forty cars can be loaded in two hours. The achievement of this road is a prophecy of what can be done and will be done on other roads. The furnaces of greatest capacity are not now in Europe, but in this country, and it is equally true that labor-saving machinery is employed to a greater extent in American furnaces than in the furnaces of the old world. No doubt our relatively higher wages are responsible for part of this, as is also the readiness of the American mechanic to use new machinery. One can not go through the Carnegie Works in Pittsburg, the Edward Thompson Works in Braddock, the Illinois Steel Works in South Chicago, without being lost in admiration of the evidences of inventive genius to be seen on every hand. The perfection to which this development of the application of mechanical contrivances has been brought must be seen in order to be appreciated. The director of a German steel plant sums up the foregoing considerations as follows:

"Concerning the industrial situation in the United States, the impression derived by a foreigner is that the present remarkably favorable conditions. are solid, legitimate, and likely to be permanent. This is particularly true of the mining and metal industries. An important element in the present unparalleled prosperity of these interests in America is the strong, steady, continuous demand for metals, particularly those used in electrical machinery and installations. It is also true that America far surpasses us in the use of iron and steel for building

purposes. It is undeniable that American works operate under decidedly more favorable conditions of production than our own. An important factor in these conditions is the fact that the United States possesses far richer and more widely distributed iron deposits than Germany. While we are largely dependent upon imported ores, especially Swedish, the American iron works find their raw material at home. To this must be added the other important advantage, that the construction and equipment of their iron and steel works far excel those of Germany, and, indeed, every other European country. In America we find what seems to us an astonishing substitution of machinery for manual labor. Only in the most necessary details is hand labor now employed. Such a vast and skillful application of machinery offers especial advantage in a time like this, when manual labor is costly and difficult to obtain. Finally comes the enormous advantage which the Americans enjoy through the high development of their railway system. The industries have at their command a railway system which far surpasses in cheapness and efficiency of service anything known in Europe. The first sight of the tracks and equipment of an American railroad makes upon a German an imposing impression.

Their freight cars of all classes far surpass in size and carrying capacity those of the German railways. Their track system is relatively broader and stronger than ours. Special tracks for freight trains secure rapid, almost unbroken traffic. A

widely developed system of branch and side railways (feeders) sustains the traffic of the principal lines. The rates for freight are excessively low. While on the German railways the cost of freight per ton kilometer is (excepting some unimportant special tariffs) 2.2 pfennigs, in America the corresponding rate is only 0.6 pfennig per ton kilometer."

We have quoted this foreign authority at length to make it clear that our own views are not tinctured too strongly with patriotic sentiment. While European mills may introduce American machinery and systems of transportation and imitate American methods of manufacture, there are, nevertheless, respects in which we have a decisive and permanent advantage-a cheaper and more abundant supply of raw materials and a larger home market. With a cheaper and better supply of iron ore, and coal at half the European price, it is not surprising that we have invaded the European markets and are practically masters of the situation where tariffs or the cost of transportation do not operate too strongly against us. Within less than a quarter of a century the tables have been turned completely. In 1880 our imports of iron and steel and articles manufactured therefrom were five times our exports, while in 1900 our exports were six times our imports. Along with a marvelously rapid increase in production has gone an almost equally rapid increase in consumption. Our home consumption, which is even now far greater than that of any other nation,

and is destined to increase more rapidly than that of either of our close competitors, furnishes a sure basis for continued supremacy. While our industries do not despise the foreign market they are not to the same degree as their European competitors dependent upon it. In other words, our exports bear a much smaller proportion to our production than do those of the other great iron and steel-producing countries.

Even more significant than the increase in the amount of our exports is the change in their character. We are no longer exporting chiefly pig iron, nor yet the cruder form of the manufactured product, but the bulk of our exports consists of those forms, the manufacture of which requires the highest degree of skill, in which not the raw material but labor is the great factor, for example, locomotives, electrical and mining machinery, cash registers, typewriters, sewing machines, and so forth.

