. And when the
German trade journals refused to accept American advertisements, they
found their country flamingly bill-boarded in buccaneer American fashion.

M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the French economist, is passionately preaching a
commercial combination of the whole Continent against the United
States,--a commercial alliance which, he boldly declares, should become a
political alliance. And in this he is not alone, finding ready sympathy
and ardent support in Austria, Italy, and Germany. Lord Rosebery said,
in a recent speech before the Wolverhampton Chamber of Commerce: "The
Americans, with their vast and almost incalculable resources, their
acuteness and enterprise, and their huge population, which will probably
be 100,000,000 in twenty years, together with the plan they have adopted
for putting accumulated wealth into great cooperative syndicates or
trusts for the purpose of carrying on this great commercial warfare, are
the most formidable . . . rivals to be feared."

The London Times says: "It is useless to disguise the fact that Great
Britain is being outdistanced. The competition does not come from the
glut caused by miscalculation as to the home demand. Our own
steel-makers know better and are alarmed. The threatened competition in
markets hitherto our own comes from efficiency in production such as
never before has been seen." Even the British naval supremacy is in
danger, continues the same paper, "for, if we lose our engineering
supremacy, our naval supremacy will follow, unless held on sufferance by
our successful rivals."

And the Edinburgh Evening News says, with editorial gloom: "The iron and
steel trades have gone from us. When the fictitious prosperity caused by
the expenditure of our own Government and that of European nations on
armaments ceases, half of the men employed in these industries will be
turned into the streets. The outlook is appalling. What suffering will
have to be endured before the workers realize that there is nothing left
for them but emigration!"

* * * * *

That there must be a limit to the accumulation of capital is obvious.
The downward course of the rate of interest, notwithstanding that many
new employments have been made possible for capital, indicates how large
is the increase of surplus value. This decline of the interest rate is
in accord with Bohm-Bawerk's law of "diminishing returns." That is, when
capital, like anything else