SUBMARINES AND AIRSHIPS Our military services were insufficiently supplied with submarine boats and with aeroplanes; which was an irony of fate, seeing that both those devices were chiefly of American origin. The submarine dates back to Robert Fulton, who years before he initiated steam navigation with the Clermont made successful trips under the waters of the British Channel in a hand-propelled submarine. For many years his achievements in that direction were all but forgotten. But the general idea was taken up in our own time by two other Americans, Simon Lake and John P. Holland, and from their inventive genius proceeded the development of the submarine fleets which have so largely transformed the naval warfare of the world. So, too, Langley and the Wright brothers, Americans, were pioneers in the development of aeroplanes, or "heavier than air" flying machines. AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES Some mention has already been made of America's production of wheat, the most important of all foodstuffs. This country annually produces more than 3,000,000,000 bushels of corn, 1,000,000,000 bushels of wheat (in 1915, the record year), 1,500,000,000 bushels of oats, 225,000,000 bushels of barley, 35,000,000 bushels of rye, 20,000,000 bushels of buckwheat, 400,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 75,000,000 tons of hay, 28,000,000 bushels of flaxseed, 7,500,000,000 pounds of cotton, 1,000,000,000 pounds of tobacco, 1,900,000 long tons of sugar, and 300,000,000 pounds of wool. It has 65,000,000 swine, 65,000,000 head of cattle, 25,000,000 horses and mules, and 60,000,000 sheep. It produces more than 500,000,000 tons of coal,' 1,000,000,000 pounds of copper, and 225,000,000 barrels of petroleum a year. It has 268,000 manufacturing establishments with a yearly output worth $20,000,000,000. Its farm products are worth more than $10,500,000,000 a year. Vast as are these resources, however, they are small by the side of what they might be. Even in the completely settled and cultivated states, scarcely fifty per cent of the available agricultural land is actually under cultivation, while that which is cultivated is not made to produce more than one-half as much as it should. Thus the average yield of wheat is from 15 to 17 bushels to the acre, while in some European countries it is 33 bushels; and the average yield of potatoes seldom reaches 100 bushels, while in Germany it is considerably more than 200 bushels to the acre. Double the cultivated area, and double the acre yield, and the enormous figures given above would be quadrupled. OUR COMMERCIAL MARINE One of the weakest points in our resourcefulness at the beginning of the war was that of the commercial marine. Enormous as was our foreign trade, it was chiefly conducted in foreign vessels under foreign flags. We have at New York the greatest seaport of the world, reckoned in the value of its trade, while in the year before the war the second was German, the third and fourth English, and the fifth Belgian: New York. Hamburg. London... Liverpool.. Antwerp... These were the five first-class ports. world reached the billion-dollar mark. $1,966,256,617 1,960,779,855 1,866,930,782 1,816,983,279 1,214,725,495 No other in the Now let us see what were our imports from and our exports to the principal countries involved in this war: The total tonnage of American shipping was indeed large; perhaps the second largest in the world. But the major part of it was on the Great Lakes and in purely coastwise traffic. In foreign trade our total steam tonnage was pitifully small in comparison with that of other countries. Thus: |