the number of wage earners employed in the manufacturing industries as 6,615,046, an increase of nearly 25 per cent. over 1900; while the value of the product the same year was $20,672,052,000, showing a gain of more than 50 per cent. over 1900. The increase in the number of persons engaged in agriculture is as great as that employed in manufactures.

While the subject of agriculture in the United States is discussed elsewhere in this work, it may be proper to compare the growth in that industry with that in manufactures and mining, by way of indicating the relative importance (past and present) and the prospect of each. It seems not unreasonable to assume from an examination of the figures above quoted that manufacturing is to be in the near future - if, indeed, it be not already the leading industry of the United States, although at the present moment the number of persons actually employed in agricultural pursuits is greater than that in manufacturing. In many respects the industrial history of the United States is similar to that of other temperate zone countries occupied by occidental peoples. Agriculture was naturally the first occupation of the people. Food was the primary requirement; for, while clothing was necessary, a part of this, in the earlier stages of the history of the country, was produced from the skins of animals captured primarily for food. Thus man gave his chief attention to the development of the soil and

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production of the type of food which it supplies. Later, with the increased supply of domestic animals and the developments in the production of cotton, the manufacture of materials for clothing began. Woolen goods were among the first. The necessities of everyday life required also manufactures of iron of the cruder type, and hence the manufacture of iron and, a little later of steel, came early, though in comparatively simple forms.

In the meantime man learned, after many years of experiment, that coal could be used in the manufacture of iron. For many years iron. For many years-decades, in fact he had manufactured his iron by the use of charcoal. Later he learned to apply to coal a process somewhat similar to that by which wood was turned into charcoal, and by transforming the coal into coke produced iron and steel from the heat supplied by coal. Then came the Bessemer process of steel-making and other similar processes, by which the proper amount of carbon was combined with the iron by forcing air through the molten metal, and the production of steel was greatly cheapened and the quantity produced greatly increased. while it developed in England somewhat earlier than in the United States, had been thought out almost simultaneously by Americans and came into general use in the United States but a short time after its adoption in England and the other manufacturing countries of Europe. Sir Henry Bes

This process,

semer's process was developed in 1856, but so much time was occupied in perfecting the system that the world's product of steel in 1867 was less than 500,000 tons, of which about 20,000 tons were produced in the United States. By 1870, however, that process had become so generally adopted that our own production was 68,750 tons. This output has since grown with such marvelous rapidity that in 1875 it reached 389,799 tons; in 1880, 1,247,335 tons; in 1890, 4,277,071 tons; in 1900, 10,188,329 tons; and in 1910 26,094,919 tons.

The United States has thus become the world's chief producer of steel. In fact, this country now produces approximately one-half of the world's steel, the other chief steel-producing countries being Germany, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. During the last 20 years the United States has made much greater gains, proportionately, in the manufacture of iron and steel than any other country, though Germany's recent gains have brought that country abreast and sometimes in advance of Great Britain, formerly the leading iron and steel-producing country of Europe. The value of the principal manufactures of iron and steel in the United States, as reported by the census, grew from less than $300,000,000 in 1880 to $1,377,000,000 in 1910; the number of persons employed in blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills, from 141,000 in 1880 to 278,505 in 1910; the wages paid, from $55,500,000 in 1880 to $187,

808,000 in 1910; and the capital invested, from $231,000,000 in 1880 to $1,492,316,000 in 1910. These detailed figures include only blast furnaces, steel works, and rolling mills, and not the numerous industries handling the material as it passes further along in the stages of development - such as the making of bolts, nuts, nails, spikes, iron and steel pipe, the various classes of machinery utilized in industries and transportation, and the thousands of requirements of daily life.

So rapidly has the iron and steel industry developed in the United States that manufactures of iron and steel have become the largest single item in our export trade, with the exception of the one natural product - raw cotton - of which we practically have a world monopoly. The value of iron and steel manufactures exported now approximates $350,000,000 per annum, while that of meats, which formerly exceeded $200,000,000, has fallen materially below that figure and wheat and flour, which formerly approximated $250,000,000 in favorable years, have now taken a much lower rank among the great articles of exportation, amounting to about one-half-in many cases less than half — the value of iron and steel manufactures exported.

Even these figures, which show enormous increases in the valuation of iron and steel production and exportation, fail to indicate their quantitative growth, since the enormous increase in production, coupled with the im