OUR INDUSTRIAL AND FINANCIAL FUTURE 479 



will not increase with un conservative rapidity. Bank clear- 

 ings of the country have increased two and a half times in ten 

 years. If progress were to continue at this rate, we would 

 show bank clearings of more than $200,000,000,000 at the end 

 of the next ten years. You will find that the total mineral 

 production of the United States has increased in value from 

 $650,000,000 to double that figure. If there is reason to sup- 

 pose that this increase will continue, we will yet make a record 

 of $2,000,000,000 as the annual product of our mines. Our 

 production of steel has doubled in ten years. The value of the 

 product of our cotton mills has increased fifty per cent. The 

 volume of business, as measured by the receipts of the post 

 office department, show almost a hundred per cent increase, 

 those receipts coming up from $75,000,000 in 1894 to $144,- 

 000,000. 



If we look abroad, we see England struggling under most 

 adverse conditions, a great portion of her industrial population 

 actually underfed, and a million people receiving aid under her 

 poor laws. We see in France a nation grown rich by thrift, a 

 nation where economy has become a disease, and in the growth 

 of it, all initiative for new accomplishment has been lost. In 

 Italy we see a great industrial awakening, but conditions still 

 so hard that a large percentage of our 800,000 immigrants 

 annually come from that country. In Germany we find a 

 barren land yielding from the fields most meagerly and from 

 the mines hardly at all, but with a population whose energy, 

 intelligence and education has built, out of most discouraging 

 conditions, a vast industrial organization which is our one real 

 competitor in the markets of the world. If we will accept 

 from the Germans something of their scientific methods, their 

 carefulness, their thoroughness and their willingness for hard 

 work, and bring such qualities to bear upon our own resources, 

 the figures which I have been quoting as possibilities of the 

 future will yet look small. 



These statements are generalities intended to apply only 

 over considerable periods. We are always in danger of 

 overdoing, and we may for the moment, perhaps, have al- 

 ready made that error, for prices have shown most sub- 

 stantial recovery — a recovery certainly in advance of what 



