hey have the start of you in manufactures or skill or
capital, as you would be in the countries to which the Atlantic leads.
They offer you the best of all commerce--that with people less
advanced, exchanging the products of different zones, a people
awakening to the complex wants of a civilization that is just stirring
them to a new life.

Have you considered what urgent need there will be for those new
fields? It is no paltry question of an outlet for the surplus products
of a mere nation of seventy-five millions that confronts you. Your
mathematical professors will tell you that, at the ratio of increase
established in this Nation by the census returns for the century just
closing, its population would amount during the next century to the
bewildering and incomprehensible figure of twelve hundred millions. The
ratio, of course, will not be maintained, since the exceptional
circumstances that caused it cannot continue. But no one gives reasons
why it should not be half as great. Suppose it to turn out only one
fourth as great. Is it the part of statesmanship--is it even the part
of every-day, matter-of-fact common sense--to reject or despise these
Oriental openings for the products of this people of three hundred
million souls the Twentieth Century would need to nourish within our
borders? Our total annual trade with China now--with this customer whom
the friendly ocean is ready to bring to your very doors--is barely
twenty millions. That would be a commerce of the gross amount of six
and two third cents for each inhabitant of our country in the next
century, with that whole vast region adjoining you, wherein dwell one
fourth of the human race!

Even the Spanish trade with the Philippines was thirty millions. They
are merely our stepping-stone. But would a wise man kick the
stepping-stone away?

[Sidenote: The New Blood Felt.]

San Francisco is exceptionally prosperous now. So is the State of
California. Why? Partly, no doubt, because you are sharing the
prosperity which blesses the whole country. But is that all? What is
this increase in the shipping at your wharves? What was the meaning of
those crowded columns of business statistics your newspapers proudly
printed last New Year's?--what the significance of the increase in
exports and imports, far beyond mere army requirements? Why is every
room taken in your big buildings? What has crowded your docks, filled
your streets, quickened your markets, rented your st