The Plymouth Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1878-1901, 1901-08-29
COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY
The United States has Already Become
the Financial Center of the World
and is Rapidly Increasing
in Power.

Ii
Great Britain was courageous
enough to say in public at
bankers banquet that the finan-
cial center of gravity was, it
seemed to him, rapidly shifting
from London to the United
States. Nearly all of his hearers,
who were themselves bankers,
criticised this remark, saying
that it was rash. probably false,
and inexpedient to make such a
statement, if there were any truth
in it, but when he asked them to
prove that lie was rash or mac
curate they were unable to do it,
whereas he pointed to several in
cidents we'll known to the bank
ers of London and the continent
which tended to prove the truth
of his assertion.
Almost three years have elaps-
ed since this remark was made,
and now there is no one of any
authority either in Europe or
upon the continent who would
care to deny privately that the
prediction was being rapidly JUS
titled, although many of the
financiers and especially the
statesmen of Europe could not
be induced to make that admis-
sion publicly.
But there comes a frank adj
mission from Professor Suess, a
publicist of high authority in
Europe and scientist of even
greater standing. He is quoted
in dispatch from Vienna as
saying that today the United
States has decidedly the lead
among the nations of the earth,
that it's policy can no longer be
doubted to be that of commercial
aggression, that it has increased
its power through the mobiliza-
ton of that power due to vast
construction and unification of
railway systems and that there
ought to be throughout central
Europe a movement for common
defense against the American in
dustrial and financial trusts
(which are moving to conquer
foreign markets by d method
Surer that that made possible by
any fleet of battle ships"
Professor Suess calls attention
to what he calls the unparalleled
figures showing how greatly the
international trade balance rep
reSentS American credit. So the
professor and Europe at last
have discovered that we have
been going on for five or six
years piling up international
credits at no less than $500, OOO,
900, and in the latest fiscal year
ggregating nearly 500, 600, 900.
And yet after all it is not surpris-
ing that this tardy admission of
the creation of great American
international trade balances has
been made IN Europe, since in
our own country there was the
greatest reluctance to admit that
the great figures showing the ex-
cess of our export trade were
due to anything more than spec
ial reasons, and that they indi-
Gated a permanent condition.
Often those who spoke with
some enthusiasm of our growing
international trade balances were
rebuked by the cynical reproofs,
and that, too, by men whose ex-
perience ought to have taught
them to give something more
than a superficial study to the
figures recorded by the experts
in our custom house and at Wash
Iington. Allusions to the char.
acter and probable permanence
of this most favorable yearly
trade balance that were made in
this correspondence from time to
time since 1897 as a most i'm
portant part of the news OF the
day were regarded by some of
the financial writer's as based
upon wholly unjustifable view
of the situation, taken by men
upon whose comments and opin-
| ions these illusions were based.
! And yet these men had gone
deeper into the figures, read more
- lox~-->., Al, 1,roc coxx-