The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1903-05-21
CARNEGIE ON ENGLAND'S DE-
CLINE.

Andrew Carnegie has in truth
bearded the liou in his den it an in
terview attributed to him is true.
The great steel magnate and library
builder is in England, and according
to press dispatches he has talked very
freely in comparing England with the
United States. Here are few of the
sayings credited to him in the before
mentioned interview:
Washington is the proper capitol
of the English speaking world"
You led the world once, but now
we have taken your place. You can
not compete with us in industry and
you will be happier if you acknow
ledge it. Our manufactures are al
ready three times as valuable as
yours and our exports greater. How
can You compete with us? The very
size of our great industries gives us
an immense advantage. BY standard
ization we can supply the demands of
the world at prices you cannot think
Of You are exhausting your coal
and iron very rapidly. Your rate of
increase in population must soon be-
gin to diminish You are already full
up"
We are only beginning. We have
plenty Of territory entirely unexplored
where there will be some day great
population. Your colonies are not in
creasing. Australia seems full. 1t
is a mere rind around an empty inter
ior. South Africa is not white
mans country, and your governments
policy of encouraging emigration
there, especially of women, is almost
crime.
As fol. Canada, compare her growth
in the nineteenth century with that
of the United States. Her only
chance of future is to throw in her
lot with the Americans.
But as the land of the spirit, the
land of Shakespeare and Milton, we
all do homage to you. There your
supremacy will always remain. When
we come here we feel in this gentle,
quiet atmosphere that it is this and
not America that produced Shakes
peare our common king. Shakespeare
was been more to me than my Bible.
Il he birthplace of Shakespeare is to
m the most sacred spot in the world,
more sacred than the holy sepulchre
itself. Shakespeare taught me more
than all other books put together. l
have dreamed of that birthplace all
my life''
Thus does the industrial king rele-
gate the proud and imperious empire
to the class of nations that include
Palestine and Egypt. "A land of the
spirit;' perhaps Englishmen will not
take Mr.. Carnegie seriously but if
they do the nation which gave him
birth may disown him and bid him
return to Pennsylvania and remain
there for life. England certainly is
proud of Shakespeare and Milton, but
she is not forgettul of Waterloo. Ira
falgar and the title of mistress of
the seas" which she wore so long,
and for an adopted American to ring
in such changes on his mother coun-
try must be anything but pleasant
There is food for reflection, however,
in Mr.. Carnegie utterances, if he
did indeed utter them, for if England
has reached the summit of her great
ness and is slowly moving toward the
twilight as many contend, history is
but repeating the old story of the
westward march of power. 1t is true
that at the present time the finger of
fate seems to point to America as the
queen of nations and the handspring
Of the earth's political mechanism,
but already the Orient is giving I'M
mistakable signs of development which
leads to the belief that in some day,
distant though it may be, the Ameri-
cans of the future may stand upon the
shores of the Pacific and view the
greatness that was his country's steal
ing silently across the great ocean to
lands beyond the sunset.