THE UNITED STATES, II. 1900-1914 293 
bined with the opening of new sources of supply for those raw 
material and food-stuffs for which cheapened transportation 
signifies most. Yet it remains striking that the physical movement 
of goods should enlarge so enormously at the very time when the 
gold supply also was in the stages of most rapid advance. There 
are questions here which have not been satisfactorily answered. 
As regards the present inquiry, however, they need not detain us, 
since we are concerned not so much with the total volume of inter- 
national trade or with the causes which make it grow more or less 
rapidly, as with the relations between imports and exports and the 
causes of changes in these relations. 
In the United States, the period from 1900 to 1914 presents some 
special problems in this regard. It has already been pointed out 
that by 1890 the stage had been reached where there was defini- 
tively an excess of merchandise exports over imports. The 
periods of wavering (1885-1890) and of confusion (1890-1900) were 
over by 1900. The United States had then become unmistakably 
a country in the later phase of borrowing operations. The interest 
payable on previous loans had risen to great amounts; the inflowing 
remittances from new borrowings were not great. The balance of 
the loan transactions led to net payments out of the country and so 
tended to bring an excess of merchandise exports. 
But that was not all. Still other items entered, and made the 
international account as a whole far from simple, and the applica- 
tion or verification of general principles by no means easy. 
First of all, it is to be noted that the excess of merchandise exports 
was very large indeed. The chart on the following page shows how 
extraordinary it came to be. When it rose in 1898 and 1899 to 
figures of 640 and 550 millions of dollars (respectively), the con- 
ditions were regarded as exceptional ; and for myself, I recall that 
at the time it seemed impossible that an excess of this extent should 
persist. Yet something like it was maintained thruout the period 
to 1914. With but two exceptions (1909 and 1910) each single year 
showed an excess over 400 millions; and for the period 1900- 
1914 there was on the average an excess of over 500 millions per 
year. The aggregate money values of both exports and imports