straight-away journey of five months in 22 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands the terms of modem railway travel. Such a trip would demand a continent 112,500 miles broad to make room for it, ample enough to wrap around the earth four and a half times. Such a journey, however, would be only a holiday compared with the undertaking of crossing the continent during the first half of the nineteenth century. A hundred years ago our population of 6,000,000 was a thin fringe along the Atlantic slope, and Ohio was the far fron tier. Consider what has been done since then. Homes have been built and fur nished for 70,000,000 people. More than four and a half million farms have been brought under cultivation. For forty years there was an average of 16,000 acres of wild land subdued daily. Half a thou sand cities have been built. Millions of miles of roads have been opened. Count less mills and factories have been erected 23 Expansion and equipped. Seven hundred and seventy-five thousand miles of telephone wire have been strung, and more than 800,- 000 miles of telegraph. With the railways which have been built, we could parallel every track in all Europe and then have enough over, if we could use the equator as a road-bed, to girdle the earth. Twenty- nine great commonwealths have been or ganized and equipped with all the ap pliances and usages of civilized society, the average area of these same common wealths being considerably greatef than that of England and Wales. It has taken thousands of years to make Europe, but on this continent as vast an area has been brought under the yoke of civilization in one century. Refemng to what Americans have accomplished. Sir Henry M. Stanley says : " Treble their number of ordinary Europeans could not have surpassed them in what they have 24 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands done. The stoiy of their achievements reads like an epic of the heroic age." Science now measures the energy of a nation, including hand, horse, and steam- power. Not including electrical, wind, and water power, the English statistician Mulhall estimated our energy, iu 1895, at 129,306,000,000 foot-tons daily, or more than twice as much as that of Great Brit ain, aud nearly as much as that of Britain, Germany, and France combined. Mulhall adds : " If we take a survey of mankind in ancient or modern times, as regards the physical, mechanical, and intellectual force of nations, we find nothing to compare with the Uuited States." It is not strange that this amazing energy, applied to resources which are per haps unequalled, has made us the richest nation in the world. Glance at the thirty years from 1860 to 1890. During this period the civil war Expansion withdrew two great armies from produc tion, and directed their energies to the work of destruction. It cost the lives of a million producers; aud furthermore took out of the assets of the nation the value of 3,000,000 slaves. But notwithstanding all this, over and above all loss, over and above all consumption, legitimate and wasteful, we created and accumulated forty-nine thousand million dollars — a thousand million dollars more than the entire wealth of Great Britain. ¦ It should be added that the creation of wealth has been at a much greater rate since 1890 than ever before. Why recall all this ? Not for vain glory; nor because I would imply for an instant that the wealth which the nation has amassed is the best product of the century, and most worthy to be singled out for honorable mention. Attention has been called to our wonderful wealth and 26 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands energy because these facts concern our argument. The nation's energy has been chiefly concentrated on the industrial conquest of the continent, and the exhaustion of the aiable public lands marks the practical completion of that conquest and consti tutes the beginning of a new era in our in dustrial history. Heretofore our growing energy and our waxing wealth found a limitless opportunity within our own land. Now a limit has been fixed, and our ever- increasing energy and wealth will find an ever-decreasing field for investment at home. This of course means that hence forth they will increasingly go abroad. When many thousands of acres of wild lands were being opened to settlement every day, and great railway lines were being projected, it created a strong de mand for capital, in response to which about two thousand million dollars were 37 Expansion attracted to us from Europe. Within a few years that inflow of wealth has ceased. We now for the first time in our history have a surplus of energy and wealth, with the inevitable result that they have begun to flow outward.' Much of the work which has made the century one of marvellous achievement could, from the nature of the case, be done but once. Billions of money have been put into permanent investments — the splendid business blocks which will stand for generations, public works and railways. Doubtless we shall build many new lines of road during the coming century, but we are not likely to invest $12,000,000,000 that way. A thousand channels which were open early in the nineteenth century are now filled and closed. We shall have ' One of our large life-insurance companies reports in vestments in Canada, Central and South America, Cuba, Russia, France, Holland, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, Hun gary, Wurtemberg, Switzerland, Italy, and Servia. 28 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands several times as much energy and capital to invest during the next century as we have had during the last, and they will necessarily seek opportunity in other lands. Precisely as England has for gen-\ erations been sending her sons and her capital to every climate, so we, from this time on, shall be sending American brains and Americau wealth wherever energy and capital are in demand, thus extending our interests over the earth. 2. Let us consider now what the exhaus tion of our arable public lands signifies to the world. Since prehistoric times the swelling populations of the Far East have rolled outward in ever-widening waves. For thousands of years there was an unoccu pied land toward the sunset. At leligth the western bound of Europe was reached, but there was still a New World. In small numbers at first, and at long intervals, th^ 29 Expansion adventurous colonists crossed the Atlantic ; but during the nineteenth century the pressure of population in Europe has sent 18,000,000 to our shores, attracted chiefly by our free lands. Civilization has now crossed the continent; and on the Pacific coast the European met the Asiatic. There are no more New Worlds ; further west is the East. Of course population will become more dense in North America, as it is doing in crowded Asia and in more crowded Eu rope, and immigrants will still come to us ; but when the wave of migration encircled the earth, it marked the beginning of a new era in the movements of the race. The great migrations have been, for the most part, along parallels of latitude in the North Temperate zone* The Ex haustion of the wild lands of that latitude, either by occupation or appropriation, means one of two things, viz., a shai'per 30 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands competition between the peoples nf th^ North Temperate zone, or a movement toward the tropics ; indeed, it means both, and both have already begun. The latter movement has not been a mi gration, but the acquisition, on the part of European Powers, of vast areas in tropical regions. Within the last twenty years some 5,000,000 square miles — an area nearly one- half greater than the continent of Europe — have been seized by European Powers in tropical and subtropical zones. After ages of indifference the Powers suddenly awake to the importance of the tropics. A French political economist, M. Paul Leroy Beau lieu, says : " Either France must become a great African Power, or she will be in a century or two but a secondary European Power ; she will count in the world scarce ly more than Greece or Rumania counts in Europe. " ' The German press is strongly ' Quoted by Mr. Kidd in "Tbe Control of the Tropics," p. 28. 31 Expansion advocating a " Greater Germany." Italy a few years since made an expensive venture in Africa. Mr. Benjamin Kidd thinks this acquisi tion of territory on the part of Geimany and France indicates the hope of repeating in Africa the colonial policy of Great Britain, whereby, during the past century, she has extended her authority to remote parts of the earth. But the expansion of England has been the expansion of her race. She has colonized her sons and daughters. France, with a decreasing birth-rate, cer tainly cannot be preparing to dispose of a surplus population. On the other hand, she is attracting immigration from neigh boring states. The Germans are a prolific race, and have been migrating for genera tions, but have never shown any interest in the acquisition of colonies until they be came a manufacturing people. The fact that Germany, France, and Italy pursue the 32 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands policy of restricted colonial markets serves to explain sufficiently to the writer their acquisition of tropical regions. This expansion is primarily an economic phenomenon. After the Napoleonic wars, European nations were glad to concern themselves with their internal affairs and the recuperation of their wasted resources. Scientific discoveries and multiplying in ventions, by which men utilized the forces of nature as never before, inaugurated what might be called an expansion inward. The conquest of nature multiplied prod ucts and created wealth more than a dozen subject peoples could have done. While the population of Europe increased fifty per cent, her manufactures increased three hundred per cent, from $5,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000. This forced home upon governments the increasing necessity of foreign markets, and opened their eyes to the commercial value of the neglected trop- 33 Expansion ical and subtropical regions — a subject which for Americans has recently acquired new interest. The tropics are apparently to play a much more important part in the world's future than they have done in its past. The greatest lines of commerce have been be tween the East and the West. The time is likely to come when they will run be tween the North and the South, the tem perate regions and the tropics. Commerce, like water, flows only where there is inequality. A dead level of abso lute equality means stagnation. Commerce results frora inequality or unlikeness of natural products and from differences among peoples. Now the most radical dif ferences both in natural products aud in peoples are between the tropics and the temperate zones ; and these differences promise permanence. Of course there are important differences 34 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands between peoples of the temperate zone — between us and Europeans, and between the various European peoples ; but so far as industry is concerned these differences are liable to be largely removed. The steel and iron we once had to buy of England are now made in the United States. A thousand articles which England once made for Germany the Germans now make for themselves. But there are good reasons for believing that manufactures will never be domesticated, to any extent, in the trop ics. Their inhabitants will naturally get their livelihood in the easiest way, espe cially if that involves no change. Agricul ture and horticulture are much easier and more liberally rewarded in the tropics than in the temperate zones. In addition to larger crops, two or more crops a year may be gathered. On the other hand, most kinds of manufactures will always be more successful in the temperate zones than in 35 Expansion the tropics, because in the latter the exces sive moisture of the atmosphere is injurious to machinery, and because tropical races ai-e deficient in mechanical ability. Only those races which have produced machinery seem capable of using it with the best results. It is the most advanced races which are its masters. Those races which, like the African and the Malay, are many centuries behind the Anglo-Saxon in development seem as incapable of operating complicated machinery as they are of adopt ing and successfully administering repre- _seatative_gove¥ajuent. It is interesting and important to note that the advanced and *the belated races are not travelling the same path. We must not suppose that a belated race, at a given point in the path of progress, is sur rounded by the same conditions and beset by the same difficulties that a more ad vanced race met when ariived at the same 36 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands stage of development. Nor must we im agine that the belated race will some day reach the same development as that of the advanced race at the present time. They are travelling different roads which involve different conditions and therefore dif ferent results. The difference between races and civilizations is not simply one of time and of degree, but one of kind. The negro, for instance, on emancipa tion in the United States, was thrown into the midst of an advanced industrial sys tem, and of matured political and relig ious institutions. He cannot by develop ing them develop himself. All he can do is to accept them and to adjust himself to them in a passive spirit. Go back to the time when the development of our white ancestors was at the stage represented by the American negro to-day. The condi tions of life then — physical, industrial, and moral — differed profoundly from those of 37 Expansion the present time. Our Anglo-Saxon an cestor (if we may call him Anglo-Saxon), when emerging from barbarism, did not have all the tools and appliances of a high industrial civilization awaiting his appro priation and use. He was diiven to in vention by necessity, which is its mother. He was not born into a highly organized society whose framework was law and whose atmosphere was liberty within law. His eye was not dazzled by pampering luxuries within such easy reach that they were often chosen at the expense of whole some necessaiies. The climate and all the conditions of life were kindly severe. He was forced to struggle, and that struggle developed a strength and fibre of character otherwise impossible. It is thos^ quali ties, slowly acquired through long ages of struggle, aud bm'n in Anglo-Saxons to-day, rather than the lands, the riches, the in dustrial, social, and political iustitutions 38 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands into which they are horn, that make Anglo-Saxons free and mighty. Scientists tell us that when man became sufficiently intelligent to invent a tool, it* put a stop to the further development of the hand. Saj^s Professor Drummond:*' " As the hand was given more and more to do, it became more and more adapted to its work. Up to a point, it responded di* rectly to each new duty that was laid upon it. But only up to a point. There came a time when the necessities became too numerous and too varied for adaptation to keep pace with them. And the fatal day came — the fatal day for the hand — when he who bore it made a new discovery. It was the discovery of tools. Henceforth* what the hand used to do, and was slowly* becoming adapted to do better, was to be * done by external appliances. So that if anything new arose to be done, or to be ' " The Ascent ot Man," p. 103. 39 Expansion better done, it was not a better hand that was now made, but a better tool. Tools are external hands. Levers are the exten sions of the bones of the arm. Hammers are callous substitutes for the fist. Knives do the work of nails. The vise and the pincers replace the fingers. The day that cave-man first split the marrow-bone of a bear by thrusting a stick into it, and strik ing it home with a stone — that day the doom of the hand was sealed." In the course of many ages the hand might have been developed to doing many things without tools which it can now do only with them. By means of invention the hand accomplished the desired object ' much sooner, but at the expense of further development. Something precisely like this would seem to apply to the belated races when brought into close contact Avith the ad vanced races. Supplying them with tools 40 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands and manufactures gives them many things for which they would otherwise have waited for ages, but will probably serve to arrest their development of mechanical ability. They wiU not become inventive, because they will not have to. The be lated races will have many helps which the advanced races did not have; but helps are often hindrances, precisely as hindrances are often helps. Among races, as among individuals of the same race, there will be permanent differences of temperament and tendency, of adaptation and skill. And these in herent differences, together with those of climate and of natural resources, will afford a permanent basis for the organi zation of a world industry and a world commerce. As we have seen, these differences will always be most radical between the peo ples of the temperate zones and those of 41 Expansion the tropics ; and as the latter will always find it easier to get their manufactured goods by exchanging agricultural products for them than by making them; and as the manufacturing peoples will find it more and more easy to get their food by exchange rather than by agriculture (in stance England), we may reasonably infer that the tropics will become more and more the source of food-supply for the world, and of course commerce %vith the tropics will grow correspondingly im portant. A hundred years ago Europe was con cerned chiefly with European politics. Now she is concerned vnth world politics, because continental problems have become world problems, and she is reaching her arms around the earth to grasp the tropics. Of course, the exhaustion of our arable public lands was not the cause of this new movement, but it may well serve as the 42 Exhaustion of Our Arable Public Lands sign of a profoundly important transition to new world-conditions which confront the new century. 43 CHAPTER II Our New Manufacturing Supremacy The nations long since yielded to the United States the first place in agricul ture. We produce thirty-two per cent of the world's food-supply, though we have only about five per cent of the world's population. Russia is the next largest producer ; and she, with eight per cent of the human family, supplies less than nine teen per cent of the world's food. Europeans have been accustomed to think of the United States as the world's great farm ; to be suddenly aroused to the fact that it has become also the world's great workshop administers a shock to our competitors across the water, and requires 44 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy a readjustment not only of ideas but also of methods and policies. The first great step was to conquer the home market ; and our manufacturers have been so intent on this that they have hardly been aware of the existence of world markets. We have been good cus tomers of the European peoples ; and they, not knowing our standard of living, have not appreciated the fact that the large bills of goods which they sold us were a mere bagatelle compared with what we produced and consumed at home.' Thus our manufactures grew almost un noticed until we took the second step, which was to invade successfully the mar kets of the British colonies and those of Asia and Africa, which has now been fol lowed by the third, viz., to dispute with ' As long ago as 1880, when our total imports amounted to $667,954,000, our total manufactures amounted to $4,397,- 930,000— nearly twice as much as our total agricultural products. 45 Expansion the great manufacturing peoples of Europe their own home markets. Speaking of 1898, a German trade paper said : " One of the most characteristic and at the same time most alarming features of , the past year has been the invasion by American competition not only of Canada, Mexico, South and Central America, India, Austra lia, and Japan, but also all of the countries of Europe, invading even our oldest manu facturing centres." The financial panic of 1893 and the commercial depression which followed taught our manufacturers some wholesome lessons. The difficulty with which they marketed their goods laid upon them a new necessity, which proved fruitful of many inventions and of more economical processes. In the sharp competition which existed, only the lowest possible price could effect a sale, and as the lowest cost of production could be reached onl}^ with 46 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy a large output, the inevitable result was the glutting of the home market. This forced our manufacturers to attempt foreign markets, which their experience since 1893 enabled them to do with success. The excess of our exports over our im ports in 1894-5 was $75,000,000; the next year it was over $100,000,000; the next, nearly $300,000,000; the next, $615,000,- 000; and while we had this enormous balance in our favor, all of the European nations showed more or less of a deficit in their balances of trade. , That of Germany was $166,000,000, and that of England was $571,000,000. The next year, 1898-9, our balance was $530,000,000. The falling off from the preceding year was in our agri cultural, not our manufactured, products. The latter have more than doubled in the last six years, having risen from $158,023,- 118 in 1893 to $338,667,794 in 1899, while Expansion the first eight months of the present fiscal year show a large increase over the corre sponding months of the preceding, and thousands of our factories are now running day and night. In 1898, for the first time in our history, our manufactured exports exceeded our manufactured imports ; and with that year our new supremacy as a manufacturing nation may be said to have been recog nized. The United States is now rapidly gain ing a footing in the markets of the world. More than a hundred of our locomotives are at work in Japan. Russia has nearly a thousand of them. Lord Beresford found American engines in use on the Shanhai- kwan Railway in China. An English con tractor had taken Baldwin locomotives be cause the English price was $14,000, with twenty-four months to deliver, while the American price was $9,250, with four and 48 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy one-half months to deliver. We are now sending our locomotives to Mexico, Colom bia, Peru, Chili, Bolivia, Brazil, the Argen tine, and to Egypt ; and not only to Asia, South America, and Africa, but to Europe also — Spain, Italy, France, and at last to England herself. Until 1899 there had been but one of our locomotives in Great Britain. We have now received orders from practically every railway in the king dom. We are also sending many steel rails abroad, to Japan, China, Russia, Asia Minor, and elsewhere. Pittsburg works have taken an order from Australia for 35,000 tons against English bidding, and against the same competition the Carnegies have se cured an order from the Cape for 40,000 tons. This company has agreed to deliver to the Russian Government 180,000 tons in two years and two months. All of the rolling-stock, rails, sleepers, and other ma- 49 Expansion terial for the road which the Russians are building through Manchuria they have bought from America. It is worth adding in this connection that for the construction of the western portion of the Trans-Sibe rian Railway American tools and machinery are being used ; and though they cost only one-half as much as the machinery which they displaced, they have made it possible to push the work nearly twice as rapidly as before and to complete it two years sooner than was originally expected. An American firm is filling an order for twelve steel bridges for the Eastern Chinese Railroad. We also hold contracts for bridges in Canada, Mexico, Central Amer ica, Brazil, Japan, and Burma. The Burma Railway Company invited six English and two American companies to make bids. The best English offer was for nearly $600,000, with three years to put the bridge in place. An American firm contracted to 50 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy complete the work in one year for about $300,000, The demand for American machinery is already world-wide. One firm has received orders in a single month from England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Patagonia, the Argentine, Chili, and Canada. We are sending a great variety of manu factures to South Africa — agricultural im plements, carpenters' tools, screws, corru gated sheet iron, wire fencing, ice-manu facturing apparatus, office and house fur niture, and safes, A writer states that nearly all the fui'niture in President Krii- ger's house bears American ti'ade-marks. The Kimberley diamond mines, the largest in the world, use American machinery al most exclusively, because, as the managers say, it is cheaper and works better. Our electrical machinery is unequalled 51 Expansion and is going all over the world. American companies secured the contracts for equip ping the municipal tramway lines of Glas gow, including the first thousand cars. These contracts aggregate about $15,000- 000, One of these companies has con tracts also in London, Bristol, Sheffield, and Dublin, It should be borne in mind that on whatever manufactures we send to Europe we pay the freight, alao whatever tariff charges there may be, and are then able to lay them down for less than it costs our European competitors to produce them. There is reason to believe that Amer ican manufacturers are to become the masters of the world's markets, and that our supremacy is to be permanent, for the five principal conditions of successful com petition in open markets are all in our favor. Let us look at them, 1, In modern manufactures coal is king 52 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy and iron is his sceptre. The coal sup ply of Europe is distributed as follows: Russia has 27,000 square miles (said to he of poor quality) ; Great Britain, 9,000 ; Germany, 3,()00 ; France, 1,800; Belgium, Spain, and other countries, 1,400. Much of England's strength both on land and sea comes from her coal, which is concrete power. But her coal lies 2,000 feet below the suiface, in a temperature of more than a hundred degrees. There are prophecies that the supply will be ex hausted in fifty years ; and the price is ris ing. Our coal lies near the surface and is be coming cheaper. The supply is several times that of all Europe and is practically inexhaustible. We have relied chiefly on states east of the Mississippi to furnish us with coal ; but excepting Minnesota it is found in e\'er}' state and territory west of the great river, ^^"e have 194,000 squai-e 53 Expansion miles of coal-measures, twenty-one times the area of aU the coal-fields of Great Britain, If all England, Scotland, and Wales were one solid bed of coal, that would not equal one-half of our coal-supplies as yet un touched. In 1860, we raised 15,200,000 tons; in 1890, 141,000,000; and in 1897 the out put was 198,000,000 tons, about one-third of the production of the world, 2. This is the iron age, or rather the age of steel, which is entering more and more into construction of every sort. Iron is supplanting wood both on land and sea. It is supplanting muscle, both of man and beast. This is an age of manufacture, and machinery is of iron. This is an age of travel, and railways are of iron. This is an age of commerce, and ships are of iron. It is an age of great and growing navies, and battle-ships are of iron. It is an age of steam-powei', and iron is its harness. It 54 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy is an age of electricity, and iron is its medium, England has had the high grades of iron ore which are requisite for steel, but she now has to import them. It is only a few years since she could produce iron and steel more cheaply than we. Now, not only are coal and iron cheaper at the pit-mouth in the United States than in Great Britain, but our processes of conversion are more economical, so that we can produce cheaper pig though we pay higher wages, Eng land has held the iron sceptre of the world, but it is passing to us. Some two years ago, the London Times said : " In more ways than one the situation in the iron and steel trades in Great Britain is at the present time peculiar and embarrass ing. America seems only to have made a beginning in the iron and steel export trade, yet they have already exceeded Ger many in machinery as well as pig, and 55 Expansion have nearly equalled England. American machinery is now known the world over. American nails are fast taking the place of those from Germany and Belgium. Ameri can freight seems to have entirely monopo lized all steamers sailing for China." A generation ago, when the Jersey Cen tral Railroad laid steel rails, it imported them at $150 a ton. A few years since, we were exporting steel rails at $15 per ton. The demand now enables us to export them at a much higher figure. A generation ago, a furnace which would make twelve tons of iron a day was a wonder. Mr. Carnegie's great furnaces now produce 500 tons a day ; and a blast-furnace was started not long ago in Youngstown, Ohio, whose capacity is 600 tons every twenty-four hours. Our output of pig-iron was only 821,000 tons in 1860. In twenty j-ears it rose to 3,835,000 tons. In 1890, it was 9,203,000 56 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy tons; and in 1898, it reached 11,962,000 tons — ^almost a million tons a month — which placed us in the lead of Great Britain, the next greatest producer, by more than 3,000,000 tons. About one- third of the world's supply came from our furnaces. Our leadership in making steel is still more marked. The production of the prin cipal countries of the a voi Id in 1898 — the last year for which statistics are available — was 24,060,000 tons ; of which we made 9,075,000 tons. Germany followed next with 5,734,000 tons; then England with 4,639,000 tons, which was but little more than one-half of our output. Our supply of iron ore, like that of coal, which is its complement, is practically inexhaustible. In addition to the well- known deposits of the East, the West is wonderfully rich in iron. Not a single state west of the Mississippi is denied it. 57 Expansion "California has superior ores. The iron of Oregon is equal to the very best Swedish and Russian metal. Wyoming has immense deposits. The supply of Utah is enormous. It is found in some form in every county of Missouri. Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob are estimated to contain 500,000,000 tons of the finest ore. There are great masses of iron in Texas, probably equal in quantity and quality to any deposits in the world," ' It is true, as the London Times says, that we have as yet made only a beginning in iron exports ; and if that beginning has given us the sceptre of the world's iron industry, it is difficult to see how that sceptre is ever to depart from us, 3. The third great condition of success in manufactures is low labor cost. Many would say at first blush that this advantage lies with Europe ; but the matter ' The author's "Our Country," p. 40. 