AN AWAKENED CONTINENT TO THE 

 SOUTH OF US 



By Hon. Elihu Root, Secretary of State 



A LITTLE less than three centuries 

 of colonial and national life have 

 brought the people inhabiting 

 the United States, by a process of evolu- 

 tion, natural and with the existing forces 

 inevitable, to a point of distinct and radi- 

 cal change in their economic relations to 

 the rest of mankind. 



During the period now past the energy 

 of our people, directed by the formative 

 power created in our early population by 

 heredity, by environment, by the struggle 

 for existence, by individual independence, 

 and by free institutions, has been devoted 

 to the internal development of our own 

 country. The surplus wealth produced 

 by our labors has been appHed immedi- 

 ately to reproduction in our own land. 

 We have been cutting down forests and 

 breaking virgin soil and fencing prairies 

 and opening mines of coal and iron and 

 copper and silver and gold, and building 

 roads and canals and railroads and tele- 

 graph lines and cars and locomotives and 

 mills and furnaces and school-houses and 

 colleges and libraries and hospitals and 

 asylums and public buildings and store- 

 houses and shops and homes. We have 

 been drawing on the resources of the 

 world in capital and in labor to aid us in 

 our work. We have gathered strength 

 from every rich and powerful nation and 

 expended it upon these home undertak- 

 ings ; into them we have poured hun- 

 dreds of millions of money attracted 

 from the investors of Europe. We have 

 been always a debtor nation, borrowing 

 from the rest of the world, drawing all 

 possible energy towards us and concen- 

 trating it with our own energy upon our 

 own enterprises. The engrossing pursuit 

 of our own opportunities has excluded 



from our consideration and interest the 

 enterprises and the possibilities of the 

 outside world. Invention, discovery, the 

 progress of science, capacity for organi- 

 zation, the enormous increase in the pro- 

 ductive power of mankind, have acceler- 

 ated our progress and have brought us 

 to a result of development in every 

 branch of internal industrial activity 

 marvelous and unprecedented in the his- 

 tory of the world. 



WE HAVE A NEW ROLE TO PLAY 



Since the first election of President Mc- 

 Kinley the people of the United States 

 have for the first time accumulated a 

 surplus of capital beyond the require- 

 ments of internal development. That 

 surplus is increasing with extraordinary 

 rapidity. We have paid our debts to 

 Europe and have become a creditor in- 

 stead of a debtor nation ; we have faced 

 about ; we have left the ranks of the bor- 

 rowing nations and have entered the 

 ranks of the investing nations. Our 

 surplus energy is beginning to look be- 

 yond our own borders, throughout the 

 world, to find opportunity for the profit- 

 able use of our surplus capital, foreign 

 markets for our manufactures, foreign 

 mines to be developed, foreign bridges 

 and railroads and public works to be 

 built, foreign rivers to be turned into 

 electric power and light. As in their 

 several ways England and France and 

 Germany have stood, so we in our own 

 way are beginning to stand and must 

 continue to stand towards the industrial 

 enterprise of the world. 



That we are not beginning our new 

 role feebly is indicated by $1,518,561,666 

 of exports in the year 1905 as against 



*Aii address before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress, Kansas City, Missouri, 

 Tuesda3-, November 20, 1906, specially revised by Mr Root for publication in the NaTionai, 

 Geographic Magazine. 



