Birmingham state herald., 1895-11-24
LAND OF ruL1Nnss.

At the New York chamber of commerce anniversary Charles Emory smith CT Philadelphia, ex-minister to Russia, was the third speaker, his toast being Ma tional Development and Opportunity. Ar. Smith said in par4;
 "OHrs Is land Of fullness and not Of famine. Providence has doWered us with matchless opportunity and ehe worlds evoiutioo unIolds before us the crowning destiny of mankind In 100 years a marvellous growth has advanced our country from almost nothing. until today it possesses more than one-fifth of all the wealth Of the world. In the two decades, from 1870 to 1S90 the mighty powers of Great Britain, France and Ger many. all combined, with their l25.OeO,- 000 people, gained in wealth 30.O00, ,0O0,- 000, while the United States alone. with it's 60. 900 900 people gained $32S, 900 00O, 900. Their debts are piling up; ours are melt ing away. Their taxes are rising; ours are failing. Their expenditures are frightfully swelling; ours are relatively declining. Their productive forces are stripped for armies and armaments; ours are al the blow, the forge, the loom and the eXchange-at the tools of wealth and not of waste
 And we are only at the threshold of our development. Who shall grasp the advancement of the next twenty or thir- ty years. or picture the dazzling destiny of the next century? Our spirit if not our flag. will rule the hemisphere. The Nicaragua canal, constructed by Ameri- can capital and owing allegiance only to American control, will open through the continent the highway of the sea, and New York, wrestling the financial center from London, will stand like another Venice of the earlier and narrower days as the focus and emporium of the worlds wide Tf1prcp bptwPpO the nFiant and the Occident"
 With such a country as this and with such population and commerce how can anyone say that we are not able to have an independent currency as well as an independent government? Governor Oates in his speech in congress on the re- peal of the sherman purchasing clause put this matter in very strong light. He said
 'In the present crisis Great Britain, Germany and other European powers are exerting their influence to cause sill yer to be stricken down as money in the United States, and we be forced to fol- low their example by adopting a single gold standard, and thus to reduce the volume of our metallic money and the material of which it is made to one-half of what it Is at present. We are largely the debtor of those countries, especially Great Britain, and the establishment of the gold standard alone would make all our indebtedness and obligations paya- ble to her people in that money, with thd purchasing power of it. on account of it's scarcity, double what it was when our obligations were entered into.
 "CaD any reasonable man, with a fair amount of information as to the vast ness of our country, with it's more than 65, ,000, GOO people. with its products near ly large enough to clothe and feed the world, and with resources sufficient to sustain an army large enough to tri- umph over the world in arms if invading our shores. say that it should be in finan- cial matters dependent on Europe or any number of the nations of the world? Are we not large enough and great enough and our future sufficiently in- viting for us to assume among the na- tlons of the world the position of die tator rather than that of a suppiant or follower?"