58 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy of low wages is a very different thing from that of low labor cost. The cheapest labor may be the most expensive, and the highest priced may be the most economical. The introduction of machinery makes the question of the cost of labor much more than a mere question of wages. A few years ago a German expert, after investigating the shoe industry of Massa chusetts, reported to his government that he found the average wages of operatives were $15 per week, and the average labor cost per pair of shoes forty cents; while similar workmen in Germany received $4 per week, aud the average labor cost per pair of shoes was fifty-eight cents. In this instance the German wage of sixty-six cents a day was forty-five per cent more expen sive than the American wage of $2.50 a day. The difference was due to the use of machinery, which oftentimes cannot be successfully operated by the cheap laborer. 59 Expansion The Consul-General of the United States at Yokohama reports to our State Depart ment that watch-making in Japan is not profitable, notwithstanding wages are only twenty or twenty-five cents a day as against $3 a day paid to American workmen; and lack of skill among the mechanics is one of the reasons assigned. On the continent a weaver usually runs two looms, while the more intelligent oper ative in England may run four. In the United States it is not unusual for a weaver to run eight or ten ; and in the case of the Northrup loom it is said an expert can run twenty-four. Workmen in America are quicker both in brain and hand than in Europe, which is due partly to a more stimulating climate and partly to a better diet. Our machinery is usually superior, but with the same machine the American workman will tum out more work than the foreigner. 60 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy A number of instances have already been given of Americans taking contracts to complete work in one-half or one-third of the time desired by English contractors. It may be worth while in this connection to quote from the remarks of General Lord Kitchener at the opening of the Atbara bridge on the "Cape to Cairo" railway. He said : " As regards this mag nificent bridge, it can fairly claim a rec ord. Every effort was made to place the order for it in England, but it was found impossible to have it completed in the nec essary time. But where Englishmen failed, I am delighted to find that our cousins across the Atlantic stepped in. The open ing of this bridge to-day is due to their energy, ability, and the power they possess in so marked a degree in turning out work of this magnitude in less time than it can be done anywhere else." Americans are an exceptionally inventive 61 Expansion people. Yankee ingenuity is proverbial. Scientific discoveries are apt to find their earliest practical application in this coun try; all of which bears on the cost of production. Reducing all energy to a common stand ard, it is found that in the United States the productive energy of each inhabitant is 1,940 foot-tons daily, while in Europe it is only 990 foot-tons for each inhabitant. This means that the working power of 75,000,000 Americans is equal to that of 150,000,000 Europeans. Thus the average American farm-laborer produces four times as much of food prod ucts as the average European farm-laborer. One American miner raises 400 tons of ore annually, the German 287, the English 285, and the French 210. This difference between peoples is due chiefly to the difference between them in the use of machinery. 62 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy With the best tools, with the most scien tific and ingenious machinery, with the most intelligent and nimble workmen, it becomes possible for us to pay higher wages and yet enjoy the advantage of the lowest labor cost. 4. The fourth great condition of success ful manufactures is cheap raw materials. Our great extent of latitude and longi tude affords us an unequalled variety of climate and a corresponding variety of raw materials. Except luxuries, we produce our own food products and sell to the other manu facturing peoples. We supply about one- third of the total output of the world's useful minerals and metals. Forty-seven per cent of the world's non-tropical forest products are American. Russia, who stands next to us, supplies only sixteen per cent. The world's consumption of cotton in 1899 was 13,932,000 bales, of which the United 63 Expansion States produced 11,235,000 bales. Thus, excepting fine wools, raw silks, and " spe cific materials peculiar to limited areas," nature has made us practically independent of the world as to raw materials ; and their production is made cheap by the exceptional effectiveness of American labor. 5. The fifth great condition of success in competitive manufactures is access to markets. On this point it is necessary to i-emark only that we lie midway between Europe and Africa on the east and Asia and Australasia on the west, while another continent adjoins us on the south ; and when the isthmian canal is cut, it will emphasize the advantages of our position. Now it is a remarkable fact that all of these fundamental conditions of success in manufactures meet in the United States, and constitute a fivefold advantage, which, like an outstretched hand, can hardly fail to grasp the open markets of the world. 64 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy There are other important, though sub ordinate, causes of American success — meth ods which may be leamed and character istics which may be imitated by our com petitors — but it is significant that four of these five advantages, which are funda mental and decisive, are as inalienable and permanent as our location. It is probable, therefore, that our manufacturing suprem acy will remain unchallenged. Thus the prophecy of Mr. Gladstone concerning the United States uttered many years ago finds its fulfilment. He said : " She will probably become what we are now, the head servant in the great house hold of the world, the employer of all em ployed, because her service will be the most and ablest." It hardly requires the eye of a prophet or of the son of a prophet to foresee that ere many years the vast and increasing exports and imports of the United States 65 Expansion will be carried in American bottoms. We are now paying British, German, and French vessels $500,000 a day for trans portation ; and only an insignificant part of our foreign commerce is under the American flag. We have not forgotten that forty-five years ago we were building almost as many merchant-ships as Great Britain. Just before the civil war the tonnage of our merchant marine was 5,500,000, and that of Great Britain only 300,000 greater. There was no question as to American skill in shipbuilding. The "Baltimore clipper " could " show her heels " to every thing on the high seas. Our aptitude in construction, together with our virgin for ests, which afforded cheap material, was rapidly giving to the young republic the supremacy of the sea. We all know how our commerce was swept away during the civil war; and 66 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy then came the substitution of iron ships for wooden, in the' construction of which we could not compete with the yards on the Clyde and the Tyne, for Great Britain had long held the iron sceptre. But, as we have already seen, that scep tre has now passed over to us, and again the advantage of cheaper building material is ours. That we have not lost our knack at shipbuilding would seem to be hinted by the perennial result of the contests for the American cup ; and if that is only a "wooden" argument, one that is steel- armored and invulnerable is furnished by the battle-ship "Oregon," This floating fortress, the material of which must needs respond to changes of temperature, steamed from the North Temperate zone across the Tomd, well on to the Fiigid at the Horn, and then up to the Torrid again — a voyage equal to more than half the distance around the globe — arriving at her 67 Expansion destination without having started a rivet, with her guns shotted and ready for battle ! Here is a record unequalled save by herself, for, after rendering signal ser vices on the ever-to-be-remembered Third of July, 1898, she steamed back again to our western coast and on across the Pacific to Manila ; and when she had cast anchor in waters which will ever reflect the glory of the American navy, Admiral Dewey cabled to Washington : " The ' Oregon ' and ' Iris ' arrived to-day. The ' Oregon ' is in fit con dition for any duty." No wonder that an English admiral. Lord Beresford, ex claimed : " No navy on earth has a better ship ; and no ship in existence has such a record." This vessel, be it remembered, was built at the Union Iron Works, San Francisco, where our civilization is only half a century old. No wonder that the exploits of the " Oregon " brought to her makers heavy 68 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy orders from the Czar, followed by a $15,000,000 contract placed with the Cramps, Of course the building of a battle-ship is a very different thing from the building of a merchantman. The former we have mastered; for the latter we are being schooled. It has already being pointed out how, unnoticed by Europe, we achieved manu facturing supremacy by producing for our great home market. In like ^tenner we are learning to build merchant-ships for the world by building them for ourselves. Our tonnage engaged in foreign traffic (only 837,000) is so ^all that foreigners and we ourselves gain the impression that American shipping is insignificant. We need to be reminded of our coastwise, river, and lake carrying trade, the tonnage of which, Senator Frye tells us, is nearly if not quite 8,000,000, and greater than the 69 Expansion corresponding trade of France, Germany, and England combined. He adds: "It took, last year, nearly 4,000,000 tonnage to carry our freight on the Mississippi alone. More ships sail the Detroit River than enter Liverpool or London. The Suez Canal, which carries the commerce of the world, passed last year (1898) 8,500,000 tonnage, while there were floated through the locks at Sault Sainte Marie 16,500,000 in eight months. This fleet moves an nually 1^000,000 tons of freight." To provide chiefly for this domestic commerce we have over seventy shipyards. Last year there were ships building in them whose tonnage was estimated at 400,000 and whose total value was $60,- 000,000. We are now in training, and when we enter on the struggle for the world's shipyards we shall be ready for it. Our carrying trade, like our manufac- 70 Our New Manufacturing Supremacy tures and politics, has been domestic. They are all to assume world proportions at an early date. 71 CHAPTER III Foreign Markets A New Necessity Amekioan manufacturers have practi cally gained control of the home market ; but we no sooner achieve industrial inde pendence than we become suddenly de pendent, ^s our manufactures increase, we shall become increasingly dependent for our well-being on foreign markets. We have been so prosperous as a nation, during the past century, without exporting manufactured goods, that many fail to ap preciate the fact that a new necessity is upon us. We call ourselves the masters of machi nery : are we quite sure that machinery is not mastering us ? As yet we have 72 Foreign Markets a New Necessity only begun to appreciate its profound and far-reaching influence. It sets the pace at which we live. A few men drive the machinery, and machinery drives all the rest of us. It is not only controlling in- dustr}-- : it is redistributing population ; it is reorganizing society ; it is modifying national policies; it is reshaping civiliza tion. The multiplication of machinery is as inevitable as if governed by a law of natural increase ; and especially is this true among a pioneer people like the Anglo- Saxon. In a new country there is always more work to be done than workmen to do it. A labor-saving device is, therefore, at a premium. Anglo-Saxons have for gener ations been on the frontier of civilization. By virtue of its training, therefore, the Anglo-Saxon mind naturally travels by the hypothenuse; it insists on the short cut, though that involves tunneling a mountain 73 Expansion or severing an isthmus. It studies econo my of time, of distance, of material, of power. In a word, it is inventive of labor- saving machinery and methods. Moreover^ invention stimulates invention. The suc cessful application of a principle in one sphere suggests its application in auother. A new chemical triumph often prepares the way for a new mechanical triumph. Thus so far as we can see, inventions will never cease; and "Yankee ingenuity" is pretty sur^to originate its full share. We cannot time invention by our con venience; nor can we say to it, •Thus far shalt thou come and no farther." It does not consider the growth of population nor the elevation of the standard of living. It thrusts into use a machine which enables one man to do the work of ten, or, it may be, of a hundred, all regardless of the nine men, or of the ninety and nine, whom it robs of a job. 74 Foreign Markets a New Necessity If the elevation of the standard of hving kept even pace with invention, the intro duction of machinery would create no economic disturbance; demand and sup ply, production and consumption, would ex actly match, and that would be delightfully convenient for all concerned. But changes in the standard of living are always grad ual, while the advent of every invention, however slowly the idea may have been evolved and perfected, is always sudden. Every new application of machinery means one of two things. If tne number of workmen remains the same, the product is increased. If the product remains the same, the number of workmen is reduced. The latter alternative has been so common that machinery has often aroused the an tipathy of the mob, and still provokes the doubt, if not the protest, of the philanthro pist. At the beginning of this discussion the 75 Expansion writer desires to record his firm conviction that machinery is beneficent beyond all calculation. It has carried the manufactur ing peoples half-way to the industrial mil lennium. Man is distinguished from the brute by his use of tools ; and for thou sands of years the only power applied to tools was muscular. Water and wind were early utilized for power, but only to a limited extent. The sail-ship had an im portant influence on commerce and thus on civilization. But the windmill, Hke the water-wheel, was unequal to producing an industrial revolution. The one was too unreliable, the other too local ; so that up to the advent of the steam-engine the power which did the world's work was muscular, supplied by man or beast. Mechanical power has certain advantages over muscular, which make it one of God's greatest gifts to man. Muscles tire and must be recuperated by rest and food. The 76 Foreign Markets a New Necessity steam-engine can work day and night and has no human wants. True, it must be fed, but for its food it does not enter into com petition with animal life. Again, muscular power can be increased only slowly. It would require many years to double the world's supply; meanwhile mouths mul tiply as rapidly as hands. And inasmuch as two pairs of hands could do little more than provide the necessaries for one family, it was impossible for the world to grow rich so long as its power was only muscu lar. Mouths consumed almost as fast as muscles could produce, so that there could be little accumulation. Wealth might be a massed by a few, but usually at the expense of the many. A little luxury cost a great deal of poverty. There was some legiti mate wealth in the world, created for the most part by commerce, in which wind- power had been utilized, but generally speaking down to the age of machinery 77 Expansion wealth was the result of oppression and spoliation. But with machinery came a power which could be indefinitely increased. The only limit to the world's supply is the demand for it. If occasion required, we could in a short time double our mechanical power, or multiply it tenfold, and that, too, with out increasing the number of mouths in the world by one. Hence with the advent of machinery came a uqw possibility into the world — the blessed possibility of universal abun dance. There are only two steps from world poverty to world plenty. The one is adequate production, the other is ade quate distribution. When the latter step is taken the industrial millennium wiU be reached. The first was taken when natural forces were enlisted in the work of pro duction. It has now become possible by means of machinery to produce more of 78 Foreign Markets a New Necessity the necessaries and of the comforts of life than the world can consume. The great problem remaining is that of distribution, which, if I mistake not, is quite as much moral in character as it is economic. The problem of distribution is very com plex and difficult. Not a little light, how ever, can be thrown on it; but it will be a long time before the moral development of the world will be such as to make ap- phcable the economic solution, even after it is fully thought out. Until the problem of distribution is solved vast and increasing production is by no means an unmixed good. It may cause industrial paralysis and wide-spread want. When markets become thoroughly glutted prices and wages fall, mills and factories are closed, and many are thrown out of employment. Thus a superabund ance may cause under-consumption, be cause men cannot buy unless they have 79 Expansion something to buy with; and men out of employment face starvation in the midst of plenty. We are now prepared to appreciate the significance of the fact that our pro duction has increased far more rapidly than our population, and, without doubt, will continue so to do. During the last half-century our population increased threefold, while our manufactures in creased eighteenfold. And our present manufacturing plant is decidedly larger than is necessary to supply the home mar ket. Says the Hon. Carroll D. Wright : "It is incontrovertible that the present manufacturing and mechanical plant of the United States is greater — far greater — than is needed to supply the demand ; yet it is constantly being enlarged, and there is no way of preventing the enlarge ment," ' • The Forum, Feb. 1898, p. 671. 80 Foreign Markets a New Necessity There is abundant reason for believing that continued enlargement is inevitable. Attention was called in the first chapter to the fact that while our capital is increas ing more rapidly than ever, many of the fields which have attracted it during the past century are now occupied. In view, therefore, of the superior advantages of manufactures in this country, pointed out in the preceding chapter, it is certain that much of this superfluous capital wiU seek investment in manufactures. Moreover, in our manufacturing and mechanical industries, the actual produc tion of our present plant is far below its possible maximum. In the article quoted above, Mr. Wright estimates that in 1890, which was a normal year, our production was less than seventy-three per cent of our full capacity. Now we may reasonably infer that, as the very marked advantage of running a plant up to its full capacity ' 81 Expansion becomes more and more apparent, there will be an increasing tendency to force the actual production up to the limit of possi bility. The following illustration, which shows the difference between running a mill at its full capacity and at two-thirds of that capacity, was given to me by a friend thoroughly conversant with the business of which he spoke. The profits are well established according to the tonnage put through. If the run is 600 tons per day, the profits are $5,000 per month. If the run is 900 tons per day, the profits are $20,000 per month. That is, by increasing the output fifty per cent the profits are, in this instance, increased 300 per cent. If the extra 300 tons are sold at cost, it would leave the profits for the month $13,000, So that the extra 300 tons per day could actually be sold for $3,000 less than cost and then the profits for the month would 82 Foreign Markets a New Necessity be twice as large as if only 600 tons had been run.' Our laying hold of this principle was one of the reasons why we were able to enter European home markets ; and it accounts for the fact that many articles of American manufacture can be bought cheaper in Europe than here. So great an advantage, when competi tion is sharp, would make all the difference ' This will sound to many very like the familiar old story of the peanut woman who ' ' always sold a little be low cost, and made her money by selling a great many." The statement, however, is capable of demonstration. 600 tons per day = 18,000 tons per month. 900 tons per day = 37,000 tons per month. Market price of the prod uct, $4.96 per ton. At 600 tons per day the cost is $4.68 per ton, leaving a profit of 38 cents per ton. At 900 tons per day the cost is reduced to $4.33, leaving a profit of 74 cents per ton. Now 18,000 X 38 = $5,040, the profits per month when only 600 tons are run per day; and 37,000 X 74 = $19,980, the profits per month when 900 tons are run per day. It the entire increase of 9,000 tons is sold at cost, the 18,000 tons remaining would, at 74 cents per ton, make $13,330 instead of $5,040, So that these 9,000 tons might be sold for $3,000 less than cost and then leave profits $10,330 instead of $5,040. 83 Expansion between success and failure ; and when gen erally recognized must operate powerfully to stimulate production up to full capacity. Again, another reason for anticipating that our production will continue to in crease is the fact that it is stimulated by competition. Sharp competition brings down prices, and the first effect of falling prices is an enlarged output; for if the margin of profit is cut in two, the output must be doubled in order to sustain the dividends. So that until an actual glut is reached, the natural result of competition among our own manufacturers and be tween them and foreigners will be a ten dency to stimulate production to the high est possible limit of capacity. It appears, therefore, that our ever-increasing produc tion will render an ever-expanding foreign market necessary to our industrial welfare. The industrial depression which fol lowed the panic of 1S9S resulted at length f 84| Foreign Markets a New Necessity in a glut of our home market, and produc tion fell far below our maximum capacity, but even then our production was a third greater than our consumption — so Senator Frye tells us. What if our manufactures were stimulated to a point approximating our possible maximum production, and then the doors of foreign markets were suddenly closed against us by hostile legis lation ? Then would follow such a con gestion of our home market and such a paralysis of industry and such distress as we have never known in our history. Furthermore, the effects of invention must be taken into account, for, as we have seen, it will not and cannot cease, even in a time of great industrial depres sion. Indeed glutted markets are the greatest stimulus to invention. When the great problem of the manufacturer is to market his goods, a new process or a new ipachine, which will dispense with the 85 Expansion labor of a large number of men, so cheapens the product that he is enabled to undersell his competitors and prosper while other men fail. Probably no period in our history, of the same length, has pro duced so many labor-saving inventions as the several years of industrial depression which followed the panic of 1893, In the plant referred to above, a new ap pliance enabled two men to put through forty-eight tons of ore a day, where pre viously six men could put through only eighteen tons. At Homestead, Pa,, I was told in 1898 that, with about the same number of men, the output was four times as large as it had been in 1892, In those works, the adoption of an electric crane enabled one man to handle the coal which had required sixty men only six years be fore. Inasmuch as invention greatly increases production, it is evident that many men 86 Foreign Markets a New Necessity must be thrown out of employment by it unless there is a corresponding enlargement of the market. In East Liverpool, Ohio, a potter in vented a machine which dispenses with two assistants and enables the workman to turn out 200 dozen cups a day instead of 50 dozen. As the company for which he worked was unable to increase its sales, he was permitted to work only one day in four and was laid off the other three. Of course a company adopting that machine must either sell four times as many cups or discharge three-quarters of its men. We are told that " the pneumatic atom izer enables one unskilled laborer to paint more freight-cars than can fifteen skilled hand-workers, while with the eight-pound pneumatic hammer the workman drives more nails, rivets more boilers, calks more seams, and cuts more stone than can twenty meft with older appliances." In making 87 Expansion shoes, one man now does the work formerly done by sixty. In preparing material for musical instruments, machinery makes a boy to-day equal to twenty-five men a tew years ago. In the manufacture of paper, of steel, and of certain grades of tinware, ninety per cent of the labor formerly em ployed has been displaced. In the pro duction of paper hangings one man now does the work which once required a hundred. In England one man with ma chinery spins 4,000 times as much cotton yarn as the hand-workman whom the ma chine displaced. Tables prepared under the supervision of Mr. Wright show that in forty leading manufacturing industries taken together, "the productive power of the labor unit was fifty per cent greater in the ninth than in the eighth decade " ; and it is prob able that the results of the late census will show a greater increase during the Foreign Markets a New Necessity past ten years than during any like period preceding. It is true that machinery not only dis places labor, but also creates it; and whether it displaces more or creates more is a debated question. But those who take the latter position acknowledge (what is quite obvious) that for the time being it throws many out of employment. Many thus displaced are skilled workmen who are too old to acquire new technical skill, and are forced back into the class of unskilled labor, thus crowding ranks already full, and involving in hardship many more than those who are directly thrown out of a job. Tt was remarked in the second chapter that the first stage of our manufacturing development was the gaining of the home market, which stage continued almost up to the present year. During this period the introduction of new machinery threw com paratively few out of employment. Instead 89 Expansion of reducing the working force, it increased the product ; and the cheaper output quietly drove the competing foreign goods out of the American market. Thus, as a matter of fact, our manufacturers up to the present time have had an ever-expanding market at home. They were not dependent solely or chiefly on the growth of population or on the elevation of the standard of living, both of which are gradual and slow. As we have already seen, our manufactures, during the last half-century, increased six times as fast as the population. A part of this enormous increase was absorbed by the rise in the standard of living ; the re mainder represents the substitution of American manufactures for foreign in our own markets. Evidently, when this process was com pleted and our manufacturers gained con trol of our own markets, we entered on a new stage of experience, in which there is 90 Foreign Markets a New Necessity laid on us a new necessity. If we do not secure foreign markets, or, in other words, if our markets do not continue to expand, the progress of invention will throw men out of employment as never before. The economic results of such an experi ence would be serious enough, but it would also be attended by social and political con sequences of the gravest character. Men who are long idle, whether that idleness is voluntary or enforced, usually degenerate both physically and morally. And if to idleness is added want, mischief is doubly sure to follow. Want when it is wide enough and desperate enough becomes rev olutionary. At this point a multitude of social philosophers come forward with a remedy as sure as it is simple. " Here is the idle land ; here are the idle men. Put the two together and the problem is solved." The suggestion is even more simple than its authors suppose. § Expansion In the age of homespun, idle men could be provided for so long as there were idle acres, and each family could live in a little industrial world of its own ; but that age passed forever when agriculture became a part of the world's organized industry, and so came under the law of supply and de mand. Once the skilled handiwork of the farmer and his wife provided for all the common wants of their household, and made them industrially independent. Now they raise produce for the market, and with the proceeds buy everything but their food — and much of that. He cannot sell unless the world wants to buy, and the amount of food that the world can eat is limited. No one would think of solving the prob lem by setting all the idle men to making pig-iron, because that would produce an oversupply and ruin the market. It is just as possible to overstock the food 92 Foreign Markets a New Necessity market as the iron market. It has been done repeatedly, and much to the detri ment of the farmers, notably in 1888. But some one says : " The cases are not parallel, because men cannot eat pig-iron. They could at least get their food by going back to that most natural, most ancient, and most honorable occupation — the culti vation of the soil." But men do not live by bread alone. They must have clothing, furniture, appliances. How much food could men get out of the soil without tools ? If the labor problem is to be solved by the return of idle men to the soil, one of three things must take place. They must sell their produce in open market, and with the proceeds provide for the thousand wants of the modern civilized man ; or they with their wives must learn a half-dozen trades apiece that with their own hands they may provide for their own wants, as their fore- 93 Expansion bears did; or they must go with these wants unsuppHed. Let us glance briefly at these alternatives. 1. In order to supply the many wants of modern civilized life, as they have been in the habit of doing by purchase, these men newly brought to the soil must gain the market. But how shall these former mechanics compete successfully with farm ers to the manner born ? As well might the farmers go into the cities and expect to compete successfully with artisans at their own trades. Agriculture is becoming more and more of a science, demanding special training. " Very well, then," it is said, " let us train these men and so make them success ful farmers." Let us suppose that this more than doubtful expedient succeeds. Take 500,000 idle men from our cities and put them on the soil. They succeed in getting the market, but only by crowding 94 Foreign Markets a New Necessity 500,000 other farmers out of the market. The world isn't going to eat several hun dreds of millions of bushels of produce in addition to its present consumption simply to oblige 500,000 farmers. It is true peo ple starve, but it is not because the world lacks food ; it is because starving people lack means with which to buy the food. The lack is not of production, but of dis tribution. To increase production beyond the means of distribution does not help matters one iota. As has been shown, it even reduces consumption. If, therefore, the 500,000 men taken from the city succeed on the farm, they do so only at the expense of 500,000 other men whom they drive from the farm to the city. We must recognize the fact that men have left the farm for the city because forced to do so by economic conditions, which are imperative. To produce our 95 Expansion agricultural staples in 1870, one man was employed to every seventeen acres culti vated; in 1890 there was only one to every twenty-six acres. If the same meth ods had been employed in 1890 as in 1870 there would have been required 4,430,000 more farm-laborers than actually found employment on the farm. This means that the application of machinery to agriculture during those twenty years forced 4,430,000 men (in addition to their families) to live in the city who would otherwise have hved on the farm. We might as well advise men to stay in the factory notwithstanding they are dis placed by machinery as to advise them to remain on the farm notwithstanding they are displaced by machinery. In each case the machinery becomes the master of the men.