end. Industry, production and commerce are at work with more than the hundred hands of Briareus.
Note our situation on the Pacific seaboard. Note also that the changes of recent times have virtually made the Pacific an American sea. The active theatre of the world's new effort is now in Asia and Western America. The two hemispheres, heretofore in communication only across the Atlantic, are now rapidly developing an intercourse over the Pacific. Many steamships, and an increasing number, on regular lines, now sail between our Pacific ports and the ports of the Orient, and, of "tramp" steamers and sailing vessels, a large and continually growing fleet. Pressure of Russia and of other nations upon China and Japan is creating a prodigious activity, and is sure to result in vast transformations there. England, France and Germany have their spheres of active influence in that same enormous field. We are in touch, then, with a movement that includes more than one-half the human race. We are in the Philippine Islands ourselves, an incomparable station for observation and commerce. Participation in the results that are to come from the transformation of the Orient will be had through the ports of our Pacific states—the way stations en route to lands across the Pacific.
Of this mighty development now just beginning to appear, our country should take all proper advantage. It means a commerce on the Pacific which will rival that of the Atlantic. It means mighty industrial and commercial progress for our states of the western side of the continent. Where now are four millions of people there may be fifty million by the close of this century, with every kind of intellectual and moral development comparable with the material prosperity.
From review of the past and observation of the present, we may see the promise of the future. Like the old Welsh bard, with all the past impressed upon his soul and looking down the historical vista to a wonderful future, one may echo the exclamation:
"Visions of glory, spare my aching sight;
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!"
