Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-01-30
AMERICA, SUCCESSOR
OF ANCIENT BABYLON
This Country Is Now the Commercial
Center of the World, and Piffling
Senate Cannot Stop the Opera
ton of Elemental Forces

! 70 VIII DN war imam is l0QlcaCeQ Dy MS
recommendation that the bureaus in
Washington dealing with international
trade be consolidated.
If we can understand how and,why the
United States has reached its present
"position OF economic preponderance," to
! use the phrase of the secretary Of state,
we may be able to shape our course in
the present and the future with a closer
regard to the great forces at work in the
world than has lately been shown in
! Washington.
Mr.. Lansing says that we are where
! we are because CT the war. This is true
in narrow and restricted sense. But
the wa" was really only an incident in
! the outworking of forces which were de-
| stroying the stability of the commercial
! equilibrium of nations.
| At the close of the Spanish American
| War Brooks Adams, a grandson of John
| Quincy Adams, called attention to the
existing unstable equilibrium which
threatened the supremacy of London as
the worlds commercial capital, and he
| prophesied that Great Britain would in
| the near future be compelled to take Sec
ond place to either Germany or the United
/ States. Unknown contingencies would de-
/ eide whether it was to be Germany or the
/ United States. The prophecy of Mr.
| Adams has been fulfilled before our eyes
and the unforeseen contingency of the
war instigated by Germany has turned
the scale in favor Of America.
Any one familiar with the history of
! the last two or three thousand years will
recognize, as soon as his attention is di-
rected to it, why America occupies its
present position Of economic supremacy.
Before the development of the resources
IF this country the commercial capital of
the world was where the trade of the
East met the trade of the West.
1t was because ancient Babylon was
This meeting place that the Babylonian
empire rose and flourished. The rise of
the power Of Rome threatened and finally
ovcrthrcw the Baby,onan commercial
power. When Rome declined Constanti-
nople fou ished-an the East and the
West met on the shores of the Bosporus
and the city was the center of the worlds
exchanges. Then the great commercial
reriuses of the Venetian republic began
to seek trade. For one reason. or another
the power of Constantinople waned and
| Venice succeeded the city on the Bosporus
as the point of exchange for the products
of the Orient and the Occident.
Venice was succeeded By Antwerp
through the enterprise Of the Dutch navi-
gators and because Of the political and
moral deterioration Cf the Nenetians
The Napolconic wars destroyed the trade
of Antwerp, which was diverted to Brit
ish ports, and by 1910 London became the
heir Of the commercial traditions of
Babylon, Rome. Constantinople, Venice
| and Antwerp, and for ninety years or
thereabouts occupied a position of un-
doubted supremacy, buttrossed by mo-
ropoly Of the trade of India, over which
! she exercised political control.
/ But events over which Great Britain
| had no control had been happening in
( these ninety years.
The United States had developed from
a small agricultural nation into a great
/ manufacturing people producing more
/ pig irOn--a trade barometer-than any
/ otheE nation.
Germany after its consolidation in 1870
/ had devoted itself to commerce and to
! manufactures. Her production of pig
| iron increased by leaps and bounds. She
/ was sending her products to every coun-
( try of the globe. She had developed the
| port of Hamburg from an insignificant
| inland city many miles from the sea, on a
! shallow river, into one of the greatest
| shipping centers of the world, where car
! goes from all climes were unloaded and
! transshipped to their ultimate destina-
! ton.
As every shifting of the trade center in
| the past had bean accompanied by great
world cataclasms, the elements were ar
ranged at the beginning of the present
! century for a new cataclasm. 1t did not
| come for fourteen years, but it was in
| evitable Its inescapability does not ac-
/ quit Germany of her crimes. 1t makes
! Germany guilty of the high crime of de-
| liberately plotting to wrest from their
natural course the forces at work and to
! compel them to do her bidding
Germany lost the war and lost that
! position of economic supremacy for which
she had been working. In her CONNER
! cial collapse she has carried with her the
rest of the nations of Europe. The
| United States remains the one great
| power with its resources unimpaired and
| in a position to hold the center of the
/ cOmHeTCldl stage lOI many years She
! stands between the East and the West in
a position of great strategic strength.
The Senate, however, is laundering
along on the theory that the United
States can continue to occupy the center
Of the stage without coming in contact
with any Of the other parties to the play.
| 1t is a blunder so stupendous that its
magnitude cannot be estimated at the
| present time.
All we know is that this country is a
| creature of the same forces that have
| been at work during all the centuries
since Babylon gave way to Rome as the
| worlds commercial center We cannot
escape from them. Whether we ratify
the treaty unchanged, or revise it or re-
ject it, we shall be rocked on the current
! of world affairs across both the oceans.