1890] Prosperity 579 of the country has enabled the cultivator to win larger returns from his land, although not so large proportionate returns from the application of labor and capital to the land. The ruder system of the earlier time was better suited to the conditions then prevailing - a fact which foreign critics have invariably overlooked. They always forget that the problem which the Western farmer had to face until recent years was how much he could get in return for a given amount of effort, and not how much he could gain from a certain amount of land by the application of labor and capital. Land was then abundant and easy to acquire, while labor and capital were both scarce and difficult to obtain. In 1865 the United States produced about one billion bushels of corn; in 1890 it produced two and one half billion bushels. The largest crop of cotton produced by slave labor (1859) was about four and one half million bales; in 1899, under free labor, the crop was over eleven million bales. popu come and expendi tures. 404. Prosperity, 1900. The national income and ex- National inpenditures have increased out of all proportion to the lation. The income of the federal government in 1860 was fifty-five million dollars, in 1900 it was over five hundred and sixty-seven million dollars; the expenditures in 1860 were sixty-five million dollars, in 1900 they were four hundred and eighty-seven million dollars. The exports and imports more than doubled in the forty years under review, and amounted to about two thousand millions each, in 1900 the exports exceeded the imports by five hundred millions. The national debt of the United States in 1900 was nearly National eleven hundred million dollars, or twelve dollars per head. debt. This total includes the paper money issued by the government and the interest-bearing debt. The aggregate debt of the several states, counties, municipalities, and school districts now exceeds that of the nation as a whole; in 1900 the former was over one billion dollars, or a little over eighteen dollars per head. It will be interesting in this connection to cite a few figures by way of comparison. They are taken from the work of Mulhall, a British statistician, and certainly do not overstate the case in favor of the United States. Mulhall estimates the wealth, debt, and ratio of debt to wealth of the four leading nations as follows (the figures are pounds sterling): The banking capital of the United States exceeds that of Great Britain and there is more gold in the United States than in Great Britain. The American post office carries nearly as much mail matter as all the post offices of Europe. Finally, the average earnings of an inhabitant of the United States are given by this foreign compiler as almost exactly double those of an average inhabitant of Europe. The meaning of the facts as to production and wealth. given in the preceding sections can be best understood, perhaps, in the light of a computation made by Edward Atkinson, the American statistician. He states that a "porComparative tion," consisting of food, fuel, and materials for clothing, prices. which corresponds to the average daily consumption of artisans and mechanics in New England, could be purchased in 1860 for thirty-one cents, and in 1890 for thirty cents, although in the meantime the average daily wage has increased from one dollar and sixty cents to two dollars and sixty cents. Since then both wages and the cost of living have somewhat increased. 405. McKinley and Roosevelt, 1900-04. In November, 1900, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt were elected President and Vice President by a very large major 1900] McKinley and Roosevelt 581 ity over the Democratic candidates. On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was murdered by an insane man, while Death of attending the Pan-American Fair at Buffalo in the state of McKinley, 1901. New York. By the untimely death of this kindly and able chief magistrate, Roosevelt became President. The turn of the century saw a rising spirit of unrest in China which ended in a movement against the introduction of foreign methods and modern reforms which is known as the Boxer Rebellion. This finally took the form of an attack on the foreign embassies in Pekin, the capital of China. The United World The coal strike, 1902. The Alaskan Boundary, 1903. The United States, the principal nations of Europe, and Japan, united to rescue their representatives from the Chinese. This was done with some difficulty; but the incident is especially interesting to Americans because it was the first time that any considerable body of American soldiers found themselves acting in company with troops from Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain, and Japan, or, indeed, from any foreign country. It marks the entrance of the United States into the arena as a world power and the breaking down of that policy of isolation which was dear to Washington and to Jefferson; but it is very possible that if these great men were now living, they would view the matter very differently from what they did one hundred and more years ago. The summer of 1902 also witnessed the most far-reaching strike in the history of the country, when the miners of anthracite coal refused longer to work on the conditions offered them by the owners of the mines or by those who operated them. At one time it seemed as if great hardship would be caused throughout the North by the lack of the fuel which is used for heating houses. President Roosevelt, however, interfered and appointed five commissioners to hear the contending parties and to propose, if possible, a basis of settlement between them, on the understanding that in the meantime the striking miners should return to work. In this way suffering was lessened, and Congress, by voting money for the salaries and expenses of the Commission, ratified the action of the President. 406. Alaska and Panama. In the winter of 1896-97, gold was discovered in the valley of the Klondike River, in Canada, two thousand miles up the Yukon River, which flows through Alaska. Soon millions of dollars' worth of gold dust began coming from this region and also from Cape Nome on the northwest coast of Alaska. It happened that the easiest way to the Klondike was over territory which was partly in Alaska and partly in Canada. This led to a new examination of the frontier between the possessions of 1904] Alaska and Panama 583 the United States and of Great Britain in that part of the world. After long negotiation, the matter was settled mainly in favor of the United States by a joint court which sat at London in 1903. Panama Canal. Almost from the time of the discovery of the Pacific by The Balboa, proposals have been made for digging a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. But the difficulties offered by the steep mountains and the rivers subject to sudden floods postponed the carrying out of this project, although the distance from Panama, on the Pacific, to Colon, on the Caribbean, is only forty-six miles in a straight line. At length, in 1881, Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French engineer under whose direction the Suez Canal had been dug, undertook the cutting of a sea-level canal across the Isthmus. This plan was abandoned, however, after a great deal of money had been spent. A second French company then undertook the construction of a canal with locks. The people of the United States have always been greatly interested in the project of making a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and since the acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippines this interest has, if anything, increased. Before 1904, however, obstacles of one sort or another have prevented the realization of this desire. In this year, however, events so shaped themselves that it became possible for the United States to enter upon the construction of this important waterway. our prosperity. The chief causes of our prosperity in the past have been Causes of the frugality, energy, and personal independence of our people; the rapid development of invention; equality of all men in the eye of the law; free institutions and the breaking loose from the prejudices of European societies. These qualities, inherent in the races from which the American people has sprung, without the barriers to human activity which surrounded them in their old homes, have been combined in the United States with a good climate, splendid soil, wonderful mineral resources, and free trade over an enormous extent of territory. These conditions have made the American people what it is; they are all still present in the inhabitants |