Expansion under new world-conditions

Front matter

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BYJOSIAH STRONG

1 1 MiitaiiUiiliklium 1 1 1 liiJiMHiitm ^ ' ' ' ' " ■ ' "

Preface

The twentieth century is confronted by conditions which are new in the history of the world, which concern the nations in general and the United States in particular. In this book the subject of Eoi^parmon is discussed in the light of these new conditions.

Students of civilization are attaching more importance to physical conditions now than formerly. Says Professor William G. Sumner of Yale University: "The notion that progress proceeds in the first instance from intellectual or moral stimuli, or that progress is really something in the world of thought, and not of sense, has led to the most disappointing and abortive efforts to teach and elevate inferior races or neglected classes. The ancestors of the present civilized races did not win their civilization by any such path. They built it up through centuries of toil from a foundation of surplus material means, which they won through improvements in the industrial arts and in the economic organization."

Civilization is shaped by as many causes as there are motives to which men are susceptible, but industry — the way in which men get their living — is dominant with the million. Man is capable of reaching a spiritual elevation such that he is controlled by the loftiest motives. He has toiled for years in the galley; he has rotted in the dungeon; he has charred at the stake, 9

Preface

rather than speak the word which would have liberated his body and chained his spirit. He has shown himself gloriously superior to all outward conditions — to all that appeals to the flesh. But these are the shining spirits that have revealed the splendid possibilities of human nature; they represent the potential rather than the actual in the multitude. As yet the great bulk of mankind live on the physical plane; and, therefore, physical conditions, as yet, exert the most powerful influences in shaping civilization. The movement is upward, and the greater altitudes will surely be gained. We must keep the noblest ideals constantly in mind and unceasingly struggle toward them; but as sober men, dealing with present facts, we must acknowledge that physical conditions still dominate the nations.

New physical conditions and the industrial revolution have created a new situation, and are producing a new world life, which is profoundly changing national relations and which must inevitably change national policies.

I am indebted to Senator William P. Frye for public documents kindly sent, and for information furnished. I desire also to acknowledge the courtesy of Captain A. T. Mahan, the eminent writer on naval subjects, who read several chapters of the book which traverse the field in which he is acknowledged to be the highest authority, and who was so good as to give me the benefit of his valuable criticism.

J.S.

New Yoek, September, 1900.

Chapter I Page

Importance of the questions involved in the general subject.

Vacant government lands. Arable lands taken.

1. Meaning to the nation. Energy and capital will increasingly go abroad. That energy measured by the work accomplished during past century. Sir Henry M. Stanley quoted. Mulhall's estimate of national energy in foot-tons. Compared with that of other nations.

Increase of capital in one generation. Decreasing field for investment at home.

3. Meaning to the world. Westward migrations as old as the race now brought to an end. Two results : a sharper competition among the great races, and a movement toward the tropics. Acquisitions of Great Powers in tropics.' M. Beaulieu quoted. Change in the great lines of commerce. Difference in development of advanced and belated races. Prof. Drummond quoted. Commerce between temperate zones and tropics to increase.

CHAPTER II OuB New Manufacturing Supremacy 40

Three steps : conquering the home market, the colonial market, the European market. Excess of exports over imports. Success of American manufactures abroad; illustrations.

We command the conditions of permanent success. 1. Coal; 3. Iron; 3. Low labor cost; 4. Cheap raw materials; 5. Access to markets. Mr. Gladstone quoted.

Our commerce to be carried in American bottoms. Americans as ship-builders. The "Oregon." Lord Beresford's opinion. Tonnage which passes through the Sault Sainte Marie. Senator Frye quoted.

CHAPTER III FiOK

FoEEiGN Markets a New Necessity 73

Influence of machinery. Its multiplication.- The substitution of mechanical for muscular power. Half-way to the industrial milleunium. Problem of production solved; that of distribution awaits solution. Production has increased more rapidly than population. Hon. Carroll D. Wright quoted. Enlargement of manufacturing plant inevitable. Congestion must follow failure to increase foreign markets. New inventions throw men out of employment.

The cry "Back to the soil" fallacious. Effect of applying machinery to agriculture and of making it a part of organized industry. The artisan out of work may not become a farmer, but may become a revolutionist.

