Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/540

532 specialties as hair-clipping machines, dental supplies, typewriters, electric motors, etc.

The people of Europe, it may be assumed, therefore, are not less but more favorably inclined to goods of American origin, and the falling off in our exports, so far as they are concerned, is to be attributed to temporary causes, such as business depression, reducing their purchasing power, with the natural result of falling prices, or to discrimination against our products. The reduction is also found to be due, in part, to the elimination of the Hawaiian Islands and Porto Rico from the Treasury tables of exports to foreign countries, and to trade conditions in the United States, such as those affecting the exports of copper, which have checked the outflow of manufactured goods.

The Treasury statement of imports and exports of the United States for the calendar year 1901 (subject to revision) shows that the total imports amounted to $880,421,056, an increase of $51,271,3-12 over the year 1900; and that the total exports were $1,465,380,919, a falling oft of $12,565,194 compared with the previous year. The exports of manufactures amounted to $395,144,030, against $441,406,942 during the same period of 1900—a falling off of $46,262,912. The percentage of manufactures in the total of exports declined from 30.38 in 1900 to 27.48 in 1901. On the other hand, the exports of agricultural products rose in value from $904,655,411 in 1900 to $940,246,488 in 1901—a gain of $35,591,077, thus largely offsetting the loss in manufactures. The percentage increased from 62.26 to 65.38. The decline in the exports of copper, not including ore, amounted to $24,007,711; and in manufactures of iron and steel, to $27,093,683.

Notwithstanding the continued spread of our goods in Europe, and the deductions to be made from the Treasury figures on the score of accidental or natural causes of decline in manufactured exports, it is evident that the 'American invasion' of Europe has ceased, for the time being, to be of the sweeping character that distinguished it at first as an economic phenomenon. Our advantages in industrial competition in the abundance and cheapness of raw material and fuel, in the superior efficiency of our skilled labor, in the unexampled fecundity of our people in the invention of labor-saving machinery, and the advances we are constantly making in economies of production are still the subject of much anxious speculation in the great industrial centers of Europe; but there are some foreign observers who are encouraged by recent developments to hope that conditions may be more