LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

power of French finance. Looking to Paris as the centre of banking
power.
The word FRENCH in this connection will raise a smile in some
quarters. But so was it. Paris before the Russian revolution was, let us
say, a great center of usury. The French Army in 1938 aroused
professions of admiration, cras tibi. The eccentricity of France’s material
position, that is to say the way in which France lay OFF the main trade
routes: her off-centerness, her not being in the center, had worried
French rulers since the time of Louis XIV. You beat France and Holland.
You grabbed the sea routes, and you HAD mineral under your grassy
soil. Your iron mines hit high, yielded their maximum in 1882 with 18
million tons of ore. By 1900, that was down to 14 million. Copper, 1868,
9,817 tons; 1899, 637 tons. Lead, 73,420; 1899, 2,552. Tin, 1871,
10,900; dropped to 4,013 inside a year. And apparently a good deal of
your coal was, at the turn of the century, already being bought by your
own ships at your coaling stations abroad, so that it couldn’t all count in
trade balance. You know whether these trends have continued. By 1903
B. Adams thought that your END seemed only a question of time. I
don’t quote Brooks Adams as divine revelation, I quote him as a
prospicient author whose perceptions are worth careful consideration. I
also quote him as indicative of the most active American thought of his
time, though he stood high above most of it. Let us say that the
mercantilist outlook never had better exponent. It was a pragmatic age. It
is highly interesting to measure human knowledge today against what
his was at the turn of the century. To see where he left off. Where if ever,
he erred. Mr. Adams was in a privileged position to estimate your
position. I mean he had perspective far above the common. His father
Charles Francis Adams had been ambassador at [The] Court of St. James
during the American Civil War and wrestled with Russell; his brother,
Henry had been secretary to their father during that period, and
possessed a far from common capacity for leaving a very clear record of
events. B.A.’s grandfather had been American Ambassador to Russia
during earlier and eventful years, and Charles Francis had edited HIS