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Show l THIS LAND OF OURS. IKI fM i J There are eighty millions of people in the United IHPf P States; perhaps four times eighty millions in Eu- Bvjjrf . rope. Europe's resources are all developed; only HW"' II a beginning has been made in the United States. HljhjfC I Tne laoorers of the United States earn and re- KfflK1 mm t j ceive more wages than four times their number in ffi; J I ' Europe. The mineral products of the United States Bfs measured in money are greater than those of Eu- IIHpI ' rope. The United States supplies Europe with HV i ! most of the cotton spun on European looms. Eu- H 1 ! rP looks to the United States for a large portion HHB; j of the bread and meat consumed by her people. HBk I Sho ls beginning to draw upon the United States for coal. Her consumption of American lumber is enormous. American manufactured goods in infinite in-finite variety are for sale in all the principal cities of the Old World. America draws from Europe's people, in most part, the young and strong a host almost as numerous as was the Grand Army that Napoleon started for Russia with but thus far they have all been absorbed and assimilated with our people, without jar or confusion. These few facts are sufficient to show what a disadvantage Europe labors under in her struggle to live and to hold the world's trade against such a competitor competi-tor as the United States. Of course she has her works of art, her gathered treasures of a thousand years; she has some mechanical and technical schools superior to ours; she draws maybe $100,-000,000 $100,-000,000 annually from American sightseers: her personal expenses are less than those of our people; peo-ple; as a rule her people have more patience and severe thrift than ours; but then she keeps 4,000,000 of men all the time in her standing armies, and keeps afloat 1,500 fighting ships. She has many costly capitals and a dozen courts to support, sup-port, with all their attaching nobility. Gilpin pointed out that from the apex of the Old World the rivers ran in all directions to the sea, the banks of which from the beginning have been peopled by warring races. When there is "no war there is a perpetual armed truce and the people have to support those armies." The study of the foregoing few facts ought to make any American glad that his lot is cast in a land like ours, ought to make him jealous of its blessings and its privileges, privi-leges, ought to make him impatient whenever he sees a man on this soil who does not hold this as the most-favored country under the sun, and who has not the patriotism to appreciate the place our country holds among the nations and the vigilance to guard her interests as he would' his own family. |