ABSTRACTS OF ADDRESSES.

NEW CONDITIONS CONFRONTING THE NEW CENTURY.

BY REV. JOSIAH STRONG OF NEW YORK CITY.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the American Institute of Instruction :

I have always held in high honor the profession which you represent, and improved my earliest opportunity to express my appreciation by selecting a Yankee school teacher for my mother. I chose another of the same stock for a paternal aunt, another for my sister, and still another for my wife.

If I have thus in any measure honored your profession, you have, I am sure, abundantly reciprocated by inviting me to address the American Institute of Instruction on this occasion.

It is not necessary for me to say that I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, and I trust I shall remember the counsel which Dr. Butler of Trinity College gave to his students. He said: "Young men, let us not be too confident, let us not dogmatize. We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest." When a man has . turned fifty he is a great deal less infallible than when at

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twenty in college. Every man, however, has a right like the Scotchman to draw an inference,-"Sandy, you've been aboot the meenister's hoose sa lang noo, I suppose ye could write a sermon yoursel', gin somebody gie ye a text?" Weel, I dinna ken, I might draw an inference or twa." "What inference, Sandy, would ye draw fra this text―The wild ass snuffeth up the east wind at her pleasure?"" "Weel, I'd infer it would be a lang while afore she'd fotten on it." I shall attempt to present to you some of the new conditions that confront the new century, hoping like our Scotch friend to draw "an inference or twa."

The German Emperor had an English mother, but notwithstanding this fact he is German in his ideas and ideals; and even in his personal appearance he is a typical German. The Prince of Wales had a German father, and although by blood he is as much of a German as the Emperor, yet in his ideas, in his ideals and even in his personal appearance, he is a typical Englishman. The one was made German by a German environment, and the other was made English by an English environment Now the conditions which confront the new century are its environment. The centuries are lineal descendants one of another. They come, therefore, under the laws of heredity, and heredity is decisive within certain limits. But within certain other limits environment is decisive. And when we look at the new conditions which confront the future and constitute a new environment, we trust we shall find ourselves warranted in drawing one or two inferences concerning the century to come.

The first new fact to which I wish to call your attention is this: the practical exhaustion of our arable public

lands. From prehistoric times down to the present, there has always been to the westward a comparatively unoccupied land to receive the overflow of crowded populations. From the early home of the race, in ever enlarging circles, waves of migration rolled east and west, and today the Asiatic and the European races meet on the Pacific coast. And there are no more new worlds. We have arrived at a new stage in the world's history. Two results, it seems to me, must necessarily follow. One is that the great races of the world must now enter on a new era of competition with each other, and the other is that the great movement which heretofore has been westward with the Star of Empire must now turn southward toward the tropics where the unoccupied lands of the world are. Indeed both of these movements have already begun; and in the last fifteen or sixteen years the great European Powers have laid hold of more than five million square miles in the tropics,—an area greater than all Europe by one-half.

But this movement has a special significance for our own people. Have you ever estimated the tremendous energy which has been employed by the American people. in the conquest of the continent? These waves of population at the beginning of the century, across which you have been looking to-day, had rolled up the Allegheny slope and cast their spray as far west as Ohio a hundred years ago. Remember that during these hundred years the American people created homes for seventy millions. They brought under the plow four and a half million farms. Think of the energy which for forty years reduced to cultivation sixteen thousand acres on the average every day. Think of the energy which has built half a thousand

cities; some of them among the great cities of the earth. Think of the energy which has strung 775,000 miles of telephone wire and more than eight hundred thousand miles of telegraph wire. Think of the energy which has built 232,000 miles of railway, enough to parallel every track in all Europe and then with the remainder, if the Equator would only furnish a roadbed, to girdle the earth. Think of the energy which has organized twenty-nine great commonwealths during the century and furnished each of them with the appliances, the institutions, the customs of organized, civilized life; each one of those commonwealths on the average larger than England and Wales. This gives us some conception of the enormous energy which has been put forth by the American people in bringing this continent under the yoke of civilization. It took a thousand years to develop the civilization of Europe, and we have brought under the yoke as large an area almost in a single century. Stanley has said that three times the number of Europeans could not have accomplished more than the Americans have done in the same time. My friends, now that the continent has been conquered, what is to become of this tremendous energy? It must inevitably turn outward.

Turn for a moment to the wealth that has been created in the United States and invested here. I cannot dwell upon it but will give you a single illustration. Take the period of a single generation from 1860 to 1890, and bear in mind that that period included the civil war, when two great armies were withdrawn from production and devoted all their energies and ingenuity to the work of destruction. Remember that during that period three millions of slaves

were withdrawn from the assets of the nation. Remember that we are the best fed and best clothed nation in the world, and the most wasteful. Yet above all the loss, above all the expenditure, legitimate and illegitimate, we created and amassed forty-nine thousand million dollars, a thousand million more than Great Britain had saved in all the centuries.

Now my friends, we are developing wealth and energy faster today than ever before. Engineers are now able to measure the working energy of a nation in foot-tons, and they tell us that the American people have more foot-tons of energy today, twice over, than Great Britain, and nearly as much as Great Britain, France and Germany combined. What is to become of that energy; what are we to do with the cumulating millions? We are not going to invest thirteen thousand millions more in railways. We have not to build again those magnificent blocks in our cities, which will stand for generations: much of this work has been done for ages. We are driven to the conclusion that this tremendous energy of the American people and this marvellous wealth are to turn outward, and precisely as Great Britain has for generations sent her sons and capital to the ends of the earth, so we during the twentieth century will be forced to send our energies and our capital to Europe, to Asia, to Africa, to the islands of the sea; indeed it is already flowing thither.

There is another fact on which I must not dwell, which is perhaps sufficiently evident from what has already been said; viz., the necessity of finding foreign markets. During the Twentieth Century such markets will become as essential for the United States as they have long been for England.