In these, as in other industries, the value of technical education is being recognized and an increasing number of schools are being established and equipped to meet the needs. In an address at the opening of the Stevens Institute, February 6, 1902, Mr. Carnegie used the following expressive language: "The technical school has given this country a class of young men the like of which are seen nowhere else in the world. I had a number of famous English iron and steel. men at dinner not long ago. When one of them arose to drink my health he said, 'Mr. Carnegie, it is not your

superior ores nor your great mills that impressed us most, but the class of young men you have in the iron industry here. We have no corresponding class in England.'"

We offer this statement of Mr. Carnegie, and the testimony of an English iron-master which he quotes with approval, as a confirmation of our

opinion that one of the great facts in accounting for our industrial supremacy in this, as in other lines, is the preeminence of the American artisan in the application of brains to his work. A study of conditions makes it clear why the center of the steel and iron' industry of the world should have shifted from Sheffield to Pittsburg.

Τ TH

HE present Reform Administration in New York was elected to put an end to abuses which the majority of citizens believed to exist. It has now had three months of official existence, and though, perhaps, it has not done so quickly all its most zealous friends hoped it would in that short period, there is every evidence that the municipal government is endeavoring to cope with the problems its election was expected to solve.

That most important of the city's departments, the financial, is the first to feel the new order, and in the present Comptroller, Mr. Edward M. Grout, the city possesses an official who is determined to carry out the policy of reform and retrenchment to inaugurate which he was elected. In the past three months Mr. Grout has shown that his record in the Comptroller's office is to be one for establishing a new financial policy for the

city, one that will have to do not only with spending the city's money to the best advantage, saving money where it is possible, but also for making money for the city. In other words, Mr. Grout is carrying out a financial policy which treats the city's administration as a gigantic business, to be conducted on as strict business principles as obtain in any great commercial enterprise or industrial venture, freed, however, from any purely speculative feat

ures.

The great public improvements now under way and projected in New York. bring the present Comptroller face to face with problems which have never troubled his predecessors. He has to meet grave questions relating to the city's debt, and he has already taken steps to so conserve the enormous resources of the city that its borrowing capacity will be further increased instead of diminished.

Every day the taxpayers receive some fresh evidence of the Comptroller's watchfulness against extravagant expenditure or weakening of the city's resources, and there is every day a more secure feeling in regard to the city's finances.

This young man, who has charge of the finances of the second city in the world, has won the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens by a public career devoted to high political ideals and active efforts for the betterment of municipal conditions.

The magnitude of Mr. Grout's present task may be judged from a perusal of his communication to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, and therein he outlines his plan for dealing with it. The figures are in themselves interesting, as showing what the city of New York owes, is paying for, and has contracted to pay for.

On January 1, 1902, the city's constitutional debt limit of ten per cent. of the assessed valuation of real estate was $323,777,826.10; the net funded. debt (excluding county indebtedness) was $271,233,365.97; net contract liability, $33,096,840.12; for lands acquired by the city, $9,896,082.14; and for judgments (estimated), $2,000,000, leaving a margin, or excess, of ten per cent. of the assessed valuation over the debt of $7,551,537.87.

In the opinion of the Comptroller this margin should not be reduced very largely.

He pointed out that the city's resources for bonding began with this margin, to which may be added: Cash in several sinking funds, special rev

enue bonds held as investment by the sinking funds, revenue bonds issued in anticipation of the taxes for 1901 held by the sinking fund, estimated revenues of the sinking funds during 1902, and ten per cent. of the increase in assessed valuation of real estate for the purposes of taxation taking effect July 1, 1902, making a total in all of $42,315,975.97. Another resource is in the prompt levying and collection of assessments upon properties benefited by street improvements other than street openings, and in which there has been great tardiness in recent years. For advances made and liabilities incurred in this direction, the sum of $23,322,938.31 is included in the city's debt, and, as the Comptroller points out, this sum has not been spent for the benefit of the city at large, but for that of particular localities. The Finance Department is taking steps toward early collection not only of the arrears of assessments, but also of the large arrearages of taxes which have been permitted to accumulate.

"Unless assessments are made and collected as rapidly as the machinery. provided by the charter will permit, the constantly increasing demands for improvements of this character throughout the enlarged city will seriously embarrass us in other directions. A safe system," continues the Comptroller, "in regard to assessment work would be one where the city did. not incur actual liability for the locality until the assessment had been levied and a substantial part of it collected."

"The average collection of assess