ble village, much less a
considerable city, not a merchant, not a captain of industry in the
United States that has not so felt it. It is plainly evident that by the
progressive dearness of money, the lower standard of living that will
result in Europe, the effect on immigration, and other processes which I
will touch upon at greater length later, any temporary stimulus which a
trade here and there may receive will be more than offset by the
difficulties due to financial as apart from industrial or commercial
reactions.

This war will come near to depriving America for a decade or two of its
normal share of the accumulated capital of the older peoples, whether
that capital be used in paying war indemnities or in paying off the cost
of the war or in repairing its ravages. In all cases it will make
capital much dearer, and many enterprises which with more abundant
capital might have been born and might have stimulated American industry
will not be born. For the best part of a generation perhaps the
available capital of Europe will be used to repair the ravages of war
there, to pay off the debts created by war, and to start life normally
once more. We shall suffer in two ways.

In a recent report issued by the Agricultural Department at Washington
is a paragraph to the effect that one of the main factors which have
operated against the development of the American farm is the difficulty
that the farmer has found in securing abundant capital and the high
price that he has to pay for it when he can secure it. It will in the
future be of still higher price, and still less abundant, because, of
course, the capital of the world is a common reservoir--if it is dearer
in one part, it is dearer to some extent in all parts.

So that if for many years the American farmhouse is not so well built as
it might be, the farm not so well worked, rural life in America not so
attractive as it might be, the farmer's wife burdened with a little more
labor than she might otherwise have, and if she grows old earlier than
she might otherwise, it will be in part because we are paying our share
of the war indemnities and the war costs.

But this scarcity of capital operates in another way. One of the most
promising fields for American enterprise is, of course, in the
undeveloped lands to the south of us, but in the development of those
lands we have looked and must look for the co-operation of European
capital. Millions of French and British mon