Lord Macaulay's " appeal to the twentieth century." Danger of a large unemployed and discontented class. The coming industrial conflict.

CHAPTER IV The New China 104

China looking backward for at least twentyseven centuries. Effect of isolation. Influence of Chino-Japanese war. The Chinese people a great factor in the world's future.

Changes since 1840. Railroads. Cotton factories. Changing habits and industries shown by tables of imports. Schools to teach Western learning. Distribution of literature. Native newspapers.

Effects of China's awakening. China's resources. Influence of railways; India's experience. Colquhoun quoted. Introduction of machinery. It creates commerce and elevates standard of living.

Effect on the United States. Commerce present and prospective. Five new Americas. Wu Ting- Fang quoted.

Chapter V Paqe

Interest in canal. Important results.

1. Geographical. Eeduction of the size of the earth by one-third. President Hayes quoted. Connecting the Mississippi Valley with the P.aciflc.

2. Commercial. Henry Clay quoted. Distance, time, and cost saved. Creation of new commerce. William H. Seward quoted. Table of distances. Pacific practically shifted 7,500 miles. Hon. A. R. Colquhoun quoted.

3. Political. Connecting our two coasts. Should be owned and controlled by our government. Commodore Melville quoted. Eastern coast of North America and western coast of South America. EfEect on West Indies. Captain Mahan quoted. Cuba.

CHAPTER VI The New Mediteeeanean 163

Pacific to be supreme in the twentieth century. That supremacy final. Population of Pacific lands. Expansion of the race to take place in these lands. Daniel Webster quoted. New and Old World compared. Hon. James W. Taylor quoted. Resources of Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, East Indies, the Pliilippines, Japan, China, and Siberia. Effect of trans-Siberian railway. Hon. John Barrett quoted on Pacific trade. Production of world's staples by Pacific lands: wool, gold, silver. Thomas H. Benton and William H. Seward quoted.

CHAPTER VII The New Mediteeeanean an Anglo-Saxon Sea.. 185 Battle in Manila Bay. Benjamin Kidd and Prof. Franklin H. Giddings quoted. The supreme question of the twentieth century.

Resemblances between the Anglo-Saxon and the Slav. 1. Numbers. 2. Growth. 3. Power of assimilation. 4. Genius for organization and government. 5. Growing-room.

Badical contrast between the two races. The Russian essentially Asiatic. William Durban quoted. Russia's aim. iflmile de Laveleye quoted. Which race to command the Pacific ? Sir Walter Baleigh quoted. Pacific coast-line belonging to the two races. Importance of Anglo-Saxon Island possessions in Pacific. Strategic importance of Hawaii and Philippines. Captain Mahan, Hon. L. A. Thurston, and Commodore Melville quoted. Admiral Walker's opinion.

Four of the six Anglo-Saxon homes ranged around the Pacific. These homes protected by water ; thus saved from militarism. Need of supreme navy.

Providence in the history of Pacific lands.

CHAPTER VIII A New World Life 214

The village world. Effect of railway, telegraph, and press. Society a living organism. Industry the fundamental factor in civilization. Profound effects of introducing mechanical power. New industrial civilization produced a new national life and is producing a new world life. British empire an illustration of new national life.

Oneness of the world's life. A world public opinion. International law. Navigation rules. Postal Union. World sympathies. The interdependence of nations. A world sensibility. Far-reaching effects of Prussia's bounty on beet-sugar.

This world life to be further developed. Continental and intercontinental railway systems projected. Effect of international competition.

New world life creates new rights and new duties. New dangers. Contagious disease. Yellow fever. Bubonic plague.

World Powers to assume more responsibility for the world's order.

CHAPTER IX A New World Policy 247

Advice of Washington's Farewell Address. Hon. Richard Olney quoted. New conditions since Washington's advice was applicable. Brief summary of preceding chapters. Political isolation impossible amid the new world conditions. Political questions inseparable from industrial and commercial interests.

Three possible courses open to us.

1. We may drift, believing we are anchored.

2. Possible to sail into this unknown sea recklessly with false chart.

Machiavelli the exponent of traditional views. Such views un-American.

