The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-06-01
OUR FIGHT FOR SUPREMACY.

ONE of the most interesting and
thoughtful contributions to the maya
zines of the current month is the paper
of Ulysses d. Eddy in the June Forum
showing how the United States is begin
ming to realize its commercial power and
specializing as to our chances for
supremacy in the struggle for
the control of the worlds
ommerc which is inevitably coming.
Mr.. Eddy looks upon our movement for
reciprocity with the countries nearest
is as the beginning of our advance but
he believes that our people will soon
ind that the reciprocity breastworks
,amper them and that they will move
ut into the open field of the neutral
markets. As soon as we do this, with
our greater skill and resources, we shall
drive many of the manufacturing ma
tons behind tariff breastworks Of their
W and then tho final struggle will
come. Mr.. Eddy looks for new leaders
to arise among us. Our generals of
may ONE from among the
men who built a Chicago, a Denver, an
Atlanta, rather than from cosmopolitan
New York, keen Boston, or peaceful
Philadelphia. The campaign is likely
to be most successfully carried Oh by
men of the loose-jointed power and
broad optimism of the Mississippi valley
rather than by the highly organized but
more cautious leading of the seaboard.
The merchants and manufacturers of
Che coast are perhaps too conventional
In their methods; they have been forced
to fight defensively too long to lead
where broader and holder action might
best succeed. The commercial generals
must be Lincolns and Grants; patient,
constant, enterprislng, and imbued with
an absolute confidence in themselves and
in their highly-organized, highly paid
armies of workmen. Such confidence
seems warranted. The men of our in
dustrial armies possess an educated in
telligence; They know how to harness
the forces of Nature and to compel her
greatest energies. They are weaponed
with machines and tools SO ingenious, SO
perfectly adapted to their uses, as
enormously to increase the effectiveness
of labor. How can such armies, backed
by the resources of such a country, fail
of victory?"
The outcome of the great industrial
struggle is thus portrayed by Mr.. Eddy:
We shall have a trade that will fill the
country with factories. and owing to the
wide distribution and climatic differences
Of the worlds markets, there need be no
periods of idleness for workmen. The
Russian oil fields threaten to destroy our
exports of petroleum to the Eastern hemis-
phere; our shipments of lumber must soon
cease from exhaustion of our forests; ex-
perts tell us that our food exports steadily
decline, and that by the end of the century
We shall need nearly all our wheat for home
consumption. AS a result of the campaign,
this void will be filled with shipments of a
wonderful variety of merchandise in which
the smallest part of the value is that of the
raw material, the greatest. that of skilled
and intelligent labor. Great Britain sold
in 1889 more that $500, O0O, 600 worth of
goods produced by other countries, while
we sold but $13, 1000, 600 worth. With
the transfer of commercial supremacy,
much of this valuable and profitable trade
would come to US. III steadily Embarrassing
importance of New York as an international
financial center will be stimulated, and the
hrst general European war will see the
transfer of the worlds surplus capital from
London to New York. Thus we shall, if we
remain financially spotless snd trustworthy.
become the worlds savings bank and safe
deposit.
This is a glorious prophesy, but Mr.
Eddy must concentrate his batterina
rams on McKinley's Chinese wall before
We can take in the prospect.