The Savannah morning news., 1904-01-08

Rochester, N. Y, Jan. THE an
nual dinner of the Chamber of Com
merce was held in Colonial Hall this
evening. About 275 guests were pres
emit. Letters of regret We're received
from several prominent men who We're
unable to attend. The principal
speakers will William Merriam, form
erly governor of Minnesota, and now
of New York; Charles R. Flint and
John Brisbane Walker. of New York
and o. P. Austin, of Washington.
Mr.. Austin said, in part:
I'VE are so accustomed in this great
country of ours to talk of millions and
even billions. that l think We scarcely
stop to consider what an enormous
sum a billion is. l do not need to say,
of course, to you men of business that
billion is a thousand millions. in our
acceptance of the term. But do we,
any of us, fully comprehend what a
vast sum a billion is? 1t is so easy,
when you write million, simply to
add three more ciphers and make it
billion. that hardly think we fully
realize the difference. Let US take a
simple and familiar subject, las a
method of determining the comparative
greatness of the two terms. millions
and billions" We all know how rap
idly an expert counter of coins will
manipulate them. You can scarcely
follow the motion of his fingers as he
shifts the shining coins from one pile
to another and counts them. The treas
ury experts will count 1000 silver dol
lars in an hour and keep it up all day
long; but that is their limit. Working
eight hours day. then, an expert
counter of coins will count $4,000 sill
yer dollars in a day, but how long will
it take him at that rate to count mill
lion dollars? Thirty-one days. Think
of man counting silver dollars, hour
after hour, day after day, as fast as he
can count them, and yet finding that
at the end of thirty-one working days
he has only counted one million. But
that is only the beginning of the meas
urement of great figures, for If this
same man were to go on counting sill
yer dollars, at the same rate of speed
for ten years he would find that he had
only counted 100 million of them, and
that to count a billion dollars would
require 102 years of steady work at
the rate ofSeight hours per day during
every working day of every one of the
1902 years. So when 1 begin to talk to
you of billions of dollars, in the meas
urement of our commerce or that of
the world, please remember that a bill
lion is a thousand times as much as a
million, and that even that expert VINO
can count a million in thirty-one Gays
must take a full century to count
billion And when you realize this, l
think you will agree with me that the
figures which measure our commercial
progress are not merely wonderful, they
are appalling.
A ;,,l Of n
wear 1870 the international commerce
of the world was 1,000,OO0,O0O but the
| development and use of steam ana
steel and electricity in transportation
| and commerce, by land and sea, during
the wonderful period in which this
generation has lived, has brought 1t TO
| $22, 0OO, 100000 in the year 1908.
Here then, we have a definite meas
ure of value; the entire International
commerce of the world in 1870 amount
ed to $11, 900, 600, 900 and in 1903 to $22,-
OOO 900. OOO And with this standard of
value-this immense measuring rod, L
propose to measure the internal COM
| merce of the United States.
ITO determine what the Internal
commerce of country is, is much
more difficult than to measure its for
eign commerce. In the foreign COM
| merce there are certain gateways
through which all merchandise enter
! ing and leaving the country must
| pass, and it can there be definitely
measured by the customs officers of
the country; but there are no gate
| ways at which the internal commerce
of the country, that which passes from
hand to hand or city to city, can be
measured. Our best mode of measur-
ing the internal commerce then is 10
take the value of the various great
products at the farm and mine and
forest and factory, as stated by the
| decennial census, and after allowing
| a proper addition for the cost of trans
portation to the first dealer who handles
them. accept this general total as the
value of the internal commerce of that
year, allowing for only a single trans
action in each article.
Applying then, this mode of meas
urement. a mode generally accepted