VOLUME XXVI

NUMBER 4

W

E ARE living in a most interesting time in American life. We are trying out legally and - industrially the great combinations built up in the last ten or fifteen years. We are going to see what greater strides we can make in industry without a protective tariff; we are going to try a new currency plan, the first in fifty years or more; and we are cleaning up politics and business at an amazing rate. Mr. Lamar, with his boasted villainies, and Mr. Lauterbach, with his exaggerations, are products of the past.

These changes in our economic and political life deserve much more attention than they usually get. As a nation we neglect these things. As children we are. taught American history as a series of wars, from the conflicts with the Indians and the French, down through the Revolution, the Mexican War, and the Civil War to our conquest of the Spanish islands. The true history of the United States is a succession of economic and political steps, here and there interrupted by war. Our more serious wars have been operations on the body politic. They have come only when some of the regular machinery

when our

of progress has broken down politics and industry were sick. And the convalescence from the operation of war has been long and costly.

The old saying, "Happy is the nation whose annals are few," is true when you think of annals, as most of our historians do, as being in a large part the records of wars. But wars do not mark the progress of a people. They mark their worst periods. The real annals of a people are the exploits of the men of inventive genius and constructive minds who make possible the ever-improving standards of life.

we

If we had not made a tremendous mistake in economics mistake in economics - the mistake of believing slave labor to be efficient should not have had the Civil War. If we did not still mistakenly believe that cheap foreign labor is efficient we might escape some future industrial strife.

Weare in an era of construction and progress. It is a good time and place in which to work and to live, and whether you look at it merely from the present standpoint or take a broader view, the prospect is cheerful.

Our crops are good, our industries are busy, the tariff and the currency are in a fair way to be improved, and our standards. of living are getting better year by year.