M INTRODUCTION OMENTOUS happenings crowd the years from 1893 to 1901. During that brief span thronging incidents jostled one another for the position of greatest historic consequence. One epoch came definitely to a close. Between 1893 and 1901 the United States entered a new era. The panic of 1893 gave the death blow to the old idea that competition was the essential of industrial progress. Through the earlier years of the century the business world held tenaciously to the principle that competition was the life of trade and that the only way to preserve the economic efficiency of the industrial world was to maintain competition in its most virulent forms. Experience with previous panics had done much to shatter the faith of business men in the necessity of competition. The business disasters which accompanied the panic of 1893 were so overwhelmingly that they called for some drastic reorganization of industrial method. The commercial failures in 1892 had numbered 10,344, with liabilities of $114,044,000. The next year the number of failures increased by 50 per cent. (to 15,242) and the liabilities rose 200 per cent. (to $346,779,000). Until 1898 the numbers of failures continued to be abnormally high and the liabilities of failed concerns varied from a maximum of 226 millions in 1896 to a minimum of 130 millions in 1898. There was but one answer to this challenge of business disorganization. If the failure of manufacturers threatened other manufacturers; if a run on one bank presaged a run on other banks; if experience had shown that injury to one was injury to all, then, manifestly, the time had come to revise the "competition is the life of trade" formula and to discover some more satisfactory principle on which to conduct business. The corporation proved to be the means; the trust (a large combination of like and unlike industries) was the form in which the business world answered the demand for a new method of coördinating business relations. The Standard Oil Company had been organized in 1870. Other businesses had followed this lead, and now, in the years that followed the 1893 holocaust, there was a vast increase in corporation development that culminated in the organization of the master corporation-the United States Steel Corporation-in 1901. The theory of the advantage of competition had been definitely abandoned. In its place was a new formula,-"Business men, unite!" This change in the viewpoint of the industrial leaders coincided with their accession to a point of political ascendency. The years preceding 1893 had witnessed a bitter struggle between western farmers and eastern bankers. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, and the Sherman AntiTrust Law of 1890, were passed at the behest of the rural community which desired by these means to punish its exploiters, the railroads and the trusts. The Greenbackers, the Populists and the Free Silverites were the spokesmen of the same movement of independent countrymen against the money powers centered in the cities. The Spanish-American War, with its triumph for the imperial policy inaugurated under President McKinley, ended the hopes of those who had dreamed of continuing the Republic on the old individualistic basis laid down by Jefferson and his fellow statesmen. The acquisition of the Spanish possession ended American isolation. and marked her as a coming world power. Until about the year 1900 the United States was a borrowing nation.. Great Britain, Belgium, France and even Germany could boast extended investments in American resources, railroads and industrial enterprises. Great Britain had more money invested in the United States than in any other single country in the world. The end of the nineteenth century marked the end of the dependence of American industry upon foreign support. From that time forward the surplus produced in the United States was sufficient to take care of the internal needs of the country and to make a beginning in foreign investment fields. The end of the nineteenth century marked the end of American dependence upon foreign capital and the beginning of a policy which, by 1920, had placed the world in America's debt by something like sixteen or eighteen billions of dollars. The Hawaiian "revolution" occurred in 1893. Hawaii was annexed to the United States in 1898. The war with Spain occurred in 1898, involving the conquest of Porto Rico, Cuba and the Philippine Islands. Within two years a decision had been reached to retain Porto Rico and the Philippines and to release Cuba for an independent existence limited by the leading strings of the Platt Amend ment. When the Hawaiian revolution occurred in 1893 the American people were still strongly anti-imperialistic. When the United States Steel Corporation was organized in 1901 the United States had inaugurated a policy of acquiring "possessions" in tropical territory. This change marked a departure from the traditions that had dominated American public life since the Civil War. Up to 1860, while American public policy was dictated from the South, the United States had followed an imperialistic course. The Southwest was secured by purchase from the French and by conquest from Mexico and from the Indians. There was strong talk of the annexation of Cuba and of other portions of the West Indies in which slavery could be perpetuated on a paying basis. The triumph of the North in 1865 turned the energies of the United States into a new direction. Southern statesmen had been forced to look for new land on which to plant cotton and tobacco. The civilization of the North, built on the new industrial order, found in the mountains of the east and west vast stores of iron, copper, coal, oil and timber upon which to expend its surplus wealth. From 1865 to 1898 the business world was busy with the development of internal improvements. During the succeeding years, for the first time since the Civil War, American surplus was freed for foreign investment. American bankers and business men were still busy with internal improvements in 1893. By 1901 they had begun to turn their eyes abroad. The big business enterprises were still on a precarious foundation in 1893. In 1901 they expressed themselves in their most highly organized form in the United States Steel Corporation. The policy of the United States, still dictated by the rural districts in 1893, was based upon isolation and self-sufficiency. By 1901 the United States was already in possession of extensive tropical territories. During this period "individualism" was finally laid to rest and organized business took the center of the stage. The anti-imperialists were vigorous in their opposition to this policy during the years that immediately preceded and followed the Spanish-American War. More than half a million of them were organized into a League, the stated object of which was "to aid in holding the United States true to the Principles of the Declaration of Independence. It seeks the preservation of the rights of the people as guaranteed to them by the Constitution. Its members hold self-government to be fundamental, and good government to be but incidental. It is its purpose to oppose by all proper means the extension of the sovereignty of the United States over subject peoples. It will contribute to the defeat of any candidate or party that stands for the forcible subjugation of any people." (Declaration of Principles, 1899.) The anti-Imperialist League held conferences in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston and other large cities. An extensive pamphlet literature was published and circulated at these conferences and through the protest meetings that were being organized throughout the country. Imperialism was the burning issue and the forces that favored a continuance of the traditional policy of non-annexation of peoples and of territories that could not form an integral part of the United States were able to muster very large support and to command the interest of some of the ablest men then in the forefront of American public life. Among the leaders in this anti-imperialist campaign was United States Senator R. F. Pettigrew of South Dakota, a pioneer in the wilderness of the Middle West. Elected as a |