The sun., 1901-11-29
WILL LEAD WORLD.
This Country Destined in Short
Time to Take First Place.
Resources and Enterprise Combined
with Absence of Glass Distinc-
tions Give Advantage over
Other Nations.

No competent observer can doubt
that in wealth, manufactures, mate.
rial progress of all kinds, the United
States, in very few years, must hold
the frst place in the world without
dispute. Its population will soon
double that of any nation of western
Europe. That population will have
an education second only to that OF
Germany and Switzerland, and su.
perior to that of any other European
nation, says Frederic Harrison, in the
Nineteenth Century.
The natural resources of their
country exceed those of all Europe
put together. Their energy exceeds
that of the British; their intelligence
is hardly second to that of Germany
and France. And their social and po,
litical system is more favorable td
material development than any other
society ever devised by man. This
extraordinary combination of nation.
al and social qualities, with vast mum.
bers and unbounded physical re.
sources, cannot fail to give America
the undisputed lead in all material
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 pas
sion for art, rest and home has
handicapped them in the race for su.
premacy 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, ma
tional unity, physical resources, geo.
graphical opportunities, trained in
telligence 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 alb
sence of social barriers or class dis
tipctions, the abundant means oil
technical and scientific education,
leave it open to each man and woman
to make their own lives. The vast
continent, with its varieties of eli.
mate and soil, produces almost every
thing except champagne, diamonds
and ancient buildings. With New
York and San Francisco, the two
grandest natural 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 a height of
which the nineteen centuries before
1t never dreamed. When the English
man talks about the evils of protec-
tion and the benefits of free trade
he is reminded that the United States
occupies a continent self-sufficing,
except for few luxuries, which has
its own free trade on a gigantic
scale, over an area far greater than
all western Europe. 1t seems inn
pertinent to lecture men about their
neglect of free trade, when in their
own country they can travel in every
direction thousands of wiles without
even meeting customs frontier.
They insist that they are the great
est free trade people on earth.
OF course, for the American citizen
and the thoughtful visitor the real
problem is whether this vast pros
perity, this boundless future oi
theirs, rests upon an equal expan.
sion in the social, intellectual and
moral sphere. They would be bold
critics who should maintain it, and
few thinking men in the United
States do SO without qualifications
and misgivings. AS to the universe
diffusion of education, the energy
which is thrown into it and the
wealth lavished on it from sources
public and private, no doubt can ex
ist. Universities, richly endowed, eX
1st by scores, colleges by many hun
dreds, in every part of the union
Art schools, training colleges, tech
nical schools, laboratories, polytech
MICS and libraries are met with il
every thriving town. The impression
left on my mind is that the whole ed
ucational machinery must be a
least tenfold that of the United
Kingdom. That open to women mug
be at least twentyfold greater thar
with us, and it is rapidly advancing
TO meet that of men, both in number
and in quality. Nor can ! resist thu
impression that the education in al
grades is less perfunctory, amateur
ish and casual than is too often oul
own experience at home. The libra
ries, laboratories, museums and gym
nasia of the best universities ant
colleges are models of equipment ant
organization. The "pious founder
has long died out in Europe. He /
alive in America, and seems to pos
sess some magic source of inexhaus
ible munificence.