Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1900-1909, 1900-09-25

VAN anu tuc UliipplueS, anu udfe SOHtS
interest i'll Cuba; and l venture to say
that the increased and increasing busi-
ness in those distant islands has already
more than absorbed the work of all the
drummers in the country who have lost
their positions through industrial COM
binations. If that is true, and l believe
it is, consider what a chance there is for
ten per cent of our commercial travellers,
or for fifty per cent of. them, in time in
foreign lands or at home here. helping
their new employers, or their old ones,
to meet all the numberless new and in
creasing demands of our prosperous and
proud American men, women, sweet
hearts, wives, cousins, aunts and chill.
dren, and ali the countless millions. who,
as we can be certain. are going to want
our American products more and more
because the counted millions that we
know of have begun to take them now
almost faster than we can supply them.
That is expansion.
You cannot stop it in million years.
1t has been going on since the world
began, and it will continue to go on,'
faster than ever, l guess, to the end of
time. 1t happens when a people fairly
bursts its manufacturing and commercial
bounds. There must be an outlet for the
products of our farms and factories. for
the capital and talents of our business
men and hustlers.
Sometimes this expansion of new
strength, which amounts to an explosion
of new strength, must be preceded by a
hattleship, even by part of a standing
army, or 4 permanent garrison, as in
Porto Rico or the Philippines. At other
times the battleship and the standing
Army. or u part of it, just enough to hold
our own aud make no doubt of it. must
follow.
The missionaries (who typify in a way
the advance of civilization into heather
lands; as ne call them) are best of all the
daring forerunners of the commerce and
the progress that have to get there too
The human race especially the Anglo
SaxOns. are always wanting more and
better things; they are climbing. climbing,
climbing. always upon higher plane of
living. These things they work for. and
fight for, and die for. So long as that
restless, world-conquering sentiment ex-
lists. there will be expansion. So long
too, the races of the earth which have
found themselves. and are still finding
themselves, unequal to the trading, and
selling. and fighting. and civilizing capac-
ity of the Anglo-Saxons, must step aside;
they must learn to fight and to trade, and
to trade and to fight, much better; that is
all.
try to say these things thoughtfully,
as drummer. notorious as he is for talk
ing. may sometimes do. This expansion
that | speak of is what we optimists
mean by destiny: we are not afraid Of it,
we welcome it. We have done in the last
three years hundred years of work
which, however, we couldn't have done,
it we hadn't been prepared, if we ha6n' t
been that kind of people.
There is not true American man in
these United States that is not better off,
in his patriotism or his pecuniary pros
poets, for the tasks of war and of states
manship that have been undertaken and
discharged in the last three years. You
are better of. whoever you are, and am
better off. Even if had not been nee
essary to.my employer in the field and
had not been kept ON the payroll then
there would have been ten times the
freedom of opportunity. which is all any
good man can want There is freedom of
opportunity for everybody: but opportu-
nifty won't come looking for u.s. We must
go running for it. watching every OPEN
ing, looking for Improvement, looking for
| the way which our employer must find if
we do not make his capital and his ef-
| forts pay him a little better. In that
way our efforts, which are our capital
will pay Us better and better
A DRUMMER.