d by her official
announcement that she will side with England. The effects of the war
upon the United States will be indirect effects; they will be economic
in character, though far-reaching and significant for every man, woman,
and child in the country.

The economic structure of the United States rests today upon the
assumption of the interdependence of international trade, upon an
international division of labor, where England makes some things,
Germany others, and we still more, all of which are exchanged. In a
sense each country manufactures and produces for the whole world, and in
turn expects the rest of the world to buy its products and to
manufacture and produce things for its consumption. While something of
this sort has always been true in international trade, the process
reached during the nineteenth century an unprecedented development which
actually made countries interdependent, or, if you will, actually
dependent for the necessities of life upon each other's prosperity and
continued activity. Hand in hand went the expansion of the international
credit structure, based upon public confidence in the mutual honesty of
merchants, until finally personal checks have begun to be exchanged
(between the United States and England at least) at par and without
investigation or previous indorsement by the banks on which they were
drawn.

With the outbreak of war a striking and artificial change, a totally
uneconomic and unnatural factor, came to transform the situation and
leave the United States for all practical purposes in contact with only
two of her really large customers. We have no merchant marine and cannot
therefore avail ourselves of our neutral status to trade with the
belligerents. We shall be compelled (for a time at least) to ship in
English bottoms to such ports as English ships can make--which will
practically be limited to England, France, Portugal, Spain, and the
Mediterranean ports. The ordinary commercial roads to Russia through the
Baltic are automatically closed by the location of the German fleet, and
probably England and France, deprived of other outlets for their own
trade, will nearly monopolize the trade with Russia through the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

On the other hand, the mobilization of armies and fleets in Europe will
draw millions of men from the field and factories where they have been
accustomed to make what we have usually bought. The war will vastly
diminish and in m