one-sixth. That is to say, we export three-fourths of the cotton we grow, leaving England and Germany to turn the fibre into yarns and fabrics for other countries in all parts of the world. A much larger share of this foreign trade ought by right to come to the United States, for the foreign market offers a field vastly larger and quite as profitable as the domestic field, if the extraordinary profits of Lancashire spinners during the past few years are to be taken as an index.

Last year Great Britain exported cotton goods valued at $500,000,000, while our exports of cotton manufacturers were offered at only $26,000,000. During this same period Great Britain exported 6,298,000,000 yards of piece goods valued at $400,000,000; our exports meanwhile being only 216,000,000 yards at $15,000,000. Here, then, is a field for our best ambitions and skill, We cannot forever endure the sight of seeing other nations manipulating our raw product at enormous profits a goodly portion of which should remain for distribution on this side of the Atlantic.

There is one respect in which the New England cotton industry much impresses an outsider. Your industry, I am glad to say, is, and always has been, remarkably free from the evils of promotion and speculative enterprise. Furthermore, it has most fortunately not been inoculated with the fever for trusts and consolidation; although I happen to know that such projects have from time to time been presented to your consideration. Perhaps your refusals to entertain such propositions thus far have been due to conditions peculiar to the industry; yet I venture to hope that it has been not a little due to the strong spirit of individualism which is one of the best characteristics of the New Englander; a characteristic which I trust will be cherished for generations to come because it is a most wholesome and necessary check upon the paternalistic tendencies of the day. One beneficial result of this policy is that the cotton industry is adapting itself to the new conditions following the panic with much less friction than in other industry. You have lowered prices, curtailed production and diminished costs in order to

stimulate a revival of consumption in a manner that promises to make you among the first in completing the process of readjustment. When recovery begins the cotton trade ought to be among the first to feel reviving influences. While other industries have been using or misusing their newly acquired powers of combination to resist natural tendencies, or to squeeze out dividends upon grossly watered stocks, you have squarely faced the new conditions and trimmed your sails accordingly. I have no doubt, therefore, that with your mills honestly capitalized you will soon be going along safely and comfortably in smoother waters when the trusts will still be struggling against adverse conditions simply made worse by foolish resistance to economic laws.

The most encouraging feature of our business situation now is the prospect of an unusually large wheat crop, winter wheat being in extra fine condition, and spring wheat having been. planted under the most favorable conditions, owing to the season for farm work being three weeks earlier this year than last. The planting of other crops has also been facilitated by good weather and altogether the agricultural outlook, at this date, has very rarely been so promising of bountiful results.

This is a great national blessing, for the foundation of our national wealth is our crops. Agriculture is indeed the great source of both our national and international strength. It was almost entirely from this resource that we were enabled, from a merely nominal sum last August, to built up a foreign trade balance of 521 millions of dollars in the first eight months of this fiscal year and the large preponderence of our exports over our imports still continues and will make the balance in our favor at the end of the year one of unexampled magnitude

This curtailment of our imports, especially of luxuries, has made the shoe pinch in Europe, for we had been Europe's best foreign customer. But, naturally extravagant as we are as a people, we can economize with as much ease, celerity and determination as we can spend, when the necessity to do so arises. So we are at present economizing on a grand scale and with great success.

We have only to consider our unlimited sources of national wealth, however, to see that the prospect before us is one that should inspire absolute confidence in the gradual return of prosperity in all directions. Let us bear in mind that our agricultural products yielded us last year, as the returns of the Department of Agriculture show $7,400,000,000.

Mining and manufacturing were the next largest sources of our national wealth. The metals mined yielded $3,000,000,000 and this metal product was converted by manufacturing into materials that had a market value of fifteen thousand millions of dollars. Thus the agricultural products, metals mined and metals manufactured in the year had a value of $25,400,000,000. We may, therefore, well and honestly say that this is a great country. "Long life to it!" as an enthusiastic Irishman was once heard to exclaim. "By jabers, it can't be beat!"

