THE WAR AND FOREIGN TRADE 363 



servation Congress, "The Nineteenth Century farmer was no farmer at all; he 

 ■was a miner, mining the fertility of the soil, and selling it for the bare cost of 

 the mining." We sell our cotton to Switzerland at 14c. a pound, with scarce 

 any labor in it. We buy it back in the form of fine handkerchiefs at $40 a 

 pound, all labor. We export bar iron and import razor blades; export hides and 

 import gloves; export copper and import art bronzes. We must acquire the skill 

 of the foreigner to the end that our exports shall carry the maximum and not 

 the minimum of high-class labor. 



Providence has been kind to us, but Providence is likely now to leave us a 

 little more to our own intelligence. We must henceforth sell more brains and 

 less material. We must, to the utmost degree, develop our human efficiencies. 

 In them is our supreme natural resource, and the only one that increases with use 

 and will increase forever and immeasurably. Other nations, lacking our raw ma- 

 terials, make the cultivation of their human resources the substantial basis of 

 their prosperity and happiness. 



We are going in the right direction. The percentage of these semi- 

 crude products in 1906 was 63 per cent. Last year it was near 50 per 

 cent. And our great captains of industry have shown the way, for 

 we note in passing that substantially half of our total manufactured 

 exports are of the four items, food-stuffs, crude copper, mineral oils, 

 and the cruder products of iron and steel. Our manufacturers of shoes, 

 typewriters, sewing machines and agricultural implements have made 

 as clear a demonstration of the coming development wherein American 

 Inventions and comforts may be everywhere accepted. Professor Fisher 

 of Yale estimates the value of our human resources, the brain and 

 spirit and muscle of our people, at two hundred billions of dollars,- or 

 five times the value of all other resources combined. What a tragedy 

 that we have, as a nation, been careless of this resource ; that we have 

 been inconsiderate of the happiness of the average worker ; of his right 

 to highly developed self-expression and citizenship. In this the Amer- 

 ican democracy has been more careless than the monarchies of Europe. 

 Our captains of industry find their joy of life in the development of the 

 day's work. When 35,000,000 operatives find a similar joy derived 

 from a developed intelligence we shall be an irresistible force in the 

 world's betterment. 



Many other things may be said, and have been, as to the develop- 

 ment of foreign trade. We must have banks in foreign countries and 

 a merchant marine. We must stop generalizing and be specific. We 

 must get over our provincialism and be catholic in our sympathies. We 

 must realize that the ocean which used to separate the countries, now 

 binds them together. The $1.25 which carries a ton of freight one 

 hundred miles on land, carries it a thousand miles on water. Mer- 

 chandise delivered at the nearest salt-water port is almost as good as 

 delivered at any other port in the world. The day of the brotherhood 

 of the nations is at hand. 



We may well thank Providence that not all men are as we are ; that 



