THE NEW EARTH 



keep pace with the increase in demand across this 

 great waterway. There are those who main- 

 tain, and with no small show of reason, that if 

 our present trade with our best customer, 

 England, were suddenly to be cut off, so that 

 for a year she should have absolutely no meat, 

 no breadstufFs, no cotton, no supplies of any 

 kind from the United States, the saddest fam- 

 ine in history would follow ; while continental 

 Europe would pay off many an old score 

 against, even if she did not wholly subdue, one 

 of the greatest nations of ancient or modern 

 times. 



The second fact of large significance is not 

 so comforting to our pride, or so suggestive of 

 strength. Whenever you study the shipping — 

 be it along the Atlantic seaboard or the 

 Pacific, or the Gulf, or in Canada — at Victoria 

 on the Pacific, Port Arthur on Lake Superior, 

 the great export wheat depot, Montreal, or 

 Quebec or Halifax — you are conscious that 

 the men who man the ships and unload the 

 cargoes and appear at the docks as the repre- 

 sentatives of the owners, or the owners of the 

 ships themselves, if they happen to be in 

 port, — you are conscious that these men are 



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