^ ' For a fuller discussion of the effects of machinery on the redistribution of population, see the author's " Twen tieth Century City," Chap. II. 96 Foreign Markets a New Necessity Thus it appears that under existing economic conditions men cannot go from the city to the farm without driving as many more from the farm to the city, which contributes nothing to the solution of the problem. 2. The second alternative is that these new farmers and their wives learn a half- dozen trades each, so as to be able to sup ply their wants without either selling or buying. But that would be going back into the age of homespun, and that is not the direction in which the world is mov ing. The division of labor has at the same time wonderfully multiplied the number and improved the quality of the comforts of life. Industrial progress is from individual to organized industry. Progress brings its problems, which must ever find their solution in more progress. The backward look never sees the way out. Economic laws are as compulsory as 97 Expansion other natural laws. They can no more be evaded than can gravitation. We might as well attempt to reverse the motion of the earth on its axis, or try to hang up the Mississippi River on a clothesline to dry, as to attempt to reverse the world's indus trial progress and send men back into the age of homespun. Men and women who were ingenious enough and persevering enough to learn to supply the varied wants of modern civilized life by their own versatile handiwork would compete successfully for positions in the factory, and there earn an easier and a better living than they could gain on the farm. 3. The remaining alternative is that men and women go back to the farm and live there with the wants of civilized life un- supplied; and that means to degenerate into savages, which is not a solution of the labor problem OS Foreign Markets a New Necessity Here, then, is the situation. The arti san thrown out of employment by the progress of invention cannot go back to the idle soil. He cannot become a farmer, but be can become a revolutionist. The harnessing of natural forces unharnesses human muscles. Without foreign markets, the new applications of machinery will transfer regiment after regiment from the industrial army to the army of the un employed and the discontented. Let us not forget that in 1877, after a period of long industrial depression, we had railway riots in ten American cities ; and ball and bayonet did their work amid incendiary fires. Our cities already contain quite enough of social dynamite for the safety of civilization. The twentieth-century city is the point of peril. " As to America," said Lord Macaulay, "I appeal to the twentieth century." To an American who had sent him a Life of Jefferson, he wrote : & Expansion " Your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented ma jority; for with you the majority is the government. The day will come when in the State of New^ York a multitude of people, not one of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a legislature. . . . Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of govern ment with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth cen tury as the Roman Empire was in the fifth : with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Em pire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engen dered within your own country and by your own institutions." Enforced idleness and hunger are capa- able of breeding Huns and Vandals even 100 Foreign Markets a New Necessity in this age and land of plenty. And idle ness and hunger would certainly follow the cutting off of foreign markets. England was once the workshop of the world. France, and later Germany, de cided to supply their own home markets. They succeeded, and now, like the United States, they are seeking outlets for their surplus products. During the last half- century European manufactures have risen from $5,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000. This increase of production has led the European Powers to acquire tropical re gions nearly one-half greater than all Europe. But while European manufac tures were increasing threefold, ours in creased sixfold, and we, too, must find an outlet. All this means that the great manufac turing peoples are about entering on an in dustrial conflict which is likely to be much more than a "thirty years' war," and like 101 Expansion all war will cause measureless misery and loss. As we saw in the preceding chapter, we are well equipped for this conflict and would have little to fear provided the world's markets were open. Our invasion of the home markets of Continental Europe has already aroused the jealousy and fear of the manufacturing peoples. After their struggle to rescue their home markets from England, they will not lose them to us without a struggle. Already have foreign ministers of both Germany and Austria publicly and officially declared that it may be necessary to form a Continental Euro pean league against our growing commerce. It would be an easy matter for them to shut us out by means of a protective tariff. Apart, therefore, from Great Britain and her colonies, we must look to Asia and the tropics for an open door. Industrial expansion is an absolute ne- 102 Foreign Markets a New Necessity cessity to competitive manufactures. It is not the ultimate way out, of course, for it cannot continue always ; there are limits to this earth of ours, and we shall not estab hsh an interstellar commerce. But the " ultimate " is a long way off, and does not concern us in this discussion. Industrial expansion is a present necessity, and will continue to be until the nations learn to substitute industrial co-operation for indus trial competition. 103 CHAPTER IV The New China' When a nap of some thousands of years comes to an end it is an event worth noting, especially if the awakening be that of a giant. As long ago as the seventh century B.C., Confucius' face was set toward the ' This chapter was written before the present outbreak in China had occurred. I see no reason for rewriting it. The violence of the opposition to foreigners which is now shown is a testimony to the wide extent of foreign influence. This outburst is only a temporary interruption in the transformation of China. The changes which are well be gun will certainly continue, but presumably under the direc tion of the allied Powers. It must not be forgotten that many Chinese are enlisted iu behalf of progress and are inspired by its spirit. The value of the improvements introduced by foreigners has been recognized by many, and innovations once feared and hated are already become necessities. For instance, mod ern military weapons ; the Chinese will never go back to 104 The New China past. He boasted that he invented noth ing, complained that the times were de cadent, and advocated reform by returning to the customs of the ancients. The Chinese place the beginning of their flrst cycle some 2000 years before Confucius (2637 B.C.), and as this sage has been accepted by all succeeding generations as their supreme teacher, we may reasonably infer that the Chinese have been looking backward ever since his day at least. About the time of Confucius, King Josiah was prosecuting his reforms in Judah. If the latter reformer had paid a their antiquated arms. Their several thousand miles of telegraph have taught them the value of instantaneous communication between Peking and the distant provinces. The 350 miles of railway, in operation for some time, are owned, not by the hated " foreign devil," but by the Chinese Qovernment, by which the road was constructed and is controlled. Modern civilization has been already admitted, and can not be cast out. The liberated genie can never again be imprisoned. I look for the fulfillment of General Grant's prophecy that " in less than half a century Europe will be complaining of the too rapid advance of China." 105 Expansion visit to- the Chinese sage, I suppose he would have seen substantially the same civihzation which Robert Morrison found in 1807. The law of change— itself changeless and absolute in all the world elsewhere — Vould seem to have skipped China. Time, as the Great Innovator, has had his way with nations as with individuals, turning and overturning; and the world, like a vast kaleidoscope, with every revolution has presented new combinations of endless variety and complexity. But China is a profoundly impressive exception. There for thousands of years Time has aban doned the function of innovation for that of conservation. In the western world his chariot- wheels — revolving dials — travel the highway of progress, but in the Celes tial Empire, hke a chariot-wheel tilted into the air, the rotating years and centuries make no onward movement. 106 The New China Probably several causes co-operated to arrest the development of Chinese civiliza tion. An obvious and efficient one was her geographical i§ol^on. Hemmed in by an impassable ocean on one side and by almost equally impassable deserts and mountains on the other three, she became a world by herself. Civilization like matter has its law of inertia, and if at rest re- mains at rest without some external im pulse. Isolation means stagnation,^ For many centuries China's knowledge of the outside world was confined to the savage aboriginal tribes on her frontiers or inhabiting the islands which fringe her coast. So that the record of Lord Macartney's embassy in 1792 passed into Chinese history as "Barbarians bringing tribute to China." Why should she accept ideas from barbarians ? Why should she change when she had already reached a celestial 107 Expansion perfection ? China's exclusiveness has kept her ignorant ; hfer ignorance has kept her self-satisfied ; her self-satisfaction has kept her conservative, •• But contact with the world has slowly done its work, and at length in the Chino- Japanese war Japan dealt her a blow which fairly cracked her shell of insufferable self- conceit and let in some nineteenth-century light. The result of that war forced on every Chinaman who could reason one of two conclusions, viz., either the Japanese, whom the Chinese had always despised, were superior to themselves, or the western civilization, which the Japanese had adopt ed, was in some respects superior to their own. The latter alternative was the less humiliating of the two and was therefore accepted. Thus many eyes were opened to see the value of the material side of westem ci'vih- zation, China may be indifferent to our 108 The New China literature and art, careless of our culture and hostile to our social and political ideals as well as to our religious faith, but it has become impossible for heT to be indifferent to the power or to the material prosperity of western civilization. The practical Chinaman appraises these at their par value. He has only to recognize them fully to grasp after them eagerly. We hear China referred to as one of the -' dying nations," as suffering "dissolution" or " vivisection " ; but it is well to remem ber that, whatever becomes of the Chinese government, the Chinese people are to re main and are destined to become a tremen- * dous factor in the world's future. The nation has become feeble and the govern ment imbecile, but the people are wonder fully vital. In Central and South America there were once high civilizations and powerful peoples now extinct. When Assyria and 109 Expansion Babylonia fell as nations, their people faded away. Many conquered races have been slaughtered, transported, scattered, enslaved, or absorbed. In many instances the con quest of nations has been preceded by luxury and vice Avhich had enfeebled the stock and prepared the way for the extinc tion of the people as well as the downfall of the nation. But here is a great mass of humanity, fully one-quarter of the human family, that cannot be massacred, or deported, or scat tered, or absorbed. As long as they re main a virile stock, they will remain a per manent and prominent element in the world's life. So far as physical endurance is con cerned, no people are better fitted to meet the increasing competition of races than the Chinese. They can thrive in any climate, they can survive the most un sanitary conditions, they can work in a 110 The New China temperature below zero or at a hundred in the shade — and all this on a poor diet. Such a people can never be stamped out. Notwithstanding wars, pestilence, famine, and flood they have multiplied as have no others, and continue so to do under the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. Doubtless with the increase of transportation facilities, which are the only adequate provision against famine, and with enlarging manufactures and com merce, the population will expand. One who takes account of world move ments must reckon with China ; and, what is more, he must reckon with China awaJse. The great change is already well under way. If we would appreciate it, we must compare the China of to-day not with Oc cidental peoples but with the China of sixty years ago. ¦ In 1840 her every port was effectively closed. No foreign consuls were recog- 111 Expansion nized, and diplomats who desired to reach the emperor could do so only through a tedious and humiliating process. " Foreign devils" had no rights which Chinamen were bound to respect. After the opium war, and as a result of it, a treaty was signed in 1842 by which subjects of Great Britain were permitted to enter, for resi dence and commerce, the one city of Shang hai. This first door opened reluctantly in 1843. Soon like treaties were made with other powers; and in 1889, forty-six years later, sixteen other cities had been added to the list of treaty ports, all of which were on the coast. Since 1895 the number has increased rapidly, and now there are cities scattered all over the empire, some of them thousands of miles from the coast, where foreigners may reside and trade. Early in 1898 an edict was issued which permitted foreigners, armed with official passports, to travel to all parts of the empire either 112 The New China for business or pleasure. This was soon followed by another, permitting foreign steam-vessels to navigate the rivers of all provinces which have treaty ports ; so that it has now become possible for foreign goods and foreign influence to penetrate to the remotest parts of the empire. It is only a few years since the first rail way built in the empire was purchased and destroyed by the government. Now fran chises are freely granted ; 350 miles are in operation, 2270 miles are being built, and 3577 miles more are projected. China ought to be a very paradise for railroads. Here is a populous coun try, full of great cities, and yet almost destitute of anything that can be called roads. Chinese highways are the worst on earth. The rivers, supplemented by the great canals now in bad repair, have been the chief arteries of trade. Overland traffic has depended on coohes, ponies, 113 Expansion mules, the old-time camel caravans and dromedaries, of which latter 50,000 were required for the tea service alone across the plains of Mongolia. Coal is in demand, and the richest mines have awaited only transportation for their development. They are now being worked with modem ma chinery. Since the treaty with Japan in 1895, foreigners have been permitted to build factories in the treaty ports which are scattered all ,over the empire. Cotton spinning and weaving is becoming an im portant industry. There are 417,000 spin dles and 2100 looms in operation, with other mills building. Those at Shanghai, fuUy equipped vnth modern machinery, are run ning day and night to their full capacity ; and similar developments along other lines are taking place in other cities. Such conditions, among people with whom traffic is a passion, would seem to insure the success of railways from the 114 The New China start, unless fear or prejudice prevents their use, of which no sign has appeared. Indeed, the people ride back and forth for mere pleasure, in wondering and delighted crowds. With the passenger-car supplanting the sedan-chair, and the steamboat displacing the junk, conditions are prepared for almost any innovation. The many apphcations of electricity are being made. The tele graph connects most of the great cities with each other and with Peking. Science, that modern miracle-worker, and China have been introduced. China, to whose birth the Christian era does not reach half way ; China, already aged when Rome was founded; China, whose locks were gray when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt ! Think of China, more ancient than Abraham, now traveling by "light ning express," riding in electric cars and on bicycles, talking by telephone and read- 115 Expansion ing Confucius by an Edison incandescent lamp ! What startling incongruities, what juxtaposition of East and West, what con founding of the compass, what confusion of the centuries ! The impossible has transpired. The faculty of wonder is par alyzed. We can never again be surprised. The Imperial Chipege post-office was opened in 1897, an^ChinaJhas now joined the Postal Union of the world. Clocks and watches are seen every where on the coast and are found far in land, which signifies that time is beginning to be of some worth in China. Old "cash," of which it takes seven pounds to make a dollar's worth, is giv ing place to silver coinage, which indicates larger transactions and possibly some rise in the standard of living. The following table, containing a very few of the principal articles of import, is of interest because it shows the increase 116 The New China ) in twenty years, and because their char acter indicates change in habits and in in dustries. Articles. 1877. 1887. Cotton thread, pounds 15,484,394 No data 559,117 61,672,580 No data No data 309,680,900163,892,600 9,354,000 331,130,700 48,313,000 36.934,000 Matches, gross boxes Iron and manufactures of iron, pounds Kerosene oil, American, galls.. Kerosene oil, Russian, galls. .. SOME ITEMS OF EXPORT FROM THE UNITED STATES TO CHINA. Articles. 1889. 1898. Books, maps, etc $6,687 413 1,869 33 67,314 $15,836 56,547 Scientific instruments, tele- 31,119 Nails 54,172 464,521 Printing-paper 386,376 Meats .. 50,180 3,547 3,000 26,72452,994 300,970 21,555 Butter Salt. 150,000 Lumber 120,251 Wood, and manufactures of . . . 167.881 The above items and facts are prophetic of changes infinitely greater yet to come. 117 Expansion Prior to the opium war China was utterly arrogant to the " barbarians " of the out side world, but when actual experience had taught her the military superiority of Occi dentals, she forthwith employed these same "barbarians" to drill her troops and build her battle-ships. There is now being forced upon her a demonstration of the superiority of mechan ical power over muscular power. Who shall say that when this demonstration is complete she will not employ Western me chanics to introduce our industrial civiliza tion, thus actively encouraging what she now permits ? Intelligent Chinese are beginning to see that the natural sciences are the basis of our material civilization and are accord ingly advocating their study. I^few schools for Western learning have been estabhshed in Canton, Hang-Chow, and a half-dozen other cities. In China, as in all Asiatic 118 The New China countries, the education of women is a great innovation, but a Chinese ladies' school, where Western learning is to be taught, has been started by the gentry at Shanghai. In this same city a multimil lionaire Chinaman left his wealth to found an institute for boys. It is to be modeled after such American institutions as the Pratt of Brooklyn and the Drexel of Phila delphia. An imperial edict has been issued put ting Western learning on a par with Chi nese literature as a condition of obtaining degrees. The officials of the empire are all drawn from the literati, so that to change the ideas of the Chinese students is to transform China. This class is being strongly influenced by the wide distribution of literature. Says Dr. W. E. Griffis : " Billions of pages of gospel truth, of scientific information, and of popular knowledge on almost every 119 Expansion conceivable department of human progress have thus been scattered broadcast all over China.'" Nearly a million copies of the Scriptures, or portions of them, are sold annually. The American Presbyterian Mission Press at Shanghai issued last year 67,625,660 pages of religious htera ture. Native newspapers are springing up, five having already appeared in Shanghai. Such instrumentalities set in motion new intellectual currents which gradually un dermine superstition and evil custom. In evidence, the rapid progress of the anti- foot-binding movement may be cited. Many are signing a pledge not to bind their own daughters' feet nor to marry their sons to those who have small feet. The Dowager Empress, Tsi- An, can im prison the young Emperor (and in so doing she illustrated David Harum's version of ' Tlie Outlook, 34 Dec. 1898, p. 1008. 130 The New China the golden rule, i.e., she did to the Emperor what he was intending to do to her, cmd did it -first), but she cannot imprison the spirit of reform which is abroad in the land and which had taken possession of the young ruler. Says a correspondent of The Missiona/ry Herald,^ writing from China : " Such radi cal and tremendous changes have never been devised or thought of iri the same length of time in any country of the world. People may well rub their eyes in view of what a Chinaman can do when once he is aroused and in earnest. The leaven is working, and no one can believe that this reaction is to be permanent. New ideas are out among the people in distant places, and they will bring forth their fruit in its season." The nineteenth centmy has been crowded with marvels, of which the resurrection of ' Feb. 1899, p. 50. 131 Expansion Japan was doubtless the greatest. It is not long since she was bound hand and foot by the past, as a mummy is wrapped with the cerements of the dead. She is now tingling with life in every member. Less than fifty years ago Japan was more intensely exclusive than China. For a native who attempted t;o leave the country, and for a foreigner who attempted to enter it, the penalty was death. No human be ing could then foresee that at the close of the century Japan would have been re ceived into the sisterhood of the Occidental Powers as an equal. \ It was to be expected that the island empire, with one-tenth of the population of China, would sooner respond to western influence than the great continental people. But the transformation of Japan is only a prophecy of the metamorphosis soon to be completed across the Yellow Sea. That China is aware that she is follow- 123 The New China ing Japan, and that she desires to do so, is indicated by the fact that she has placed one hundred and fifty selected students in the care of the Tokio government to be educated in Japanese universities. The edge of the wedge of Occidental civilization is now well entered ; and un less there is a revolution, precipitated by the Manchus in order to perpetuate their waning power, with the result of abrogat ing treaties and massacring foreigners, that wedge will be driven to the head. And in case of such revolution, the Great Powers would certainly assume control, and the regeneration and development would proceed under their direction. So that in either case China will be trans formed. Thus far the writer has sought to estab hsh the certainty, and to make obvious the fact, of China's j,wakening. ' It remains to show what will be the effects of this 133 Expansion awakening upon China herself and upon us. The quickening to new life of one- quarter of the human family could not fail of profoundly influencing the world. Its results in the social, intellectual, and spiritual life of the nations must be great, and its disturbance of the pohtical balance may have consequences beyond calcula tion. The writer hopes to discuss these topics in a later volume ; his present pur pose is confined to the commercial signifi cance of the new China. The most obvious result of this awaken ing will be the development of China's .wonderful resources. The deposits of coal and iron in the provinces of Shensi and Shansi are beheved to be the most valuable in the world. They cover an area of about 250 miles by 50 miles, and it has been estimated by a high authority that they contain enough anthracite coal to supply 124 The New China the world, at the present rate of consump tion, for two thousand years. England will penetrate this region with a railway, and has secured a concession to work this vast wealth for sixty years. Iron ore is widely distributed, and gold is found in many provinces. Mr. Colquhoun says: " The mineral wealth of China is perhaps the greatest of any country on the world's surface, and is yet hardly touched." The opening up of her mines will de velop the iron industry, and thus facilitate the extension of railway systems, which will stimulate manufactures and commerce throughout the empire. What will take place in China may be reasonably inferred from what has already taken place in India. Says Mr. Colquhoun : " There has been in India an expansion of commerce which forty years ago would have been considered impossible. The im ports and exports in that time have risen 125 Expansion from 400,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 rupees [in 1896]. In 1858 India was merely a dealer in drugs, dyes, and luxuries. Now she is one of the largest merchants in food- grains, fibers, and many other staples. The internal economical conditions of China to-day are very much the same as those of India when railways were introduced. Contrary to expectation, the passenger traffic on the Indian railways has, from the first, exceeded the goods traffic. China is better off per man, and the Chinese and Indo-Chinese, unlike the natives of India, are born travelers and traders."' The number of passengers on the railways of India in 1857 was 2,000,000 ; the number in 1896 was 160,000,000. The goods traffic in 1857 was 253,000 tons; in 1896 it was 32,500,000 — an increase in the one case of eighty fold, and in the other of one hundred and twenty-eight fold. • " China in Transformation," p. 97. 136 The New China Sir Thomas Jackson, manager-in-chief of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, who has been in China for a generation, said recently that the nation was on the eve of a commercial develop ment that in its magnitude could not be estimated. All that was required, he main tained, to bring enormous prosperity to China was to open it up by means of railways and waterways. Then it would show a development that would astonish the nations. Such a development must greatly in crease wealth, which will inevitably either elevate the standard of living or raise the birth-rate or both. As we have seen, the factory system has already been introduced. With abundance of raw materials and an exhaustless supply of cheap labor there will be a great manu facturing development. Now machinery does two things : it 137 Expansion forces a movement outward and another upward, that is, it creates commerce and elevates the standard of living. My ma chine makes cloth for a hundred men ; but I cannot wear a hundred coats. I want ninety-nine other things besides clothes, and I would better be spending my time making one of each than in making ninety- nine useless suits unless I can exchcmge. My loom therefore compels me to find ninety-nine other men who want cloth, and who in exchange for it will give me the ninety-nine other things I need. Thus the factory compels commerce. If my factory makes goods for a miUion, then I am driven to find a million who want my goods. Every enlargement of my factory, therefore, enlarges the circle of commerce, until at length the latter fills a great circle of the earth, and freight-trains cross continents and steamships traverse oceans to effect the exchange. 138 The New China But there is a movement upward aa well as outward. When I wove by hand I of course did but one man's work. I wove one day for the shoemaker and an other for the farmer, and each worked a day for me — one pegged and the other planted; and I had to give a hundred days' work to get a hundred men to work each one day for me. But my power loom does a hundred days' work in one, so that now a hundred men work for me every day, and I have a hundred times as many things as I had before. I, therefore, live on a much larger scale. And as many of my customers leam to do their work by machinery, which multiplies their effective ness many fold, they also get large returns for their labor, and their scale of living rises correspondingly. At the present time the standard of living in China is painfully low. Three dollars a month or $36 a year would cover 139 Expansion the earnings of a family of the working class. In America the corresponding class earns from .ten to twenty times as much; and the standard of living here is from ten to twenty times as high. It appears then that in China there is a latent power both of production and of consumption which is almost beyond calculation ; and with the introduction of machinery this latent power will become actual. This leads to the inquiry, what will be the effect of China's awakening upon the United States ? Suppose the Chinese were as much west ernized as are the Japanese, what would China's foreign commerce be ? The popula tion of China is about ten times as great as that of Japan, and between the resources of the two countries there is no compari son. Lord Beresford says: "Japan is a country without a tittle of the natural re sources of China." And yet the foreign trade 130 The New China of Japan in 1898 ($444,000,000) was nearly as large as that of China ($495,000,000). We may reasonably infer that if China were as far advanced as Japan, her com merce would be as much greater as is her population. That is, her foreign trade would reach the enormous sum of $4,440,- 000,000. A large increase of population, by in creasing demand, stimulates manufactures and commerce. What a tremendous im petus it would give to the world's indus tries if another America, peopled with 75,000,000 hke ourselves, should rise out of the Pacific Ocean ! To raise the standard of living in China to the average standard in the United States would be equivalent to the creation of five Americas. Raise the Chinese standard of living fifty per cent, and, commercially speaking, it would add 200,000,000 to the world's population. 