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Rh Morgan, came to dominate various Southern transportation lines and the anthracite coal roads and mines, and extended their influence to the Northern Pacific railway, while a new genius in railway financiering, Edward H. Harriman, began an avowed plan of controlling the entire railway system of the nation. Backed by an important banking syndicate he rescued the Union Pacific from bankruptcy, and with its profits as a working basis he started in to acquire connecting and competing lines. Labour also shared in the general prosperity after 1898. Relative real wages increased, even allowing for the higher cost of living, and the length of the working day in general decreased except in special industries.

378. By 1900 the continental United States had a population of 76,000,000; an aggregate real and personal wealth of $88,500,000,000; a per capita public debt of $14.52, and per capita money circulation of $26.94 against $21.41 in 1896. In 1901 bank clearings amounted to nearly $115,000,000,000

against $45,000,000,000 in 1894. Imports of merchandise had fallen in this period, while exports rose from about $847,000,000 in 1893 to $1,394,000,000 in 1900. Of these exports food stuffs and food animals, crude and partly manufactured, aggregated nearly 40% of the total. The production of pig-iron, which was about 7,000,000 long tons in 1893, was nearly twice that in 1900. This economic prosperity and these far-reaching processes of social change by which the remaining natural resources of the nation were rapidly appropriated, went on contemporaneously with the extension of the activity of the nation overseas. The first rough conquest of the wilderness accomplished, the long period of internal colonization drawing to a close, the United States turned to consider its position as a world power.

379. To understand this position it is necessary to return to an earlier period and briefly survey the foreign relations since the close of the Reconstruction era. The most significant and persistent influence came from the growing interest of the United States in the Pacific, as its population and economic power extended to that ocean. The problem of an overflow of Chinese migration to the Pacific coast, and the jeopardizing of the American standard of labour by this flood, had been settled by various treaties and laws since 1880. The question of the relation of the United States to an interoceanic canal was not so easily settled. In 1878 Colombia granted a concession to a French company, promoted by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer of the Suez Canal, to dig a tide-level canal through the Isthmus of Panama. President Hayes voiced the antagonism of the United States to this project

of European capital in his message of 1880 in which he declared that such a canal should be under the control of this nation, and that it would be “virtually a part of the coast-line of the United States.” Although an American company was organized to construct a canal under a concession from Nicaragua in 1884, no real progress was made, and the French company, defeated by engineering and sanitary difficulties, failed at the close of 1888.

380. Meantime, for a few months, Blaine, as secretary of state under President Garfield, began a vigorous foreign policy with especial reference to the Pacific. He attempted to get the consent of England to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, which contemplated the construction of an isthmian canal by private enterprise under joint control and neutralization of the United States and Great Britain, together with such other powers as should join them. In South America he actively pressed the influence of the United States to settle the war between Chile and Peru. Again, in the years from

1889 to 1892, Blaine held the portfolio of state, and attempted to increase the influence of his country in Spanish America by the Pan-American Congress of 1890, which proposed a great international railway system and bank, commercial reciprocity and arbitration, without immediate results. (See .) Indeed, the bad feeling aroused by his earlier policy toward Chile found expression in 1891 in a mob at Valparaiso, when some

of the men from the United States ship “Baltimore” on

shore leave were killed and wounded. An apology averted the war which President Harrison threatened. Blaine also asserted, against Canada particularly, the right of

the United States to the seals of the Bering Sea; but in 1893 arbitrators decided against the claim.

381. As the navy grew and American policy increasingly turned to the Pacific, the need of coaling stations and positions

advantageous to its sea power was appreciated. By a tripartite treaty in 1889 the Samoan islands were placed under the joint control of the United States, England and Germany, and, a decade later, they were divided among these powers, Tutuila and the harbour of Pago-Pago falling to the United States. The Hawaiian islands, which had been brought under the influence of civilization by American missionaries, were connected by commercial ties with the United States. Upon the attempt of the ruler to overturn the constitution, the American party, aided by

the moral support of the United States, which landed marines, revolted, set up a republic, and asked annexation to the Union. A treaty, negotiated under President Harrison to this end, was withdrawn by President Cleveland, after investigation, on the ground that the part of the United States in the revolution was improper. He attempted without success to restore the original state of affairs, and on the 7th of July 1898 the islands were annexed.

382. President Cleveland's conservatism in this and other matters of foreign policy had not prepared the people for

the sudden exhibition of firmness in foreign policy with which he startled the nation in his message of December 1895 upon the question of the boundary of Venezuela. That nation and England had a long-standing dispute over the line which separated British Guiana from Venezuela. Great Britain declined to arbitrate, at the suggestion of the United States, and gave an interpretation to the Monroe Doctrine which the administration declined to accept. President Cleveland thereupon brusquely announced to Congress his belief that Great Britain's attitude was in effect an attempt to control Venezuela, and proposed that a commission on the part of the United States should report upon the disputed boundary, and support Venezuela in the possession of what should be ascertained to be her rightful territory. Secretary-of-State Richard Olney declared: “To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.” Great Britain tactfully accepted arbitration, however, and in the end (1899) was awarded most of the territory regarding which she had been unwilling to arbitrate.

The growing activity of the United States in foreign relations next manifested itself against Spain. Cuba in its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the approaches to the proposed isthmian canal, as well as in its commercial relations, and its menace as a breeding spot for yellow fever, had long been regarded by the United States as an important factor in her foreign policy. Successive administrations from the time of Jefferson had declared that it must not fall to another European nation, if Spain relinquished it, and that it was against the policy of the United States to join other nations in guaranteeing it to Spain. Between 1868 and 1878

a harsh war had been in progress between the island and the mother country, and American intervention was imminent. But Spain promised reforms and peace followed; again in 1895 revolt broke out, accompanied by severe repressive measures, involving grave commercial injury to the United States. (See .)

383. By the Treaty of Paris, signed on the 10th of December 1898, Spain lost the remaining fragments of her ancient American

Empire. She relinquished Cuba, which the United States continued temporarily to occupy without holding the sovereignty pending the orderly establishment of an independent government for the island; Porto