The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1901-07-25
WILL HOLD FIRST PLACE.
This Country Destined in Short a Time to
Lead the World.

This Country Destined in Short a Time to
Lead the World.
1Frederic Harrison in the Nineteenth Century,
No competent observer can doubt
that in wealth, manufactures, material
progress of all kinds, the United States
in very few years, must hold the first
place in the world without dispute. Its
population will soon double that of
any nation of western Europe. That
population will have an education sec
ond only to Germany and Switzerland,
and superior to that of any other Euro
pean nation.
The natural resources of their coun-
try exceed those of all Europe put to-
gether. Their energy exceeds that of
the British; their intelligence is hardly
second to that of Germany and France.
And their social and political system is
more favorable to material develop
ment than any other. society ever de-
yised by man. This extraordinary COM
bination of national and social quail
ties, with vast numbers and unbounded
physical resources, cannot fail to give
America the undisputed lead in all ma
terial things. 1t is curious instance
of the power of national egotism that
Europe fails to grasp this truth-that
Germans, with their wretchedly poor
country, narrow seaboard and scanty
rivers. ports and minerals, still aspire
to the first place; that Frenchmen fail
to see how their passion for art, rest
and home has handicapped them IN the
race for supremacy in things material:
that BritonS, in their narrow island and
their comfortable traditions, will not
recognize that the industrial prizes
must ultimately go to numbers, national
unity, physical resources, geographical
opportunities, trained intelligence and
restless ambition.
The ease with which men can pass
from one locality to another from, one
climate to another, from one business
to another: the entire absence of social
barriers or class distinctions, the album
dant means of technical and scientific
education, leave it open to each man
and woman to make their own lives.
The vast continent, with it's varieties
of climate aud soil, produces almost
everything except champagne, dla-
monds and ancient buildings. With
New York and San Francisco, the two
grandest ports in the world. open to the
ships of the Atlantic and the Pacific,
with Chicago or st. Louis as the center
of traffic, the clearing house of this
boundless trade, the material prosperity
of the American continent must reach
in the twentieth century height of
which the nineteen centuries before
it never dreamed. When the English
man talks about the evils of protection
and the benefits of free trade he is re-
minded that the United States occupies
continent self-sutficing, except for
few Injuries, which has its own free
trade on gigantic scale, over an area
lar larger than all western Europe.
1t seems Impairment to lecture men
about their neglect OF free trade, when
in their own country they can travel in
every direction thousands of miles with
out ever meeting customs frontier.
They insist that they are the greatest
free trade people on earth.
OF course for the American citizen
and the thoughtful visitor the real
problem is whether this vast prosperity,
this boundless future of theirs, rests
upon an euqal expansion in the social,
intellectual and moral sphere. They
would be bold critics who should main
tain it, and few thinking men in the
United States do so without qualitca-
lions and misgivings. AS to the uni
versal diffusion of education, the
energy which is thrown into it and the
wealth lavished on it from sources pub
lie and private, no doubt can exist.
Universities, richly endowed, exist by
scores, colleges by many hundreds, in
every part of the mon. Art schools,
training colleges, technical schools, labo-
ratomes, polytechnics and libraries are
met i'll every thriving town. The inn
preston left on my mind is that the
whole educational machinery must be
at least tenfold that of the United
Kingdom. That open to women must
be at least tWentyfold greater than with
US, and it is rapidly advancing to meet
that of men, both in number and in
quality, Nor can | resist the impress
sion that the education in all grades is
less perfunctory, amateurish and casual
than is too often our own experience at
home The libraries, museums and
gymnasia of the best universities and
colleges are models of equipment and
organization. The ''pious founder has
died out in Europe. He is alive in
America and seems to possess some
magic source Of inexhaustible munifi-
cence.
The C,aH,,, Da1,,o,d