The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-08-25
Comparative Wealth and Exports.

States is now about equal to
that of Great Britain. For the
year ending June 80 last, according to
recent figures, our exports amounted
to S1,221, 4S5, 425, while for the six months
ending with the same date, the British
export trade is given at G126,521 1894,
which being thrown into dollars makes
$614, 1896 404, just about one-half the
amount of our own for the full year
At the present rate of increase the
United States will soon be away in the
lead. These figures become significant
when we consider that the home mar
ket of the United States Is twice as
large as that of Great Britain, which
home market is mainly supplied from
our own products.
London financial journals are COM
menting upon these conditions with
some show of alarm. The mere fact of
the United States forging to the front
need cause our English cousins no par
ticular concern. For half century,
at least it has been manifest that the
United States was destined to lead
mercially. Years ago Gladstone de-
clared that America was passing Eng
land by leaps and bounds in the race
for wealth, and it is worthy of the
most careful consideration that while
our exports are about the same as those
of Great Britain, our accumulated
wealth is nearly, if not quite, twice as
TIA
tory and the variety of it's resources,
coupled with the intellectual activity
and boundless energy of an absolutely
free people, made the ultimate COM
mercial supremacy OF the United States
inevitable, unless by an unwise policy
we handicapped ourselves in the race.
That we did so when we changed our
standard of value in 1873 by the out
lawry of silver, is a fact so obvious
that it has been admitted by some of
the most prominent advocates of the
gold standard in Europe. We were at
once the greatest producing and great
est debtor nation in the world. Occupy
ing this position we Joined European
nations in a crusade against silver, thus
limiting the supply of money, depress-
ing the prices of our products and In
creasing the burden of our already
enormous debt.
AS a mere commercial proposition 1t
is self-evident that the largest produc-
ing nation is benefited by a high range
of prices. This benefit is still more ap-
parent when the country is heavily in
debt, and must make its payments out
of the prices obtained for the things
which it has for sale. The action of
the United States in 1873 is the first in
stance in the commercial history of the
world in which a government supposed
to be representative ever turned it's
guns upon one of its own important
industries, at the same time inflicting
unconscionable injury upon the great
body of the people by depressing the
value of their labor and increasing
the burden of their debt.
But this comparative commercial
growth is suggestive in many other
ways, one only of which will be men
toned at this time. For years it has
been a favorite claim with gold cham
pions that England's commercial su-
premacy was the direct result of her
adoption of the gold standard in 1916.
Disraeli exposed the fallacy of this
chimera years before his death, but the
simple suggestion that England was
the greatest commercial nation and
the richest country in the world long
before she even thought of adopting
the gold standard. explodes it COM
pletely.
But the particular point is this: The
United States never has been COM
pletely upon the gold standard. At the
present time. when we have more gold
than ever before very little, if any
more than one-third Of our money sup
ply is in that metal, while England
has been as solidly upon the gold stand
ard as it was possible for her to be.
And yet we have long since passed
her in the race for wealth, and are
now on an even keel in the matter of
exports. Ten years hence we shall be
far in the lead. despite the brake which
We, ourselves, have set upon the wheels
of our progress