The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1900-02-19

-~AA0Ne~>AN- 49,
ing cotton yarns and cotton goods abroad |
at the rate of $500 100000 per year.
For fifty years she has been selling steel
and iron goods, and ships Of iron or
steel, at the rate Of from oO,ooo,Ooo to
$500 900, 900 per year to us and other green
horn or necessitous nations.
During that time she has bought our
flour at Minneapolis or Rochester On. W
prices, our cotton at New Orleans figures
and our provisions at seaport prices.
And each year she has loaned us back
her freight moneys as a sop and drug to |
dull our perceptions of what was to our
own. advantage. 1t was due to our en-
vironment, our wonderful natural re-
sources and our institutions that the sop
and drug acted as stimulant to our
local energies and sent us unfagging
to the top of performances; sent us
across the continent with four parallel
lines of railway. and sent US into the
bowels of the earth for the iron and oil
and copper that are now making such
extraordinary promise for us In the flu
ture. And, although we have in the past
z4pandered $1,2o0,Oe0.o0o for coffee from
Brazil in twenty-five years, and are now
shamelessly quarreling with little Puerto
Rico about her coffee and exports to this
ought to enable us to recoup some Of our
folly and losses and bring US home such
profits that We can even look with COM
placency upon the heodwinking Of the
past.
We are selling mineral oils at the rate
of $50,0O0,000 per year to- other nations.
That much may be saidHto the credit of
the Standard Oil monopoly. Enough to
just about equal our own gold produc-
ton. But our coffee imports from Brazil
eat it all up 4si7a
We are now selling abroad iron and
steel goods to the value of $500 600. Geo per
annun. But our sugar bill just about
absorbs that gold credit; and we are
shamelessly quarreIing with Puerto Rico
We are selling abroad raw cotton to
the annual value of over 100000, 900 and
manufactured cotton to the annual value
of less than s2O,OO0,OoO. We have invested
in ten years s60, 900 in electric light
plants. We have invested probably $7,OOo,-
600 In new cotton mills in the same time.
The water power that should be driving
the wheels Of mills is driving the electric
current into dwellings and offices for pur-
poses Of luxury or convenience, toys of
diversion from great national mission.
We are producing 100000 tons of pig
iron per annum, worth at an average SIS
per ton. We are In imminent danger Of
pig iron shipments to Europe, pro-
cedure that would be asScalamitous as
the shipments Of cotton and -four have
been.
We have built 2od,0 900 miles of railroad
track in the last fifty years, at cost of
$12 0O0. eee 09a. .sTheyssearn@ every year over
81, SOC, coo, 000. The entire system is capa-
BILE of carrying more freights at cheap
er rate than any other railroads in the
world, but is helpless s.as soon as it
reaches the seashore The same rails can
be made to carry still greater traffic,
more ton miles at a Iess-rate per ton.
But they must have seashore support
The total foreign commerce of Great
Britain runs up to more than s3.0o0,0O0,000
per years.. 72o, 100000 in 1899. Ours
amounted to 100000 Geo. and we. consider
it wonderful performance. The Neither
lands had foreign trade Of 81, 800, OoO, 900,
and Belgium OF 1926. 0O0. 0O0-and we fed
their mechanics with our cheap flour
and meat and sold them our cheap raw
/ cotton, to enable them to outsell us In
South America and Asia.
Having the greatest oil fields in the
world, the most completely developed
copper, mines, cotton for the world to
draw upon, water powers without stint
and iron ore and coal beds to which
there Is no known limit-and the Asiatic
and Oceanic trade wide open, with $780,
zation-what nation of sapheads and
| nilksops we should be to continue the
submergence of our capital and credit in
local works of municipal Improvement
when the rest OF the world is In shirt
sleeves for colonial expansion for pur-
| poses Of trade. and when our iron fur
naces might be duplicated with profit and
our cotton mills auadrupIed, and when
| there are ships to be built to answer the
purposes of our new coastwise trade, as
well as the new foreign trade on the Pa
| cific
| The rest of the world already has
! trade to the value OF $3.50, 100000 per an
| mum with China, while We have but $780,
| 000, 600 of it, with Australasia to the value
! of $578, 900 900, while we have but s20, Co.,
900 of it. Cape Colony trades abroad to
| the value of $2OO,00OOO0. and we get but
| SIG 900. 900 of 1t; Argentina, to the value
| of $241 ,O0O,O and we get but $50 900 Of
| 1t. Is there no American to go mad
upon this proposition, that it Is time to
build ships-to build American cargo car
| riers-te build more furnaces and steel
mills, and to set UP cotton spindles at
| every dam site in the South or North;
to save our coffee and sugar bills by SELL
ing our own manufactures and hauling
our own freights to the less advanced
nations?