8,635. These figures, in 1904, reached the stupendous proportions of $3,060,178,611 and $7,305,443. In 1820, the amount due each depositor was $131.86; in 1904, $418.89.

The transactions of the New York clearing house in 1854 embraced fifty banks with a capital of forty-seven million dollars, and the clearings $5,750,455,987. In 1904, the number of banks had increased to fifty-three and their capital to one hundred and sixteen millions, but the clearings attained the inconceivable total of $59,672,796,804.

In 1800, our imports were ninety-one millions and the exports seventy-one millions. In 1903, the imports were $991,000,000 and the exports $1,460,000,000. In 1800, the imports exceeded the exports by thirty per cent.; in 1901, the exports exceeded the imports by fifty per cent.

The "Year Book" of the London Daily Mail, compiled with great care, shows the relative wealth of the leading nations; their national debts, their production of the chief cereals and their standing in the strife for the “iron trade.”

The United States has steadily gained in the battle of commercial competitions, while England and Germany have hardly held their own. The pig-iron production in 1903 was:

The gold production of the United States in 1903 was valued at $73,591,700. Colorado held a long lead with $22,590,000, and California next with, $16,104,500. The other States and Territories producing over one million dollars each, were: Alaska, $8,614,700; Arizona, $4,357,600; Idaho, $1,570,400; Montana, $4,411,900; Nevada, $3,388,000; Oregon, $1,290,200; South Dakota, $6,826,700; Utah, $3,697,400.

The production of silver, the next precious metal, was 54,300,000 ounces. Colorado yielded $7,014.708; Arizona, $1,829,034;. Idaho, $3,513,996; Montana, $6,826,842; Nevada, $2,727,270; Utah, $6,046,272.

No doubt the pension system of our country contains a great amount of fraud and dishonesty, but the dread of doing injustice to those who helped the country during the

stupendous struggle for the Union, as well as the fear in many quarters of alienating the "soldier vote," have led to an unprotesting acceptance of these frauds. Every political platform makes a bid for the soldier vote; no public speaker dare attack the fraudulent pensions, even though he knows of scores of instances which are neither more nor less than downright stealing. Many a man who never heard a hostile shot fired has been drawing his pension for years, and will continue to do so as long as he lives. Investigations have shown that men who left the army at the close of the war, stronger, sturdier and in better health than ever before, have met with some accident, have fallen into dissipation or contracted some disease, due wholly to other causes than war, yet straightway they apply for and obtain pensions for injuries or disease caused by service. in the army. To illustrate, it came to light that one person was receiving a pension on account of baldness, and the writer knows of another in which the recipient had a trifling injury to his little finger, of which not even the scar remained. There are thousands of such cases, and yet on the first move to bring the criminal to justice, a hue and cry is raised against the one who initiates the action, and he is howled down as an enemy of the old soldiers, who risked their lives and received grievous injuries while serving their country.

No one questions the duty of the government to pay the patriotic veterans for the work they did, for its value is beyond measure, but it is one of the burning disgraces of the time that multitudes of worthless persons, who have not the first claim to remembrance, draw a steady income from the fund that was never intended for such as they.

If anyone is disposed to question the truthfulness of these statements, let him. analyze the following official figures.

Think of the few leaders on either side of the great contest of 1861-65, who are still living. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Farragut and a host of others, passed away long ago. The mortality among the privates has been proportionately great, and yet the number of pensioners has steadily increased with nearly each year. At the end of June, 1904, the names on the rolls were 994,762, including 16,829 from the war with. Spain. The pensioners are classed: invalids, 730.315; widows, etc., 274,447. There were 55.794 claimants for pensions during the year, and 44, 296 claims were allowed. The total pension disbursements for 1904 were $142,092,818.75. This included one widow and two daughters of Revolutionary soldiers, and one survivor of the War of 1812, Hiram Cronk, who died in 1905 in his 105th year.

The statement gives the following amounts of money paid pensioners under different administrations:

CHAPTER XVI.

ROOSEVELT'S FIRST ADMINISTRATION, 1901-1904 (CONTINUED). THE DANISH WEST

INDIES.

WR

E never took any special interest in what is known as the Danish West Indies until after Porto Rico came into our possession as one of the results of the war with Spain. If you will look at the map, you will see several islands lying to the eastward of Porto Rico and named respectively St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix. They belong to the group known as the Virgin Islands, some of which are owned by Great Britain.

The most important of the three is St. Thomas, which lies thirty-eight miles east of Porto Rico. Its area is hardly forty square miles and its population less than twenty thousand. The surface is hilly and poor and water is very scarce. The chief town on the island, Charlotte Amalie, is obliged to depend upon tanks for its supply of water. This town contains three-fourths of the population of the island, whose few inhabitants are engaged in the cultivation of grass, vegetables and a little cotton, but the products are

so meager that nothing is exported. The town, known more generally as St. Thomas, is a station for steam packets from Southampton to the West Indies, and has a fine harbor.

St. Croix, or Santa Cruz, is the largest of the Virgin group, with an area of about a hundred square miles and a population of twenty-seven thousand. It has been owned successively by the Dutch, English, Spanish and French, the last of whom sold it to Denmark in 1733. The remaining island, St. John, is insignificant.

A proposition was made in 1867 by Denmark to sell the three islands named to the United States, and Secretary Seward favored the project, but the Senate did not confirm the treaty. Following the war with Spain, however, the negotiations were renewed and carried on for two or three years, everything being complete except the necessary appropriation by Congress. The price offered to the Danish government by our. minister to Denmark was 12,000,000 kroner, equivalent to about $3,240,000. But for a change of ministry in Copenhagen, the transaction, no doubt, would have been completed in the early part of 1900. The islands have been a financial drag upon Denmark for years, and she is more than willing to sell them. You will readily see, from their location, how disadvantageous it would be to us for some government to purchase them, now that Porto Rico is ours and would require protection in the event of war.

In the latter part of March, 1901, it was stated that Denmark had communicated to the United States the conditions on which she would sell her West India Islands to us. It was said that she made four conditions: 1, the price was to be $4,000,000; 2, a refer

endum of the people of the islands was to be taken on the transfer; 3, if the referendum proved favorable to the transfer, the people were to become immediately not only American subjects, but American citizens; 4, products of the islands were to be admitted to the United States free of duty.

As was to be expected, these rumors, although persistently circulated, proved to be not wholly reliable. In September, it was said that the new Danish ministry had accepted the terms offered by the United States, but the report was found premature, though there was little doubt that the transfer, sooner or later, would be consummated. Our government left the matter almost wholly in the hands of Minister Swenson, and the tenor of his dispatches was that before long he would be asked to arrange a treaty to submit to the next session of Congress. The latest dispatches gave the price set for the islands as $4,800,000, but it was believed that the deal could be made for consider