3. A true chart, and good courage. A new world policy, whose aim shall be the noblest ministry to the new world life. A new world conscience. Development of same. Milton's ideal. Time to adopt new political philosophy and ethics. A world police. Use of force. Sacrifice of reason to reasoning. Use of force may be benevolent. Illustrations. New use for armies. Change in character of war. Cling to ideals, but recognize facts.

Distinction between freedom and independence. Progress of civilization involves decreasing independence and increasing freedom.

Our relations to the Philippines. Practical question is whether Filipinos are capable of self-government. Testimony of expert witnesses. Our duty ; how to discharge it. The liquor traffic with dependent races.

Great Britain and the United States standing together for Christian civilization, Emerson quoted.

Under New World-Conditions

Chapter I

With nations as with individuals the unintended and unforeseen results of actions are often vastly more important than the objects aimed at; for instance, the Crusaders, going out to rescue the Holy- Sepulchre and bringing back the seeds of Eastern civilization; Columbus, seeking a new route to India and finding a New World. In like manner, the unexpected and wholly unintended results of the late Spanish- American war are unspeakably greater than tlie liberation of Cuba, important as that was.

The shock of battle between the Old World and the New, between mediaevalism and modern progress, together with its momentous issue, has precipitated discussions which have been long pi"eparing. Nothing so becomes one who would arrive at a just conclusion touching these far-reaching questions as largeness of vision. Not rivers and provinces and peoples are implicated, but oceans and continents and races — not parties and policies, but hemispheres and civilizations. The world itself is involved. On the hinge of these questions may turn — is likely to turn — the history of centuries.

The forging of nations is a long process.

Often the fires which bring the great mass

to the right temperature are slow, and the

changes which take place are obscure. Then

suddenly on God's great anvil of war are 18 struck the mighty blows which shape the nation to higher uses.

The nation emerges from the late war with a new temper, a new national consciousness, a new apprehension of destiny. New responsibilities confront us, new possibilities invite us, new necessities compel us. But these new conditions were not altogether unforeseen. The essential change which has taken place was rendered inevitable by causes long at work and long since recognized by many thoughtful minds. These causes are now seen to issue in new conditions which must shape the future course of the nation.

Among the new conditions which confront the new centuiy is the exhaustion of our arable public lands — a fact of both national and world significance.

It is true that, exclusive of Alaska and oiir new island possessions, there are more than 500,000,000 acres of vacant govern- 19 ment land, but the mad rush for Oklahoma and the Sioux Reservation, when thrown open to settlement a few years ago, showed how little of the remaining government land is arable.

This land is by no means worthless. Much of it affords good grazing, and is at this moment supporting vast numbers of sheep, cattle, and horses ; and much of it is rich in minerals. Moreover, Major Powell estimates that 100,000,000 acres can be reclaimed for agriculture by irrigation. But storage reservoirs and canals would be required of such proportions as to place the wort beyond private enterprise ; while the interstate character of irrigation problems relegates any undertaking on a large scale to the Greneral Government; and there is no reason to believe that Congress will ap- ])ropriate vast sums for the reclamation of arid lands in the West so long as there are

many abandoned farms in the East which 20 can be had for less than the cost of the buildings on them. Practically, therefore, our arable public lands are exhausted.

1. Consider what this fact means to the nation. It does not mean of course that we are becoming crowded. It will be many centuries before the United States will be as densely peopled as England. It means that great tracts of unoccupied land have passed into the hands of corporations and of private owners, and, because they are no longer free lands, have ceased to attract settlers. It means that the energy and capital which heretofore have been devoted to developing a continent will now be turned in other directions.

That we may better appreciate how great is this energy, it is well to remind ourselves of the magnitude of the task accomplished by the American people during this century now closing, the prodigious character of which was happily unknown to 21 those who on the Atlantic seaboai'd faced the continent and the century together.

With the triumph of the railway, time rather than the surveyor's chain has come to be the measure of distance, and the shrinkage of the continent makes it difficult for us to appreciate how endless were the reaches of woodland and prairie and mountain ranges which separated the Atlantic from the Pacific a hundred years ago.

