that would be derived from parting with them to build up a shipping industry.

Whatever the outcome of the conservation talk may be, one thing is certain -we shall probably in the future, as in the past, be the best customers for our irreplaceable products. It is not likely that we shall diminish in consumptive ability in the near future. Our per capita consumption of coal, iron and copper has increased greatly during the past thirty years, and the demand for these products shows few signs of abatement. Under the circumstances not much dependence can be placed upon the expansion of the exports if iron and coal paving the way to the establishment of a great oversea carrying trade. And the indications are numerous that the past preponderance of agricultural products in our exports will not be long maintained. Our exports of crude foodstuffs in 1880 were 32.30 per cent. of our total exports; in 1907 they had fallen to 9.03 per cent. The proportion of partly manufactured foodstuffs in 1880 was 23.47 per cent.; in 1907 it was only 18.65 per cent. During the period our exports of raw materials, which formed 28.98 per cent of the total exports in 1880, increased to 32 per cent. in 1907.

Export of Manufactures Increasing.

But while exports of crude foodstuffs and partly manufactured foodstuffs show a diminution, the proportion of manufactured articles exported has greatly increased. Of manufactures for further use our exports have advanced from 3.52 to 13.99 per cent. of our total exports, and manufactures ready for consumption have expanded from 11.26 to 25.93 per cent. of the total. These figures point to the course our foreign trade is likely to take in the future. They seem to demonstrate with tolerable conclusiveness that the rapidly increasing population of the United States will tax the abilities of the tillers of the soil to meet their food wants and satisfy their demands for raw materials. The value of our farm products has increased from $1,958,030,927 in 1870 to $7,848,000,000 in 1908, and may doubtless be increased to a much greater sum, but our diminishing exports of wheat show

that year by year the foreigner is becoming less able to pay our price for it. In other words, a condition has been created through which we find that we can derive more profit from exchanging the products of our fields for articles manufactured in this country than we possibly could obtain by exchanging them for foreign manufactured articles.

The condition is one which intimately concerns the producer of California and touches the exterior of our foreign trade question at more points than one. It is not probable that we shall ever find in foreign lands a market for the products of our orchards and vineyards, or the surplus of our fields better than that which our own country offers. It is not at all likely that any of the countries which appear to hold out hopes of future trade relations with the people of this State will compete with the prosperous communities of the East for our oranges, grapes, pears, apples and other fruits and our vegetables. We hardly look to China or Japan or India to provide outlets for any surpluses of that kind we may have; nor can we reckon much upon the tropical States of Central America or Mexico buying them from us, for they are all capable of developing, where they do not already have them, fruit and vegetable growing industries.

The Coast Must Manufacture.

If we are to develop a trade with the Orient or with the Latin American countries it will be along different lines than those we are now working on. Our sole hope seems to center itself upon our ability to create a great manufacturing industry in our midst, and that is an achievement which presupposes a big near at hand consuming population. It was so in the case of the nation, and it is inevitable that it should be so in our case also. Professor Moses tells us that "The political isolation maintained by the United States for many years tended to confirm and prolong our commercial isolation," but there is absolutely no foundation for the assumption that any change in the political policy of the nation has affected our foreign commerce favorably. A great expansion of our foreign trade synchronized with the events which he assumes brought us in closer touch with the outside world, but examination discloses that what he regards as a cessation of an isolating policy was the sudden perception by foreigners that the Cobdenistic theory that protection makes it impossible for a nation to successfully compete has no basis of fact to rest upon. The quick growth of our commerce after 1898 had a different cause. It was due to the reservoir flowing over. About the close of the nineteenth century our manufacturing output reached proportions sufficient to satisfy the domestic demand and to leave some over. Had that not been the case all the treaties and hands across the sea thinkable could not have made our foreign trade go ahead by leaps and bounds as it has since 1898.

If this conclusion is correct, the best course for California to pursue is to persevere in the effort to increase her population and to develop as rapidly as possible a great manufacturing industry. We have not yet reached the stage of

being able to supply ourselves with the things most desired by the peoples with whom we may naturally expect to establish trade relations, and until we do, it is idle to think of cutting the ground under the feet of the earlier settled and more prosperous sections of the Union and of the rest of the world. We may hasten the day by various methods. An energetic demand might suffice to reverse the flow of raw materials from the South and Middle West to communities on the Atlantic seaboard. Some day we may be able to persuade our railroads that they may find more profit in hauling raw cotton to California from the South at a low rate than to carry it to Japan for a song. And it is not impossible that our natural facilities may tempt the iron ores of Alabama and the Northwest hitherward. When that time arrives, and labor proves amenable to the argument that competition must be met if employment is to be provided, our problem will be solved. A big population and abundant production insures plenty of foreign trade.

A fact, though trivial, has an excellent chance of being noted down by historians, and even of reaching the immortality that school books can give. A motive, on the other hand, as soon as it loses its impelling powers begins to fade out of mind, and may be forgotten even by people in whose thoughts it was once dominant. Perhaps there never was an American school history so brief or so fragmentary that it did not mention our war with Algiers, short and uneventful as that war was. Yet thousands of Americans do not know anything of the bitter resentment felt towards France because of her tyrannical decrees; do not know that early in the last century an attempt was

made to induce Congress to declare war on both France and England.

