Just before the ranch fever began, we struck oil--struck it in such immense quantities, and also found men so competent to make it fit for general use, that petroleum in some of its forms promised to be the leading export article of the United States. There was not a civilized quarter of the world in which one couldn’t find the American kerosene oil can. Our oil still continues to go abroad in immense quantities, but the fortunes which have been made upon it have stimulated prospectors all over the world, and, as it is known that oil is not restricted to any single hemisphere, or even grand division of the world, the prospects begin to look rather dismal for America retaining supremacy in this particular article of commerce. The Asiatic oil wells are far more valuable than ours and are worked at less expense, and the supply can be distributed in Europe quite as easily and cheaply as that from the American wells and refineries. Evidently we can’t afford to depend upon oil alone. Large fortunes have been made upon it, but there is an old song which says: “The mill can never grind with the water that is passed.” We need something new to keep us at the fore. What it is to be has not yet been discovered. Some few unfulfilled expectations of this kind, some great commercial disappointments, are probably necessary to divest us of part of the overweening self-confidence which is peculiar to the inhabitants of all new countries. Simple and unquestioning belief in manifest destiny and all that sort of talk has quite a stimulating effect at times, but it also is likely to lull people into a false sense of security. It already has done so to a large extent in the United States. We have been so well satisfied that we were superior in intelligence and resources to any other land on the face of the earth that we have been inattentive to some of our greater interests. The shipping of raw materials of any kind is a reputable division of industry, but it is not the highest result at which a nation should aim, nor should any amount of success at it blind the people to their greater duties, responsibilities and opportunities.