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 international
 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 definitively
 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 application
 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 conditions
 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