We Americans have led the world in a great many respects in most unexpected ways and at unexpected times, but seldom does a year pass in which we do not discover that we have no monopoly of the art of taking the lead. In one way or other, some nations of the earth are continually showing themselves superior to us in some respects. We have needed a great many warnings of this kind, and we will need a great many more unless we act more promptly upon those which have already been granted us. We have had enough success in other days to make us very conceited, so it is natural that occasionally we fall behind our competitors through the blindness of our fancied security. There was a time when American sails whitened every ocean, and more American ships could be seen in foreign ports than those of two or three other nations combined. The man who would now go out in a foreign port to look for an American flag, determining not to break his fast till he found one, would stand a fair chance of starving to death. Whether the disappearance of our flag from commerce is due only to the ravages of the Alabama and her sister privateers, or to the navigation laws now in force, is not to the point of the present situation, which is, that unexpectedly to ourselves and all the rest of the world we have taken the lowest position among the nations as carriers of what we have to buy and sell, and that we do not show any indications whatever of ever resuming our old position. Another instance: Within the memory of half the people now alive, the world heard that Cotton was king, and, as cotton was obtainable only from America, Americans proudly assumed to be the commercial rulers of the world. Owing to a little family trouble on this side of the water, the other nations began to look about elsewhere for their cotton. They found some in unexpected places, and have been finding it there ever since. We still produce more cotton than any other country, but we are not kings of the cotton market any longer. Then came the time when Corn was king. It is true we did not ship much of it in the grain, but between putting it into pork and putting it into whiskey, our corn became the first cause of the loading many thousands of ships to different foreign countries. Foreigners have eyes in their heads and they began to look about and see whether they could not produce pork and whiskey as cheaply as those people across the water, who had to send their products three thousand miles or more to find a market. They succeeded. At the present day, although our distilleries and pig-styes are in active operation, a great deal of distilled liquors and also a great deal of the meat of the hog comes this way across the ocean. The market still is good abroad for American hams, sides, shoulders, bacon and lard, but the bottom has dropped out of the whiskey market, and seems to show no signs of a desire to return.