131 Expansion We see then what the awakening of China means to American commerce. Our share of the Chinese trade is next to that of Great Britain and rapidly increasing. Our proximity to Eastern Asia and our advan tages for manufacture, pointed out in Chap ter II. should ultimately give us the first place in China's foreign commerce. At the annual dinner of the American Asiatic Association, Wu Ting-Fang, Chinese minister to the United States, said : " We all know that China is one of the greatest markets of the world, with a popu lation of 400,000,000 that must be fed and clothed, and must receive the neces saries of life. She wants your wheat, your cotton, your iron and steel, and your manu factured articles of the New England States. She wants steel rails, electrical machines, and one hundred other things that she cannot get at home and must get abroad. It is a fine field for American in- 132 The New China dustry to fill these wants. It is particularly easy for you to reach China on account of the fine highway you have on the Pacific, and especiaUy desirable that you do so since you have become our next-door neighbor in the Philippines. If you do not come up to your own expectations and meet this opportunity, it is your own fault." The new necessity of finding foreign markets, pointed out in the preceding chapter, together with the prospect of doors closed against us in continental Europe and bolted with a prohibitory tariff, lays strong emphasis on the value of China's " open door " and the necessity of keeping it open. And when we remember that our new necessities are precisely complementary to China's new needs, it is not difficult to see a providential meaning in the fact that, with no design of our own, we have be- 133 Expansion come an Asiatic power, close to the Yellow Sea, and we find it easy to believe that " There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will." 134 CHAPTEE V The New Isthmian Canal A CONTINENTAL Wall, nearly 9000 miles long, forbade Columbus to realize his bold vision of reaching the Far East by sailing west. For four hundred years men have dreamed of piercing this wall, thus saving a third of the distance in circumnavigating the globe. In 1551 the Spanish historian, Gomara, urged on Philip II. the importance of cut ting the isthmus. Two hundred years ago, one of the celebrated freebooters, who then ranged the Spanish Main, exclaimed : " The spoil of Granada I count as naught beside the knowledge of the great Lake Nicaragua, and tlie route between the 135 Expansion northern and southern seas which depends upon it." An attempt to gain possession of this route was made by Nelson in con junction with a land force in 1780, but Spain had so well appreciated the import ance of the position that she had fortified it with a series of a dozen strong works, and Nelson failed. When Napoleon asked his ministers whether he should cede Louisiana to the United States, Decres replied : " If the Isthmus of Panama is cut through some day, it will occasion an immense revolution in navigation, so that a voyage around the world wiU be easier than the longest cruise to-day. Louisiana will be on the line of this new route, and its possession will be of inestimable value. Don't give it up." The subject of an interoceanic canal is world-wide in its importance. Many nations have interested themselves in it; many men have given themselves to the 136 The New Isthmian Canal study of it; many volumes have been written on it ; many lives have been sacri ficed to it; many millions of gold have been spent for it. Over no portion of the earth's surface has the engineer's level been so repeatedly run. And now what the ages have waited for, the new century is about to witness. What the genius of Columbus failed to find, the genius of modern science is about to create. From this new world-condition will fol low important results, geographical, com mercial, and political. Let us glance at each. 1. Geographical. — Students of history and of its philosophy are now allowing greater weight than formerly to the in fluence of physical causes and of material conditions in the evolution of civihzation and in the shaping of national character and life. Geographical conditions have determined food, dress, occupations, cus- 137 Expansion toms, laws, social conditions, and even reli gions. Victor Cousin said : " TeU me the geography of a countiy aad I will tell you its future." The discovery of unknown countries, the opening of new routes of travel, the establishment of new commer cial relations have transformed the habits of peoples, have created and destroyed commercial supremacy, have precipitated wars, and have changed the balance of political power. New geographical con ditions (or, what is practicaUy the same, new knowledge of them) have been among the most stimulating and disturbing factors in the world's history. Geographical isolation has always been the mother of barbarism; so that the great achievements of science, by which the earth has been made smaller and the nations brought closer, have always given an impetus to civilization. Now the cutting of the new Isthmian 138 The New Isthmian Canal Canal will be the most important geographi cal event since the discovery of Australia, and will reduce the size of the earth at the equator by one-third. No other ship canal ever constructed, not even the Suez, can compare with it in economy of sailing distances. From London to Canton the Suez saves 3300 miles, and to Bombay it saves 4325, while the Nicaragua Canal will save from 5000 to 8000 miles to most ships passing through it. Between London and San Francisco it saves nearly 7200 miles, almost one-half of the distance ; between New York and San Francisco it saves 10,080 miles, more than two-thirds of the distance. Said President Hayes : " An interoceanic canal across the American isthmus will essentially change the geo graphical relations between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States, and between the United States and the rest of the world." 139 Expansion This canal wiU practically project the Pacific coast into the heart of the con tinent, and make it possible to steam from Pittsburg to Hong Kong, and from Omaha to Sydney. The Mississippi valley, which has an area of 1,244,000 square miles, is considerably larger than the whole of Central Europe. Because of its magni tude, combined with its inexhaustible fertility, its great variety of products, the energy of its people, its 5000 miles of waterway navigable for steam, and the southward flow of its great central artery, this is commerciaUy and politicaUy the most important valley in the world ; and its connection with the most important ocean is a geographical change of prime importance. Sea-going vessels may yet pass from Chicago and Duluth down the Mississippi to the Pacific. 2. This brings us to the commercial sig nificance of the canal. 140 The New Isthmian Canal Referring to the project of cutting the isthmus, Henry Clay when Secretary of State (1825) said: "The execution of it will form a great epoch in the commercial affairs of the whole world." It will, how ever, mean more to American commerce than to that of any other nation. From New York to San Francisco by way of Cape Horn the distance is 14,840 mUes; by way of the Nicaragua Canal it will be only 4,760, saving over 10,000 miles in distance and fifty days' time by freight- steamer between these two points, with a cor responding economy between other points on the two coasts. Where two-thirds of the time and dis tance are saved there is a proportionate saving of depreciation of value, of repairs, of the chances of loss and therefore of in surance on vessel and cargo, of interest on the investment, of wages, and of provision ing. That is, there is an economy of two- 141 Expansion thirds of the cost of transportation. When we reflect that on a single voyage of a 1,650-ton bark between Port Townsend, Wash., and Boston, Mass., these several items saved would aggregate some $9,500, we are impressed with the economic value of such a canal to the thousands of vessels which wiU pass through it every year. But its saving to existing commerce is by no means aU. It will create a vast amount of new commerce. It is of course impossible, commercially speaking, to trans port freight of any sort beyond a point where the cost of transportation exceeds the value of the cargo in the market to which it is brought. The canal, therefore, by reducing distances increases the num ber of the articles of commerce. The exports of the Pacific coast are for the most part raw materials, some of which will not bear long carriage — for in stance lumber, in which the Far North-west 142 The New Isthmian Canal is so rich. The supply of the Eastern States is being exhausted. Cheap transpor tation between the two sections of country will be a great blessing to both, but the trade will not bear the long voyage around the Horn. Cuba has attempted to import Pacific-coast lumber, but it proved too ex pensive. As soon as the canal is cut, lum ber for building purposes will become an exceedingly important article of commerce between the two coasts. It is estimated by lumbermen that the opening of the canal will add $2 to the value of every thousand feet of lumber standing around Puget Sound. The forests of Washington alone contain 1 75,000,000,000 feet of uncut yellow and red fir. If the above estimate is a reasonable one, the value of the forests of Washington wiU be enhanced $350,000,000 by the canal. The supply in Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska is much greater. Of this entire region William H. Seward said : 143 Expansion " It seems destined to become a shipyard for the supply of all nations." The wheat of the Pacific Coast seeks the European market, but it is four months or more in transit around the Horn, with possibilities of rise or fall in prices, which makes the trade "as much a gamble as any hazardous game of chance." When the time is reduced to twenty-five days' steam ing it will become a mercantile transaction with fairly assured profits. Distances from points on the Pacific coast around Cape Horn are somewhat greater to New York than to Liverpool; and the rich trade of the westem coast of Central and South America goes chiefly to Great Britain and Germany. When the isthmian canal is cut, all this will be changed. Distances will then be from 2,700 miles to 3,500 miles in favor of New York, which with our facilities for manu- 144 The New Isthmian Canal facture will give us the markets of that coast. Distances via Nicaragua Canal. From San Francisco , Acapulco Mazatlan Guayaquil . . . . Callao Valparaiso ... To New York. To Liverpool. 4,760 miles 7,508 miles 3,122 " 5,870 " 3,682 " 6,430 " 2,340 " 5,890 " 3,713 " 6,461 " 4,700 " 7,448 " The Southem States will have a still greater advantage, as New Orleans is 713 railes nearer than New York to the canal. There are in Alabama inexhaustible mines of the finest coal, and so easily worked that coal can be landed on shipboard at Mobile for $1.25 a ton. There is but little coal on the Pacific coast, and that of an in ferior quality and high-priced. A few years ago it cost from $9 to $12 a ton. Steamers passing through the canal will require 2,000,000 tons of coal a year, which will be furnished by Alabama. 145 Expansion In Alabama and Tennessee pig-iron is produced more cheaply than elsewhere in the world ; and in all the markets of the Pacific iron will be in increasing demand for many years to come. Japan is becoming a manufacturing na tion, and had in 1899 a million spindles. In 1897 she imported raw cotton to the value of $43,122,000, which was an in crease of 32 per cent over the previous year. The same year (1897) China im ported cotton goods valued at $58,600,000. China has now 417,000 spindles, and more mills building. When the canal is cut, ocean steamers can load with cotton at the river and gulf docks and sail direct for the Orient, which will enable us to compete successfully with Indian cotton. Attention has aheady been called to the fact that with only five per cent of the world's population we produce 32 per cent of the world's food. The Mississippi valley 146 The New Isthmian Canal is oar great granary, and the new water way will connect it with more than half the population of the globe. Thus the new isthmian canal will give our Pacific coast access to European markets, and our Atlantic and Gulf coasts access to Asiatic markets. New York is 150 miles farther than Liverpool from Cape Horn.' This fact of course makes ¦ Liverpool 150 miles nearer than New York to all ports on the eastern shore of the Pacific. Again, Liverpool is as much nearer than New York to all points in the western Pacific as Liverpool is nearer than New York to Gibraltar, which is about 2,000 miles. That is to say, as between New York and Liverpool, the Pacific is, commercially speaking, an English ocean. Look now at the effect of cutting the ' According to tables issued by the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate. 147 Expansion Nicaragua Canal. New York will be 2,748 miles nearer than Liverpool to its eastern entrance. The following table shows the advantage of New York com merce via the Nicaragua Canal over that of Liverpool via the Suez : From Shanghai . . Yokohama . Manila . . . Honolulu . . Auckland . . Melbourne . To New York. To Liverpool. 10,212 miles 10,330 miles 9,227 " 11,030 " 10,662 . " 11,.534 " 6,417 " 9,167 "1 8,463 ¦' 11,210 " • 10,000 " 11,000 ¦' Thus New York gains the advantage by 118 miles (one day's sail) to Shanghai, about 1,000 miles on the average to the ports of North China, and from 872 miles to 2,748 to the principal ports of the cen tral and western Pacific. The canal thus moves the line of equi distance from San Francisco to Shanghai 7,500 miles. So that, commercially speak- ' Fia Nicaragua, the shortest route. 148 The New Isthmian Canal ing, the Pacific is practically shifted the dis tance of its entire width — a fact of stupen dous importance. This ocean is to bear the great bulk of the world's future com merce, as will be shown in the next chap ter; and so far as distances are concerned, which in close competition are decisive, the Pacific will be transferred by the Nicara gua Canal from the commercial control of England to that of the United States. The isthmian canal is the gateway of the Pacific, and opens upon 500,000,000 people whose imports in 1898 were $1,- 120,000,000. The commerce of the Pacific is to increase indefinitely, and unless aU signs fail, the United States will command the greater part of it. What this means to us will be better appreciated if we re member that now only about six per cent of our exports and imports pass through Pacific ports. The distinguished Englishman, Hon, 149 Expansion Archibald R. Colquhoun, is an authority both as an engineer and as a traveler in the Far East. After a careful examination of the Nicaragua Canal route, he wrote: "It will render greater service to the New World than the Suez does to the Old. It will bring Japan, North China, Austral asia, and a part of Malaysia nearer to the Atlantic cities of the United States than they are now to England. ... It will give an immense impulse to United States manu factures, especially cotton and iron, and wiU greatly stimulate the shipbuilding in dustry and the development of the naval power of the United States FinaUy, I beUeve it will, taken in connection with the vast changes occurring in the Far East, bring about the most serious rivalry to the commercial supremacy of Great Britain which she has ever yet had to encounter." ' 'Quoted from Colquhoun's "The Key of the Pacific" by Hon. Warner Miller in The Forum, Nov. 1898. 150 The New Isthmian Canal So long as our manufactured goods were marketed at home, our need of the canal was not imperative ; but now that we have entered into competition for the world's markets, access to those markets (the fifth fundamental condition of success discussed iu Chapter II.) becomes essential, aud so far as distance is concemed, it will be secured by the interoceanic canal. Europe is washed by one ocean, America by two. Of these great world highways, which neither have to be built nor repaired, one has hitherto been closed to us. With that opened, the United States will be midway between the markets of the world. 3. It remains to consider briefly the political bearing of the Nicaragua Canal. Its most obvious political effect will be in uniting our coast lines and in bringing the most remote portions of our territory into much closer relations. Says Mr. Colquhoun, speaking of the canal: "It 151 Expansion will bind together the remote sections of that immense country, assimilate its diverse interests, go far toward solving many dif ficult problems, and make the United States still more united." Virtually the canal will be, as President Hayes said in one of his messages, " a part of the coast line of the United States," and a portion in which we shall be vitaUy concerned. The United States Govem ment, therefore, ought to control and pro tect it. An agreement of the Powers jointly to guarantee the neutrality of the canal would be in utter disregard of the Monroe Doctrine and in violation of the principles on which it is based. As well might we put our coast from New York to Philadelphia under the joint protection of the Powers. That strip of coast is far less vital to us than the canal. The canal must be ours, and we must have a navy strong enough to protect it. 153 The New Isthmian Canal By closing it, a foreign Power, with this single blow, would cleave our two coasts 10,000 miles asunder. The neutralization of the Suez Canal is urged as an example for us. But Gibraltar and Aden are not neutralized. By these strongholds and by virtue of the supreme navy based upon them, Great Britain commands the entrance of the Mediter ranean and that of the Red Sea, and there fore commands the canal. It may be added in this connection that in the possession of Jamaica, Great Britain holds the strongest naval position in the Caribbean Sea. It is a matter for con gratulation that this position, if we cannot command it ourselves, is in the hands of a power likely to remain always friendly. It is evident, as Gen. Tracy said when Secretary of the Navy, that without the canal we must maintain two indepen- 153 Expansion dent navies, one in the Atlantic, the other in the Pacific. For an Asiatic squadron with hostile intent could cross the Pacific and dehver a blow at San Francisco before a fleet saUing from om- Atlantic seaboard could meet it. "In the utilization of the mobile defenses of the United States," says Commodore George W. Melville, Chief Engineer of the Navy, "there is no element which approaches in importance the isthmian waterway. Without it, the fleet of one coast is unavailable for the other ; with it, every naval gun may be turned upon the foe, whether he shall come from east or west." In addition to the political consequences which will flow directly from the opening of the canal, there are others no less sure because more remote, and attendant on the commercial results of the interoceanic water way. 154 The New Isthmian Canal With a map before the reader it will be observed that the eastem coast of North America and the western coast of South America are directly north and south of each other. Both lie between 70° and 80° west longitude; and Valparaiso is directly south of Boston. South America has seemed very much out of the world, but the canal will bring these two coasts into close relations. The principal ports of the western coast of South America will be from 60 to 1700 miles nearer to New York than to San Francisco. These regions of South America have rich, undeveloped natural resources and a sparse population, and they are brought by the canal into close relations with the richest and most densely peopled portion of the United States. A large part of the superfluous and rapidly increasing energy and capital of the latter country, to which 155 Expansion attention was called in Chapter I. can hardly fail to be applied to the develop ment of the former. Peoples have commonly migrated on lines of latitude, because unoccupied land to the westward afforded opportunity, and further because movement in that direction causes less variation in climate than the same distance traveled north or south. It should be remembered in this connection that the proximity of the Andes to the Pacific coast affords a choice of alti tude which, together with a great extent of latitude, should make it possible to find almost any desired climate along the west ern coast of South America, matching that of a given latitude on the Atlantic coast of North America. Thus influences which have hitherto caused westward migrations will be likely, after the canal is opened, to stimulate a movement of population and of capital southward. That political re- 156 The New Isthmian Canal suits would, follow such a movement can hardly be doubted. Again, the isthmian canal will give to the West Indies a commercial import ance which will involve political con sequences. For some hundreds of years these islands were the principal source of tropi cal products, and during the Napoleonic wars furnished Great Britain with one. fourth of all her commerce. But misrule, as vicious as ignorant tyranny could de vise, and other causes have paralyzed their industries and depleted their commerce until now it is insignificant. The canal, however, will focus the commerce of the world in the Caribbean Sea. Toward it flow three great rivers, the Hudson, the Mississippi, and the Amazon, which, as tributaries to the canal, must pour their commerce through this sea, Avhose islands will become ports of caU. 157 Expansion The tonnage which passed through the Suez Canal m 1870, the first year of its use, was 436,600; in 1871 it was 761,467, and in 1898 it had reached 8,500,000. In a report made to the Senate of the Fifty- second Congress it was estimated that, in the second year of its use, 6,500,000 tons would seek the Nicaragua Canal ; and this would leave nearly 12,000,000 more within the zone of its attraction, depending for its choice of routes chiefly on the canal tolls which may be adopted. So large a portion of the world's traffic passing through the Caiibbean Sea, together with a stable and just government insured to the islands until recently under Spanish misrule, will undoubtedly produce an in dustrial and commercial revival in the West Indies, which wiU give them increas ing wealth and greatly enhance their im portance from a naval and pohtical point of view. 158 The New Isthmian Canal Captain A. T. Mahan, whom the London Times describes as " the most distinguished living writer on naval strategy," and whose utterances show the insight of the phi losopher and the wisdom of the statesman, says: "In the cluster of island fortresses of the Caribbean is one of the greatest of the nerve centres of the whole body of European civilization " ; and refers to the Archipelago as "the very domain of sea power, if ever region could be called so." ' He continues : " Control of a maritime re gion is insured primarily by a navy; sec ondarily, by positions, suitably chosen and spaced one from the other, upon which as bases the navy rests, and from which it can exert its strength. At present [writ ten in 1893] the positions of the Caribbean are occupied by foreign powers, nor may we, however disposed to acquisition, ob tain them by means other than righteous ; ' " The Interest of America in Sea Power," p. 261. 159 Expansion but a distinct advance will have been made when public opinion is convinced that we need them, and should not exert our utmost ingenuity to dodge them when flung at our head." ' In the new stadium of history on which the world is just entering, the tropics will have new importance — a fact so thoroughly appreciated by the European Powers, for the past fifteen years, and so thoroughly neglected by ourselves. There was good prospect that our appreciation would come too late to avail us anything, when the world had another illustration of the say ing that Providence cares for children, fools, and the United States. Without our forethought or desire, and even against the active opposition of many, as well meaning as they are well mistaken, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Porto Rico drop, like windfalls, into our hands. Our possessions ' " The Interest of America in Sea Power," pp. 102, 103. 160 The New Isthmian Canal cannot be any too extended in the Carib bean Sea, provided only they come to us, as Captain Mahan says, by righteous means. If any other great Power had been in our place, Cuba would have been hers generations ago. This must not be under stood to imply that we should close our hand upon her, now that she lies in our palm. Our pledge to her and to ourselves is sacred, and must be so held, though its redemption will be incomprehensible to the world. I know a little girl who in the summer of 1898 ran into the house, saying : " Papa, we've been playing Spain." "Why, how could you play Spain, chUd ? " " Oh, you see, I was the United States, and Madeline, she was Spain, and little Paul, he was Cuba ; and while Spain was flat on her back, I picked up Cuba and ran away ! " 161 Expansion This is precisely the interpretation which was placed on the Spanish- American war by Continental Europe ; and judging us by themselves, they expect our troops to re main in Cuba. But we must disappoint ' aU such expectations. Let us indeed bind Cuba to us, but only by the strongest bonds — those of obligation and love. 162 CHAPTER VI The New Mediterranean For thousands of years the Mediterranean — the Midland Sea — was the center of the world's commerce, wealth, and power. With the discovery and development of the New World that center was transferred to the Atlantic. During the twentieth century it will pass on to the Pacific, which will become and remain the Midland Sea — the New Mediterranean — of the world's future. In some directions there are no limits to possible progress. We can see no end to the changes which will come from new conquests of natural forces, but we easily foresee the end of the great movements which have sprung from geographical dis- 163 Expansion coveries. There are no more undiscovered countries. The westward migration of peoples and the succeeding march of em pire reach their hmit with the Occident. Through the Golden Gate we look out upon the Orient. The scepter of the world's power has ever passed to a younger hand. Beyond the young Republic is the decrepit East. The cutting of the Isthmian Canal wiU be the last geographical event of the first magnitude. There are no more isthmuses the severing of which would shift the com merce of the world. The Suez Canal gave England an immense advantage. The Nicaragua Canal will transfer that advan tage to the United States, with the cer tainty that it cannot again be shifted by any geographical cause. The commercial supremacy of the Pacific will be final. Commerce depends, first, on population; and, other things being equal, the greater 164 The New Mediterranean the population the greater will be the com merce. Let us look then at the present and prospective populations of the lands which border on the New Mediterranean. Their present numbers are estimated at 500,000,000, one-third of the human family; and if we include India, to which the com merce of the Pacific has easy access, the figures rise to nearly 800,000,000, or more than one-half of mankind. Commerce de pends, secondly, on resources, which must be considered in connection with prospec tive population. Such are the room and resources of these Pacific lands as to insure their becoming much more populous. It is a striking fact that of the great undeveloped and habit able portions of the earth all except Africa are ranged around the Pacific — Alaska, Canada, our great West, Central and South America, Australia, some of the larger East India Islands, and Siberia. Thus most of 165 Expansion the room for the expansion of the race is precisely here. Europe has a population of 106.9 to the square mUe; Asia, 57.7; Africa,' 15.7; North America, only 13.8; South America, 5.3; and Australasia, only 1.4; while that of Siberia is about the same as that of Australasia. If the popu lation of North and South America and of Australasia were one-half as dense as that of Europe, it would aggregate 878,000,000. Let us look at these great continents a little more closely. At a time when the population of the United States was only 20,000,000, Daniel Webster said : "I do not know whose imagination is fertile enough, I do not know whose conjectures, I may almost say, are wild enough, to tell what may be the ' I use the estimates of the geographer and statistician, Ernest George Ravenstein, F.R.G.S. His figures for Africa, however, are 11. I deduct the great Sahara, which is as large as the United States. The statistics are for 1890. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. 166 The New Mediterranean progress of wealth and population in the United States." Science, without resorting either to imagination or to wild conjecture, affords a basis for a reasonable estimate. Geographical differences, which need not detain us, give only a scant supply of rain to the Old World and an abundance to the New. Accordingly the greatest river systems are here, and the only great deserts there. We must not be surprised, there fore, that the geographers find as much arable land in America as in Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, viz., about 10,000,000 square miles. The Encyclopmdia Britan nica says : ' " Paradoxical as the fact may appear, we are satisfied that the new con tinent, though less than half the size of the old, contains at least an equal quantity of useful soil and much more than an equal amount of productive power." It con tinues with the following astonishing state- ¦ Article on America, Vol. I. p. 717. 167 Expansion ment, which is based on scientific data: " If the natural resources of the American continent were fully developed, it would afford sustenance to 3,600,000,000 of in habitants." Even if incredulity cuts these figures in two in the middle, they would stiU make America capable of supporting 300,000,000 more than the present popula tion of the earth. The above estimate of arable land in North America excludes most of the region north of latitude 53°, in which vast re sources have since been discovered. Hon. James W. Taylor, American Consul at Winnipeg, who has for years been an authority on the great North-west, says that the western half of Canada together with Alaska are equal in area to England, Ire land, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, and most of Germany and Russia in Europe. " And the produc tiveness of the American area," he adds, 168 The New Mediterranean " would surpass that of the European one. , . . There are in these sections of North America fully 200,000,000 acres weU adapted to wheat culture." The European countries which Mr. Taylor names have a population of 215,000,000. Alaska also has food resources of which Mr. Taylor makes no mention. In its waters salmon abound in almost incredible numbers, whUe the cod is still more abun dant. We are assured that the cod-banks of Alaska are by far the greatest in the world. The Hon. WiUiam S. Dodge esti mates that their extent is about 2,600 miles, "a sea-frontage, comprising one grand reservoir of fish, sufficient to employ thousands of men." The grazing resources of Alaska will also sustain many cattle. