AD VALOREM vs. SPECIFIC DUTIES.

The farmers have been protected from unreasonable and unjust importations of agricultural products from Canada, Mexico, and other foreign countries. The greatest change, however, that can be found in the bill is the substitution of specific rates for ad valorem. The demand for this change comes not alone from Republicans. Honest Democrats and honest importers have united with Republicans and all classes of manufacturers in asking the Ways and Means Committee to do away with the system of ad valorem rates and restore specific duties, so that the system of undervaluation, by which the Government has been robbed of millions of money, may be stopped, and honest importers placed on an equality with dishonest ones importing goods into this country and placing them on our markets.-Hon. Albert J. Hopkins, of Illinois.

AMERICAN MACHINERY.

Why We Can Undersell European Manufacturers.

Many years ago Sir Edmund Beckett, then president of the British Horological Institute, said: "There can be no doubt in the mind of any one who understands machinery that this (referring to the American Waltham Watch Company) is the best as well as the cheapest way of making machines that require precision and uniformity, and although labor is dearer in America than here, this machinery enables them to undersell European watches of the same quality.”

AMERICA'S COMMANDING POSITION.

Our position is supreme. Our country lies midway between the East and the West. "Westward the course of empire takes its way," and in its progressive march our Republic-"Time's noblest offspring is the last”—stands at the culminating point where the advancing tide of Western power meets the refluent wave of Eastern antiquity. It arches and dominates the continent. Its Eastern shore stretches over three thousand miles along the Atlantic. Its Western shore-with its outpost, soon to be, at fair Hawaii-faces the Pacific and the Orient which are to be the theater of a new and splendid commerce. With the Isthmian canal constructed and under our undisputed control, as it must be, wedding the two oceans, practically giving us a continuous coast line and cutting

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in half the commercial routes of the Western World we shall hold the key of its rising trade and be the master force in all its broad influence and policy.

With this commanding position and opportunity what are our resources and present achievements? What are the elements of power with which we engage in the world's rivalry? The astonishing story sounds like a rhapsody. The American people grow one-fifth of the world's wheat, seven-eighths of its cotton, and nine-tenths of its corn. We consume one-third of its wool and one-half of its metals. We do two-fifths of its mining in value and hold nearly one-half of all its coal-fields. We make one-fourth of its iron and one-third of its steel. We have one-third more railroad mileage than all Europe, and with only one-fifth of Europe's population we do four-fifths as much railroad business. We earn every year nearly as much as Great Britain, Germany, Austria, and Italy put together. We manufacture one-third of all that comes from the teeming workshops and factories of the whole world, and in thirty years, so rapid is our advance, the aggregate growth of our industries has been more than double that of England, France, and Germany combined. Though the youngest of all the nations, with a flag but little over a century old, we possess one-fifth of all the wealth of the world. In the treasuries of our domain and in the brain and brawn of our people we have boundless resources of power and progress, and with these magnificent strides who can measure the sweep of our supremacy in another hundred years?

These fabulous figures show both our unequaled power of production and our unparalleled capacity of consumption. We create more than any other people and we use more. Our greatness has been within ourselves. The field of foreign commerce is the only material realm we have yet to conquer. In our stupendous home development the time had not come for the outward look. We had far less need of it than other nations. The commerce of England represents more than one-third of the value of her chief occupations, while the commerce of the United States represents less than one-tenth of ours. Our domestic exchanges amount to nearly thirty times the whole volume of our foreign commerce, and they aggregate more than six times all the imports of all the nations of the world. What wonder that with this matchless market at home we have been negligent in looking abroad! But in the evolution of our material greatness the time has now come for the fruition of these mighty resources beyond our borders. It is a triumphant vindication of the American policy that it has first created and established our American industries, that then it has given them unchallenged sovereignty within our own vast domain, and that now it has fortified and equipped them to enter into the world's ar

duous competition. And so, with all the superiority of our position, with one arm outstretched to the East and the other to the West, with all the advantage of being the only great industrial power that is self-sustaining, we boldly embark upon the career of commercial extension.-Charles Emory Smith, at Banquet of American Manufacturers, January 27, 1898.

ANNEXATION.

ISLAND POSSESSIONS OF THE UNITED STATES.

It has been argued that the annexation of Hawaii is a departure from the traditions of the country and a foolish experiment, because it is not contiguous territory, the case of Alaska being set down as still an experiment. But in annexing Hawaii there is no departure from the traditions of the country. The country has already made numerous annexations of insular territory.

MIDWAY ISLAND.

This island was annexed in 1868 by order of the executive department of the United States. The action taken thereunder is fully described in Senate Executive Document No. 79, Fortieth Congress, second session. An appropriation of $50,000 was made by the third session of the Fortieth Congress by act approved March 1, 1869.

This is contained in United States Statutes at Large, volume 15, chapter 48, page 279. It is also referred to in the Report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1870, on page 8, and Report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1871, pages 6, 7, and 8,

The object of the annexation was to create a naval station there. Midway Island is the westernmost of the Hawaiian group,

The appropriation was all spent, and an estimate made showing that it would cost some $400,000 more to open the harbor, which is a lagoon harbor with a bar of coral across at the entrance on which there is only 15 feet of water. The heavy expense and the loss of a war ship engaged in bringing away the laborers when the $50,000 was expended interfered with the continuance of the plan to make a naval station, but the island still belongs to the United States.

OTHER ISLAND ANNEXATIONS.

The United States owns the Aleutian Islands, extending a thousand miles west of Hawaii, which it acquired in conjunction with Alaska. It also owns fifty-seven other islands and groups of islands in the Pacific and thirteen in the Caribbean Sea, which have been taken possession of by American citizens under act of Congress dated August 15, 1856, which provides for the registration and protection of islands so annexed. The principal object of

such annexations was to secure the guano located on such islands, but it only makes the precedent so much the stronger in that it indicates that so small a matter as the securing of a limited amount of fertilizer is sufficient reason for insular annexation.

The traditions of the country are to annex whatever territory or country is needed.

The fact that the greater portion of the territory annexed was not insular is no precedent or tradition against insular annexations when such annexations would be valuable to the country.

In other words, the question of whether the territory proposed to be annexed is insular or continental is not and should not be the criterion, but the deciding line is whether or not its annexation would be valuable to the United States.

The names, location, and date of acquisition of the islands which have become United States territory under the above-mentioned act of 1856 are as follows: