lumber mills have sprung up all over the South; factories for furniture, waggons, spokes and brooms are utilizing the enormous area of virgin forests. One of the lumber companies in South Carolina is amongst the largest in the country, wholly due to the Dingby tariff against Canadian timber.

Sheep-raising is becoming important in Tennessee and North Carolina, and woollen mills are arising in many places. In Florida and the Carolinas sufficient phosphate deposits have been discovered to fertilize all the grain and cotton lands for centuries, while in Georgia and Tennessee marble and granite are shipped in vast quantities. Of the other new industries, ostrich-farming is now being carried on in Florida with success, and not less successfully the cultivation of tea in South Carolina where the soil is admirably suited to the finer species.

The greatest obstacle in the way of the extension of America's non-European commerce has been her lack of steamship facilities. A large portion of her trade with the South American continent is done via Europe; she has not a single line of steamers running to the River Plate, although there are numberless European lines running to and from that river and district. While trade has to be conducted under such conditions, it is impossible for it to expand. America has therefore come to realize that as long as she depends on other nations to do her ocean-carrying trade, her exports to the countries of the South continent and elsewhere will remain of relatively small account.

Not even her panacea of reciprocity will help her much. But once the Isthmian Canal is cut, with cotton

mills adjoining the cotton plantations spinning cheap cloth, with iron and steel forges in Alabama, Ohio, and Pennsylvania alongside coal mines, with the unequalled extension of internal communications, what is to set a limit to America's commercial progress?

Some might answer-the faults and insecure structure of society; the growing antagonism between capital and labour; the failure of the State to assimilate jarring elements. The set-back will be social, not economic; it will not arise from lack of material resources.

America has much to fear from labour troubles. There continues to be deep unrest among the industrial classes. The strikes and the great fortunes made by trust promoters, especially the coal and steel men, have naturally produced discontent among the wage-workers, and a desire for better conditions. Strikes in the bituminous coal fields of the West and South may be looked for, to be followed by another among the employees on the large railway systems. During the recent coal strike in Pennsylvania troops guarded the mines, with orders "shoot to kill" strikers who attempt by violence to prevent any men from working in the mines who may desire to do so. Intense bitterness prevailed on both sides, and the increased dearness of anthracite coal entailed great hardship upon the poor in large cities.1

"The duty of the public in trade disputes," once said Lord Derby, "is to make a ring to see fair play."

But in America public opinion is not yet sufficiently

1 The losses arising out of the strike were not less than $92,300,000, of which $21,200,000 represent wages lost by the men.

advanced to see or to desire to compel fair play. Personal liberty is talked about until it becomes wearisome to the ear; but it is not the kind of personal liberty to which we Britons are accustomed.

Take even the case of the recent steel strike, which is supposed to have been comparatively free from riotous excesses. In the districts covered by the strike hundreds of men willing to work were not allowed to work; the mill approaches were picqueted by relays of strikers; non-union men were set upon and forced to retire under threats of assault. The few who succeeded in evading the vigilance of the strikers' picquets were simply prisoners, not daring to venture out even for food. At railway stations and in the streets inoffensive persons suspected of being non-unionists were pelted with stones, badly beaten, or kidnapped and imprisoned. Besides these actual sufferers were the thousands of other victims who, owing to the reign of menace and injury, were unable to come forward and obtain employment.

Where, it may be asked, is America's equivalent to the English "Conspiracy and Protection Act"? There are, indeed, various laws on the subject scattered throughout the States; but what avail are they when they are not enforced by the full strength of the Government, if need be ? "Freedom," declares a Massachusetts judge, "is the policy of this country; but freedom does not imply a right in one person, either alone or in combination with others, to disturb or annoy, either directly or indirectly, another's lawful business or occupation for the sake of compelling him to buy his peace."

The entire authority of the State should, if necessary,

be put in motion to protect the liberty of a single citizen; the law should be uniform for all, and universal in its application, and the refusal and failure of the State to repress and punish violations of personal liberty is a practical alliance with, and a defence of, anarchy.

CHAPTER IX

THE AMERICAN ARMY

LORD WOLSELEY, with, as it seemed, a fine love of paradox, perhaps from an exaggerated belief in the value of individual initiative, has lately told us that the American Army is "the best in the world."

A few years ago the very phrase "American Army " would almost have been tinctured with irony.1

Contrasted with the conditions which pertained less. than a quarter of a century ago, the change in personnel and moral, is even more striking than that which has marked all the other conditions of national life. • Europeans smiled at the laxity which attended enlistments. Who took the American Army seriously? What need was there for an American Army at all, except as a small mounted frontier force? In those days, as an American officer reminds us, "the recruit who easily entered through the front door made his exit from the Army with equal smoothness; the result being that for a time the desertions outnumbered the enlist

2

1 In 1890 the whole military force of a nation of 60,000,000 consisted of only 25,000 privates (principally of foreign birth) and 2144 officers. The navy was even proportionally smaller. Yet both appeared to suffice, because it seemed absurd to suppose a war with any foreign power.

2 General H. C. Corbin.