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that, whatever the ultimate population of the continent may be, the time will come when it will support more inhabitants 169 Expansion than the three continents of the Old World, simply because it is capable of doing so. Before leaving Alaska it is worth while to refer to other than food resources, which will certainly attract a large popu lation. In addition to the valuable seal- fisheries and the gold, now well known, there are more permanent sources of wealth. Coal and iron abound in many parts of the country. On the Chilkat River the supply is apparently inexhaust ible. Prof. Davidson of the Coast Geo detic Survey relates that while at Chilkat he noticed the marked aberration of the needle of his compass, and discovered that it was caused by a mountain of iron some 2000 feet high, which proved to be only one of a range of similar character extend ing thirty miles. He adds : " As if nature had anticipated its use to man, a coal-mine was found near by." The greatest copper 170 The New Mediterranean I ledge in the United States and a lake of oil are reported. The timber wealth of Alaska is perhaps unequaled, and it is peculiarly rich in yellow cedar, so re markable for its durability both on land and sea. Turn now for a glimpse at Australasia, New Zealand, which is antipodal to Great Britain and Ireland, has an area only one- seventh less. Two-thirds of its surface are suited to agriculture and grazing. Some 20,000,000 acres are still under forest. It produces annually some eight or ten mil lion dollars' worth of gold, silver, coal, and fother minerals. Its agricultural and graz ing interests are much greater. In 1898 there were 19,688,000 sheep reported. New Zealand has numberless streams of pure water and a delightful climate, admi rably adapted to Europeans. There is every reason to believe it wUl become populous and wealthy. 171 Expansion The formation of the Australian federa tion is an event of extraordinary interest. Modeled largely on our own political insti tutions, with a population of substantially the same stock, and not far from the same number at the time of our national birth, occupying a territory very nearly as large as our own, speaking the same language, having the same general ideals and civili zation, Australia promises to become a great Pacific Power, whose relations to us will be most intimate and important. Though the interior of Australia is tor rid, and has no such boundless possibili ties as the Mississippi valley, stiU the resources of this great continent are vast and varied and capable of enriching a great population. Metals abound in great variety. The gold and silver product of Australasia in 1898 was $80,404,000— equal to that of Africa, and surpassed only by that of the 173 The New Mediterranean United States. Since the discovery of gold up to 1897, inclusive, an incomplete record shows that of this one metal Aus- traha has produced $1,700,000,000. Tin, silver, copper, lead, and iron are also prof itably mined. Up to the close of 1897 New South Wales had raised coal to the value of $165,250,000. Australia also supplies agricultural pro ducts and has vast grazing interests, re porting over 100,000,000 sheep, which together with those of New Zealand fur nished 520,000,000 pounds of wool in 1899. Large quantities of butter, leather, tallow, hides, furs, and preserved and frozen meats are exported. The 4,000,000 inhabitants of the Aus tralian colonies have accumulated $7,000,- 000,000 of wealth, or $1750 per caput; while their foreign trade reaches the enor mous sum of $1,000,000,000 a year, more than twice as much as that of China, 173 Expansion whose population is a hundredfold greater. Evidently Australia is capable of support ing a large proportion of the world's pop ulation, and is therefore destined to do so. Passing by the unnumbered islands of Oceania, we reach the western boundary of the Pacific and come within the sphere of Asia. We cannot tarry in the Malay Peninsula or Siam, in French India or Indo-China, in Formosa or Corea, all of which have important populations des tined to be quickened by Western in fluence. The tropical wealth of the East Indies has for centuries attracted the interest and cupidity of European peoples. Wallace says the archipelago "includes two islands larger than Great Britain ; and in one of them, Borneo, the whole of the British Isles might be set down, and would be surrounded by a sea of forests. Sumatra is about equal in extent to Great Britain ; 174 The New Mediterranean Java, Luzon, and Celebes are each about the size of Ireland. Eighteen more isl ands are on the average as large as Ja maica [about one-half the size of Massa chusetts] ; and more than 100 are as large as the Isle of Wight." The total area is 773,008 square miles, somewhat less than that of British India, and the population 34,813,000.* When we consider that the average density of population is only 45 to the square mile, while that of British India is 229, it is evident that a large in crease is possible. Several of the largest islands are occupied to a great extent by savages and semi-civilized tribes. The Philippines under the paralysis of Spain's grip have had a foreign trade of $32,000,000 a year. Hon. John Barrett, former minister of the United States to Siam, says : " Java, the garden of the East, . . . and doing a foreign trade of ' Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1881. 175 Expansion $250,000,000 annually, has no such large extent of fertile areas as the Philippines." Undoubtedly their population of 8,000,000 and their trade are both capable of great expansion. Japan is densely peopled, but her scale of living, though high compared with that of China, is very low when compared with that of Occidentals ; and as she has wel comed Occidental civilization and is be coming a manufacturing nation, we may expect her standard of hving to rise rapidly, which is commercially equivalent to a rapid increase of population. It has been shown in a preceding chap ter that the commercial possibilities of China are almost boundless. It will be impossible to introduce Western civiliza tion without raising the standard of living many fold. Measured by wages, it is not one-twentieth as high as our own. If that standard should rise 25 per cent in 25 176 The New Mediterranean years (one quarter of one fold), it would be, commercially speaking, equal to adding 100,000,000 to the population. But in addition to a rising standard of living, there will undoubtedly be an actual increase of population, as there has been in India since the introduction of machinery and of railroads. It may be imagined that the population of China has already reached the limit of possible density. Far from it. China is only one-half as densely peopled as France. We forget how vast is her terri tory. It contains but 95 to the square mile, while France contains 188, Great Britain 315, and England 536. If China were as densely peopled as Japan, she would have 1,172,000,000, nearly three times her pres ent population ; and she is capable of sup porting a denser population than Japan, because she is vastly richer in natural re sources. Pass on now to the north and complete 177 Expansion the circuit of the New Mediterranean. Si beria has been almost a terra incognita to the world, but with the completion of her colossal railway, she will have a develop ment that will astonish the twentieth century. Out of Siberia might be carved aU Europe, with a fringe of a dozen Italys around it. The resources of such a coun try, as magnificent as her distances, cannot be presented in a paragraph. Rich in gold and other metals, in forests and fur-bearing animals, in arable and grazing lands, " this huge territory is one vast repository of in calculable and undeveloped treasures." ' Siberia, larger than Australia, has a popu lation of about the same density, viz., one and a fraction to the square mile. The trans-Siberian railway will tap the great reservoir of more than 100,000,000 people in European Russia, which flood ' William Durban in Ihe OuUooh, Nov. 4, 1899. 178 The New Mediterranean wiU flow eastward upon the waiting land as immigrants poured into our great West a few years ago. We were wonderfuUy generous with our free lands, but the Czar is far more bountiful. He offers to every Russian family that migrates to Siberia from 200 to 300 acres of good land, a loan of 600 roubles for thirty-two years without interest, agricultural implements at cost, and exemption from military service, while free transportation is furnished to needy famUies.' What must such an offer mean to the miUions of peasants who half-starve every winter in European Russia ! Long before the close of the twentieth century, Siberia wiU have a great popula tion, which wiU be tributary to the Pacific. In our rapid survey of the lands which bound the New Mediterranean, we have found three conditions : (1) The countries on the north, east, and south-west are vast conti- 1 " The New Pacific," p. 317. 179 Expansion nents capable of sustaining a vast popula tion, but now only sparsely settled. (2) Scattered over the Pacific and gathered in a windrow on the west are thousands of islands which, lying mostly in the tropics, represent great resources. Many of them, including some of the largest, are occupied by savages or semi-civilized tribes. Here in due time civilization will perform its miracle of the loaves and fishes and feed its thousands where now a handful of savages are in want. (3) On the mainland to the west are the swarming millions of Asia, whose standard of living will rise as they are awakened by the quickening currents of Western influence. Each of these three conditions is pro phetic of an enormous increase in the com merce of the Pacific. Says the Hon. John Barrett : " It should be remembered that the foreign trade of this wonderful Pacific-Asiatic coast-line, 180 The New Mediterranean that winds in and out for 4,000 miles from Singapore to Vladivostok, is valued at the mighty sum of one billion dollars, and yet is only in the earliest stages of its develop ment." This is true of Pacific commerce as a whole, though its total is estimated at $5,000,000,000 annuaUy. Though the present products of Pacific lands are hardly more than beginnings, they constitute an important proportion of many of the world's staples. In 1899 they produced 1,024,000,000 pounds of wool out of the world's total of 2,681,000,000 pounds. We find that a few of these new lands, containing only six per cent of the world's population, produce twenty-nine per cent of the world's wheat. Again, we find that in 1898 Pacific countries yielded $170,800,000 in gold, while all others produced only $115,910,000. A stiU larger proportion of the world's silver comes from these lands, 181 Expansion viz., $192,180,000, against $21,598,000 from aU other lands. The boundaries of this ocean are singu larly rich in the precious metals. They abound in Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Corea, and China, and are stored in the coast range from Alaska to Patagonia. Thus the Pacific is the world's great sap phire set in gold and silver. In addition to the commerce which will spring from the increasing population, de veloping resources, and growing civilization of Pacific lands, much of the commerce of European states with each other will ap parently be diverted from its accustomed channels and will flow to the Pacific. This wiU result from the increased competition into which all manufacturing peoples are now entering. For the protection of home industries, the nations of Continental Europe are likely to adopt tariffs which wUl force them all to look to China for a market. 183 The New Mediterranean It has, I trust, been made sufficiently evident that the greater portion of the world's population will gather around the New Mediterranean, because there is the room for it, and there are the resources capable of sustaining and enriching it. And by virtue of becoming the center of the world's population and commerce, the Pacific will become the center of the world's wealth and power. San Francisco is now 3,000 miles from New York. The time will come when New York will be 3,000 miles from San Francisco. This will be the realization of what a few far-sighted men saw long since. More than half a century ago. Baron von Hum boldt predicted that the commerce of the Pacific would in time exceed that of the Atlantic. Later, Thomas H. Benton de clared that " the dominion and empire of the world lay along the route to the Indies and with the country which controlled the 183 Expansion commerce over it." William H. Seward, who had the prevision of the true states man, in a speech made in the Senate of the United States in 1852, said : " Henceforth European commerce, European politics. European thought, and European activity although actually gaining force, and EurO' pean connections, although actuaUy becom^ ing more intimate, will nevertheless rel atively sink in importance; while the Pacific Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast region beyond, will become the chief theater of events in the world's great hereafter." 184 CHAPTER VII The New Mediterranean an Anglo-Saxon Sea Some months after the fateful battle in Manila Bay, at a dinner in New York, given in honor of the English philosopher, Mr. Benjamin Kidd, that gentleman re marked : " In my judgment, the gun fired by Admiral Dewey in the Bay of Manila was the most important historical event since the battle of Waterloo." FoUowing him, Professor Franklin H. Giddings, of Columbia University, said : " I find myself compelled to differ from the distinguished guest of the evening in his estimate of the battle in Manila Bay. In my judgment it was the most important historical event 185 Expansion since Charles Martel turned back the Moslems," which occurred in a.d. 732 ; and to justify his judgment the speaker added, " because the great question of the twentieth century is whether the Anglo- Saxon or the Slav is to impress his civiliza tion on the world." This judgment as to the supreme ques tion of the future I believe to be entirely just. Whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Slav is to dominate is the spinal column of world politics, of which aU other political questions are only the ribs. Adequately to present the importance of that question and our vital relations to it would require a volume, which the author hopes to pre pare in due time. The narrow limits of the present work do not permit even a brief outline of the fundamental facts and principles which to the writer's mind are absolutely conclusive as to national destiny and duty. It would, however, be omitting 186 An Anglo-Saxon Sea Hamlet from the play not to point out the relations of these two great races to the New Mediterranean. It is a profoundly significant fact that the only powerful races which have a con tinental coast-line on this ocean, that is to be "the chief theater of events in the world's great hereafter," are the Slav and the Anglo-Saxon.' It is worth while in this connection to note certain other resemblances between - ¦• these two races. (1) They are about equal in numbers. (2) Both are rapidly growing. The ex pansion of the Anglo-Saxon, both geo graphically and numerically, has been one ' " Anglo-Saxon " is used broadly to designate English- speaking peoples, notwithstanding familiar protests. Such use is as fitting as one which gained universality during our civil war. With utter disregard of the then estab lished usage, but with an instinctive judgment which was entirely true, the Southerners called every Northern sol dier a " Yankee." From whatever State he came, whether Massachusetts or Ohio or Iowa, he represented New Eng land ideas and New England civilization. 187 Expansion of the wonders of the century of wonders. During the same period the Slav has ex tended his empire some 2,000,000 square miles, and his numbers have increased four fold. Though his growth has not been as rapid as that of his great rival, he has been thoroughly vital and aggressive, and his elbows are constantly felt in his neighbor's ribs. (3) Both races have remarkable povgers of assimilation, and they are the only races that have, which goes far to account for their unequaled growth. Anglo-Saxon assimilation is best illustrated by the United States, into whose current of life alien peoples and characteristics, in one, or at most two, generations, sink and disap pear like snowflakes in a river. The his tory of Russia affords a striking parallel, for more than one hundred nations and tribes have sunk into this vast empire, not one of which has ever emerged. It should 188 An Anglo-Saxon Sea be observed, however, that while the Anglo-Saxon absorbs Europeans, the Slav absorbs Asiatics. Napoleon's saying, "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar," is true. He is really an Asiatic with a European veneer ; and this fact ac counts for his character and for his career. Victor Hugo said, " Africa begins at the Pyrenees." It is even truer that Asia be gins, not at the Ural Mountains, but at the GuK of Bothnia and the mouth of the Danube. (4) Each race has a genius for organiza tion and government: and they are the only existing races of which this can be said. England's touch transforms chaos into a well-ordered state : witness India and Egypt. In like manner, Russia has had unequaled success in controlling the wild tribes of Central and Northern Asia. (5) Each race is in possession of a vast territory, capable of an enormous increase ¦ 189 Expansion of population. Indeed, the remaining un occupied lands of the North Temperate Zone, which is the zone of power, are divided between these two races ; and in each case, as if by instinct, the movement of population is toward the Pacific — east ward through Siberia, and westward through Alaska, Canada, and "the States." The contrasts between these two great races are as numerous, as striking, and as significant as are their resemblances. We are here concerned, however, with only one, and that is radical. The Anglo-Saxon is the supreme representative of civil and religious liberty ; the Slav is the supreme representative of absolutism, both in state^ and church. Angln-Saxon mviliKatinn ia the one civilization in the history of the world based on the develnprnonf nf +'ha in dividual. Russian civilization depends (for its very existence on the suppression pf the individual. If the average Anglo- 190 An Anglo-Saxon Sea Saxon should sink to the level of the aver age Slav, Anglo-Saxon institutions would perish. If the average Slav should rise to the level of the average Anglo-Saxon, Rus sian institutions would perish. In fundamental principles, in spirit, in ideals, and in methods they are diametri cally opposed. They do not represent two different stages of development along the same lines. They spring from radi caUy different conceptions, they aim at radically different ends ; and the more fully they are developed, the more utter will be their unlikeness and the more inevitable their conflict. The stupendous struggle of the future will be not simply between two Titanic races, but between Eastern and Western civilizations. For the Russian (a unique type) is an Asiatic who by long contact with the West has been thoroughly vital ized, has absorbed Western learning, has 191 Expansion mastered Westem military science, and who now, without loosening his hold on Europe, is retuming to Asia, there to work out his destiny. Says William Dur ban, who has spent much time among the Russians and who has sympathetically studied their characteristics and their lit erature : " Russia does not covet India, but she does intend to appropriate, and im agines that Providence has appointed her* to possess, Persia, Turkey, Afghanistan,* Tibet, and China. This may sound like. a ridiculously large statement, but only those who are unfamiliar with Russian literature can deride it or question its truth. The whole Russian nation is deeply imbued with the dangerous notion that Heaven specially favors ' Holy Rus sia ' and speciaUy despises all the rest of the world." ^ Russia has a religious mission to control ' The Outlook, Nov^nber 4, 1899, p. 592. 193 An Anglo-Saxon Sea Asia; and the genius of the race and its geographical position unite to stimulate its purpose of eastward and southward expan sion. Russia can wait, but never vacil lates in her supreme purpose. That pur pose runs through the generations as a thread runs through a string of beads. Her advance on China is a new ice age — a slow, resistless, paralyzing movement from the north. Already has she gained Man-' churia, and now controls nearly one-haU of the Asiatic coast-line of the Pacific, the whole of which is her aim. Some years ago Emile de Laveleye wrote: "A hundred years hence, leaving China out of the question, there wiU Ibe two colossal powers in the world, beside which Germany, England, France, and Italy will be as pigmies — the United States and Russia." And these two colossal powers will face each other across the arena of the Pacific Which of the two will command ~ 193 Expansion the sea ? For as Sir Walter Raleigh said : " Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; and whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world and consequently the world itself." We have already seen (Chapter V.) that between European Powers and the United States the Pacific will be commerciaUy transferred to us by the Isthmian Canal. But Russia is an Asiatic Power, and to become increasingly such; and her aims are not primarily commercial but political. She is strengthening her navy, already the third strongest in the world and outrank ing our own, the primary object of which can hardly be to protect her over-sea com merce, for that is insignificant ; her foreign trade is chiefly across her European frontier. Is the Anglo-Saxon or the Slav to com mand the Pacific and therefore the world's future ? 194 An Anglo-Saxon Sea Look at the map. From Behring Strait down to the boundary of Corea in latitude 42°, the Slav controls the north-west coast of the Pacific. Exactly matching it, the north-east coast from Behring Strait down to the northern limit of California, lati tude 42°, is under Anglo-Saxon control, which also extends nine degrees and ten seconds further south to the lower limit of California. Strategically, Russia's growing influence in Corea and her possession of Port Arthur may well offset our com mand of the California coast. We see then how important in the scales are the Anglo-Saxon island possessions in the Pacific. Over Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Fiji, Hong-Kong, and parts of Bomeo and New Guinea floats the Union Jack, while the Philippines, the Hawaiian group, and some smaller islands are under the Stars and Stripes. The importance of our small 195 Expansion share in these possessions is greatly en hanced by their location. Consider Hawaii. Midway between Unalaska and the Society Islands, midway between Sitka and Samoa, midway be tween Port Townsend and the Fijis, mid way between San Francisco and the Caro lines, midway between Nicaragua and Hong-Kong, and on the route from South American ports to Japan, the central loca tion of these islands makes their commer cial importance evident. Vastly greater is their strategic value to the United States. Let that be expressed by Captain Mahan, the recognized authority of the world on naval warfare and strat egy. In 1893 he wrote: "Too much stress cannot be laid upon the immense dis advantage to us of any maritime enemy having a coaling station well within 2,500 miles of every point of our coast-line from Puget Sound to Mexico. Were there many 196 An Anglo-Saxon Sea others available, we might find it difficult to exclude from all. There is, however, but the one. Shut out from the Sandwich Islands as a coal-base, an enemy is thrown back for supplies of fuel to distances of 3,500 or 4,000 miles — or between 7,000 and 8,000 going and coming — an impedi ment to sustained maritime operations well- nigh prohibitive. It is rarely that so im portant a factor in the attack or defense of a coast-line — of a sea-frontier — is concen trated in a single position, and the circum stance renders it doubly imperative upon us to secure it, if we righteously can." * The commanding position of these islands is effectively shown by Hon. L. A. Thurs ton as follows: "In the whole Pacific Ocean, from the equator on the south to Alaska on the north, from the coast of China and Japan on the west to the • " The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future," p. 48. 197 Expansion American continent on the east, there is but one spot where a ton of coal, a pound of bread, or a gallon of water can be ob tained by a passing vessel, and that spot is Hawaii."The immensity of this area of the earth's surface is comprehended by but few. The distance from Hong-Kong through Hawaii to Panama is 9,580 miles. This distance is as far as from San Francisco eastward across the continent, across the Atlantic, across the Mediterranean, and across Turkey to the boundary of Persia. The ffi'st supply-station north of Hawaii is at Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, and the first similar station on the south is Tahiti, a French colony. The distance between Unalaska and Tahiti is 4,400 miles, — as far as from the south point of Greenland to the mouth of the Amazon River." Commodore Melville, chief engineer of 198 An Anglo-Saxon Sea our navy, well remarks : " It may safely be said that on our globe there are no islands whose strategic position, with regard to the area commanded, equals that of Hawaii." And as if to leave nothing to be desired, nature provided Hawaii with Pearl Har bor, of which Admiral Walker says : " It should not be forgotten that Pearl Harbor offers, strategically and otherwise, the finest site for a naval and coaling station to be found in the whole Pacific." Turn now to the Philippines. They lie at the gateway of China, and in the path way of Oriental commerce. Manila is only 628 miles from Hong-Kong, and is 812 miles nearer than Singapore. It is 400 miles nearer China than is Yokohama. It lies directly on the route between Hong- Kong and Australasia. "The chief dis tributing centers of China, Japan, Corea, Siam, Annam, and the East Indies are as near to Manila as Havana is to New York ; 199 Expansion and the distributing centers of British India and Australasia are nearer to Manila than to any other great emporium." When we consider that the imports of all these coun tries are chiefly made up of goods which we can furnish cheaper than any other country, we get a suggestion of the possible commercial future of Manila with Ameri can capital and energy to develop it. Our possession of the Philippines has enormously increased our national prestige in China and throughout the East. A mis sionary recently retumed from China tells me that when Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, thousands and tens of thousands of the most intelh- gent Chinese all over the empire exclaimed : " This means the salvation of China. This means that China is not to be partitioned. This means that America is to be our savior." If our duty to the Philippines (which 300 An Anglo-Saxon Sea will be considered in a later chapter) re- quired us to abandon them, that would of course be decisive with every right-minded American. But duty aside, and considered simply as a question of policy, it would be insane folly to throw away the vast advan tage which the possession of these islands places in our hand. As I see it, duty and policy unite in calling us to retain them. Perhaps a supposition wUl help us to a better appreciation of the political impor tance to us of this archipelago : Imagine some 2,000 , islands, great and small, rich with aU tropical resources, scattered up and down our Pacific coast, and from four hundred to fourteen hundred miles removed, with the most important of them aU not one quarter as distant from San Francisco as are the Sandwich Islands, a/iid imagvne them, all under the Russicm -flag. Would it mean anything to Russia and her future ? The possession of the Philippines means 301 Expansion even more to us. For Russia would occu py the supposed islands in the presence of a powerful civilization, while we occupy the Philippines in the presence of a civilization which is decrepit and totter ing. Unless prevented by Russia, England and America wiU give to China the bless ings of European civilization, the triumph of which represents the liberation of the individual, not only politically, but relig iously and intellectually. Bring the East thoroughly under the influence of the West, and it would be impregnated with a new life. Asia would gain political and relig ious regeneration ; while the world would gain a new literature, a new art, and a new member of the sisterhood of nations. If Russia gains control, Asia will remain Asiatic for centuries to come, China's vast resources will become the resources of the Slav, her millions his millions, with their 203 An Anglo-Saxon Sea power multiplied many fold by his military skill and" his genius for organization. I do not forget that Russia has once and again befriended the United States. But I more than suspect that her motive was hatred of England rather than love of free institutions. It is devoutly to be wished that our friendship might be maintained ; but two world powers, aggressive, expand ing, and representing civUizations whose fundamental principles are diametrically opposed, must inevitably clash, fulfilling the prophecy of Lord Palmerston, made sixty years ago, as to the final death-strug gle between absolutism and liberty, with the Slav on one side and the Anglo-Saxon on the other. Does it seem to any that the lands sur rounding this vast ocean are so far distant from each other as to make the possibiljity either of conflict or of co-operation too re mote for serious consideration ? Then re- 303 Expansion member that ever since time became the measure of distance, the Pacific has grad ually shrunk until now it is only one-half as large as the Mediterranean was in the days of classic Greece. For a 21 -knot ves sel can steam 10,000 miles, from Cape Horn to Yokohama — the longest diameter of the Pacific — in twenty days, which is one-half the time it took the old Greek merchant or pirate to sail 2,000 miles from the Pheni- cian coast to the Pillars of Hercules. In view, then, of the strategic position of the Philippines in the coming struggle, to abandon them because the doing of our duty there will involve financial burdens and grave responsibilities would be trea son to ourselves, to the Anglo-Saxon race, to humanity, and to Western civilization. Tum again to the map. There are six Anglo-Saxon families, aU of which are to be numerous and strong, — Great Britain, South Africa, the United States, Canada, 204 An Anglo-Saxon Sea Australia, and New Zealand. Four of the six are ranged around the Pacific, on the north-east and south-west, while on the north-west, the west, at the center, and scat tered over its broad surface at strategic points are many hundreds of islands under the British or American flag. Surely this New Mediterranean, which in the twentieth century is to be the center of the world's population and the seat of its power, is to be an Anglo-Saxon sea, provided only we place on it an adequate navy. The importance of naval power is being more fully recognized; and to the Anglo- Saxon a navy of the highest possible effi- ciency is an absolute necessity. The prog ress of military science has rendered former defenses obsolete. China's myriad-mile wall, had it encircled the entire empire, could not have kept out the Japanese. There is, however, a natural wall of defense which cannot be mined or breached, and 205 Expansion which never becomes antiquated. Such is the watery wall which for ages has protect ed Great Britain. The English Channel plus the English fleet have made her as safe as "The Titan of the West," "behind a thousand leagues of foam secure." ^ Now it is a significant fact that the sea stands guard over all six of the Anglo- Saxon families ; and this sea-wall exempts them from the necessity of keeping great standing armies, thus saving them from the vampire of militarism, which curses the great Continental Powers, each of which has an extended frontier across which an army might march. A transport loaded with soldiers is help less in a sea-fight. It must be protected by a war- vessel ; and if attacked by a stronger fighting-ship, both transport and convoy must surrender or be sent to the bottom. It follows, therefore, that a navy strong enough to cope with the navies of the 206 An Anglo-Saxon Sea world would protect Anglo-Saxondom from all the armies of the world. Although