be those who hold stock in the
enterprises which fail or cease to operate, and that far larger class
who are dependent on a fixed salary. Professors and teachers of all
sorts and grades; people living on annuities or small incomes derived
from bonds or real estate; those dependent on the rent derived from
leases for a term of years of dwelling houses, office buildings and the
like, these will lose a material amount, exactly in proportion to the
rise in prices. To that extent, the purchasing power of the stated
number of dollars they receive will depreciate and that much they will
lose beyond a peradventure. In time, some relief will be afforded by a
tardy rise in salaries, by the expiration of leases and the payment of
bonds, but the actual losses of the intervening years have never been in
any way refunded in like cases in the past.
For some individuals, then, the European war will spell strict economy;
for a comparatively few, let us hope, ruin. For the country as a whole,
considered as a social and economic unit, a long war will introduce an
era of astounding prosperity. Never before has the country had, and
certainly it will never again have, almost a monopoly of the world's
trade thrust into its hands. The United States will have only one real
competitor, England, and, should the English Navy prove itself less
capable than is expected, or should England and her colonies be forced
to order a general mobilization of their armies, the United States might
conceivably remain the only great mercantile community to which the
world could look for supplies. No such eventuality need be predicated to
prove that the continuation of this war or a series of wars will create
a demand for manufactured goods such as our merchants have never dreamed
of. And they will command war prices. It means employment with rich
reward for capital and labor alike--a vastly increased foreign market, a
much greater domestic market, high prices, and a steadily voracious
demand for the entire output. The result will be the rapid
diversification of industry in the United States, the creation of
industries never before possible because of European competition, the
invention of machines to meet new needs. The normal economic development
will be accelerated decades.
After the close of the European war, when manufacturing and production
are resumed, America will find herself overproducing and face to face
with another economic readjustment necessary t
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