money
attracted from the investors of Europe. We have been always a debtor
nation, borrowing from the rest of the world, drawing all possible
energy towards us and concentrating it with our own energy upon our own
enterprises. The engrossing pursuit of our own opportunities has
excluded from our consideration and interest the enterprises and the
possibilities of the outside world. Invention, discovery, the progress
of science, capacity for organization, the enormous increase in the
productive power of mankind, have accelerated our progress and have
brought us to a result of development in every branch of internal
industrial activity marvelous and unprecedented in the history of the
world.

Since the first election of President McKinley, the people of the United
States have for the first time accumulated a surplus of capital beyond
the requirements of internal development. That surplus is increasing
with extraordinary rapidity. We have paid our debts to Europe and have
become a creditor instead of a debtor nation; we have faced about; we
have left the ranks of the borrowing nations and have entered the ranks
of the investing nations. Our surplus energy is beginning to look beyond
our own borders, throughout the world, to find opportunity for the
profitable use of our surplus capital, foreign markets for our
manufactures, foreign mines to be developed, foreign bridges and
railroads and public works to be built, foreign rivers to be turned into
electric power and light. As in their several ways England and France
and Germany have stood, so we in our own way are beginning to stand and
must continue to stand towards the industrial enterprise of the world.

That we are not beginning our new role feebly is indicated by
$1,518,561,666 of exports in the year 1905 as against $1,117,513,071 of
imports, and by $1,743,864,500 exports in the year 1906 as against
$1,226,563,843 of imports. Our first steps in the new field indeed are
somewhat clumsy and unskilled. In our own vast country, with oceans on
either side, we have had too little contact with foreign peoples readily
to understand their customs or learn their languages; yet no one can
doubt that we shall learn and shall understand and shall do our business
abroad, as we have done it at home, with force and efficiency.

Coincident with this change in the United States, the progress of
political development has been carrying the neighboring continent of
South America out of th