the United States ranks only fourth of the seven naval powers, the com bined navies of Great Britain and America are stronger than the remaining five taken together ; and in the interest not only of the English-speaking peoples, but of peace also, and of civilization, this first rank must never be lost. In this connection, it is worth remark ing that while armies have often proved dangerous to liberty, navies have never fallen under that suspicion. In all the world's history, it is said, no admiral has ever seized civil power. Navies may de fend a land ; they cannot conquer it. The vast standing army, which her thousands of miles of land-frontier compel Russia to keep, is perfectly in harmony with her spirit of absolutism, and will serve to strengthen and perpetuate that spirit. On 307 Expansion the other hand, the race which is the supreme representative of civil and relig ious liberty, and in whose hands is the keeping of the world's high hope of free dom, has no need to endanger its sacred trust by a great standing army. A force sufficient for police duty is aU that Britain and America will require. The Anglo- Saxon families are so placed in the world that they can defend themselves, command the Pacific, and accomplish their mission in behalf of civilization by means of sea power, which may be increased to any required degree of strength in perfect harmony with their free institutions. And has all this no providential mean ing? If God has any interest in human affairs, is it not in progress and in civU and religious liberty ? When we consider the part which the Pacific is to play in the world's future, how shall we account for the wholly exceptional relations which the 208 An Anglo-Saxon Sea Anglo-Saxons sustain to it? England had no prophet-statesman (greater than Peter the Great) who, centuries ago, with miracu lous prevision read the world's future, and, seeing its best hopes for liberty at stake in the far Pacific, planned a colonization scheme for the ages which should place that ocean under the control of the race which is the special guardian of liberty. As there are forces at work in human affairs which are mightier than human power, so there is an intelligence higher than human knowledge, which is guiding human destinies. The fact that Anglo- Saxons laid hold of what proved to be the best portions of the earth — lands which command the commerce, the population, and the power of the world's future, and lands which are defended from invasion by nature — was not due to the foresight of any man or of any number of men. 309 Expansion Prevision and provision began when the continents were made. Says Washington Irving, referring to Columbus : " He had been in pursuit of a chimera of a splendid imagination and penetrating judgment. If he was disappointed in his expectation of finding a strait through the Isthmus of Darien, it was because Nature herseK was disappointed. For she appears to have attempted to make one, but to have attempted in vain." An explanation of nature's " failure " may be found in the following remark of Commodore MelvUle : " It cannot be doubted that if nature had but cleft a waterway through the American Isthmus, the growth of the Pacific to the north-east and the south would have begun almost with the coming of Columbus." In that event, western North America and Australasia would not have waited for Anglo-Saxon settlement. Had nature done more or less at the Isthmus, the history of 210 An Anglo-Saxon Sea the Pacific would have been very different ly written. She prepared a gateway which provided for the needs of the New Medi terranean, but in the gate she set a time- lock which for centuries should silently resist the nations until America's hour should strike, and into her hand might safely be committed the key. But preparation for the twentieth century did not end vsdth the making of the Isthmus. Spain and Portugal once claimed by divine right to divide the American continent between them. France once owned a lordly empire on the Pacific. The double-headed eagle of Russia once floated over 18,000 miles of North Ameri can coast-line. Four times has Hawaii been under European flags — first the Rus sian, then the French, then the British, and again the French. For three hundred years Spain despoiled the Philippines ; and Aus tralia, the sixth great continent of the 311 Expansion world, was practically No Man's Land until the nineteenth century. How happens it that all these lands are found under Anglo-Saxon flags in the very generation when the Pacific becomes de cisive of the world's destinies ? Such facts are God's great alphabet with which he spells for man his providential purposes. For a hundred years now, blind men have been quarreling with our national destiny or with divine Providence. They declared that Jefferson violated the Constitution in the purchase of Louisiana; they opposed the purchase of Florida ; they were vehe ment in their opposition to the acquisition of Texas and California ; they called Alaska "Seward's folly"; they rejected Hawaii when offered as a gift, and would have had Dewey sail away from the Philippines, leaving them an apple of discord to the European Powers, or dooming them to anarch}'. 212 An Anglo-Saxon Sea But somehow, notwithstanding the lack of human foresight, notwithstanding human blindness and opposition, these many differ ent lands, belonging to many different nations, are found, in a great world crisis, in the hands of one great race, upon which they confer decisive power. If there is no God in such history, there is no God anywhere; for an "absentee God " is for all practical purposes no God at all. This race has been honored not for its own sake, but for the sake of the world. It has been made powerful, and rich, and free, and exalted — powerful, not to make subject, but to serve ; rich, not to make greater gains, but to know the greater blessedness; free, not simply to exult in freedom, but to make free ; exalted, not to look down, but to lift up. 313 CHAPTER VIII A New World Life When communication beyond the edge of the village was only semi-occasional, the village was the little world of its inhabit ants. It measured their habitual thinking; it circumscribed their activities ; it included their common interests; it engaged their common sympathies and prejudices. The village life was a whole, of which each villager was a conscious or unconscious part. With the advent of the railway, the tele graph, and the press, the narrow horizon was enlarged ; national happenings became the subject of daily thought and conversa tion, activities were extended, while in- 214 A New World Life terests and sympathies were broadened until national life became the whole of which men were a conscious part. When it required two or three months to cross the Atlantic, word from the Old World seemed to the fathers, as Washing ton said, like news from another planet. But the submarine cable and the triple- expansion marine engine have reduced the world to a neighborhood, and now we read at breakfast what happened in London that same morning, before we get the gossip of our own street. Thus our horizon has been enlarged to the measure of a great circle of the earth, and a world life is beginning to be the great whole of which we are becom ing a conscious part. It goes without saying that this world life is as yet very imperfect, but such a life fairly begun is another new and im portant condition which confronts the new century. 215 Expansion In calling this world life new, I do not forget that since early times men have dreamed of a world unity through a world empire, and have measurably realized their dreams by means of force. Under Rome the world had one master, but not one life. The unity which men instinctively felt was necessary to a nation or an empire they strove to secure through an enforced identity of custom, of religion, and of law. But such bonds are external, and, being im posed from without, are mechanical, not vital. There was a unity in the Roman world, but it was made, it did not grow. It was the same kind of unity which exists in a barrel, which when its hoops are re moved faUs apart. • We are beginning to see that society is something vital — a living organism. And this is true whether it be the social organ ization of a village, or of a nation, or of the world. In seeking the laws of social evo- 316 A New World Life lution, therefore, we must look for laws of life. Now life abhors uniformity ; in all the forests there are no two leaves precisely alike. Life loves harmonies and resem blances, but these imply differences. Uni formity means stagnation. If identity of law and language and custom and thought could be enforced throughout the wide world, it would be so far from a world life that it would not be even the first step toward it. If all the world thought alike — even though that thought were good and true — there could be no more progress in the world until a difference of opinion had been developed. ' ' God fulfills himself in many ways. Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." • Life produces variety ; and it can rise to higher forms only as it develops differences. An organism is impossible without differ entiation ; and the higher the organism the 217 Expansion greater is the number of organs, and the more widely do these organs differ in their functions. A world life, then, as it is time's last off spring, ought to be the noblest, and there fore the most complex, possible only when the greatest differentiation has taken place. We accordingly see how the beginnings of a true world life awaited the organization of a world industry and of a world commerce. both of which, like a living organism, de pend on differentiation and speciahzation. We are only beginning to appreciate that industry — the way in which people get their living — is the fundamental factor in civilization. Of course religion, and climate, and institutions, and great ideas, and heroes have all had marked influence on civiliza tion ; and each has had its advocate who made it the key of history, but no one of these can compare with industry in the constancy and universality of its operation, 218 A New World Life or in the magnitude of its effects. These different causes have had varying values in various stages of civilization, but there is one cause which is constant because there is one want which is absolutely universal, common to both sexes, to all ages, to all classes of society, to all nations, to all degrees of civilization, and to all centuries — and that is something to eat. This is the one great necessity which forced life to evolve into higher forms. As life rises in the scale, it has an increasing number of wants and of motives ; and the higher the type of man or of civilization, the greater will be the sway of the higher motives; but this one universal motive is never lost. Here is a necessity that is new every day in every life, and must always be reckoned with. Industry, the first aim of which is food, is gradually widened until it supplies or attempts to supply, directly or indirectly, 219 Expansion all the wants of life; hence the central and vital position which industry occu pies in every civilization, and the fact that an important modification of the former results in an important modification of the latter. Suffer two or three lUustra tions. When men live by the chase, they are savage. When they begin to get their living from domesticated animals, they take a long step upward. But the civil ization of pastoral peoples is primitive and only such as is possible to nomadic habits. When men begin agriculture, it attaches them to the soil, makes a fixed home, and revolutionizes pastoral civiliza tion. Again, the introduction of machinery revolutionizes industry, and therefore so ciety, producing as great changes in civil ization as does the passage from pastoral to agricultural pursuits. 220 A New World Life An individualistic industiy naturally resulted from muscular power, of which each man possessed his own. Work was done apart. The famUy was the indus trial world. It was the age of homespun. There was but little interchange. Com merce was confined chiefly to luxuries. The community was composed of a large number of units which were industrially independent of each other ; hence an indi vidualistic civihzation, in which the social organization was simple and of a compara tively low type. With the introduction of mechanical power all this was changed. Workmen of necessity gathered around the source of power ; the factory arose ; the organiza tion of industry and an ever-increasing division of labor followed. Occupations were differentiated and became interde pendent, precisely as the various members of the body are dependent on each other. 221 Expansion Exchange became imperative and com merce was enormously stimulated. Great industrial plants are now often devoted to a single industrial process, or to the production of a fraction of a com pleted mechanism, as, for instance, the making of bicycle-rims. Of course all such related industries have common inter ests. The failure of one cripples all. In fact all industries, so far as they have become organized, have become parts of one great whole and dependent on each other. The factory is dependent on the production, preparation, and transporta tion of the raw material, and again on the transportation and marketing of the fin ished product. A strike in one great in dustry results in a more or less general paralysis. Thus with the new industrial civihza tion there is developed a new national life, highly organized and highly sensitive, 223 A New World Life with new conditions, new needs, and new possibilities of good and evil. The British empire, as contrasted with the Roman, affords an excellent illustra tion of the new national life which has become possible with the new industrial civilization. The British empire, though extending vastly farther than Roman eagles ever flew, is knit together by bonds vastly stronger than were ever forged by Roman legions. Though that empire is scattered over the earth, there is oneness of life in it, which was manifested at the time of the Queen's Jubilee and again during the war with the Boers. British com merce is more powerful than British arms to hold that empire together. Such an empire would have been impossible in the age of homespun. The development of the differing resources of the various colo nies and their exchange have produced common interests ; and the different mem- 223 Expansion bers of the empire have become needful to each other. Had the Boers been a part of this great industrial organization, the late war would hardly have been possible. The Roman bond was imposed from without ; the British bond of commerce springs from mutual desire, renders mutual service, and is mutually profitable. It is internal rather than external, vital rather than mechanical ; and, like aU living things, it grows. Now this oneness of life which is well developed in the British empire is well be gun in the great world. The widest differ ences of climate, the greatest variety of natural resources, the marked variations of races, with their different needs, different adaptations, and different kinds of skiU — all constitute a basis for a world industry, a world commerce, and a world life, the beginnings of which are now quite obvious, and the perfection of which will insure 334 A New World Life universa peace and the highest possible measure of prosperity to every people. We have seen that organized life, like organized industry and commerce, requires variety; but there must be unity in variety. Glance now at some of the signs of the oneness of life that is being developed in the world. There has come to be a world public opinion, which is the natural outgrowth of the daily newspaper. Before the wide cir culation of the daily press only a few per sons thought of the same events at the same time. The news slowly made its way from mouth to ear and from land to land, and had long since ceased to occupy one part of the nation or of the world before it reached another part. It is a new thing under the sun for some hundreds of miUions of people to be thinking at the same time of the same thing — the assassination of a sovereign or the envoys of the Powers im- 225 Expansion periled in Peking. The news was once a single wave slowly moving across the sea; now it is the swell of a great tide. And when the same thought or feeling is com mon to vast numbers, there is a certain con tagion in it which intensifies effects. Thus there has come to be the possibility of a world impulse and of a world judgment which is new and is of constantly increas ing moment. This world public opinion is some thing with which governments hke to square themselves. When one nation wishes to despoil another, instead of resort ing to the frank method of the highway robber, once customary among nations, it must needs find some pretext, though it be no better than the murder of a missionary, which wUl make a show of punitive jus tice, thus recognizing, at least, the world's public opinion. An interesting illustration of the weight attached to such opinion is 226 A New World Life found in the Boers' struggle to hold out untU the presidential election in the United States, believing that a possible tum in our pohtical tide would affect their settlement vsdth Great Britain. There has grown up a system of inter national law, which, so far as it goes, fur nishes a common standard, chiefly ethical, to which aU civilized nations are held by the force of world public opinion. There are certain rules for the regulation of navigation which have the force of law aU over the world. There is a world Postal Union, the or ganization of which was a triumph over many obstacles which seemed for a while insurmountable. This Postal Union is at the same time an expression of world life and an efficient means of further cultivating that life. We are developing world sympathies. A great calamity occurs — an Indian famine, 227 Expansion an Armenian massacre, a Johnstown flood, a Chicago fire — and at once streams of bene faction, aggregating hundreds of thousands of dollars, flow to those in distress from many lands. There is a humanity common to modern times and peculiar to them, which shows consideration for man as man, and is therefore as broad as mankind. There is no better Ulustration of it than that found in the changed treatment of prisoners of war. Grotius reflects the pre vailing sentiment of his time : " At the de vastation of a province or the capture of a city, he thinks it right that children, women, old men, clergy, farmers, merchants, and other non-combatants should be spared. He allows that tradition and precedent are against him, but he claims to be speaking for the newer spirit. He is doubtful whether it is right for the victors to ravish the women of captured places. AU precedent, he says, establishes the right, but he praises 228 A New World Life those generals that refuse to exercise it. Speaking as a lawyer, bound by tradition, he has to admit the right of the victor to slay all prisoners taken in arms, but he thinks that if heathen they might be more wisely enslaved, and if Christian they ought to be only held to ransom."' This repre. sents the most advanced sentiment at the middle of the seventeenth century. Against the dark background of history, how shin ing was American treatment of Spanish prisoners in the late war ! Our govern ment, at its own expense, sent home across the sea a whole army. At Santiago, over a victory that electrified the world, pity tempered triumph, and the noble Philip exclaimed, "Don't cheer, boys; the poor fellows are dying." And when Cervera's squadron surrendered, every energy of the victors was devoted to rescuing the drown- ' Alexander Sutherland in The Nineteenth Century, April, 1899. 339 Expansion ing Spaniards. The officers were paroled ; and the men, destitute almost to nakedness, were provided for, and at length sent back to Spain, each with two new suits of clothes, while trained American nurses tenderly cared for the sick on the home ward voyage. Another evidence of a world life is the interdependence of the nations. It is no longer thought that a great nation must be altogether sufficient unto itself. Indeed, no people with a high civilization could be. The nations which are primarUy in dustrial and those which are chiefly agri cultural are as mutuaUy dependent as are city and country. We are told that Great Britain eats her entire wheat-crop in about thirteen weeks, and that if the United Kingdom were entirely cut off from the outside world, her population would starve to death in a few months. It is said that a few years ago, when our spring wheat- 230 A New World Life crop reached the Atlantic seaboard, the supply in Great Britain, together with all then afloat and bound for British ports, was sufficient for only three weeks. Europe never produces enough wheat to supply her own needs. Her peoples are fed by North and South America, Australia, and Asia. Some 2,000,000 farmers in the United States get their living by feeding nearly 40,000,000 Europeans every year. The price of a loaf of bread in London de pends on the prospects of the wheat-crop in this country, the Ai'gentine, India, and Russia. A single English town has on sale 800 articles of foreign food, while English ships carry many times 800 different kinds of manufactured goods to foreign lands. Thus does the interdependence of different nations create common interests and serve to develop a common life. Again, this world life is indicated by the existence of a world sensibility, such that 231 Expansion events or conditions on one side of the earth produce effects on the other. A finan cial crash occurs in the Argentine Repubhc, and loud and prolonged echoes are heard in London and New York, costing the latter city, it is said, hundreds of millions of dol lars. The closing of Indian mints to silver closes mines in Colorado. A majority in the American Congress vote "Aye," and several thousands of persons are thrown out of employment in a single Austrian city. Pilgrims at Mecca disregard sanitary laws, and cholera knocks at the gates of England and America. Russian peasants live in filth, and la grippe visits a curse on millions in every land. The train of events which followed Germany's exporting of beet-sugar affords an excellent illustration both of the oneness of the world's life and of the pohtical com plications, the constitutional and moral ques tions, which may attend an economic policy. 333 A New World Life Prussia fostered the beet-sugar industry by a policy which amounted to offering a bounty. The prosperity of the West Indies depended on the production of sugar-cane. The result of the German policy was the flooding of the British market with beet- sugar, and in five years cane-sugar fell one- half in value. So great distress resulted in the West Indies that the British gov ernment sent a commission to investigate their condition. The commission pointed out the effect of the German policy, which had reduced the islands from prosperity to misery. That policy threatened a further reduction of the industry. "The con sequences," the report continues, " are likely to be of a very serious character. The immediate result would be a great want of employment for the laboring classes, . . . the public revenue would fall off, and the governments . . . would be unable to meet the absolutely necessary public expendi- 233 Expansion ture." The chairman of the commission, Sir Henry Norman, said: "The planters would be ruined ; . . . the tradesmen, arti sans, and laboring classes wiU suffer priva tion, and probably become discontented and restless."' We know the results in Cuba. The economic revolution there made it impossible longer to endure the exactions of Spain, and political revolution foUowed. The United States became involved; the war liberated Cuba, and transferred Porto Rico and the PhUippines to our control. In this way a legislative act in Germany, touching economics, caused untold misery in the West Indies, cost many thousands of lives in Cuba, plunged Spain and the United States into war, lost to the former the last of her possessions in the New World, and made the latter an Asiatic Power. Thus modem civilization is forging a ' Quoted by Brooks Adams in McClure's Magazine, April, 1899. 334 A New World Life chain of cause and effect which is linking all lands together, and making isolation more and more impossible. The new world life makes the stranger my neighbor, and my neighbor my brother. ' ' Say not, ' It matters not to me, My brother's weal is liis behoof,' For in this wondrous human web. Your life is warp, his life is woof. " Woven together are the threads; And you and he are in one loom, For good or ill, for glad or sad, Your lives must share a common doom." Now the industrial and commercial changes which made a new world life both possible and inevitable wiU continue to promote that life more and more. The industrial revolution, involved in the transition from the age of homespun to the age of the factoiy — which transition may be said to have been completed in England and the United States, is just be ginning in Asia, and is in various stages of 235 Expansion progress in Continental Europe — wUl ulti mately embrace the world no doubt, with the probable exception of the tropics. Its effects, therefore, in the world in general may be anticipated by observing its effects in England and the United States. No where else is the industrial organization so complete and so extended, and nowhere else is the resulting commercial activity so great. The specializing of industry neces sitates exchange ; thus traffic is enormously stimulated by the factory system. There are moved in the United States forty times as much railroad freight per caput as in the remainder of the world. This fact sug gests how vastly interchange and interde pendence will increase as the industrial revolution extends. Moreover, there are now projected or in process of construction continental and intercontinental systems of raUway that are unequaled. The "Cape to Cairo" 336 A New World Life road, which represents splendid commer cial comprehension and an engineering skiU no less briUiant, will be only the main line of a system whose branches will cover Africa with a network of roads, England is also planning a line to run from Alexan dria around the Persian Gulf through India and across China to Shanghai. Ger man and French capital is now constructing important roads in Asia Minor and Syria, and Russia is seeking an outlet to the Per sian Gulf. The Siberian Railroad wiU be 5,819 miles from St. Petersburg to Port Arthur — about twice as far as from New York to San Francisco. This, like the great African road, wiU ultimately be the main line of a vast system. When this road, which spans two continents, is completed, it will be seventeen days from Paris to Yokohama — ^just half the time now re quired by way of the Suez Canal. These colossal lines, the great systems projected 237 Expansion in China, and those well begun in India, together with the opening of the Isthmian Canal and the laying of the proposed Pacific cables, will profoundly influence the commerce of the world, and have politi cal effects perhaps even farther-reaching. Thus the growth of the industrial and commercial conditions which have produced a world life will increasingly foster its de- development. It is here objected that the period of se vere international competition on which wS are now entering will hinder the develop ment of this world life. Competition means struggle for existence, which so far as we can see has been necessary to the evolution of the higher forms of life ; and this prin ciple will no doubt have the same value in the higher development of the world life that it has had in the evolution of national life and lower forms. It will weed out the unfit nations and will discipline and develop 238 A New World Life not the strongest, but rather the fittest ; for survival will depend more on social effi ciency than on mere strength. The world is apparently to be divided among a few great powers. This tendency is of a kind with the absorption of smaU manufactures by large, the consolidation of small railways into great systems, and the massing of cap ital in powerful combinations; and how ever much we may disapprove these ten dencies, they will doubtless ignore our disfavor and consummate themselves. Before there can be a highly organized national life there must be differentiation and co-ordination. This is the natural or der of development of world life as of aU other ; and we may reasonably suppose that the period of severe competition through which we must yet pass vrill effect the ne cessary specialization which must precede the final co-ordination. It cannot be doubt ed that when the world industry is com- 239 Expansion pletely organized there will be international co-operation instead of international com petition. This new world life, some of the signs and laws of which have been pointed out, constitutes a new condition confronting the new century, which must be recognized by nations as modifying both rights and duties. The closer contact of a higher social organ ization limits certain individual rights which many would call both natural and inahenable. A man has a right to liberty, but to only so much as he can exercise without infringing the rights and hberties* of others. In an individualistic civilization with a sparse population individuals had certain rights which in a social civilization have had to give way to the good of society. A famUy living alone on a prairie may with impunity dispose of their refuse in a man ner which in a city would outrage aU sani tary laws and imperil the health of the com- 240 A New World Life munity. In an isolated locality a man may build his house of whatever material he pleases. But if he moves to the city or the city comes to him, and he undertakes to build a wooden house where the common safety requires that houses be of stone or brick, his liberty must be restrained. He cannot be permitted to exercise a liberty which imperils the health or property of others. « ^ In hke manner, when every continent and almost every country was a separate world, peoples could live very much as they pleased, and other peoples, so long as there was no encroachment, had neither right nor duty to interfere. But all this is changed by the intimate contact and com mon interests of the new world life which now exists. The popular notion in this countiy that there can be no rightful govemment of a people without their consent was formed 241 Expansion when world conditions were radically dif ferent, and peoples could live separate lives. No people can now be permitted to live in such filth as generates disease and starts it on a crusade of death around the world. It so happens that the regions where disease most quickly originates under unsanitary conditions, and in the most hideous and fatal forms, are precisely the regions where civihzation is most backward, viz., the tropics. And diseases which originate in the tropics spread far into the temperate zone. The yellow fever, generated in Cuba, has repeatedly invaded the United States, and has ravaged as far north as the Great Lakes. If such conditions Avere aUowed to exist in the West Indies, when by the opening of the Isthmian Canal the Caribbean Sea has become a focus of the world's commerce, they would spread pestilence to all ports. The bubonic plague also, arising in the tropics, has extended many times through- 342 A New World Life out the civilized world. History tells us that in a.d. 543 it carried off 10,000 vic tims in Constantinople in a single day. Later in the century, 590, it prevailed at Rome, and spread thence throughout the Roman world. The Black Death of the fourteenth century is believed to have been the bubonic plague. It overran nearly the whole of Europe, and in some parts of the continent the mortahty was from two-thirds to three-fourths of the population, and was even greater in England. It recurred fre quently in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen turies in nearly all parts of Europe, and has appeared every century since. It inflicted great mortality in Persia in 1877, and broke out in Europe the foUowing year. The present epidemic of the plague ap peared in Hong-Kong and Tonkin in 1893. It spread to Manila, Hawaii, where it was necessary to burn ten blocks of buildings to check it, and to Australia. Notwithstanding 243 Expansion a most vigilant quarantine at various points on our Pacific coast, it entered San Fran cisco. This is the first time it has ever ap peared in the Western Hemisphere. It has also been reported from Buenos Ayres, Rio Janeiro, London, Glasgow, Oporto, Alexan dria, and Bombay, thus having made the circuit of the world. It is not probable that this plague wiU ever again be as fatal in civiUzed countries as it has often been in the past, because it can be controlled by modern science. A few centuries ago, when the most civilized peoples lived in besotted ignorance of sanitary laws, the perpetuity of the race, no doubt, depended on the isolation which then existed. If amid such unsanitary conditions there had been the close contact of to-day, contagious diseases would prob ably have swept the earth of its inhabitants. But many savage and partially civUized races to-day are as filthy as the civilized 344 A New World Life peoples of a few hundred years ago. Such races, then, must be controlled by en lightened nations both for their own sake and for the sake of the world. Again, the protection of property is a function of government which wiU no doubt be given a larger construction by reason of this new world life. The capital of the more wealthy and powerful nations has been invested in many of the remote parts of the earth. England has investments abroad amounting to $9,300,000,000, scattered through almost every land. Germany has $457,000,000 in South American investments. American capital, as we have seen, will flow abroad in great streams in the future, largely no doubt to South America. In this commercial age business interests are becoming so vast and so vital, so com plicated and so sensitive, that a serious dis turbance in a Latin-American state may 345 Expansion spread disaster throughout the world. Such conditions limit the Hberty of these so-called republics to amuse themselves with a political revolution every fine day. As local interests become world interests, we may expect the world Powers to assume responsibility for the world's order. 