um.

With this sparse population the production of wealth is already
enormous. The latest trade statistics show exports from South America to
foreign countries of $745,530,000, and imports of $499,858,600. Of the
five hundred millions of goods that South America buys, we sell them but
$63,246,525, or 12.6 per cent. Of the seven hundred and forty-five
millions that South America sells, we buy $152,092,000, or 20.4 per
cent--nearly two and a half times as much as we sell.

Their production is increasing by leaps and bounds. In eleven years the
exports of Chile have increased forty-five per cent, from $54,030,000 in
1894 to $78,840,000 in 1905. In eight years the exports of Peru have
increased one hundred per cent, from $13,899,000 in 1897 to $28,758,000
in 1905. In ten years the exports of Brazil have increased sixty-six per
cent, from $134,062,000 in 1894 to $223,101,000 in 1905. In ten years
the exports of Argentina have increased one hundred and sixty-eight per
cent, from $115,868,000 in 1895 to $311,544,000 in 1905.

This is only the beginning; the coffee and rubber of Brazil, the wheat
and beef and hides of Argentina and Uruguay, the copper and nitrates of
Chile, the copper and tin of Bolivia, the silver and gold and cotton and
sugar of Peru, are but samples of what the soil and mines of that
wonderful continent are capable of yielding.

Ninety-seven per cent of the territory of South America is occupied by
ten independent republics living under constitutions substantially
copied or adapted from our own. Under the new conditions of tranquillity
and security which prevail in most of them, their eager invitation to
immigrants from the Old World will not long pass unheeded. The pressure
of population abroad will inevitably turn its streams of life and labor
towards those fertile fields and valleys. The streams have already begun
to flow; more than two hundred thousand immigrants entered the Argentine
Republic last year; they are coming this year at the rate of over three
hundred thousand. Many thousands of Germans have already settled in
southern Brazil. They are most welcome in Brazil; they are good and
useful citizens there, as they are here; I hope that many more will come
to Brazil and every other South American country, and add their
vigorous industry and good citizenship to the upbuilding of their
adopted home.

With the increase of population in such a field, under free
institutions, with the fruits of labor