We may now cover the distance from New York to San Francisco in four days — four passive days of luxury. A hundred years ago^ — and indeed fifty years ago — ^that journey exacted strenuous months of hardship. In the winter of 1842-3, Marcus Whitman, with a vision broader than the continent and a purpose loftier and more unyielding than the Rockies, rode from Oregon to Washington in five months. The earth has become quite too small to express a straight-away journey of five months in 3« the terms of modern railway travel. Such a trip would demand a continent 112,500 miles broad to make room for it, ample enough to wrap around the earth four and a half times. Such a journey, however, would be only a holiday compared with the undertaking of crossing the continent during the first half of the nineteenth century.

A hundred years ago our population of 6,000,000 was a thin fringe along the Atlantic slope, and Ohio was the far fron-- tier. Consider what has been done since then. Homes have been built and furnished for 70,000,000 people. More than four and a half million farms have been brought under cultivation. For forty years there was an average of 16,000 acres of wild land subdued daily. Half a thousand cities have been built. Millions of miles of roads have been opened. Countless mills and factories have been erected 23 and equipped. Seven hundred and seventy-five thousand miles of telephone wire have been strung, and more than 800,- 000 miles of telegraph. With the railways which have been built, we could parallel every track in all Europe and then have enough over, if we could use the equator as a road-bed, to girdle the earth. Twenty-nine great commonwealths have been organized and equipped with all the appliances and usages of civilized society, the average area of these same commonwealths being considerably greater than that of England and Wales.

It has taken thousands of years to make Europe, but on this continent as vast an area has been brought under the yoke of civilization in one century. Keferring to what Americans have accomplished, Sir Henry M. Stanley says: "Treble their number of ordinary Europeans could not

have surpassed them in what they have done. The story of their achievements reads like an epic of the heroic age."

Science now measures the energy of a nation, including hand, hoi'se, and steam-power. Not including electrical, wind, and water power, the English statistician Mulhall estimated our energy, in 1895, at 129,306,000,000 foot-tons daily, or more than twice as much as that of Great Britain, and nearly as much as that of Britain, Germany, and France combined. Mulhall adds : " If we take a survey of mankind in ancient or modern times, as regards the physical, mechanical, and intellectual force of nations, we find nothing to compare with the United States."

It is not strange that this amazing energy, applied to resources which are perhaps unequalled, has made us the richest nation in the world.

Glance at the thirty years from 1860 to

1890. During this period the civil war withdrew two great armies from production, and directed their energies to the work of destruction. It cost the lives of a million producers; and furthei-more took out of the assets of the nation the value of 3,000,000 slaves. But notwithstanding all this, over and above all loss, over and above all consumption, legitimate and wasteful, we created and accumulated forty-nine thousand million dollars — a thousand million dollars more than the entire wealth of Great Britain. It should be added that the creation of wealth has been at a much greater rate since 1890 than ever before.

Why recall all this? Not for vainglory; nor because I would imply for an ■instant that the wealth which the nation has amassed is the best product of the century, and most worthy to be singled out for honorable mention. Attention has

been called to our wonderful wealth and 26 energy because these facts concern our argument.

The nation's energy has been chiefly concentrated on the industrial conquest of the continent, and the exhaustion of the arable public lands marks the practical completion of that conquest and constitutes the beginning of a new era in our industrial history. Heretofore our growing energy and our waxing wealth found a limitless opportunity within our own land. Now a limit has been fixed, and our ever-increasing energy and wealth will find an ever-decreasing field for investment at home. This of course means that henceforth they will increasingly go abroad.

When many thousands of acres of wild lands were being opened to settlement every day, and great railway lines were being projected, it created a strong demand for capital, in response to which

about two thousand million dollars were attracted to us from Europe. Within a few years that inflow of wealth has ceased. We now for the first time in our history have a surplus of energy and wealth, with the inevitable result that they have begun to flow outward.'