346 CHAPTER IX A New World Policy Admiral Dewey's guns at Manila did more than to sink the Spanish fleet; they battered down our Chinese wall of political isolation. Washington in his Farewell Address laid down a rule touching our foreign re lations, which was eminently wise for our national infancy, but which, by reason of our veneration for its author, has been glorified as a principle, perpetually appli cable, and accepted by three generations as the sum of political wisdom for our national manhood. Our long-continued misapplication of Washington's advice has created a temper 347 Expansion well expressed by the words, " Who cares for abroad ? " As if the experience of other nations could profit us nothing ;* as if we were quite superior to the natural laws which have controlled the world's history ; as if the wisdom of the past contained nothing for us ! This temper is indifferent to Old World opinion and responsible for many bad manners. It has created a feeling of iiresponsibility for the world's affairs which made it possible for us to stand by and pusillanimously watch the unspeakable Turk while, in the broad dayhght of nine teenth-century civilization, he butchered more Christians than suffered martyrdom during all of the " Ten Great Persecutions " under the Roman emperors. This national temper has so neglected American citizens abroad as to invite for them imposition. Americans have had to rely on the British flag for protection ; and instances are not lacking in which that flag 248 A New World Policy has been worth more to them than their own. At the time of the Armenian massacres American citizens suffered the loss of their property and were placed in peril of their lives by the Turkish soldiery, and yet in response to repeated demands for indemnity, made by our government, the Turk snaps his thumb and finger in our face. Why should an American mission ary be " a man without a country " ? A missionary from China recently said to me : "You will find that all American mis sionaries are in favor of expansion." Why should not the American flag com mand as much respect in the ends of the earth for those who claim its protection as the British flag, or any other ? This national temper, which, so far as any participation in the political life of the world is concerned, has made us a hermit nation, is thus characterized by Hon. 349 Expansion Richard Olney, ex-Secretary of State: "Does a foreign question or controversy present itself appealing however forcibly to our sympathies or sense of right — what happens the moment it is suggested that the United States should seriously partici pate in its settlement? A shiver runs through aU the ranks of capital lest the un- interi'upted course of money-makihg be in terfered with ; the cry of ' Jingo ! ' "comes up in various quarters ; advocates df peace at any price make themselves heard from innumerable pulpits and rostrums; while practical politicians invoke the doctrine of the Farewell Address as an absolute bar to all positive action. The upshotfis more or less explosions of sympathy or antipathy at public meetings, and, if the case is a very strong one, a more or less tardy tender by the government of its ' moral support.' " Mr. Olney adds : " Is that a creditable part 250 A New World Policy for a great nation to play in the affairs of the world ? " ' The advice of the Farewell Address was expressly based on " our detached and dis tant situation." When that advice was given, we were isolated from the remainder of the world, both geographically and economically ; and political isolation was a logical corollary. Now all this is radically changed. The city of Washington is nearer to European capitals to-day than they were to each other a hundred years ago ; and the nation which is the greatest producer and consumer in the world finds economic isolation doubly impossible. Of course political isolation was doomed to disappear with the geographic and eco nomic foundations on which it rested. Reduced to its simplest terms, Wash ington's advice amounts to this : " Let us mind our own business " — admirable ad- ' Atlantic Montldy, May, 1898, p. 587. 251 Expansion vice for that age, and equally good for this. Then our business was confined to this continent; now it is in the ends of the earth. By all means let us mind it. We may ransack all history in vain to find changes which can compare in magni tude or number with those which mark the nineteenth century. Had Adam lived to the present moment, he would have seen greater material progress during the past hundred years than during all his life preceding. There are new forces at work in the world. There are new conditions, new ideas, new social ideals, new necessi ties. In brief, there is a new civilization ; and with the possible exception of Japan, nowhere in the world have these changes been so vast as in the United States. In addition to the changes which have taken place during the nineteenth century, and largely as a result of them, we find the twentieth century confronted by certain 253 A New World Policy conditions quite new in the history of the world, which concern mankind in general and ourselves in particular, and which were discussed in the preceding chapters. Attention was called, in the first chap ter, to the astonishing development of en ergy and of wealth which have subdued the continent, and which to-day make us the most forceful and resourceful nation in the world. We have seen that, with ever- increasing wealth and energy, we shall have at home ever-decreasing opportunity to invest and apply them. Our young men and our capital will, therefore, in. creasingly go abroad, and be found wher ever undeveloped resources and sleepy, eighteenth-century methods create an op portunity. Thus Americans will increas ingly acquire individual and corporate rights and interests all over the world. We have seen (Chapter II.) that our new manufacturing supremacy gives every 353 Expansion promise of permanence. We have seen (Chapter III.) that our manufacturing inter ests must inevitably become relatively greater while our agricultural interests become relatively smaller; so that our national welfare wiU be increasingly de pendent on foreign markets; and it has been further shown that we are dependent on such markets not simply for industrial prosperity, but also for pohtical and social health. Attention has been caUed to the sure awakening of China (Chapter IV.), and to the profound significance of that awaken ing ; and it has been shown that the needs of that empire are complemental to our own ; hence the importance of keeping the door open between China and the United States. It has been shown (Chapter V.) that the new Isthmian Canal, by making a geo graphical change of the first magnitude, 354 A New World Policy wiU have a profound effect upon the world, and will confer on us the commer cial scepter of the Pacific. We have seen (Chapters VI. and VIL) that the Pacific is to become the center of the world's population, commerce, wealth, and power ; that it is to be also the arena where the two great races of the future will settle the question of free institutions or absolutism for all mankind. We have seen that we are entering on a new world hfe (Chapter VIIL), of which we are an organic part, and which creates new necessities and new obligations, which it will be impossible to evade. Amid these changed world conditions we could not maintain a policy of political isolation, if we would. This is a commer cial age, and commercial considerations are the mainspring of national policies. It is the supreme interests of nations, or what appear to be, which shape their politics 255 Expansion both at home and abroad ; and in this day industrial and commercial interests are su preme. Questions of finance, of tariff, of expansion, of colonial policy, of the " open door" dominate politics, national and in ternational, because they profoundly affect industry and commerce. The Far Eastern question, which constitutes a war-cloud on the world's horizon considerably larger than a man's hand, is an industrial and commercial question. The vast continen tal and intercontinental railway systems which are being created Ulustrate the im possibility of separating the poUtical and commercial interests of nations. Great commercial enterprises like the Suez and Isthmian Canals cannot be divested of their political importance. Britain now has an Indian empire because she once had an East Indian Trading Company. England rules Egypt because English capital is so largely invested there. It is idle to sup- 256 A New World Policy pose that we can be a part, and a princi pal part, of the organized commercial and industrial life of the world and yet main tain a policy of political isolation. We might as well attempt to divorce cause and effect. Political questions are as in separable from industrial and commercial interests in the great world life of which we are so large a part, as they are in national life. " But," it is asked, " are there not serious and weighty objections to entering into world politics?" Certainly. There are serious and weighty objections to growing old, but growing old is inevitable, unless, indeed, we die young. Some might sug gest serious and weighty objections to dy. ing at any age, and yet death is inevitable. Objections, however weighty, when urged against the inevitable, do not count. It is quite too late to ask whether we wUl expand. We are already expanded. 257 Expansion American troops in China, marching shoul der to shoulder with those of the Great Powers, and doing their full share to re buke barbarism and restore order, not to mention the fact that the American fl^g now floats over Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, make it sufficiently obvious that we have already crossed the Rubicon which bounded our insularity. There are now three possible courses open to us. We may drift out into the sea of world politics with no chart at all, hug ging the delusion that we are still safely anchored in the bay of political isolation ; or we may sail out recklessly with a false chart; or we may sail out courageously with a true chart. Let us glance at each : 1. It is hardly worth while to ask whether it is wise to drift. The question answers itself, for things that drift usually have destruction for their destination. There are those who believe it to be 358 A New World Policy both possible and desirable to continue, or to resume, our traditional policy of isola tion. But if our recent acquisitions had never been made, if the Spanish- American war had never been waged, expansion would still have been the natural and in evitable result of the causes discussed in the preceding chapters. Should the nation, refusing to recognize the radical changes which have taken place during the nine teenth century, and ignoring the new con ditions which confront the twentieth, imagine it could still pursue the policy of the past, that would be to drift uncon sciously out into the open sea of world politics without chart or compass. But we may confidently hope that the nation, having left behind its childhood, has acquired some of the wisdom of manhood. And if we have not yet as a nation arrived at well-reasoned convictions touching ex pansion, we have at least shown the instinct 259 Expansion of development, and as Professor Seeiey says: "In a truly living institution the in stinct of development is wiser than the utterances of the wisest individual man." There are many among us who share neither this instinct nor these convictions who command our entire respect. Men are worthy of all admiration who can stand against popular clamor, who prefer a good conscience to glory, either personal or na tional ; men who, when they believe the nation is entering on a mistaken and dan gerous course, cry out and spend themselves to spread the alarm. Such, I believe, are the anti-expansionists, who have become such, not at the behest of party leaders, but as independent thinkers. These men are not one whit too conscientious, nor one iota too unselfish (that were impossible). But they have, I believe, formed their judg ments without taking into consideration the great world facts which have been 360 A New World Policy pointed out in the preceding chapters, which cannot be gainsaid, and which are utterly destructive of their conclusion that it is possible for this nation to continue its traditional policy of political isolation. The new departure is already made. It is inevitable that we enter into the politics of the world. It remains only to ask. How? 2. It is quite possible to sail into this, to us, unknown sea recklessly and with a false chart. Should we adopt the ambitious aims and unscrupulous methods which have been traditional among the great nations of the earth, we should probably justify the fears and fulfill the predictions of the anti-expansionists. MachiaveUi held that without the state there could be no civilization, and without civilization there could be no good of any sort. Therefore, the state, as the highest 261 Expansion good, was to be preserved at aU costs and by all necessary means, good and bad. A ruler " must have a mind ready to shift as the winds and eddies of fortune bid ; not to depart from good if he can help him self, but to know how to do evU if he must." ^ Machiavelli, whose name has be come the synonym of duphcity and of political cunning, was simply the frankest and ablest exponent of the pohtical phi losophy aud ethics which have obtained among rulers for centuries, and stiU obtain in many quarters. His disciples, as frankly unscrupulous as was their master, tell us that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount have nothiag to do with politics, either national or international. As if the conscience of the private citizen must be supreme though it lead him to the stake, while that of the state official must often 1 " The Prince," Chap. XVIIL 262 A New World Policy be subordinated to expediency ; as if a Christian statesman must needs be a Dr. JekyU and Mr. Hyde ; as if principles might bind men individually and yet not collectively ; as if God might be the Ruler of nations, while yet nations are independ ent of His law ; as if nations might be and must be supremely selfish, while indi viduals are bound to be altruistic ! If men holding such political philoso phy and ethics were placed in charge of the ship of state, we should indeed sail out into a stormy sea with a false chart and with every prospect of disaster. But such men do not represent the American people, and hence are not likely to be ele vated to positions where they can do any mischief. 3. The remaining alternative is to un dertake the voyage before us with a true chart, which we may do with all good courage. Or, to drop our metaphor, the 263 Expansion only wise course for us is frankly to recog nize the changed conditions of the world and intelligently to adapt to them a new world policy, the aim of which shall be not national aggrandizement, but the noblest ministry to the new world life. In the realization of this aim we must be guided by AN ENLIGHTENED WORLD COBTSCIENCE. With a new world life, the advent of which was shown in the preceding chap ter, is coming a new apprehension of that life. Men have long held, at least theo retically, that God made all nations of one blood, but in recent years there has come to be a conception of the oneness of man kind, so new that there must needs be coined a new word to express it ; and now we talk of the solidarity of the race. The recognition of this fact is the begin ning of a new world consciousness. 364 A New World Policy Not until we come to self-conscious man, as we rise in the scale of being, do we find a conscience. Consciousness and conscience are closely related, and each implies the other. When, therefore, we arrive at a world consciousness, then a world conscience becomes both possible and necessary. When we become con scious that our interests, sympathies, and opportunities have become as Avide as the world, our conscience tells us that our duties have been expanded in like meas ure. Paul says : " As we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men," making obligation commensurate with opportunity. As the individual life, organized in ever- wider relations, is the basis of the com munity life, of the national life, and of the world life, and as individual opinion is the basis of public opinion, which by reason of extending communication becomes national 265 Expansion and at length world-wide, so the individual conscience is the germ which, with the development of organization and of com munication, grows into the national, and ultimately into the world, conscience. The conscience of our early ancestors was rudimentary — as narrow as their life. Within a circle of common interests, in cluding only blood-relations, there were rights and duties ; but outside that circle there were neither, and deceit, theft, and violence incurred no guilt; indeed, when practiced on enemies, they became positive virtues. Each tribe might attack any foreign community simply for plunder; and might slaughter their captives or re duce them to slavery at option. When Ulysses, in his wanderings, came to a strange city he sacked it, not because he had any quarrel with its people, but simply because they were strangers. This circle which once confined moral 266 A New World Policy obligation to the family and then to the tribe was gradually enlarged to include the nation. But between different nations there was for ages little evidence of any sense of moral obligation. The only in ternational law was that of might. "... The good old rule Sufficeth them — the simple plan That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can.'' In general, statecraft was craft indeed — the " crooked wisdom " of unscrupulous rulers. Down to the nineteenth century probably the question was rarely raised whether a specific war between different nations was just. It is only a few gen erations since private citizens preyed on the commerce of a friendly state with entire impunity, committing depredations which now would condemn them to hang at the yard-arm. Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh did not scruple to rob 267 Expansion and kill Spaniards when England and Spain were at peace. To have dealt thus with Englishmen would have been the highest of crimes : thus to cripple, in some measure, a people who had been at war with their own and might be again was close kin to the virtues. Governments have been supposed to have no ends above the weU-being of the state. There was no greater nor higher life than that of the nation, and, therefore, no worthier end; and to this end the good of other nations has been promptly sacri ficed when " necessary " or practicable ; hence national, instead of universal, ethics, and a national, instead of a world, con science. But the same sort of conditions now exists for the development of a world con science which once produced the national, and earlier the tribal, conscience. Com munication, common interests and oppor- 268 A New World Policy tunities, and, therefore, common obliga tions, which were once confined to the narrow circle of blood-relatives, and were gradually expanded to include the nation, have now been extended to embrace the world, with the natural and inevitable result that a new world conscience is being developed, which is to govern the new world life. Jane Addams has wisely said : " We may make a mistake in poli tics as well as in morals by forgetting that new conditions are ever demanding the evolution of a new morality, along old lines but in larger measure. Unless the present situation extends our nationalism into internationalism, unless it has thrust forward our patriotism into humanitarian- ism, we cannot meet it." This world hfe is something greater than national life, and world good, therefore, is something higher than na tional good, and must take precedence of 269 Expansion it if they conflict. Local, and even na tional, interests must be sacrificed, if need be, to universal interests. Or rather, world interests will prove to be the best criterion by which to judge of national interests, and it will ultimately be seen that he serves his country best who serves the world best, because the weU-being of the member is found to depend on the health or well-being of the life of which it is a part. Of course this world conscience is as yet feeble, because the world life is as yet in its infancy. But this world life, as we have seen, is real, and its further develop ment cannot be reasonably doubted. In creasing communication and commerce will certainly render relations between the nations more intimate and complex, and as these relations become closer, friction will necessarily increase unless they are right relations. Thus a world life necessitates 270 A New World Policy a world conscience which, as far as pos sible, shall hold the nations to an ethical standard common to the world. Of course a Christian nation can adopt for its own standard nothing less than Christian ethics. A government cannot justly be called Christian unless it is con trolled by Christian principles. " The state ought to be," as Milton said, " but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man." It goes without saying that no state has as yet realized Milton's ideal, but has not the time come to adopt and confess that ideal ? And is there not precisely here a sacred obligation and a noble opportunity for our nation ? God winnowed Europe for the seeds of civU and religious liberty with which to sow America, and kept this soil virgin until that seed could be developed, se lected, and transported, that the new ex- 371 Expansion periment in self-government might be tried under the most favorable conditions ; and the success of democracy here has compelled the princes of Europe to reckon with the peoples of Europe. Again has Providence prepared the world for an upward step, and for a new experiment to be tried under the most favorable conditions. The time has come for a new political philosophy and ethics which will meet the new world conditions and satisfy the claims of the new world life. On entering into the politics of the world it will be practicable for this nation to set up a new standard of national obli gation that will be consonant with the individual conscience, and to adopt politi cal ethics which will not outrage Christian ethics. We are not called to take this step as a weakling, compelled to follow the lead of stronger nations in adopting the selfish 272 A New World Policy and therefore immoral standards which have been consecrated by precedent and hallowed by time. That call comes to us in the recognized might of our manhood. Conscious of our strength, we may bind ourselves with the law of right and jus tice, aye, and of benevolence too, with out being charged with weakness or fear. Unbound by habit and untrammeled by precedent in world politics, we may set for ourselves a new standard of national obligation which shall recognize the new world life, of which national life is a part, and which the nation is bound to serve with a purity of purpose for which it will be held answerable at the bar of the world conscience. Let this nation prove the practicability of righteousness in international affairs, let it demonstrate that the recognition of world interests as supreme is the farthest- sighted wisdom, the highest statesman- 373 Expansion ship, the purest patriotism, and other nations will at length be compelled to follow our example and to accept the same political ethics. Of course this will cost effort, perplex ity, sacrifice; it will cost a good deal of treasure and some blood ; but most things of value do cost, and duty is no exception. We know what to think of the citizen who as a member of society shares its benefits and shirks its duties ; who says by his acts, "I will exchange courtesies with my neighbors ; I will trade with the public ; I will enjoy the security of a well- ordered society, but I will have nothing to do with politics ; it's dirty, besides I can't afford to take the time from my business ; I will accept no responsibility for public order; and I shall evade the payment of taxes so far as possible." Now the United States is a member of the society of na tions. We exchange courtesies with other 374 A New World Policy nations, we send to them our official repre sentatives and receive theirs ; in the world's commerce we buy and sell and get gain; we reap our full share of benefit from the world's good order, but we have been willing that other people should pay for it. We have left other nations to police the world, while we rub our hands in holy glee that they have never been fouled in the dirty politics of the world ; meanwhile we attend strictly to business, and make all the money possible out of the peace for which other nations pay. Why is it any less contemptible for na tions than for individuals to shirk obliga tions, and try to get the good things of life without paying for them ? ARMIES AS WORLD POLICE. Adopting a world policy involves a world police and the acceptance of our proper share of the cost. This means an 375 Expansion adequate standing army, which need not be large, as we have aheady seen, and a powerful navy- All this implies the possible use of force, or, in other words, war; and many excellent people find it difficult to recon cile war with an enlightened world con science, by which it is agreed our new world policy should be guided. Disciples of Count Tolstoi and philo sophical anarchists hold that force should never be used for moral ends. They do not believe that a loving parent can wisely use force to correct or restrain a wayward child. They would not have the police employ force to suppress a riot or to pre vent robbeiy and bloodshed. They would condemn the forcible suppression of the Boxers even though the only alternative were the spread of violence and anarchy throughout the Chinese Empire, with all the unspeakable horrors which that implies. 376 A New World Policy One cannot argue with those who are prepared to make such sacriflces of com mon sense to a theory. A correct logical process draws a false conclusion, if a premise be false ; and an educated man who believes that his premises are correct wUl stick to his conclusion, however ab surd it may be, because he is sure of his logic ; hence the infinite sacrifices of reason to reasoning. But it is God's mercy to the multitude, who have never learned logic, that they are saved from such blun ders by their common sense. A conclu sion, however buttressed it may be by logic, which is not workable in the com mon scheme of life, the people reject ; and this is the salvation of democracy. Such doctrine touching aU use of force is as much a travesty of Christianity as it is of reason. The use of force may be sel fish or benevolent; and it is the former which is condemned alike by an enlight- 277 Expansion ened conscience and by Christian teaching. The use of force is very apt to be seMsh, and is, therefore, very apt to be wrong; but it is not necessarily selfish ; and many instances might be given in which the use of force is not only not selfish, but is evi dently benevolent; as when one at the risk of his life forcibly restrains from com. mitting murder a man who is crazy drunk. Such use of force is in strictest accord with the Golden Ride : it is merciful, and it is mercy "twice bless'd"; it blesses both the would - be murderer and his victim. Doubtless benevolent force should be employed only as a last resort. There must be forbearance and persistent effort to instruct, but there are emergencies in which force is the only remedy. Sanitary measures, absolutely necessaiy to avert a pestilence or to stay a plague, may run counter to popular superstition or to rehg- 378 A New World Policy ious prejudice, as in India. In such cases, where prompt action alone can avert a great calamity, patient effort to persuade would be weakness, and failure to use force would be criminal. It is said, " What a saving in blood and treasure if, instead of sending soldiers to Cuba, we had spent a few millions in sending missionaries and teachers ! " But whUe the missionaries were trying to hu manize the Spaniards, the reconcentrados would have perished, and the teachers would have found themselves without an occupation. Here was a situation which demanded prompt action, and the only action to which Spain would yield was forcible action. The taking of her colo nial possessions from Spain was a case of moral surgery requiring force, as painful and as benevolent as amputation. Only a few far-gone theorists would deny that there are emergencies, like riot 379 Expansion or conflagration, when the only argument which municipal authority can use is the policeman's club. Many find it easy to approve of force on the part of the municipality who are unable to justify force on the part of the nation. To such the pohceman's stick is the symbol of good order, while the sword is the symbol of violence and rapine. This is due en tirely to association. The obvious object of the police force is to preserve order, while history associates armies with con quest and plunder. But as the world is graduaUy being civilized and civilization is graduaUy being Christianized, armies are finding new occupations. As The Outlook says : ^ "The army among Anglo-Saxon peoples is no longer a mere instrument of de struction. It is a great reconstructive organization. It is promoting law, order, ' July 29, 1899, p. 699. 