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In an article entitled 'America's Changed International Position/ the London 'Statist' of January 5, 1901, also dwells upon the superiority of our methods of production as enabling us to take advantage of the needs of Europe and to respond to an increased demand for manufactured goods. "All at once," says the 'Statist,' "the United States became a keen competitor in the markets of the world with ourselves and with our continental rivals, and, in all reasonable probability, the competition will grow more eager as the years pass." The 'Statist,' in fact, predicts 'a great outburst of new enterprise in the United States.'
CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL IN THE UNITED STATES.
Lord Rosebery is quoted by cable as having said in a speech before a British Chamber of Commerce, January 16, 1901, that the chief rivals to be feared by Great Britain 'are America and Germany.' "The alertness of the Americans," he continued, "their incalculable natural resources, their acuteness, their enterprise, their vast population, which will in all probability within the next twenty years reach 100,000,000, make them very formidable competitors with ourselves. And with the Germans, their slow but sure persistency, their scientific methods, and their conquering spirit, devoted as these qualities are at this moment to preparation for trade warfare, make them also, in my judgment, little less redoubtable than the Americans. There is one feature of the American competition which seems to me especially formidable, and, as I have not seen it largely noticed, perhaps you will excuse me for calling attention to it. We are daily reminded of the gigantic fortunes which are accumulated in America, fortunes to which nothing in this country bears any relation whatever, and which in themselves constitute an enormous commercial force. The Americans, as it appears, are scarcely satisfied with these individual fortunes, but use them by combination in trusts, to make a capital and a power which, wielded as it is by one or two minds, is almost irresistible, and that, as it seems to me, if concentrated upon Great Britain as an engine in the trade warfare, is a danger which we cannot afford to disregard. Suppose a trust of many millions, of a few men combined so to compete with any trade in this country by underselling all its products, even at a considerable loss to themselves, and we can see in that what are the possibilities of the commercial outcome of the immediate future."
It has been evident for some time that the United States, not content with having solved that part of the problem of economy of produc-
