The sea powers.

weapons. Whether their officers and men can use them as Dewey and Sampson and their men used their squadrons at Manila and Santiago is one of the questions yet to be answered. In the meantime Great Britain is carrying out a building program in consonance with her policy of maintaining a navy stronger than any two of her rivals can bring against her; Russia is entering upon a comprehensive plan of naval development; Germany is completing the tactical scheme determined upon in 1897 which fixed upon a definite naval strength for the empire to reach as soon as possible and to maintain unchanged; Japan is developing her navy conservatively, but with intelligent regard to her needs as the home power of the far East; and the United States, apparently at last convinced of the need of a strong navy for the security and advancement of a world power, is carrying out a moderate, but positive, program which each year adds to its fleet vessels of the most approved modern types.

As a naval power Great Britain certainly maintains a war footing. This is made necessary by her enormous commerce and her widely scattered possessions. Again and again England, not over-fortunate in military operations on land, has been saved by her sea power, and history is very likely to repeat itself in this respect if Great Britain should now become involved in a conflict with any of the world powers. There seems to be a grave doubt in the minds of many well-informed Englishmen as to whether the personnel of the British navy is up to its efficiency in times past, when the British sailor had but one rival, the sailor of the United States. The latter has been lately tried and found to have lost nothing of his traditional ability; the British navy has had no real test since the development of modern fighting ships. France maintains its powerful navy chiefly in anticipation of war with Great Britain. Of the possibilities of this splendid equipment in French hands, we know nothing. It may not have any great significance, for the historic ill-fortune of the French in naval warfare seems to indicate that the sea is not their place for operations. The German navy is being developed with German scientific thoroughness, in accordance with a definite scheme. That of Russia, as now in commission, under construction, or projected, is proportioned to the ambitious imperial designs of the tsar's government, which will make it necessary to maintain strong squadrons on four seas. The United States moves somewhat hesitatingly and uncertainly toward what

seems to be its inevitable national destiny-that of a great maritime power on the two chief oceans of the world.

It has been possible in this brief survey to indicate only some salient contributory elements of national strength that may bear upon the complex problems of the world's politics if the use or display of force becomes necessary in settling them. The subject is in itself broad enough for long and detailed study. To such a study the suggestions of this and the preceding chapter may form a preface.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

INDUSTRIAL CHANGES.

The eighteenth century set on foot in the western world great political Characteristics of changes which had their fruition in the nineteenth. The latter was a the centuries. wonderful industrial century, introducing changes in the conditions of life and of production that are revolutionizing society and will determine the social and political movements of the twentieth century. It seems probable that as the great original contributions of the eighteenth century to civilization were intellectual, and those of the nineteenth were material, those of the twentieth will be ethical, the outcome of the widespread social unrest of the present day in its seeking for better conditions of life. At present material conditions are chiefly occupying attention. The question is one of economics; but there is already evidence of a seeking for something higher, safer, and surer than mere material welfare. This movement, touching first the individual, will also affect those aggregated individualities, the nations.

Meanwhile, the effect upon the nations of the industrial changes and Material developmaterial growth of the present age has been even greater than we some- ment. times realize. The development of improved machinery and of improved methods of rapid production, stimulated by the desire for an increase of wealth on the part of the producers, has created new standards of living for the masses of the people. The existing markets have been enlarged, and new markets have been created. But the demands of this new trade for cheap and prompt delivery could not have been met with the old methods of transportation. The railway and the steampropelled vessel came in and at once enlarged, as by the touch of a magician's wand, the scope of trade, making it possible for the energetic producer to enter new and distant markets with his surplus product. The wide extension and increasing complexity of business relations necessitated more prompt and certain means of communication than existed a century ago, and the genius of scientific invention answered the demand with the telegraph, the cable, and the telephone. The active industrial countries have been gridironed with railways; mountain ranges have been tunnelled or otherwise circumvented by modern engineering skill; ocean has been Railways and joined to ocean literally by bands of steel. The interest in canals which canals. was strong in the first quarter of the last century and gave way to the passion for railways, has revived within a few years, as the many advantages of water freight carriage have become apparent, and in many countries, especially in Europe, internal communication is facilitated by artificial waterways. Of greater importance to the problems of world politics are the interoceanic canals, providing short pathways for commerce from ocean to ocean, and facilitating rapid naval movements in time of war. Thus the most distant places have been brought into close touch with each other, and the isolation of past ages no longer exists. These changes have directly affected the internal politics and external relations of the nations, quite as much as they have modified conditions of production and of the life of the people. Industrial consolidation

LOCKS IN THE
GOTHA CANAL AT
BERG, SWEDEN.

The United States as an illustration.

