of hovels, and the valley of Syr-Daria is a wilderness. The fate of the empire of Haroun-al-Raschid exemplifies an universal law.” “The greatest prize of modern times,” in Mr. Adams’s opinion, is northern China, and upon this the fate of empire rests. His book was published in 1901, and he considered then that the chances were all with the United States. Ten years before we had been “tottering upon the brink of ruin.... Relief came through an exertion of energy and adaptability, perhaps without a parallel.... In three years America reorganised her whole social system by a process of consolidation, the result of which has been the so-called trust. But the trust is in reality the highest type of administrative efficiency, and therefore of economy, which has as yet been attained. By means of this consolidation the American people were enabled to utilise their mines to the full.... The shock of the impact of the new power seems overwhelming.... In March, 1897, Pittsburg achieved supremacy in steel, and in an instant Europe felt herself poised above an abyss.... The Spanish Empire disintegrated, and Great Britain displayed a lassitude which has attracted the attention of the entire world.... Germany has also been perturbed.... Russia has, however, suffered most. “The world seems agreed that the United States is likely to achieve, if indeed she has not already achieved, an economic supremacy. The vortex of the cyclone is near New York. No such activity prevails elsewhere; nowhere are undertakings so gigantic, nowhere is administration so perfect; nowhere are such masses of capital centralised in single hands. And as the United States becomes an imperial market, she stretches out along the trade routes which lead from foreign countries to her heart, as every empire has stretched out from the days of Sargon to our own. The West Indies drift toward us, the Republic of Mexico hardly longer has an independent life, and the City of Mexico is an American town. With the completion of the Panama Canal all Central America will become a part of our system. We have expanded into Asia, we have attracted the fragments of the Spanish dominions, and reaching out into China, we have checked the demands of Russia and Germany, in territory, which, until yesterday, had been supposed to be beyond our sphere. We are penetrating Europe, and Great Britain especially is assuming the position of a dependency, which must rely upon us as the base from which she draws her food in peace, and without which she could not stand in war.” “Supposing the movement of the next fifty years only equal to that of the last,” continues our author, ... “the United States will outweigh any single empire, if not all empires combined. The whole world will pay her tribute. Commerce will flow to her, both from east and west, and the order which has existed from the dawn of time will be reversed.”