Waterbury Democrat., 1901-08-06
WILL LEAD WORLD.
This Country Destined in Short
 Time to Take First Place.
Resources and Enterprise Combined with Absence of Class Distinc- siOns 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 first place in the world without dispute. It's 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 tc material development than any other society ever devised by man. This extraordinary combination of nation al and social qualities, with vast num- bers and unbounded physical re- sources, cannot fail to give America the undisputed lead in all material things. It 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 Frenchn.cn fail to see how their pas sion for art, rest and home has handicapped them in the race for SUI 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, na- 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 ab- sence of social barriers or class dis | functions, the abundant 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 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 height of which the nineteen centuries before it 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 /, continent self-sufhcing, except for a few luxuries, which has its own free trade on a gigantic scale, over an area far greater than all western Europe. It seems im- 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 of 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 misgiyings. As to the universal 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- ist by scores, colleges by many hum dreds, in every part of the union. Art schools, training colleges, tech nical schools, laboratories, polytech- nics and libraries are met with in every thriving town. The impression left on my mind is that the whole ed ucational 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 I resist the impression that the education in all grades is less perfunctory, amateur ish and casual than is too often our own experience at home. The libra ries, laboratories, museums and gym nasia of the best universities and colleges are models of equipment and organization. The "pious founder" has long died out in Europe. He is alive in America, and seems to pos sess some magic source of inexhausx- ible munifcence.