Much of the work which has made the century one of marvellous achievement could, from the nature of the case, be done but once. Billions of money have been put into permanent investments — the splendid business blocks which will stand for generations, public works and railways. Doubtless we shall build many new lines of road during the coming century, but we are not likely to invest $12,000,000,000 that way. A thousand channels which were open early in the nineteenth century are now filled and closed. We shall have

'One of our large life-insurance companies reports investments in Canada, Central and South America, Caba, Russia, France, Holland, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, Hungary, Wurtemberg, Switzerland, Italy, and Servia. 28 several times as mucli energy and capital to invest during the next century as we have had during the last, and they will necessarily seek opportunity in other lands. Precisely as England has for generations been sending her sons and her capital to eveiy climate, so we, from this time on, shall be sending American brains and American wealth wherever energy and capital are in demand, thus extending our interests over the earth.

2. Let us consider now what the exhaustion of our arable public lands signifies to the world.

Since prehistoric times the swelling populations of the Far East have rolled outward in ever-widening waves. For thousands of years there was an unoccupied land toward the sunset. At length the western bound of Europe was reached, but there was still a New World. In small

numbers at first, and at long intervals, the 29 adventurous colonists crossed the Atlantic; but during tlie nineteenth century the pressure of population in Europe has sent 18,000,000 to our shores, attracted chiefly by our free lands. Civilization has now crossed the continent; and on the Pacific coast the European met the Asiatic. There are no more New Worlds ; further west is the East.

Of course population wiU become more dense in North America, as it is doing in crowded Asia and in more crowded Europe, and immigrants will still come to us ; but when the wave of migration encircled the earth, it marked the beginning of a new era in the movements of the race.

The great migrations have been, for the most part, along parallels of latitude in the North Temperate zone. The exhaustion of the wild lands of that latitude, either by occupation or appropriation,

means one of two things, viz., a sharper 30 competition between the peoples of the North Temperate zone, or a movement toward the tropics ; indeed, it means both, and both have already begun.

The latter movement has not been a migration, but the acquisition, on the part of European Powers, of vast areas in tropical regions. Within the last twenty years some 5,000,000 square miles — an area nearly one-half greater than the continent of Europe — have been seized by European Powers in tropical and subtropical zones. After ages of indifference the Powers suddenly awake to the importance of the tropics. A French political economist, M. Paul Leroy Beaulieu, says : " Either France must become a great African Power, or she will be in a century or two but a secondary Eui'opean Power ; she will count in the world scarcely more than Greece or Rumania counts in Europe. " ' The German press is strongly

' Quoted by Mr. Kidd in "The Control of the Tropics," p. 28.

advocating a " Greater Germany." Italy a few years since made an expensive venture in Africa.

Mr. Benjamin Kidd thinks this acquisition of territory on the part of Germany and France indicates the hope of repeating in Africa the colonial policy of Great Britain, whereby, during the past century, she has extended her authority to remote parts of the earth. But the expansion of England has been the expansion of her race. She has colonized her sons and daughters. Prance, with a decreasing birth-rate, certainly cannot be preparing to dispose of a surplus population. On the other hand, she is attracting immigration from neighboring states. The Germans are a prolific race, and have been migrating for generations, but have never shown any interest in the acquisition of colonies until they became a manufacturing people. The fact

that Germany, Prance, and Italy pursue the 32 policy of restricted colonial markets serves to explain sufficiently to the writer their acquisition of tropical regions.

This expansion is primarily an economic phenomenon. After the Napoleonic wars, European nations were glad to concern themselves with their internal affairs and the recuperation of their wasted resources. Scientific discoveries and multiplying inventions, by which men utilized the forces of nature as never before, inaugurated what might be called an expansion inward. The conquest of nature multiplied products and created wealth more than a dozen subject peoples could have done. While the population of Europe increased fifty per cent, her manufactures increased two hundred per cent, from $5,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000. This forced home upon governments the increasing necessity of foreign markets, and opened their eyes to

the commercial value of the neglected trop- 33 ical and subtropical regions — a subject which for Americans has recently acquired new interest.

The tropics are apparently to play a much more important part in the world's future than they have done in its past. The greatest lines of commerce have been between the East and the West. The time is likely to come when they will run between the North and the South, the temperate regions and the tropics.

