Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1893 — EUROPE OUTSTRIPPED. [ARTICLE]

EUROPE OUTSTRIPPED.

The United States Now the Leading Manufacturing Country. R. 11. Edmonds, in the Engineering Magazine, says: The United States is now the leading manufacturing country in the world. We have far outstripped all other nations in the magnitude of our industrial operations. It is almost incomprehensible that in ten years the increase in capital invested in manufactures should exceed the total invested only twenty years ago. The value of our manufactured products increased about 60 per cent.; add 60 per cent, to the output of 1890 and we would have $13,700,000,000 in 1900—but that ie too much to expect. The same ratio of growth in mining interests in this decade as in the last would make our mineral output in 1900 nearly $1,200,000,000, while a smaller percentage ol gain only equaling in volume the total increase in 1890 over 1880 would bring the figures to over $950,000,000. If our coal miners add to the output of 1890 as many tons as they added to that of 1880, ignoring in this the percentage of growth, 217,000,000 tons will be the production of 1900. No other country in the world ever advanced in population and wealth as the United States is doing. The progress of the past shows no signs of halting. In fact, the development of our foreign and domestic trade and commerce, and of our industrial interests is steadily broadening out.

Contrast our position and condition with Europe, with resources surpassing those of all Europe, with wealth-pro-ducing possibilities in soil, minerals, timber and climate unequalled by Europe, and practically without limit to their profitable utilization, with a homogeneous population of 05,000,000 people unvexed by the arbitrary regulations of half a dozen different governments, and free from the drain of standing armies, the United States justly commands the wonder and admiration of the world.

Great Britain is no longer the manufacturing center of the world, for we have taken the foremo3t position in that line. Its vast iron and steel business is yearly increasing in cost of production, while ours is decreasing. It cannot meet the world’s growing demand for iron and steel because it cannot increase its production to any great extent. It produces less pig iron now than it did ten years ago. Much of its ore it imports from distant countries. Its cotton is all imported. It spends about $750,000,000 a year for foreign foodstuffs. On the continent every nation is burdened with dtbt, and none of them can ever hope to pay off its obligations. Measured by their natural resources and advantages for continued growth against their debts and the many disadvantages under which they labor, they are practically bankrupt. In all of them the cost of production and living must steadily increase. In the United States we have scarcely laid the foundation for our future greatness. In natural resources we are richer than all of Europe; we are paying off our debts faster than they are due, we have barely scratched the ground in the development of our mineral wealth, and our agricultural growth can scarcely be limited.