d, stagnant, and unprogressive land. Suffice it to
say here that the population has trebled under British rule, and that the
country is abundantly able to sustain in great comfort twice its present
numbers by agriculture alone; that the extension of the railway system has
recently been rapid, and along with this has gone on a growth of
manufactures that is simply amazing. Only recently Burmah borrowed in
London $15,000,000 for railway construction, a sum that was subscribed in
that market five times over. In these vast fertile regions, which in
comparison with what they are destined to be might be called new and
undeveloped, live 290,000,000 of people, who are increasing at the rate of
something like 2,000,000 per year. And these are but a few of the facts I
might present to show that the early development of the Orient is the
great fact America must take into account, and that it is almost a
certainty that the world's greatest possible production of gold in the
future may be absorbed in the East, leaving the West to struggle with an
increasing scarcity. Indeed, Prof. Eduard Suess, the great German
authority, after giving reasons for his belief that the larger part of the
gold product is used in the arts, and that all of it will soon be, points
out that Asia will soon, in all probability, absorb almost the entire
silver product, and that we shall then have a "crisis" indeed.

In my travels through India and the Orient generally I took notice of her
enormous capacity to export wheat. As a result, I predicted that the
export, then but fairly begun, would soon menace our supremacy in the
British market. I began at the same time to study the social and
industrial condition of Russia, and was soon satisfied that she was in the
dawn of a great day. I predicted the eastern extension of her enterprises,
and increased political influence, especially with China, and the
consequent absorption of western gold and capital generally. It appears
from the latest summary of the United States Bureau of Statistics that
Russia had, on the first of January, 1892, $324,828,300 in gold in her
banks, and on the last of last May $424,193,700. If she carries out her
present policy, this is less than half of the amount she will require. On
a strictly gold basis we must allow her at least $10 per capita, which
would make for the empire $1,200,000,000. But if we greatly reduce the per
capita, in view of the undeveloped condition of her subjects, the