It ix an economic law theat educa tion increases both production and consumption. 1 know that there may be some readers who will dis-gree. "We have lived in Asia," they will say, "we have worked with Asisaties, and we can bear undisputed testimony to the fact that the uneducated Chinese or Indian workman will do more than his educated colleague." To a limited extent this is a correct view, but economically it is unsound. This writer has himself had charge of Asiatic printers and engravers who could not speak a word of English, and yet he would prefer to have them to do a job of work than a much smaller "gang of educated white men who would be required for the same work. But this is merely.
matter of preferment of method. As men learn more—and we shall see this increasingly in Asia: we are already seeing it in India—they become more valuable as producers, for as men learn more they have greater desires. As the desire grows, industry grows.
However, where has the money gone? The following may be quoted as the principal avenues:
(a) The railronds—undoubtedly the finest managed in the world, for what the merchant marine is to Britain the rail-to the United (b) Electricity and Gas—the American home is electrically equipped as no other is; the smallest bungalow has. its electric light, its heaters, its washing machine, and many other household conveniences, all electrically driven.
The public school system—undoubtedly no other country in the world can compare ith the Unitde States. for modern school plants, though old-time educators may: question whether, with it all, the children are' better educated than they were in older days, (d) Good roads—it is needless to say that America's great highways are far beyond those of any other country, taken a whole, (2) Automobiles—there are more eutomobites in the city of Ghicago than there are in the It cannot be denied that the average American understands more about "big business"—buying and selling, building houses and selling them, more about how big industries operate and more about rheic financing—than the average Briton at home. Conditions of life in the two countries are very different, of course. But, though these wise bankers and' economists may draw fine pictures, I personally incline to the belief that all this success and prosperity is more imaginary than real. Communities in this country of, say, a hundred thousand people' issue bonds for enormous stims of moneys for public improvements which would make the hair of the mayor and town council of a city of similar size in Great Britain stand on end, Communities vie with each other, and because one city has some partiealar thing the adjacent city believes it must possess the same thing, and so it promptly pledges its credit, raises bonds, gets whatever it has its mind eet upon, and "forgets it"—a curio ous American expression with wealth of meaning. And tais "forgetting" leads this community on }from one thing to another until it finds that it has overstepped itself, and a depression gets in—merely
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.