"Tu all the years I have known America," said Sir Edward, "I have never been so struck as during last two months by her prodigality. Americans have long; been the champion spenders of the world, but now they are making all previous records in that line look silly. It is not merely money they. are throwing about, out overything—copper, cotton, zinc, lead, timber—you can hardly name any of the staples of industry that they are not literally devowing. [t is an amazing spectacle.
"In America you have 130,000,000 people feverishly tearing from the earth its irreplaceable wealth and using it to maintain a rate of growth utterly without precedent in human history. This terrible consuming power is the biggest economic fact in the world to-day. It is terrible because it is already outrunning production. Before Jong, while the demand will be as
have run short. Then there will voracious as ever, the supply will; be a smash." I Sir Edward recalled that in 1914° 'America produced about 65 per! cent. of the world's supply of cotton. oil, copper, lead and zine.'
Then America consumed roughly supplieg To-day, while she producing relatively the same, her' consumption of. these commodity: amounts to over half of the world's
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.