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Advance in Wages.-The prosperity of the people which has accompanied this activity of production, manufacturing, and exportation has been equally marked in every branch of industry. Wages have advanced, the number of persons employed has greatly increased, the products of the farm have doubled in value, and the earnings and savings of the people have largely increased. The deposits in the savings banks of the country, those depositories of the surplus funds of the workingman, the pensioner, the widow, and the orphan, were $690,000,000 greater in the single year 1901 than in 1896. The individual deposits in the national banks of the country were $1,298,064,839 greater in 1901 than in 1896. Thus the individual deposits in the savings and national banks of the country now exceed those of 1896 by the enormous sum of $1,938,003,142. Official records show great prosperity among those engaged in each and all of the great industries of the country, the farmer, the manufacturer, and his millions of wage-earners, and those engaged in the mines and forests.

Increase in Farm Values.-The value of the live stock on the farms of the country, which was reported by the Agricultural Department in 1896 at $1,727,926,084, is reported at $1,981,054,115 by the Census of 1900, an increase of $253,128,031. With the increased activity, increased earnings, and increased consumption the farmer has received greatly increased prices for his productions. The Agricultural Department reports an increase of more than $350,000,000 in the farm value of the cereals alone in 1900 as compared with 1896, these figures being those of the actual value upon the farm before leaving the hands of the producer, while other articles of farm production show an equal advance in value. The exportation of agricultural products increased from $570,000,000 in 1896 to $944,000,000 in 1901, an increase of $374,000,000 in the mere. surplus remaining after supplying the great and rapidly expanding home market.

Mining Industries Prosperous.-In the great mining industries, so closely dependent for their prosperity upon the activity of the manufacturer, the increase has been equally striking, and the millions dependent upon them for a livelihood have shared in the general prosperity of the country. The number of persons engaged in coal mining alone has increased by more than 50,000, and the coal production of the United States has grown from 171,000,000 tons in 1896 to 261,000,000 tons in 1901, an increase of over 50 per cent in five years, thus making the United States the greatest coal-producing nation of the world. In iron and steel the United States has also taken front rank among the world's producers, the production of pig iron having increased from 8,623,127 tons

in 1896 to 15,878,354 in 1901, and of steel, from 5,281,689 tons in 1896 to 10,188,329 tons in 1900; while the exportation of iron and steel manufactures has increased from $41,160,877 in 1896 to $117,319,320 in 1901.

Activity in Manufacturing.-In the great manufacturing industries the activity of the manufacturer and the earnings of the workingman show equal and striking improvement. The cotton manufacturers have increased their consumption of domestic cotton from two and a half million bales in 1896 to over three and a half millions in 1901. The number of iron furnaces in blast has increased from 159 in 1896 to 266 in 1901, and the manufacture of tin plate has grown from less than 40,000,000 pounds in 1894 to 678,000,000 pounds in, 1900. The number of wage-earners engaged in the manufacturing industries alone increased from 4,251,613 in 1890 to 5,231,687 in 1900, and their wages from $1,891.228,321 in 1890 to $2,330,273,021 in 1900. The home market has been more and more supplied with home manufactures, and the exportation of manufactures has grown from $228,000,000 in 1896 to $412,000,000 in 1901. Foreign Trade.-The manufacturers of the United States continued to send large amounts of their goods to foreign countries. The exportation of manufactures during the eleven months ending with May, 1902, is greater than that of any preceding year, except in iron and steel. The total exports of manufactures for the eleven months ending with May amount to $371,647,609, against $378,533,496 in the eleven months of 1901, or only $6,885,887 less than those of last year. The exports of iron and steel manufactures for the eleven months are $90,780,571, against $109,483,827 in the corresponding months of last year, a reduction of $18,703,256. From this it would appear that the exports of manufactures other than iron and steel are $11,817,369 greater than in the corresponding months of the preceding year. The exports of manufactures other than iron and steel are, for the eleven months ending with May, 1902, $280,867,038. For the eleven months ending with May, 1901, they were $269,049,669. For the eleven months ending with May, 1900, they were $283,050,704, but when it is remembered that these figures included the exports to Porto Rico and Hawaii, which are not included in those of 1901 and 1902, it becomes apparent that the exports of manufactures other than iron and steel in the eleven months of the present fiscal year are greater than those for the same period in any preceding year in the history of our commerce.

While the exports of iron and steel have been decreasing, importations of iron and steel have been increasing.

The following table shows the imports and exports of iron and steel manufactures in eleven months of each of the fiscal years 1900, 1901, and 1902:

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From this it will be seen that the importations of iron and steel manufactures have materially increased during the three years, and the exportations of iron and steel materially decreased. The cause of this change in the condition of the foreign commerce in iron and steel is discussed in the report of the Iron and Steel Association, as follows:

"A marked change has taken place in our foreign trade in iron and steel since this subject was prominently referred to in our annual reports in 1899 and 1900. In 1899 and immediately preceding years the iron and steel industries of Europe were exceptionally prosperous; there was an active demand and prices were high. In the years just prior to 1899 the prices of iron and steel in the United States were lower than they had ever been. Under these conditions we naturally found opportunities to dispose of our surplus iron and steel products in neutral markets and even in the home markets of our European competitors. But these conditions have materially changed; the European demand and European prices have declined and the home demand upon our own iron and steel works has greatly increased, while our prices have advanced; hence sharper competition in neutral and all foreign markets and increased foreign competition in our Own

markets.

"The figures of increased imports and decreased exports of iron and steel should not be hastily dismissed by our iron and steel manufacturers. We hope that they will lead them instead to dismiss the thought that the world's markets for iron and steel are to be easily captured and held. The activity in our export trade in iron and steel in the last few years was exceptional and abnormal. Not only is Europe adopting our improved methods of manufacture, but it will always have cheap labor, and by these agencies it can hold its own markets and actively and aggressively contend for the possession of neutral markets. For our iron and steel industries, as well as for all other domestic manufacturing industries, our home market must always be our best market."

The following table shows the exports, by principal classes, during the eleven months ending with May, 1901, and 1902, respectively:

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AMERICAN INVASION OF EUROPE-THE UNITED STATES COMPETING WITH EUROPEAN MANUFACTURERS IN THEIR HOME MARKETS.

"In the last six years we have sold in merchandise, produce, and manufactures $2,000,000,000 more than we have bought, while in all our history, from the beginning of the Government up to six years ago, the foreign trade balance in our favor had aggregated a net total of only $383,000,000."

This is the deliberate statement of Frank A. Vanderlip, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, in an article on "The American Commercial Invasion of Europe," after nearly a year's travel and study of this subject in all the leading countries of Europe. Mr. Vanderlip went abroad to study the causes of the agitation in some continental countries for tariff combinations against the United States. He found, as have our American consuls in Europe, that it was due to the rapid recovery of American industrial development under the Dingley tariff and Republican protection to our industries. In the last two years there has been much agitation in Austria and other continental countries of Europe against "The American Peril" and the "American Danger." This agitation, was due to the American invasion of European markets with American manufactures as well as American produce. By protecting our home industries we have not only taken from the European manufacturers the American market, but we have invaded the European market as serious competitors for their own home trade.

Mr. Vanderlip was offered unusual facilities for obtaining the views of men most influential in political life and commercial affairs in Europe, and he says:

European Statesmen Alarmed. "The subject I discussed with these distinguished foreigners is one regarding which our public

has been pretty thoroughly enlightened in the last five years, and it is one of which the European public has heard almost as much in the English and continental newspapers, but from quite an opposite point of view. When the amount of our sales to foreign countries passed the $1,000,000,000 mark in 1897, we began to congratulate ourselves on the strides we were making in the markets of the world. The record was followed by steadily growing totals, until now we have, in a twelvemonth, sent to other nations commodities to the value of $1,500,000,000. The meaning of that total is emphasized if we look back and find it compares with an average during the ten years ending 1896 of $825,000,000. look back and find it compares with an average during the ten "While our sales to foreign countries have grown so prodigiously, the other side of our financial account during these last five or six years has shown no proportionate increase. bought from the foreigners an average of only $800,000,000 a year, and that total has shown little tendency to expand. It was this fact, this mighty development of our sales, while our purchases were comparatively on a declining scale, which piled up in half a dozen years a favorable trade balance so enormous as to startle the world. In the last six years we have sold in merchandise, produce, and manufactures $2,000,000,000 more than we have bought, while in all our history, from the beginning of the Government up to six years ago, the foreign trade balance in our favor had aggregated a net total of only $383,000,000.

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"The significance of these surprising totals was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. An analysis of them brought out features more important than the vastness of the aggregate. Heretofore our sales had been made up almost wholly of foodstuffs and raw materials. Europe was the workshop. But that has changed, and we find, year after year, an astonishing increase in our exports of manufactured articles, an increase that in the last two or three years reached totals which gave ample basis for the popular talk of our invasion of the European industrial fields. Our exports of manufactured articles in the decade prior to 1897 averaged $163,000,000 annually. In 1898 our sales of manufactured articles to foreign customers jumped to $290,000,000, the next year to $339,000,000, the next to $434,000,000.

Imports Decline. "These figures, showing a steady invasion by our manufacturers of foreign industrial fields, have a natural corollary. As exports of manufactures increased, our imports of the handiwork of foreign shops showed an even more rapid decline. Our manufacturers were not only invading the foreigner's own markets, meeting him at his threshold with a new competition, but they were taking away from him his greatest market-the United

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