AMERICAN PROSPERITY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 57, 14 March 1907, Page 4

AMERICAN PROSPERITY

Registering Us balances at the en I of PJO6 the United States congratulates itself on abundant evidence of prosperity iu almost every department of industry, trade, and commerce. In the Old "Year production outran previous records. For the New Year there is every prospect of bu>y occupation for months to come, unless some unfor?een cataclysm should befall io the *co-untry. Furnace* ars iu fulblast, factories are working overtime to prevent supply from fall'ng further behind the demand, spindles and looms are whirling as on incessantly, and farmers .are laving down new acreage for erop3 of coin and cotton. In each of the three great divisions of its products on which it* prosperity is based, fundamentally the Un'ted Btates is enjoying to the full the benefit of a fortunate year, modified by drawbacks to a comparatively smail degree. The farmers of th" Middle West and West spirally, hive freed themselves from heavy burdens of mortgage and other encumbrances, have found themselves able to i-pend largely on material comfort* in their, mode of living, an 1 have hrgely increased Uie home coiiMimption of the manufactures of the industrial ceutiv.;. Nor is th s all. Never has lh* Mouth enjoyed such general with land booming, farm values at their highest, anil business everywhere expand.ng, though scarcity of labour and the lack of sullinent ears io transport the crop an 1 merchandise are nowhere so keenly felt. In this auction of the country'wages luive never been mi high or farm labour so well paid, nor have tins banks ever before done such a volume of business The progress made hi the production of pig iron and steel as | n ru even more astonishing. All the records of the country have been broken by Jie | output of each passing 2."),000,001) ton- ! nage, exceeding the joint production ol ' Great Britain, Germany, and France. i'he entire mineral production of the | country is now twice as great in ISOS, the year of the Spanish war, and four limes and a-half as much as in 1884. when Mr Cleveland began his first presidency.