The market for raw cotton, has of course, been handicapped by the depression in the cotton industry, and the efforts of the Southern planters to advance the price of the staple very materially by holding it back instead of marketing it, have failed, as they deserved to fail. Cotton is now lower than it was during the crisis, and about as low as at any time in this crop year, being 300 points, or three cents, a pound below the season's top notch. But cotton is still king in the factories.

This decline is equivalent to fifteen dollars per bale, or a hundred and eighty million dollars on a crop of twelve million bales. So spinners and spot buyers in general have not for two years had so good a chance to purchase for summer and autumn delivery, and advantageously cover their season's requirements as they had last month and this. But spinners have taken more than a million bales less of this season's crop since the first of September last than in the same time in the previous year.

The Census Bureau in its final report for the season tells us the total crop ginned up to the first of March last was 11,261,163 bales, including "linters"; and it estimates that 127,646 bales remained unginned on March 1. Allowing for the usual underestimating of the cotton ginned in the reports to the govern

ment, it follows, from the figures, that the spinnable cotton from the last season's crop will aggregate no more than 11,500,000 bales. This is with the average net weight of a bale 5011⁄2 pounds.

The statistical or technical position of cotton is therefore bullish, notwithstanding the very large falling off in consumption and the requirements of spinners, this year, both here and in Europe, as the indications are that there will not be a very heavy or unmanageable load of cotton to be carried over into the new crop year, which begins on the first of September.

One very hopeful sign of the times is the check that has been given to radical State legislation concerning railway corporations by the Supreme Court of the United States, declaring the rate laws of Minnesota and North Carolina in certain respects unconstitutional. The decision practically denies the right of a State to enact and enforce rate laws against interstate railways. This takes the wind out of the sails of a good many Western and Southern political agitators, and makes the State Courts more definitely than ever subservient to the Federal Courts. The clash as to jurisdiction between the two courts which we witnessed in the South last year is therefore not likely to recur.

The decision was based mainly upon the unreasonable penalties prescribed by the North Carolina and Minnesota statutes, but it sustains beyond all question the contention of the railway companies, which are now held to be at liberty to refuse to obey any State law reducing rates, upon their making affidavit that it would reduce their earnings to an unreasonable extent. Upon such an affidavit a judge of a United States Circuit Court can order a suspension of the operation of the law until the law can be shown in court to be reasonable.

This is a protecting bulwark against radical and confiscatory State legislation, resulting from the inflammatory appeals of demagogues. By protecting the railways it protects investors, and adds to the security of railway property, which, in turn, strengthens confidence in that property, and confidence is what is most necessary to recuperation. Let us therefore help to increase it.

It is the desire to promote confidence, and clarify the business situation, that has inspired the recent utterances of President ROOSEVELT, and dictated the course of the Federal law department. This is commendable and has had a good effect.

The most spectacular event of the crisis, and its most sensational starting point, in New York, was the failure of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, under a wild rush to withdraw its deposits on the 22nd of October, 1907, and the subsequent suicide of CHARLES T. BARNEY, its president; and the most satisfactory event in its later career was its resumption of business on the 26th of March, 1908, after many trials and tribulations. On that day, too, it received $1,500,000 of deposits more than it paid out, a remarkable contrast to the heavy run before the suspension. This, and the almost simultaneous payment in full of the depositors of the Oriental Bank, a New York State institution, were reassuring influences that did much in helping to pave the way to general recovery, and stimulate the rise in the stock market, which of itself had a good moral, if not material, effect upon the business situation.

It was not until the fourth day after the Knickerbocker's suspension, namely, on Saturday, the 26th of October, that the New York Clearing House Committee decided to issue Clearing House certificates to the banks in the Association needing them, to pay their Clearing House balances. Then their issue, against satisfactory collaterals deposited with the Clearing House, began at once. This was the signal for every other Clearing House in the country to do likewise simultaneously.

On the same day the detailed weekly bank statements were suspended, and these were not resumed until the 8th of February, 1908. Meanwhile, a hundred millions of the Clearing House certificates had been issued and redeemed except some that were held by the National Bank of North America, the Mechanics and Traders Bank, the Bank of New Amsterdam, and the Oriental Bank, which had all failed, but these were all redeemed before the end of March.

It was in the third week of November that the issue of