THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN IDEA. 



BY ALEXANDER H. FORD. 



[Alexander H. Ford, journalist; bom Buffalo, N. Y., June 11, 1858; educated in the 

 public schools and at Brown university ; became connected with the New York Tunes 

 and has since written much for newspapers and periodicals, chiefly on foreign topics 

 and their relation to the United States in industry and political life. The following 

 article is from the New England magazine by special permission.] 



The third quarter of the last century closed with the 

 old world still treating with contempt the idea that anything 

 good could ever come from America. To-day, at the dawn- 

 ing of the new era, however, the situation is exactly reversed; 

 America leads the world, while every country of Europe 

 seeks to imitate our methods and regain in a measure the 

 prestige that has suddenly crossed the Atlantic. 



England is astonished that we can pay our miners twice 

 the wages she gives her colliers, and yet send shipload after 

 shipload of coal to New Castle to undersell the products of the 

 adjacent parts. France is startled that our excellent wines 

 from artificially irrigated lands can undersell the vintages of 

 Burgimdy in Paris itself. Germany is suffering from business 

 stagnation because we now send her the thousand different 

 kinds of tools and mechanical toys that were once her prized 

 monopoly. Russia, with the most extensive wheat fields in 

 the world, marvels that our finest flour undersells her coarsest 

 native grain, even in remote districts. In far off eastern Asia, 

 the inventive Japs eagerly purchase Yankee machine made 

 imitations of the gewgaws that Jap artists have made by hand 

 for centmies. To Bagdad, we send new lamps in exchange 

 for old, while to Egypt we send not only the trolley cars that 

 run from Cairo to the pyramids, but in Connecticut is a 

 factory equipped with marvelous modern machinery that 

 turns out ancient Egyptian scarabse, which are chipped auto- 

 matically, besides being given at the same time the color and 

 appearance of age. These Yankee made Eg3rptian relics are 

 sold by the cask to the Arabs, who devoutly bury them at the 



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