CHAPTER 24 
TrE UniTED STATES, II. 1900-1914 
IN the period from 1900 to the Great War, the foreign 
trade not only of the United States but of all countries showed 
a comparatively even growth. The advance, tho halted some- 
what by the crisis of 1907, and not proceeding at the same pace 
or in parallel lines in all countries, was world-wide; and it 
was extraordinary in extent. Allowance must be made, when 
scanning the figures, for the rise in prices; the physical 
quantities did not increase as much as did the recorded money 
values. But with all needed qualification on this score, the ad- 
vance appears still extraordinary. Something of the same sort 
had happened a half-century earlier, in the period from 1850 to 
1860. Then too the volume of international trade increased by 
leaps and bounds. Then too, after all allowance for higher prices, 
the increase in physical terms remained astonishing. In both 
periods there was the phenomenon of greatly increased gold 
supply : from the Californian and Australian mines in the first, 
from the South African in the second. The added gold supply, 
it is pretty generally agreed, was the cause, or a dominant cause, 
of the general trend toward rising prices. This same cause is also 
often referred to as explaining the growth in international trade 
and indeed in world-wide production. It is not obvious why sub- 
stantive consequences of such magnitude should ensue from the 
mere enlargement of the circulating medium, or rather of the basis 
on which the circulating medium rested. More probably, it 
would seem that the main explanation is to be found in the accumu- 
lated effects of improvements in transportation by land and by 
ocean, such as were made on so great a scale in the second quarter of 
the 19th century, and were again made in its last quarter, com- 
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