The spring freshet that actually swept away an old bridge will be remembered until the youngest boy in the village becomes the oldest inhabitant. But if the most terrific storm imaginable passes over the village, and bursts at a distant point, the bulk of the villagers will forget the impending peril, and the next generation will never hear of it. A war leaves behind it trophies in the museums, pillars on the commons, tablets in public institutions, and other visible reminders that outlast the veterans. The political agitation that causes the election of a President or the passage of an important statute is long remembered; while the most cogent arguments, the most learned citations, pass out of memory unless definite results follow. Millions of people have heard of Martin Irons because he brought about a strike. John T. Morgan will soon be forgotten because the canal route he favored was not adopted.

However, there will always be people who know that facts are the results of thoughts, who know that modern science is largely due to Greek meditation, that governments date back to reflections long antedating their birth. Students never allow the actual condition to be divorced from the leading ideas which made for or against the condition. Keeping this in mind one is ready to admit the force of waves that have ebbed, and never is this more important than in the study of our tariff history.

There are a few persons living who knew Washington Irving and who recall his violent aversion to railroads. It was, after all, sentimental and not practical, that is, when he saw that a railroad was inevitable he withdrew all objections and was ready to accept any fair offer for his land, but this is only another way of saying that Irving was a gentleman. Abstractly he disliked railroads as modern, unpicturesque, noisy, smoky and generally offensive. If such prejudices were strong so late as Irving's day, far stronger prejudices a century ago had to be faced by the early American manufacturers. Men of intelligence and patriotism objected to wheels, looms and spindles, on the ground that they would injure the country. Our sturdy farm laborers would, they declared, be succeeded by a weak, stunted race.

The Englishmen who believed that the smoke of locomotives would destroy the wool of their flocks; the old-fashioned physicians who argued that the sight of rapidly moving trains would cause wholesale lunacy were honestly convinced that they spoke words of truth and soberness. Equally sincere were the Americans who contended that manufactures would be hurtful to us; that our destiny was to raise food for ourselves and the rest of the world. Nowadays these contentions appear so feeble that we smile at them, but Alexander Hamilton recognized their force and replied to them in language as courteous as cogent. It may be doubted, however, if the logic of Hamilton was one-hundredth part as effective as the stern teaching of the Embargo and the interruption of foreign commerce occasioned by the war of 1812. The abrupt cessation of imports and the longing for what could not be purchased abroad suggested more forcibly than any report the need of workshops on our soil.

He who has read Hamilton's report once to comprehend the argument, and read it again to contrast the industrial conditions of 1790 with those of today, may well read it a third time in order to see how strong and widespread was the belief that extensive manufactures would be detrimental to the growth of the republic. There is no doubt that Thomas Jefferson at one time held this view, and such opinions had a negative influence even when no positive opposition was manifested. Statesmen who did not speak or vote against manufactures were nevertheless inclined to give other matters the preference. Railroads have

given to the language an expressive colloquialism, better than many Addisonian phrases, and that colloquialism is "side-tracked." The dread that manufactures would hurt agriculture "side-tracked" many an effort that would otherwise have had good chances of success.

Later came the inevitable clash between free and slave labor systems. No one knew better than Calhoun that a protective tariff would build factories, employ workmen and put money in circulation; but when Calhoun favored a tariff he indulged the fond hope that the crude slave labor of the South could adapt itself to manufacturing industry. A few years of experience convinced him that the North was moving far more rapidly than the South, and that Protection would each year widen the gulf between the free and the slave states. The planters wanted to ship their cotton to England, and to receive British goods in return; domestic manufactures were, from their point of view, to be discouraged or, if possible, uprooted. Here and there a far-sighted Southerner recognized a broader policy, but the drift of sentiment was that "Cotton was king." The results of this sentiment have never been more forcibly expressed than by Richard Taylor, one of the bravest soldiers of the Lost Cause. In his justly celebrated book, "Destruction and Reconstruction," Taylor says:

"We suffered less from inferiority of numbers than from the want of mechanical resources. Most of the mechanics employed in the South were Northern men, and returned to their section at the outbreak of the war. The loss of New Orleans, our only large city, aggravated this trouble, and we had no means of re

pairing the long lines of railway, nor the plant. Even when unbroken by raids, wear and tear rendered them inefficient at an early period of the struggle. This had a more direct influence on the sudden downfall of the Confederacy than is generally supposed."

No books or papers of today can show the power of the South from 1830 to 1860. The Presidents of that period were Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan. Of these Jackson and Taylor

were Southern planters; Pierce and Buchanan were more submissive to the pro-slavery element than Jackson or Taylor would have been; Polk was the bond-servant of the cotton kings. and Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Law. Social and business life was largely ruled by the South. West Point felt its power to a degree one can hardly credit. Annapolis was leavened by the same influences. Not merely in set speeches and in actual voting, but in a hundred indirect ways the Southern free trade school hampered and thwarted the Northern Protectionists.

It is well known that the South forced us into war with Mexico; that it demanded the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law; drove Congress into repealing the Missouri Compromise, and contemplated a reopening of the African slave trade. But the present generation does not understand the deep, the intense hostility of the pro-slavery faction to the Homestead Bill. When Andrew Johnson, then a Congressman from Tennessee, urged the enactment of legislation that would fill the Northwest with small farms tilled by freemen, he aroused a degree of hostility