Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/642

634 funds. German Government funds were also bought amounting to about four millions sterling. Russia was able to borrow in order to purchase railway material. And it is understood that the United States was willing to lend likewise to Switzerland and to other governments. This is the most dramatic change that has occurred for a very long time."

"The succession of extraordinary creditor balances," says the 'New York Journal of Commerce,' of January 10, 1901, "has virtually revolutionized our financial relations with the European centers. In a very important sense, we have become the creditor nation of the world. From a chronic condition of dependence upon the banking forces of London, Paris and Berlin, we find those centers now dependent upon the large floating balances of the United States, subject to our lending ability in periods of exigency, carrying the largest stock of gold in the world and holding the largest resource for dealing with crises in international finance. Three of the foremost European governments—England, Germany and Russia—have found it necessary to come to New York for important loans, and the two former have not applied in vain. Thus, if this city may not be said to have yet become the financial center of the world, yet we may incontestably claim a foremost rank among the few metropolitan cities which have won that distinction."

"One of the most important financial features of the year," says 'Bradstreet's' (January 5, 1901), in its review of the stock-market in 1900, "was the placing in Wall Street and with American investors of issues of British consols, German Government bonds, and loans by Russia, Sweden, and other countries, giving point to the feeling that our market has taken the lead in the financial world."

Summed up, therefore, the general conclusion of competent foreign authorities, as well as of our own, is that the commercial expansion of the United States is no longer problematical, but a fact of constantly enlarging proportions which opens up new vistas in the struggle for ascendency among the industrial powers. Prolific as it has been of great surprises, it is doubtful whether similar phenomena will spring from its undemonstrated forces. It would seem, now that the causes of our unlooked-for triumphs are known and are being carefully weighed and studied, that the future will be one of fruition, of the gradual maturing of our powers, rather than of sudden blossoming of some novel capacity of competition. The day, perhaps, is not distant when the more intelligent of our rivals will be able to meet us upon more nearly equal terms and when, as has already been indicated, it will be necessary to supplement our natural advantages and our highly developed industrial efficiency with the appliances of