A COMPLETED
SECTION OF THE
PANAMA CANAL.

brings the population more and more into large towns, and makes human life more and more a part of a machine, changing the environment and outlook of the individual, and making new adjustments necessary. With this daily association of great numbers of people comes a tremendous impulse to the growth of social and political democracy. Furthermore, with the cheapening and multiplication of production and the increase of wealth, people are constantly demanding more of the accessories of life, and the luxuries of one generation become the necessities of the next. The wide-reaching social significance of these facts is something into which we cannot enter; but their political consequences are a most important part of the world problem we are considering. The relation of the United States

to the world is perhaps the most plain and striking example of the changes wrought by modern means of communication in the realm of international politics. At the foundation of the union and well into the last century, the government and people of the United States regarded themselves as apart from the Old World, protected from it by broad oceans, and not much concerned in its affairs. In accordance with this theory, the United States advanced with unprecedented rapidity along all the paths of national power, and by increase of its productive capacity, necessitating a broader market, has become the interested associate of other great commercial nations in the exploitation of the world. The strenuous commercial rivalry of the present generation has brought the young republic of the West face to face with the world powers in the far East, and

has forced upon
the government
problems that were
brushed aside as
irrelevant by the
early statesmen of
the republic.
Underlaid by cables
and crossed with
almost the regu-
larity of the tides
by many lines of
great steamships,
the oceans have
ceased to be bar-

riers to intercourse. The old isolation is ended, and increasing commercial intercourse forces the nation into political relations with other great powers. The pressure by the western powers upon the distant Orient is partly due to the same drawing together of the continents, which permits no isolation.

The effect of the notable industrial expansion of the last generation is also of the most profound significance in world relations. Machinery

has increased production until it has outrun even the rapidly increasing Effect of industrial demands of the people. The home markets of the great producing nations expansion. have not been equal to handling the products of the field, workshop, and factory. It has become necessary to find foreign markets, and all of the great manufacturing countries are seeking those markets by every means which private enterprise, supported by the resources of government, can suggest. The nations are bringing all possible political agencies to bear to maintain the commercial competition of their people with the people of their rivals. Here again the United States furnishes an apt illustration. A little while ago in the United States the whole cry of a considerable majority of the people was for the cultivation and protection of the home market. Today the United States competes successfully in the world's markets in several important lines of manufactured goods and, as has been shown in the preceding chapters, leads in the production of the most valuable natural staples. The home market has become insufficient. A new appeal is made for such a national policy as may secure the people

a strong place in
the trade of the
world, give the mer-
chants of the United
States access to
every possible mar-
ket, increase its
merchant marine so

that it may become NORTH RAILWAY
less dependent for STATION, VIENNA.
its carrying trade
upon other powers,
and improve the
ocean highways to
facilitate inter-
course with distant
lands. Since poli-
tics always go with

trade sooner or later, it is thus drawn into the turmoil and complications of Politics and trade. world politics. Bismarck, masterful as he was in shaping to his will the politics of Europe, found this inseparableness of politics and trade when he took up the colonial problems raised by the development of German trade. He desired Germany's commercial advantage; he found himself embarked on a colonial movement, which is inevitably political.

Prince Kropotkin, the earnest and devoted Russian reformer, arguing Prince Kropotkin's for the need of greater attention to agriculture as a means of preserving theory. individual independence and of checking the overgrowth of modern industrialism, attributes the warfare and international dissensions that engaged the world's attention as the nineteenth century was passing into history, to this sharp competition of the industrial nations for markets for their surplus products. The rapid increase of this surplus, throwing the producing nations into the current of competition, has forced them to find or create new markets, which is done by forcing upon inferior races a civilization that they do not understand in order that they may buy the goods of which they do not feel the need. This reasoning would attribute largely to commercial competition the rivalries of nations in this industrial age; which may not be very far from the truth. The primary motive force in most of the national movements of the present time is to be found in commerce; and the game is played with such passionate eagerness because success is essential to the continuance of the national power and life of the contestants.

Mulhall states that the volume of international trade has increased forty-fold since the beginning of the eighteenth century. It quadrupled

The volume of inter- between 1850 and 1890, as may be seen by the following table, showing in millions of dollars its amount at each decade:

national trade.

The preceding table is prepared from Mulhall's "Dictionary of Statistics." The following statement of the world's commerce for 1899, as divided between imports and exports, is from the statistics of the United States Bureau of Foreign Commerce:

Some comments on the table.

*For fiscal year ending June 30, 1899.

$8,976,117,702

It will be seen from the above tables that while the aggregate foreign trade of the whole of Europe increased over $1,384,000,000, that of the United States increased $366,000,000, or more than twenty-three per cent, the increase being, it may be added, in the export column. The world's increase in aggregate commercial movement for the same period was only about nine per cent. The main point to be noticed in connection with these figures is that the European countries import foodstuffs to a great extent, and they are rapidly increasing the amount of their manufactured products; while the United States, for a long time a large exporter of the agricultural staples, has now made long strides into the arena of commercial competition with the manufacturing countries. These are facts not shown by these condensed tables, but easily to be verified, and of much interest in connection with the figures here given.