Our Achievements and Prospects: American
The immense export trade in foodstuffs matches that in manufactures. Fewer manufactured goods come from Europe in payment of its annual debt to us for the means of life. How deep an inroad the United States has been making into European markets may be estimated by the increasing rumors of retaliatory measures, and the time will undoubtedly come when our traders will have to encounter new obstacles to progress. Meanwhile American makers of steel rails and bridges have triumphed over English and all other competitors in every part of the world. American contractors have constructed electric street railways in England, and various American manufactures of iron and steel are underselling British products, not only in neutral markets, but also in the United Kingdom. Recent reports of the rapid exhaustion of England's coal supply have added to the prevailing alarm. The advantage which American manufacturers have gained is due not merely to the superiority of our natural resources as respects the deposits of iron ore and coal, but also to the vast scale upon which our industries are organized, and the superiority of their appliances.
While the old world is growing alarmed at the prospect of diminished natural resources, we possess literally inexhaustible riches in mines, quarries, and the yield of the earth's surface. Of iron alone our store passes comprehension. Its importance is eloquently stated by a recent writer, who shows that "in the dependence of civilized man upon iron, he is but following nature, in whose realm nothing lives, moves or exists without it. It is in the water which bubbles from the earth; it is in every drop of blood which flows through the veins of life; it is in the rocks and soil under our feet, in the vegetation about us, and in the heavens above us. The meteors which fall from the skies are composed almost entirely of iron. It is known to exist in large amounts in the heavenly bodies, and the gases of which iron is composed are found to make up largely the masses of vapor which float in the firmament, and which, by the forces of nature, are solidified into worlds.
"The use of iron in the United States is in its infancy. Its consumption is progressing each decade with a cumulative force. Fifty years ago, one hundred pounds were consumed in the United States annually, for each one of its inhabitants; ten years ago, there were three hundred pounds for each person, and to-day we are consuming iron at the rate of four hundred pounds yearly for each one of our seventy-six millions of inhabitants."
Great Britain has been a great producer of iron ore, supplying many of the world's markets with the raw material and manufactures of iron. It now furnishes about seventeen per cent. of the world's output, and the United States produced nearly thirty per cent. Germany comes next with twenty-one per cent.
The well-worked coal-field of Great Britain cover 9,000 square miles; those of Germany, 3,600; Russia, 27,000; India, 35,000; France and Belgium, 3,200; those of the United States, 194,000. They are exceeded only by the coal-fields of China and Japan, which are estimated at 200,000 square miles.
The State of Pennsylvania produces more coal than any state or country in the world, with the exception of Great Britain. There were 73,066,943 tons of bituminous coal mined in 1899, and 54,034,224 tons of anthracite. A great deal of the bituminous coal was made into coke, so that 12,196,570 tons of coke were produced, and 52,895,383 tons of coal shipped to market.
Cotton is another staple product with a gratifying record. From 1870 to 1880 the crop ayeraged about four million bales per annum, which has been more than doubled since 1890.
"The cotton belt covers 24 degrees of longitude and 10 degrees of latitude. Excluding from the count the greater part of Virginia, more than 100,000 square miles of western Texas and the whole of Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri, Utah, California, Arizona, and New Mexico, the cotton-growing region measures nearly 600,000 square miles, almost one-third of the total area of settlement in 1890 of the United States. The 20,000,000 acres planted in cotton occupies barely five acres in every 100 of this extensive region. Scarcely fifty per cent. of this territory is in farms, and not more than one-fifth has at any time been tilled. This section contained in 1890 a population of over 8,000,000 whites, and something over 5,000,000 negroes, in all 13,651,006, every 100 of them producing 53 bales of cotton,"
The value of the cotton crop in 1897 was nearly $320,000,000, and each year we are manufacturing more of it for our domestic trade, while our exports continue enormous. The cotton-seed industry has grown rapidly, a hundred new mills having been erected during nine months of 1900.
The total corn crop of the world in 1898 was 2,634,000,000 bushels, of which the United States produced 1,924,000,000. We grew in the same year 675,000,000 bushel of wheat towards the whole world's total of 2,725,000,000. Our area for growing cereal crops is unlimited. The vast Northwest has been experiencing a period of low prices, yet it shows a yearly average market value of about $900 for each farm in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, in cereal crops, exclusive of cattle and dairy products.