and forces down the interest rate on all capital. Mr. Charles A.

Conant has well described the keenness of the scramble for safe
investments, even at the prevailing low rates of interest. At the

close of the war with Turkey, the Greek loan, guaranteed by Great
Britain, France, and Russia, was floated with striking ease.

Regardless of the small return, the amount offered at Paris,
(41,000,000 francs), was subscribed for twenty-three times over.

Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and the Scandinavian
States, of recent years, have all engaged in converting their

securities from 5 per cents to 4 per cents, from 4.5 per cents to
3.5 per cents, and the 3.5 per cents into 3 per cents.

Great Britain, France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, according to
the calculation taken in 1895 by the International Statistical

Institute, hold forty-six billions of capital invested in negotiable
securities alone. Yet Paris subscribed for her portion of the Greek

loan twenty-three times over! In short, money is cheap. Andrew
Carnegie and his brother bourgeois kings give away millions

annually, but still the tide wells up. These vast accumulations
have made possible "wild-catting," fraudulent combinations, fake

enterprises, Hooleyism; but such stealings, great though they be,
have little or no effect in reducing the volume. The time is past

when startling inventions, or revolutions in the method of
production, can break up the growing congestion; yet this saved

capital demands an outlet, somewhere, somehow.
When a great nation has equipped itself to produce far more than it

can, under the present division of the product, consume, it seeks
other markets for its surplus products. When a second nation finds

itself similarly circumstanced, competition for these other markets
naturally follows. With the advent of a third, a fourth, a fifth,

and of divers other nations, the question of the disposal of surplus
products grows serious. And with each of these nations possessing,

over and beyond its active capital, great and growing masses of idle
capital, and when the very foreign markets for which they are

competing are beginning to produce similar wares for themselves, the
question passes the serious stage and becomes critical.

Never has the struggle for foreign markets been sharper than at the
present. They are the one great outlet for congested accumulations.

Predatory capital wanders the world over, seeking where it may
establish itself. This urgent need for foreign markets is forcing

upon the world-stage an era of great colonial empire. But this does
not stand, as in the past, for the subjugation of peoples and

countries for the sake of gaining their products, but for the
privilege of selling them products. The theory once was, that the

colony owed its existence and prosperity to the mother country; but
today it is the mother country that owes its existence and

prosperity to the colony. And in the future, when that supporting
colony becomes wise in the way of producing surplus value and sends

its goods back to sell to the mother country, what then? Then the
world will have been exploited, and capitalistic production will

have attained its maximum development.
Foreign markets and undeveloped countries largely retard that

moment. The favored portions of the earth's surface are already
occupied, though the resources of many are yet virgin. That they

have not long since been wrested from the hands of the barbarous and
decadent peoples who possess them is due, not to the military

prowess of such peoples, but to the jealousvigilance of the
industrial nations. The powers hold one another back. The Turk

lives because the way is not yet clear to an amicable division of
him among the powers. And the United States, supreme though she is,

opposes the partition of China, and intervenes her huge bulk between
the hungry nations and the mongrel Spanish republics. Capital

stands in its own way, welling up and welling up against the
inevitable moment when it shall burst all bonds and sweep

resistlessly across such vast stretches as China and South America.
And then there will be no more worlds to exploit, and capitalism

will either fall back, crushed under its own weight, or a change of
direction will take place which will mark a new era in history.

The Far East affords an illuminating spectacle. While the Western
nations are crowding hungrily in, while the Partition of China is

commingled with the clamor for the Spheres of Influence and the Open
Door, other forces are none the less potently at work. Not only are

the young Western peoples pressing the older ones to the wall, but
the East itself is beginning to awake. American trade is advancing,

and British trade is losing ground, while Japan, China, and India
are taking a hand in the game themselves.

In 1893, 100,000 pieces of American drills were imported into China;
in 1897, 349,000. In 1893, 252,000 pieces of American sheetings

were imported against 71,000 British; but in 1897, 566,000 pieces of
American sheetings were imported against only 10,000 British. The

cotton goods and yarn trade (which forms 40 per cent of the whole
trade with China) shows a remarkable advance on the part of the

United States. During the last ten years America has increased her
importation of plain goods by 121 per cent in quantity and 59.5 per

cent in value, while that of England and India combined has
decreased 13.75 per cent in quantity and 8 per cent in value. Lord

Charles Beresford, from whose "Break-up of China" these figures are
taken, states that English yarn has receded and Indian yarn advanced

to the front. In 1897, 140,000 piculs of Indian yarn were imported,
18,000 of Japanese, 4500 of Shanghai-manufactured, and 700 of

English.
Japan, who but yesterday emerged from the mediaeval rule of the

Shogunate and seized in one fell swoop the scientific knowledge and
culture of the Occident, is already today showing what wisdom she

has acquired in the production of surplus value, and is preparing
herself that she may tomorrow play the part to Asia that England did

to Europe one hundred years ago. That the difference in the world's
affairs wrought by those one hundred years will prevent her

succeeding is manifest; but it is equallymanifest that they cannot
prevent her playing a leading part in the industrial drama which has

commenced on the Eastern stage. Her imports into the port of
Newchang in 1891 amounted to but 22,000 taels; but in 1897 they had

increased to 280,000 taels. In manufactured goods, from matches,
watches, and clocks to the rolling stock of railways, she has

already given stiff shocks to her competitors in the Asiatic
markets; and this while she is virtually yet in the equipment stage

of production. Erelong she, too, will be furnishing her share to
the growing mass of the world's capital.

As regards Great Britain, the giant trader who has so long
overshadowed Asiatic commerce, Lord Charles Beresford says: "But

competition is telling adversely; the energy of the British merchant
is being equalled by other nationals. . . The competition of the

Chinese and the introduction of steam into the country are also
combining to produce changed conditions in China." But far more

ominous is the plaintive note he sounds when he says: "New
industries must be opened up, and I would especially direct the

attention of the Chambers of Commerce (British) to . . . the fact
that the more the native competes with the British manufacturer in

certain classes of trade, the more machinery he will need, and the
orders for such machinery will come to this country if our machinery

manufacturers are enterprising enough."
The Orient is beginning to show what an important factor it will

become, under Western supervision, in the creation of surplus value.
Even before the barriers which restrain Western capital are removed,

the East will be in a fair way toward being exploited. An analysis
of Lord Beresford's message to the Chambers of Commerce discloses,

first, that the East is beginning to manufacture for itself; and,
second, that there is a promise of keen competition in the West for

the privilege of selling the required machinery. The inexorable
query arises: WHAT IS THE WEST TO DO WHEN IT HAS FURNISHED THIS

MACHINERY? And when not only the East, but all the now undeveloped
countries, confront, with surplus products in their hands, the old

industrial nations, capitalistic production will have attained its
maximum development.

But before that time must intervene a period which bids one pause