In the country districts, as in the cities, which are every day more numerous, the common wealth and the fiscal revenues are increasing, owing to the efforts of industrious men. Not only are foreign industrial undertakings being founded, but national institutions also, fed by national capital. When the necessary loans can be subscribed in the country itself, when railways and ports are constructed with State or private capital, or with the financial aid of other South American governments; when American multi-millionaires (there are already plenty of them in the Argentine) have effected the nationalisation of the public works now in the hands of foreigners, then the economic ideal of these democracies will be realised. Latin America may already be considered as independent from the agricultural point of view; it possesses riches which are peculiar to it: coffee to Brazil, wheat to the Argentine, sugar to Peru, fruits and rubber to the Tropics. Its productive capacity is considerable. It may rule the markets of the world. The systematic exploitation of its mines will reveal treasures which are not even suspected. We may say, then, that even without great industries the American continent, independent in the agricultural domain, and an exporter of precious metals, may win a doubtless precarious economic liberty. [1] Cited by F. Bulnes, _El Verdadero Juarez_, Paris, 1904, p. 29. {387} CONCLUSION AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES The Panama Canal and the two Americas--The future conflicts between Slavs, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and Latins--The role of Latin America. A new route offered to human commerce transforms the politics of the world. The Suez Canal opened the legendary East to Europe, directed the stream of European emigration towards Australia, and favoured the formation, in South Africa, of an Anglo-Saxon Confederation. The Panama Canal is destined to produce profound perturbations in the equilibrium of the nations of the New World. Humboldt announced these changes in 1804:[1] "The products of China will be brought more than 6,000 miles nearer Europe and the United States; great changes will take place in the political condition of eastern Asia, because this tongue of earth (Panama) has for centuries been the rampart of the independence of China and Japan."