SCRIBNERS VOL. XXXVII JANUARY 1905 MAGAZINE NO. 1 POLITICALPROBLEMS OF EUROPE AS THEY INTEREST AMERICANS BY FRANK A. VANDERLIP FIRST AUR interest in European affairs has been undergoing marked change in the last generation—even in the last half dozen years. We do not need to look back far to remember the time when we had little con- cern in world politics. Questions of Euro- pean public policy, the tendencies of politi- cal currents, and the objects of national ambitions, were without practical interest to the average American. Even European war meant in our minds only that we were to sell more wheat and provisions, and we looked with greater interest at market quo- tations than we did at the questions which might involve nations in conflict. We were not only outside the range of the game of European diplomacy, but we lacked reason for having a keen practical interest in Euro- pean social and industrial conditions. We were concerned with Europe’s gen- eral prosperity, for Europe bought our produce; but the training, efficiency, and organization of European labor, the effect upon industrial progress of current legisla- tion and of sociological tendencies, all had more of an academic than a practical in- terest for us. Important as was our foreign trade, four-fifths of our exports were the direct products of the farms, ranches, and forests. Our fields could fear no rivalry, and our workshops had not begun to chal- lenge competition. With the military and industrial suc- cesses of the last half dozen years, however, Copyright, 1904, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. VoL. XXXVII.—1 PAPER have come many and far-reaching changes. Not only is our present interest in world politics, in its relation both to our own polit- ical system and to ournational ambitions, a matter of recent growth, but we have an- other quite immediate interest in the politi- cal conditions and development of other nations—an interest that leads us to meas- ure the effect of national conditions and de- velopment on the efficiency of industrial and commercial competitors. Now that we have taken our place in the first rank as a manufacturing nation and can see an inevitable destiny leading us toward world industrial competition, all the questions affecting the relative efficiency of the other great industrial countries in com- petition with us in the world markets be- come of practical importance to every American. The farm boy, the shop ap- prentice, the clerk, the worker in every field of American life, must henceforth have a more and more intimate personal relation to European conditions, problems, and tendencies. That is true because the con- ditions that are affecting our great indus- trial competitors, the problems with which they are concerned, the difficulties which they are encountering, the successes which give them fresh courage, will all have an in- creasing influence upon the net results of the day’s work of the average American. For these reasons I believe that we are ready to give a more intelligent study to European conditions, and that it will be practically worth our while to gain a clearer
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