OURS is the greatest land in the world, and we, the people of these United States, ought to be the greatest people.

At the present time it does not require any great amount of conceit to make us believe that we are superior to our neighbors, but it will not do to forget that the faculty of being up and growing is not one of which we have a monopoly.

One of the founders of the Republic said: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” He might have added that it is the price of pretty much everything else worth having and keeping.

We Americans have led the world in a great many respects in most unexpected ways and at unexpected times, but seldom does a year pass in which we do not discover that we have no monopoly of the art of taking the lead. In one way or other, some nations of the earth are continually showing themselves superior to us in some respects. We have needed a great many warnings of this kind, and we will need a great many more{598} unless we act more promptly upon those which have already been granted us.

We have had enough success in other days to make us very conceited, so it is natural that occasionally we fall behind our competitors through the blindness of our fancied security. There was a time when American sails whitened every ocean, and more American ships could be seen in foreign ports than those of two or three other nations combined. The man who would now go out in a foreign port to look for an American flag, determining not to break his fast till he found one, would stand a fair chance of starving to death. Whether the disappearance of our flag from commerce is due only to the ravages of the Alabama and her sister privateers, or to the navigation laws now in force, is not to the point of the present situation, which is, that unexpectedly to ourselves and all the rest of the world we have taken the lowest position among the nations as carriers of what we have to buy and sell, and that we do not show any indications whatever of ever resuming our old position.

Another instance: Within the memory of half the people now alive, the world heard that Cotton was king, and, as cotton was obtainable only from America, Americans proudly assumed to be the commercial rulers of the world. Owing to a little family trouble on this side of the water, the other nations began to look about elsewhere for{599} their cotton. They found some in unexpected places, and have been finding it there ever since. We still produce more cotton than any other country, but we are not kings of the cotton market any longer.

Then came the time when Corn was king. It is true we did not ship much of it in the grain, but between putting it into pork and putting it into whiskey, our corn became the first cause of the loading many thousands of ships to different foreign countries. Foreigners have eyes in their heads and they began to look about and see whether they could not produce pork and whiskey as cheaply as those people across the water, who had to send their products three thousand miles or more to find a market. They succeeded. At the present day, although our distilleries and pig-styes are in active operation, a great deal of distilled liquors and also a great deal of the meat of the hog comes this way across the ocean. The market still is good abroad for American hams, sides, shoulders, bacon and lard, but the bottom has dropped out of the whiskey market, and seems to show no signs of a desire to return.

For a number of years, and until very recently, our wheat had made us commercially, in one sense at least, the superior of all the other nations of the world. The finer breadstuffs were not to be had in Europe except from American sources. Year by year the price of wheat increased until{600} the American farmer became so enviable an individual that a great many merchants went out of business, bought farms, and attempted to compete with him. As is usually the case when any business is so flourishing that every one wishes to go into it, endeavors were being made by hundreds of sharp-eyed observers to see whether wheat might not be more profitably produced in other portions of the world, and the success which attended these observations has been anything but gratifying to the American farmer. Russia and Hungary are producing more wheat than ever before. Wheat is pouring into Europe from Asia, and even from Africa, and the American farmer now is not quite so sure as to what will be the result of a good crop of wheat—not sure whether it will yield a profit or fail to pay expenses. Even the reductions in freight rates, alike from the agricultural districts to the seashore and from America to Europe, do not compensate him for the great reduction in the price of what once he fondly believed was an enduring source of profit. The time when it was safe to put an entire farm into wheat has passed. Farmers are studying mixed crops now with all the intelligence that is in them, for a man’s first duty is to earn food for his family.

Again, when it was discovered that, helped by some refrigerating process, we could send fresh meat to Europe, the whole country arose, cheered{601} and patted itself upon the back. Now, surely the whole world would be at our feet, for were we not feeding Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans cheaper than any of their home producers could do it? Our self-satisfaction increased when it was discovered that live cattle also could be sent over to Europe in immense quantities and pay a handsome profit in spite of occasional losses due to storms and injudicious loading of the vessels which carried the animals. About this time ranches began to cover all ground in the far West that was fit at all for grazing, and the estates, nominally the property of those who managed them, came to be of baronial extent. But what America could do, Australia began to think she also could do, and even South Africa was not averse to experimenting in the same direction. We still send a great deal of meat to Europe, but ranch property is not as much in demand as once it was. There are ranches now to be had for the taking, but the takers are few.

Just before the ranch fever began, we struck oil—struck it in such immense quantities, and also found men so competent to make it fit for general use, that petroleum in some of its forms promised to be the leading export article of the United States. There was not a civilized quarter of the world in which one couldn’t find the American kerosene oil can. Our oil still continues to go abroad in immense quantities, but{602} the fortunes which have been made upon it have stimulated prospectors all over the world, and, as it is known that oil is not restricted to any single hemisphere, or even grand division of the world, the prospects begin to look rather dismal for America retaining supremacy in this particular article of commerce. The Asiatic oil wells are far more valuable than ours and are worked at less expense, and the supply can be distributed in Europe quite as easily and cheaply as that from the American wells and refineries. Evidently we can’t afford to depend upon oil alone. Large fortunes have been made upon it, but there is an old song which says: “The mill can never grind with the water that is passed.” We need something new to keep us at the fore. What it is to be has not yet been discovered.

Some few unfulfilled expectations of this kind, some great commercial disappointments, are probably necessary to divest us of part of the overweening self-confidence which is peculiar to the inhabitants of all new countries. Simple and unquestioning belief in manifest destiny and all that sort of talk has quite a stimulating effect at times, but it also is likely to lull people into a false sense of security. It already has done so to a large extent in the United States. We have been so well satisfied that we were superior in intelligence and resources to any other land on the face of the earth that we have been{603} inattentive to some of our greater interests. The shipping of raw materials of any kind is a reputable division of industry, but it is not the highest result at which a nation should aim, nor should any amount of success at it blind the people to their greater duties, responsibilities and opportunities.

On the other hand, no other nation of the world has so much as we to be thankful for and to encourage them. We have no bad neighbors who are strong enough for us to be afraid of, and all the greater powers of the world are far enough away to take very little interest in us, unless we annoy them in some way. We do not have to squander the energies and sometimes the life-blood of our race by putting all our young men into armies and navies and teaching them distrust, suspicion, cruelty and the spirit of rapine. Our taxes are heavy, but, on the other hand, our national debt, once so enormous, is being reduced with such rapidity that soon we will show the world the astonishing spectacle of a great nation without a debt. There is nowhere else in the world where a person with money to invest and desiring it to remain absolutely secure, no matter at how small a rate of interest, cannot quickly obtain the securities of his own government for his gold or notes, but here there is very little encouragement any longer to buy the national bonds, for they are being redeemed at a{604} rate which makes it almost impossible for any one to retain them with certainty for a long time as a permanent investment. Holders of the debts of other countries expect never to have their principal redeemed; they are satisfied to get interest perpetually, as undoubtedly they will unless the debts are repudiated. There is very little possibility of any foreign country of the first class ever dischargin............