Less Foreign Demand for Products. 39 



at all. To this time no reference is made in Eepublican 

 platforms ; but when, after 1897, for several years came a 

 great increase in the volume of agricultural exports, pro- 

 tectionists credited the result to their system. If the fat 

 years were due to this system, why not the lean years? 

 Can the different results be laid to unpropitious events? 

 Let the man who denies that the tariff affects the export- 

 ation of agricultural products answer. 



Mr. Stanwood says: ''Now one of the most striking 

 developments of the quarter of a century from 1870 to 

 1895 was a vast extension of the area of production, and 

 consequently of the markets for buying and selling. Yet 

 this extension was only an intermediate cause of the 

 great economic and industrial upheaval. It was itself 

 caused, or at least made possible, by an increase in the 

 means of communication to a degree never witnessed in 

 any like period of the world's history. A statement that 

 the tonnage of steam shipping engaged in international 

 trade increased more than five-fold in the twenty-five 

 years is impressive ; but it fails to convey an idea of the 

 enlarged facilities for the transportation of the products 

 of all the continents to the wholesale marts of Europe 

 and America. " ' ' Consider what has taken place on land, 

 particularly in this country. The railroad mileage of the 

 United States was more than tripled during the period. 

 What is more important, the mileage of the northern 

 states and territories west of the Missouri increased 

 from 12,000 to 78,000 miles. It is not an exaggeration to 

 say that the few trunk railway lines which constituted the 

 entire mileage of that vast region in 1870 would have 

 been of little value in bringing to market the produce of 

 the region had it been inhabited by a producing com- 

 munity. But in the ensuing quarter century so much of 



