Geographic Notes 



245 



resources, their acuteness, their enter- 

 prise, their vast population, which will 

 in all probability within the next twenty 

 years reach 100,000,000, make them 

 very formidable competitors with our- 

 selves. And with the Germans, their 

 slow, but sure, persistency, their scien- 

 tific methods, and their conquering 

 spirit, devoted as these qualities are at 

 this moment to preparation for trade 

 warfare, make them also, in my judg- 

 ment, little less redoubtable than the 

 Americans. There is one feature of the 

 American competition which seems to 

 me especially formidable, and as I have 

 not seen it largely noticed, perhaps you 

 will excuse me for calling attention to it. 

 We are daily reminded of the gigantic 

 fortunes which are accumulated in 

 America, fortunes to which nothing in 

 this country bears any relation what- 

 ever, and which in themselves constitute 

 an enormous commercial force. The 

 Americans, as it appears, are scarcely 

 satisfied with these individual fortunes, 

 but use them, by combination in trusts, 

 to make a capital and a power which, 

 wielded as it is by one or two minds, is 

 almost irresistible, and that, as it seems to 

 me, if concentrated upon Great Britain 

 as an engine in the trade warfare is a 

 danger which we cannot affore to disre- 

 gard. Suppose a trust of many millions, 

 of a few men combined so to compete 

 with any trade in this country by un- 

 derselling all its products, even at a con- 

 siderable loss to themselves, and we can 

 see in that what are the possibilities of 

 the commercial outcome of the imme- 

 diate future.' 



' ' It has been evident for some time 

 that the United States, not content with 

 having solved that part of the problem 

 of economy of production which relates 

 to processes of manufacture and the util- 

 ization of labor, has been drifting in- 

 stinctively toward the larger question of 

 the concentration of capital as the logical 

 development of the same general idea of 

 reducing cost and increasing the margin 



of profit. The question is larger because 

 it has a more direct and more general 

 bearing upon the economic and social 

 life of the nation ; upon the interests, 

 rea,l or imagined, of the whole body 

 politic. We have to do with it here 

 only because of its relation to and pos- 

 sible effect upon our foreign trade, and 

 it is interesting to know that so thought- 

 ful an observer as lyord Rosebery per- 

 ceives in the simplification of the use of 

 capital in the United States which is go- 

 ing on — it may be said experimentally, 

 to a large extent, as yet — a tremendous 

 power in the commercial rivalry of the 

 world. 



" Germany, as well as Great Britain, 

 seems fully sensible of the seriousness of 

 American competition. In a recent issue 

 the Hamburger Fremdenblatt points out 

 that the United States, which ten years 

 ago exported more than 80 per cent of 

 agricultural products and less than a 

 fifth of manufactured goods, todaydraws 

 nearly a third of its entire export from 

 the products of its factories. ' In other 

 words, the Union is marching with gi- 

 gantic strides toward conversion from 

 an agricultural to an industrial nation.' 

 Does not the rapid increase of the United 

 States in the value of industrial ex- 

 ports, the Fremdenblatt asks, 'constitute 

 an imminent danger for all competing 

 nations ? ' 



"The Fremdenblatt' s conclusion is 

 that Europe ' must fight Americanism 

 with its own methods ; the battle must 

 be fought with their weapons, and 

 wherever possible their weapons must- 

 be bettered and improved by us ; or, 

 to speak with other and more practical 

 words, Germany — Europe — must adopt 

 improved and progressive methods in 

 every department of industry, must use 

 more and more effective machinery. 

 Manufacturers as well as merchants 

 must go to America, send thither their 

 assistants and workingmen, not merely 

 to superficially observe the methods 

 there employed, but to study them thor- 