280 A New World Policy civilization, and is fighting famine and pestilence in India. It is lightening taxes, buildhig railroads, opening markets, lay ing the foundations of justice and liberty, in Egypt. It is reorganizing society on a basis of physical health, fairly paid indus try, honest administration, popular rights, and public education, in Cuba." In like manner, war is gradually chang ing its character. It once involved lust of conquest, hatred, revenge, the slavery or the slaughter of the vanquished, and the violation of virtue. But no one of these belongs essentiaUy and of necessity to war. They are accidents, of which one and another have been already dropped with the progress of civilization. Selfish ness, hatred, and revenge are no more necessary to the soldier who is engaged in preserving the world's order than to the policeman who is quelling a riot, or to a parent who is correcting a child. 281 Expansion The intimate relations of city life make it the duty of the authorities to resort to force under certain circumstances in order to protect hfe, health, and property. The new civilization is reducing the world to a community with one life, and laying like duties upon World Powers ; and as it is reasonable and right for the police to resort to violence in order to suppress violence, so it may be reasonable and right for a nation, in discharging its police duty to the world, to resort to war in order to put an end to war. Such a use of force may be entirely benevolent and entirely approved by an enlightened conscience. The late conflict with Spain affords an instance of a war in behalf of humanity. The increase of army and navy seems to many to be a step backward ; but it is no less a necessity because it is to be re gretted. Christian confidence that war, with all its horrors, shall yet cease, and 282 A New World Policy forever, will not be disappointed ; for Christianity will gradually remove the causes of war, and the development of the world life will ultimately make war im possible. We may cherish our hope of arbitration for the world ; but while we never forget our ideals and never cease to struggle toward them, we must never forget actualities and that we are com pelled to deal with them. We dare to believe that human nature is yet to be come unselfish and pacific ; we dare not forget that at present it is neither. It is with twentieth-century human nature that we shall have to deal in the twentieth century, and not with the regenerated human nature, which will be when the kingdom of God is fully come in the earth ; and human nature as it is requires (and wUl require for a long time to come) more or less of force in its government. Law is one of the fundamental facts of 283 Expansion the universe. Without it there can be no order, no society, no civilization, no good of any sort whatever ; and only those may be free from the law of another who are capable of being a law unto themselves ; hence the necessity of force in the family, the community, the state, the world, untU S(3^-government is universal, and then free dom will be universal. At this point we must distinguish between FREEDOM AND INDEPEWDElfCE. To be independent is to be exempt from reliance on others and from the rule of others. To be free is not to be exempt from law, but from arbitrary or despotic law. It is, as Webster says, to be "sub ject only to fixed laws, regularly adminis tered." There can be no existence without law ; and the higher the form of existence, the larger the number of laws to which it 284 A New World Policy owes obedience. These laws can never be evaded. When violated they are not escaped, their penalties are inflicted. The only possible way, therefore, to be free is to be free under lavF ; that is, by being in sympathy with the laws of one's nature. All animate nature is free, not because it is out from under law, but because it has no desire to transgress the laws which limit and control it. But man, because he is endowed with free will, is capable of transgressing. Indeed, he has to learn to obey ; he, therefore, has to learn to be free. Legally or technically one may be "born free "; but strictly speaking, freedom, like learning, must be acquired ; it exists only where it has been achieved ; it is a duty rather than a right. Independence is a matter of relation. ship; freedom is a matter of character. Men become free only so far as they learn self-government; and they should be in- 285 Expansion dependent only so far as they have be come free. Giving to a tribe independ ence no more confers upon it freedom than letting an anarchist out of jail con fers on him a love of law. To those who have not become a law unto themselves, independence brings not liberty with the blessings of order, but license with the curse of confusion. Inde pendence without freedom is anarchy. A savage in the midst of civilization finds himself hampered by a thousand re strictions, and chafes like a newly caged lion. But the civilized man does not find his freedom of action abridged, because he is in sympathy with these restrictions ; they are his protection. Just in propor tion, then, as men become civilized do they lose independence and acquire free dom. The higher the social organization the greater is the number of relation ships and the greater the interdepend- 386 A New World Policy ence, and of course the less the independ ence. The progress of civilization involves the increase of organization, industrial, social, and political, and, therefore, necessitates an ever-decreasing independence, while it makes possible an ever-increasing freedom. We are now prepared to consider OUR RELATIONS TO THE PHILIPPINES. Our policy should be determined not by national ambition, nor by commercial con siderations, but by our duty to the world in general and to the Filipinos in particu lar. By discharging these obligations we shall best fulfill our duty to ourselves. The subject bristles with interrogation- points. Have we acquired a legal title to the Philippines ? May we constitution ally hold them? Does the constitution extend over all the possessions of the United States ? Can we justly or consist- 387 Expansion ently govern without the consent of the governed ? On these and other like ques tions, good and conscientious and intelli gent and patriotic citizens differ. A list of worthy names may be cited on each side with a resulting equation ; and in questions of opinion an equation may be solved by cancellation. To spend our time saying, "It was" and " It wasn't," " It is " and " It isn't," is as indecisive and idle as the age-long dis pute of the katydids. When the whole question is raised from the plane of opin ion to that of fact, and we look at it in the light of the great world conditions which have been pointed out and which no one can deny, doubt is instantly resolved, and the path of duty is made reasonably clear to every mind whose judgment is not darkened by its own prepossessions. As a part of the great world life, these people cannot be permitted a lawless in- 288 A New World Policy dependence. If they are capable of being a law unto themselves, then neither the United States nor any other Power should extend authority over them. If they are incapable of self-government, then to give them independence would wrong the world in general and themselves in partic ular. The practical question then nar rows down to this : Are the Filipinos capa ble of self-government ? Henry Clay said : " I contend that it is to arraign the disposition of Providence Himself to suppose that He has created beings incapable of governing themselves." But Clay's conception was formed when the old carpenter theory of the universe obtained, before modern science had shown that races develop in the course of centuries as individuals do in years, and that an undeveloped race, which is incapa ble of self-government, is no more of a reflection on the Almighty than is an un- 389 Expansion developed child who is incapable of self- government. The opinions of men who in this enlightened day believe that the Filipinos are capable of self-government because everybody is, are not worth con sidering. This is a question of fact to be settled by weight of testimony. I know of no witness, who has had per sonal observation of the Filipinos, who declares them to be capable of self-govern ment. Admiral Dewey has said he be lieved them to be more capable of it than the Cubans. But this proves nothing; the Cubans have yet to demonstrate their capacity for government. Besides, Admi ral Dewey, as a member of the Phihppine Commission, signed the report which states that at present the basis of self- government does not exist among the Fili pinos, and that if America should with draw, " the government of the Philippines would speedily lapse into anarchy." The 290 A New World Policy report continues : " Thus the welfare of the Filipinos coincides with the dictates of national honor in forbidding our aban donment of the archipelago. We cannot from any point of view escape the respon sibility of the govemment which our sov ereignty entails, and the Commission is strongly persuaded that the performance of our national duty will prove the great est blessing to the people of the Philip pine Islands." In addition to Admiral Dewey this report was signed by Colonel Charles Denby, who, as minister of the United States to China during several administra tions, became familiar with Oriental char acter; by President Schurman of Cornell University, who at the time of his ap pointment to the Commission was opposed to our taking the Philippines ; by General Otis, and by Professor Worcester, who has spent over three and a half years in 391 Expansion the study of the islands and their people, and who is recognized as one of the highest authorities on all questions relating to them. He says the people are "utterly unfit for self-government." Bishop Potter, who acknowledges that his visit to the islands considerably changed his views, says : " It is nonsense to talk of the native Filipinos having the ability to organize a govemment of their own," Such testimony from such sources would seem to be decisive to every un biased mind. And if the FUipinos are incapable of governing themselves, some one else must govern them. On whom is that duty more incumbent than on our selves ? It is the Tagalogs who have been in arms against the authority of the United States. They are civilized and many of them are liberally educated. They are often spoken of as if they were the Fili- 292 A New World Policy pinos; but they constitute only one-fifth of the population. The other four-fifths are composed of various tribes speaking different languages, and representing dif ferent degrees of civilization down to simple savagery. These four-fltfths have been either friendly to the United States or neutral. Do we owe nothing to them? The report of the Commission states that the govemment, so-called, which the Tagalogs organized " served only for plundering the people under the pretext of levying ' war contributions,' while many of the insurgent officials were rapidly accumulating wealth. The administration of justice was paralyzed and crime of all sorts was rampant. Might was the only law. Never in the worst days of Spanish misrule had the people been so overtaxed or so badly governed. In many prov inces there was absolute anarchy, and from all sides came petitions for protection and 293 Expansion help." Do we owe no protection and help to these four-fifths against the one-fifth ? One other question I would like to ask the anti-expansionists. Will they kindly explain why it is that Americans, with the traditions and inheritance of Anglo- Saxons and with the experience of free men, are incapable of governing one-tenth of their number of Fihpinos, and cannot even attempt it without sacrificing the republic and losing their own liberties, while a tribe of Malays, who have neither the inheritance nor the experience of free men, can create a republic and successfully govern not only themselves but also four times their number of undisciplined tribes men? Some anti - expansionists accuse the nation of waging an unrighteous war of conquest, on the ground that the Filipinos are capable of self-government, whUe others are equally severe in t^ir condem- 294 A New World Policy nation of the policy of annexation, on the ground that the Filipinos are incapable of self-government and can never establish a political organization worthy to enter into the sisterhood of states. Let the two classes of objections neutralize each other. If it has been made reasonably clear that it is our duty to establish and main tain order in the Philippines, it remains only to add a word as to the principles on which government should be administered. It should in every particular aim at the well-being of the Filipinos. We must accept this new responsibility as a trust for civilization. We want no tribute-' bearing colonies. The colonial history of Spain, Holland, and England contains valuable lessons by which we must profit. Their experience demonstrates the folly of selfishness— the more selfish the policy, the more complete its failure. If, with 295 Expansion the warning of their experience, we repeat their blunders, we shaU be much more culpable than they. Our own brief experience in Cuba already affords a warning and a shining example. Officials who went down there " on the make " required but a few months to ruin themselves and to disgrace the nation they represented ; while the dis interested labors of General Wood and Mr. Alexis Everett Frye have rendered splendid service to the Cubans and have reflected great honor upon themselves and their country. There is one evil which has already reached sufficient proportions to demand especial notice, and that is the drink traf fic with our dependencies. Asiatic and African races of arrested development are alike innocent of many Occidental vices and undisciplined to resist them. Civ ilized races have a moral fiber which en- 296 A New World Policy ables their better members to withstand the vices of civilization, to which undevel oped races fall easy victims; and this is especially true of drunkenness. If these undeveloped races are subject to the limitations of childhood, we may also claim for them the rights of child hood; and certainly all are agreed that ; liquor should not be sold to children. By the very act of assuming a protectorate over these races the European governments declare them to be wards, incapable of managing their own affairs. These gov ernments are, therefore, clearly bound to afford them the protection which is thrown around minors. And yet civUized and " Christianized " nations have inflicted on Africa a rum traffic which is debauching whole races, plunging them into all the horrors of savage warfare, and pouring vitriol into the " open sore of the world," so that Dean Farrar declares that this 297 Expansion traffic "is becoming to Africa a deadher evil than the slave-trade." We have easily disclaimed all responsi bility for this inhuman cruelty because we have no authority in Africa. But this ex cuse will not suffice in the case of our new possessions. We are altogether responsible for whatever ravages imported drink may make among the natives of our dependen cies. We shall be held responsible by the world conscience, and we must hold our selves responsible. Let us not stultify ourselves by extend ing our authority over these peoples on the ground that they are "big children who must be treated like little ones," and at the same time teach these children the use of intoxicating liquors. Let us not be so thrice idiotic as to undertake to establish and preserve order among these tribes, and to teach them self-control, while we send to them shiploads of barreled deviltry. 298 A New World Policy Moreover, it is weU to remember that while responsibility for our own posses sions cannot be evaded, it is not confined to them. The enlightened nations should unite to end the African rum-traffic as they did to stop the African slave-trade. And it is to be hoped that the day is not far dis tant when Great Britain and the United States wUl join hands in defence of justice and liberty the world over. " He's true to God who's true to man ; wherever wrong is done To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-behold ing sun, That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all the race.'' If we love justice for ourselves, but not for others, it is ourselves we love, not just ice. If we love liberty for ourselves, and not for all the world, we love it as a selfish luxury, not as a principle. 299 Expansion It is heathenish to measure obUgation by proximity or by blood-relationship. Christ ian ethics declares that whoever is found wounded on the Jericho road is our neigh bor, and our neighbor is to be loved not only as a brother, but as ourselves. Moral obligation cannot be computed from a gen ealogical chart, nor measured with a yard stick. Duty does not, hke gravitation, vary inversely as the square of the dis tance. AU this does not mean that the Anglo- Saxon race should become a Don Quixote, riding atilt at every windmUl on the world's horizon, "but it does mean the con sciousness in ourselves and the declaration to others that our national sympathies are everywhere on the side of justice, freedom, and education; it does mean the natural self-consciousness that in this respect our spirit and that of the people of Great Britain are one ; and it does mean that the 300 A New World Policy enemies of justice, fi'eedom, and education the world over must hereafter reckon with America and Great Britain as the open, avowed, and courageous friends of these inalienable rights of humanity."' Such a world policy as is urged is not only justified, but required, by the new world life on which we have entered. True enough it is unprecedented, but so are the new world conditions which demand it. The wise words of Emerson, true when written, are peculiarly applicable to-day : "We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another word for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of Divine Providence in behalf of the human race ; and a hteral, slavish follow ing of precedents, as by a justice of the peace, is not for those who at this hour lead the destinies of this people." Con- ' Editorial on "The New Monroe Doctrine," The Out look, August 37, 1898. 301 Expansion servatism demands precedents; progress creates them. The first precedent is always unprecedented. The world moves. It is time to dismiss " the craven fear of being great," to recognize the place in the world which God has given us, and to accept the responsibilities which it devolves upon us in behaU of Christian civihzation. 302 INDEX Addams, Jane, 269. Africa, rum traffic in, 297, 398, 299. Alaska, resources of, 168-171. America, Providence in settlement of, 371, 272 ; called to a new upward step, 373-374. Anglo-Saxon, compared with Slav, 186-195; families and their homes, 204-308. Anti-Expansionists, 360, 261, 394, 395. Armenian massacres, 248, 349. Armies as world police, 375-383. Australasia, 171-173 ; precious metals of, 173, 173 ; wealth of, 173. Australia, 173, 173, 311. Barrett, Hon. John, 175, 180. Beaulieu, M. Paul Leroy, 31. Benton, Thomas H., 183. Beresford, Lord, 68, 180. Boxers, the Chinese, 276. British empire contrasted with Roman, 323, 324. Bubonic plague, 343-344. Canada, resources of, 168. Canal, the isthmian, 135-163; geographical effect of, 137- 140 ; commercial effect of, 140-151 ; political effect of, 151-161 ; economy of, 141, 143 ; table of distances, 145, 148 ; neutrality of, 153, 153. China, the new, 104-134 ; reaction in, note 104 ; isolation of, 107; a "dying nation," 109-111; openmg of. 111, 303 Index China — Continued. 113 ; railways in, 113 ; manufactures in, 114 ; imports, 171; Western education in, 118-120; result of awaken ing, 124-138; resources, 134, 125; standard of living, 129, 130; commerce of, 131; "open door" m, 133; cot ton goods imported by, 146; effect of elevating stand ard of living, 176, 177; density of population, 177; American troops in, 258. Chino-Japauese war, effect of, 108. Clay, Henry, 141, 288. Coal, 53-54; in Russia, 53; in Great Britain, 53; in Ger many, 53; in France, 53; in United States, 53, 54; amount raised, 64; in China, 124, 135. Colquhoun, Mr., 125, 150, 151. Columbus, 17, 210. Commerce, new lines of, 34; American, to be carried in Americau bottoms, 65-70; created by Nicaragua canal, 143-144. Commission to Philippines, report of, 390, 393, 393. Competition, conditions of successful, 53-71; coal, 53-54; iron, 54r-58; low labor cost, 58-63; cheap raw materials, 63, 64; access to markets, 64; stimulating production, 84, 85; international, 238, 239. Confucius, 104, 105. Conscience, an enlightened world, 264-375. Cotton, production of, 63, 64. Cousin, Victor, 138. Crusaders, the, 17. Cuba, our pledge to, 161, 162 ; distress in, resulting from Prussian bounty on beet- sugar, 234 ; sending mission aries to, 379 ; the army in, 281 ; General Wood and Mr. A. E. Frye in, 396. Cubans, Admiral Dewey's opinion of, 390. Davidson, Professor, 170. Decr&s, M., 136. 304 Index Denby, Col. Charles, 391. Dewey, Admiral, 68 ; victory of in Manila Bay, 185, 247 ; member of Philippine Commission, 389. Distribution, problem of, 79. Drake, Sir Francis, 267, 368. Drummond, Professor, 39, 40. Durban, William, 193. East Indies, the, 174, 175. Energy of American people, 21-25 ; expressed in foot- tons, 25. England, trade balance of, 47 ; investments of, in other lands, 345. Emerson, 301. Expansion, industrial, 44-103. Exports, excess of, over imports, 47. Farewell address, Washington's, 247, 251. Farrar, Dean, 297. Filipinos, our relations to the, 287-303. Force, use of, selfish and unselfish, 277-384. Freedom and Independence, 284-286. Frye, Alexis Everett, in Cuba, 293. Frye, Senator, 69, 85. Germany, trade balance of, 47 ; investments of in South America, 345 ; bounty of, on beet-sugar and effects, 333-334. Giddings, Professor Franklin H. , 185. Gladstone, prophecy of, 65. Government without consent of governed, 341, 343. Grant, prophecy of General, concerning China, note, 105. Great Britain, density of population in, 177 ; flag of, iu Pacific, 195 ; protection of, 306 ; standing with the United States for freedom and justice, 300, 801. Griffis, Dr. W. E., 119, 130. Grotius, 338, 339 305 Index Hawaii, strategic value of, 196-199 ; under European flags, 211. Hayes, President, 139, 153. Homespun, cannot return to age of, 97, 98. Hugo, Victor, 189. Immigrants, number of during century, 30. Independence and freedom, 384-386. India, commerce of, 125, 136 ; railway traffic of, 136. Industry, the fundamental factor in civilization, 318-233. Iron, the age of, 54 ; America's manufacture of, 54-58 ; production of pig, 56, 57 ; supply of ore, 57, 58. Irving, Washington, 310. Jackson, Sir Thomas, 137. Japan, resurrection of, 121, 132 ; manufactures in, 146 ; standard of living in, 176. Kidd, Benjamin, 32, 185. Kitchener, Lord, 61. Labor cost, 58-64. Lands, exhaustion of our arable public, 17-43 ; return to idle, 91-98. Laveleye, Emile de, 193. Locomotives, American, abroad, 48, 49. Macartney, Embassy of Lord, 107. Macaulay, 99. Machiavelli, 261. 263. Machinery, ability to use, 36-41 ; demand for American, abroad, 51 ; our master, 72, 73 ; inevitable increase of, 73, 74; effects of, 74^78; displacing labor, 86-89; creating labor, 89; effect of, ou agriculture, 95, 96; effect of, on commerce and standard of living, 137-139; effect of, on civilization, 330-333. Mahan, Captain A. T., 156, 196. Manufactures, European, increase of, 38 ; excess of Amer ican, over agricultural products, note, 45; increasing more rapidly than population, 80, 90. 306 Index Manufacturing supremacy, our new, 44-71 ; permanent, 53-71. Markets, foreign, a new necessity, 73-103 ; expanding at home, 90. Mediterranean, the new, 163-184; population of lands bordering on, 165; an Anglo-Saxon sea, 185-218. Melville, Commodore George W., 154, 199, 310. Milton, 271. Mulhall's estimate of energy in United States, 35. Napoleon, 136, 189. Navy, necessity of a strong, 205-208 ; increase of, 283. Negro and Anglo-Saxon, development of, 37-39. New Zealand, 171, 173. Nicaragua Canal, see Canal. Norman, Sir Henry, 234. Objections to expansion, 257, 258. Olney, ex-Secretary Richard, 250. Oregon, the battleship, 67, 68. Otis, General, 291. Pacific, commerce of the, 149, 181 ; lands, products of, 181, 182; an Anglo-Saxon sea, 185-213; dimensions of, 204. Philip, Commodore, 339. Philippine Commission, report of, 390, 393, 393. Philippines, the commerce of the, 175, 199-301 ; political importance of, 301, 303 ; our relations to, 387-308. Policies, three possible: 1, persuade ourselves that we are anchored while we drift, 258-261 ; 2, sail out recklessly with false chart, 261-263 ; sail out courageously with true chart, 363-302. Politics inseparable from industrial and commercial inter ests, 255-257. Population, density of, of various continents, 166 ; of various countries, 177. Postal Union of world, 227. Potter, Bishop, 393. 307 Index Power, mechanical, compared with muscular, 76-78. Public lands, exhaustion of arable, 17-43; acres remaining, 19 ; capable of irrigation, 30 ; what it means to the nation, 31-39 ; what it means to the world, 39-34. Public opinion of world, 335-336. Puget Sound, lumber of, 143. Races, belated, will produce a different civilization, 36-41. Railways, in United States, miles of, 34; capital invested in, 38; continental and intercontinental, 236, 237. Raleigh, Sir Walter, 267, 368. Raw materials, cheap in United States, 63. Reason sacrificed to reasoning, 377. Rum traffic with our dependencies, 396-398. Russia, production of food by, 44; production of timber by, 63; growth of, 188; characteristics of, 188-193; Pacific Coast line of, 195; in China, 302. Sault Sainte Marie, tonnage passing the, 70. Schurman, President, 291. Seeiey, Professor, 260. Sermon on the Mount and politics, 263L Seward, William H., 143, 144, 184. Shipbuilding, 66-70. Siberia, 178, 179; immigration to, 179. Slav and Anglo-Saxon, comparison of, 186-195. Society a living organism, 316. Soil, cannot return to the, 91-98. South America, our relations to, changed by isthmian canal, 155. Spain, taking possessions of, 379; colonial history of, 394, 395. Spanish-American War, 17, 259. Stanley, Sir Henry M., 24. Steel rails, American, abroad, 49. Suez Canal, tonnage of, compared with that of Sault Sainte Marie, 70; and Great Britain, 153. 308 Index Summary of the several chapters, 253-255. Tagalogs, the, 293, 393. Taylor, Hon. James W., 168. Telegraph lines in United States, 34. Telephone lines in United States, 34. Ten Commandments and politics, 363. Thurston, Hon. L. A., 197, 198. Tolstoi, Count, 376. Tonnage of merchant marine, British, 66 ; American, 66. Tropics, movement toward the, 31-43 ; land in, appropri ated by European Powers, 81 ; manufactures in, 35, 36. Tsi-An, Dowager Empress, 120. United States, production of food by, 44 ; flag of in Pacific, 195 ; member of society of nations, 274, 275 ; standing with Great Britain for freedom and justice, 301. Walker, Admiral, 199. Wallace on East Indies, 174, 175. War, Chino-Japanese, effect of, 108 ; Spanish-American, 17, 259, 283 ; and an enlightened conscience, 376-384. Washington, forests of, 143. Washington's advice, 347, 351. Wealth in United States, accumulation of, 25, 36. Wealth, American, going abroad, 38. Webster, Daniel, 166. West Indies, effect of isthmian canal on, 157; cane-sugar industry of, 233, 334. Whitman, Dr. Marcus, 33. Wood, General, in Cuba, 396. Worcester, Professor, 391, 393. Workmen, American, compared with foreign, 60. World-conscience, an enlightened, 264-375. World-life, a new, 314-346; complex, 318; oneness of, 335- 338; world public opinion, 335-237; international law, 237; world postal union, 337; world sympathies, 237- 309 Index World-life — Continued. 339; interdependence of nations, 380-334 ; new rights and duties created by, 240-346. World police, armies as, 375-383. Wright, Hon. Carroll D., 80. Wu Ting Fang, 133, 138. Yellow fever in West Indies, 243. 310 BAKER & TAYLOR CO.' 8 PUBLICATIONS. THE TWENTIETH CBNTUEY CITY. By Eev. Josiah Steong, D.D., author of " Our Country " and "The New Era." 16ino, paper, 25 cents; cloth, 50 cents. With the same fascinating presentation of facts and figures which made " Our Country " one of the great books of the century. Dr. Strong discusses the danger arising from the vast movement of population towards the cities and the growth of their preponderating influence in the Nation, points out the principles which may be applied successfully to the solution of the great problems of modern society, and makes a ringing appeal for action. Contents. — I. The Materialism of Modern Civilization. II. A Nation of Cities. III. The Materialistic City a Men ace to Itself. IV. The Materialistic City a Menace to State and Nation. V. Remedies — The New Patriotism. VI. Reme dies — Twentieth Century Christianity. VII. Remedies — Twentieth Century Churches. VIII. Remedies — Practical Suggestions. " A power wherever it is read. It should be in the hands of every teacher, preacher, editor, public speaker and thou sands and thousands of thinking men in all departments of life."— 2\r«w York Christian Advocate. 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A careful discussion of the economic and political questions springing out of the great trust problem, dealing with the in dustrial benefits and evils of trusts, and also the necessary re strictions and limitations 'chat must be put upon them. Mr. Collier shows in what way large industrial organizations are necessary for the proper accomplishment of the gigantic busi ness undertakings of the day, especially in developing and extending our foreign trade and in securing markets for our surplus products, and he also considers the extent to which they limit competition and are monopolies. He discusses the nature and scope of legislative powers over trusts, the evil of over-capitalization, the effect of trusts upon wage-earners and farmers, and the proper remedies for the evils of trusts. The social phase of the question is considered in a chapter entitled " The Man and the Dollar," with special reference to William J. Bryan's famous speech at the Chicago Trust Conference. 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By FREDERICK HULL COGSWELL. i2mo, cloth, gilt top, illustrated, f 1.50. An absorbing story of Puritan New England, dealing largely with actual historical characters and events, the action centering in the flight and pursuit of Generals Whalley and Goffe, signers of the death-warrant of Charles the First. This romantic episode is here treated for the first time in fiction. "A powerful picture of Connecticut in the early colonial days." — Philadelphia Times, " One of the most important historical tales yet written." — Cleveland Leader. " Bound to take a high and permanent place in American literature." — Worcester Spy. " A splendid picture of the life and customs of colonial days." — Springfield Union. " A vivid picture of that early past to which the incidents of the story belong." — Boston "Transcript. " A strong and veracious picture of colonial life. Mr. Cogswell has made a book of genuine historical value, and of excellent qualities as a work of fiction. 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