The National tribune., 1901-07-25
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF AMERICAN
INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY.

SS-iA1 of ahEblS AT
| INDUSTRIAL SUPREMACY.
While our bosoms swell with Nationa
pride over the astonishing success OF
American goods and manufactures every
where, yet we cannot help feeling deep
sympathy for the people who are being
injured, perhaps ruined, by this success.
Take for example the European millers.
There is no pleasanter picture in literature
or art, or the memories of those who have
Travelled abroad, than that of the English
or German miller and his mill. The miller
was always a leading, substantial, kindly
figure in his little community. He was
probably the best-to-dO of any man
in it. His house was the most comforta-
bic, his wife and children the best-dressed,
his mill the most important institution. and
with its great overshOt wheel, its broad
pond, its substantial, moss-covered walls,
was a favOrite study for painters and
writer's. The mill was n social and polit-
zeal center, where the farmers met
and talked politics and exchanged neigh
bOrhood news while waiting for their
grists. The miller was the social and po-
litical leader, whose word counted for
more than almost anybody clse's But
everywhere the millers are gone or going.
and the mills falling into melancholy
ruins. Minneapolis and cheap transport
alton are running them all over Europe.
The wheat can be bought III this country
cheaper than in Europe. the great mills
around the Falls of st. Anthony can make
il into flour at very much less expense
than the oldfashiOred machinery in the
little country mills of Europe can possibly
do it, and cheap railway and ocean trans
portatiOn does the rest. France and Ger
many are trying to save their miilers by
discriminating in favor Of wheat as
against flour importations, but these are
only temporary makcshiftS. Nothing must
stand in the way. nor will be long allowed
to- of the people getting their bread the
very cheapest possible. or course, if we
reason to the end we shall see that the
ruin of the small mllers has been much
more than compensated by the cheapening
of a necessary of life for everybody, but
somehow one must still feel very sorry
for the miller
1t is the same in almost everything else.
The old, familiar boot and shoe shop of
our boyhoOd, with the busy but gossipy
and frequently philosophical and reflective
boot and shoemaker, has all but disap-
peared from our country, and now we are
beginning to exterminate it and him in
Europe. 1t is true that we are now get
ting much better shoes than he could
make, at probably one-third the price, but
we lament his going all the same We
wish that somehow he could have been
kept, and given us as good shoes as we
are now getting at the present prices.
There is danger of carrying this senti-
mental regret too far, however. The
changes are in the very nature of things.
They have always been going on, proba-
bly, always will 90 on, rs mankind pro-
crosses. The big miller with his stream
of water and his ovcrshot wheel destroyed
the business Of a whole lot of smaller mil
lers, who ground with human or animal
power, just as he is being destroyed by
the still bigger millers, who make the
Mississippi River furnish power. The
makers of leather shoes destroyed the bus
mess of those who whitfield them out of
Eastwood; and so on through every de-
partment of manufactures.
One of the first disturbances of this
kind occurred hundreds of years ago, when
the European raisers of wOad rose in re-
bellion against the introduction of Span.
ish indigo. At that time woad was one
OF the leading crops of Western Europe.
1t was discovered that one pound of in
digo would do as much as 30 pounds of
woad. During the reign of Elizabeth in
nJ l,.o 1FI D., -
and officers were ordered to search for and |
destroy it wherever found. This law re-
mained in force for more than a century. !
The German Diet Of 1917 prohibited it as
the devils dye, pernicious, deceitful and |
The French Government did !
the same thing. Now indigo is being rap |
idly driven out by aniline.
Probably the greatest ard most disas- !
trous revolution of this kind ever known |
was in the beginning of the last century, |
when the invention of Eli Whitney's cot
ton gin, together with the steam engine |
and the power loom, destroyed the bust
ness of millions of fax-growers, spinners
aud weavers i'll Germany, France, Holland |
and Ireland. The money taken from them
was put in the pockets OF little clique |
If slave-Owners in the United States, and |
INTO those of the cotton-mill owners and
1l eratiyes in England, Scotland and this
But the thing had to be, be,
cause the whole world got clothes, bedding
and other necessafies incomparably cheap
er than the fax men could furnish them.
All progress is destructive as well as
and at every step many sut
Ter that more may be benefited.
OUR esteemed contemporary, the Wash
ngton Post, which is near enough the
fountain head to see the wheels 90 around
and independent enough to laugh at the
ceasless humbuggery, cannot restrain the
laugh at times. 1t says editorially:
The Hon. H. Clay Evans has been
awarded a place in the New York Even /
HILL i