sent by Clarence H. Mackay, President of the Pacific Cable
Company, made the circuit of the earth in nine minutes.

What additional possibilities are involved in the wireless
system of telegraphy we can only conjecture, but it is already
apparent that this system has passed the experimental stage
and that it is destined to achieve still more amazing results. A
startling illustration of its possibilities was given by the
Japanese fleet March 22, 1904. A cruiser lay off Port Arthur
and by wireless messages enabled battleships, riding safely
eight miles away, to bombard fortifications which they could
not see and which could not see them.

Commerce has taken swift and massive advantages of these
facilities for intercommunication. Its ships whiten every sea.
The products of European and American manufacture are
flooding the earth. The United States Treasury Bureau of
Statistics (1903) estimates that the value of the manufactured
articles which enter into the international commerce of the
world is four billions of dollars and that of this vast total, the
United States furnishes 400,000,000, its foreign trade having
increased over 100 per cent. since 1895. While the bulk of
the foreign trade of the United States is with Europe, American
business men are gradually awaking to the greatness of their
opportunity in Asia. A characteristic example of their aggressiveness
was given when President James J. Hill, of the Great
Northern Railroad, testified before a Government Commission,
October 20, 1902:--