Commerce, like water, flows only whesre there is inequality. A dead level of absolute equality means stagnation. Commerce results from inequality or unlikeness of natural products and from differences among peoples. Now the most radical differences both in natural products and in peoples are between the tropics and the temperate zones; and these differences promise permanence.

Of course there are important differences 34 between peoples of the temperate zone — between us and Europeans, and between the various European peoples ; but so far as industry is concerned these differences are liable to be largely removed. The steel and iron we once had to buy of England are now made in the United States. A thousand articles which England once made for Germany the Germans now make for themselves. But there are good reasons for believing that manufactures will never be domesticated, to any extent, in the tropics. Their inhabitants will naturally get their livelihood in the easiest way, especially if that involves no change. Agriculture and horticulture are much easier and more liberally rewarded in the tropics than in the temperate zones. In addition to larger crops, two or more crops a year may be gathered. On the other hand, most kinds of manufactures will always be more

successful in the temperate zones than in 35 the tropics, because in the latter the excessive moisture of the atmosphere is injurious to machinery, and because tropica,! races are deficient in mechanical ability.

Only those races which have produced machinery seem capable of using it with the best results. It is the most advanced races which are its masters. Those races which, like the African and the Malay, are many centuries behind the Anglo-Saxon in development seem as incapable of operating complicated machinery as they are of adopting and successfully administering representative government.

It is interesting and important to note that the advanced and the belated races are not travelling the same path. We must not suppose that a belated race, at a given point in the path of progress, is surrounded by the same conditions and beset by the same difficulties that a more advanced race met when arrived at the same 36 stage of development. Nor must we imagine that the belated race will some day reach the same development as that of the advanced race at the present time. They are travelling different roads which involve different conditions and therefore different results. The difference between races and civilizations is not simply one of time and of degree, but one of kind.

The negro, for instance, on emancipation in the United States, was thi'own into the midst of an advanced industrial system, and of matured political and religious institutions. He cannot by developing them develop himself. All he can do is to accept them and to adjust himself to them in a passive spirit. Go back to the time when the development of our white ancestors was at the stage represented by the American negro to-day. The conditions of life then — physical, industrial, and

moral — differed profoundly from those of 37 the present time. C)ur_Anglo-S^Qil_an^ castor (if we may call him Anglo-Saxon), when emerging from barbarism, did not have all the tools and appliances of a high industrial civilization awaiting his appropriation and use. He was driven to invention by necessity, which is its mother. He was not bom into a highly organized society whose framework was law and whose atmosphere was liberty within law. His eye was not dazzled by pampering luxuries within such easy reach that they were often chosen at the expense of wholesome necessaries. The climate and all the conditions of life were kindly severe. He was forced to s truggle, and that struggle developedajitreng^jindjfibre of character 6t £erwij e_Jaipossible;- Hr is irhose^qualities, slowly acquired through long ages of struggle, and iom in AngloSaxons to-day.

raf Eer thaS^t he lands^ the riche^ISie industrial, social, and political institutions

38 ' ^ into wMch they a/re horn, that make Anglo-Saxons free and migh^.

Scienii s tS"teII us that when man became sufficiently intelligent to invent a tool, it put a stop to the further development of the hand. Says Professor Drummond : ' " As the hand was given more and more to do, it became more and more adapted to its work. Up to a point, it responded directly to each new duty that was laid upon it. But only up to a point. There came a time when the necessities became too numerous and too vai'ied for adaptation to keep pace with them. And the fatal day came — the fatal day for the hand — ^when he who bore it made a new discovery. It was the discovery of tools. Henceforth what the hand used to do, and was slowly becoming adapted to do better, was to be done by external appliances. So that if anything new arose to be done, or to be

• " The Ascent of Man," p. 103. 39 better done, it was not a better hand that was now made, but a better tool. Tools are external hands. Levers are the extensions of the bones of the arm. Hammers are callous substitutes for the fist. Knives do the work of nails. The vise and the pincers replace the fingers. The day that cave-man first split the marrow-bone of a bear by thrusting a stick into it, and striking it home with a stone — that day the doom of the hand was sealed."

In the course of many ages the hand might have been developed to doing many things without tools which it can now do only with them. By means of invention the hand accomplished the desired object much sooner, but at the expense of further development.