In the second half of the century the for eign commerce grew by leaps and bounds. The ocean steamer greatly developed its carrying power, tonnage multiplied and the cost of transportation on the ocean was greatly re duced, while the tremendous increase of the railway system of the country had a similar effect upon the cost of moving the products of the interior to the water's edge, and in this movement the Great Lakes also rendered marked assistance with the development of large and powerful freight carrying steamers which handled the merchandise which the rail ways were able to deliver to them at the western end of the chain and transfer from the eastern end to the tidewater. The development of the great manufacturing system of the country, the greatest in the world, added large quantities of manufactures to the available ma terial for exportation and at the same time created a great demand for manufacturing ma terial to be imported from other parts of the world. As a result the foreign commerce of the country which totaled but little more than in 1850 was $686,000,000 in 1860, 7,000,000 in 1870, $1,504,000.000 in 1880, ,647,000,000 in 1890, $2,244,000,000 in 1900, ,302,000,000 in 1910 and $4,279,000,000 in 1913, all of the above figures being for fiscal years.
During all of this period of rapid growth the exports greatly exceeded imports, though prior to that development imports were usually as much as the exports, and frequently exceeded them. In the period from 1900 to 1913 exports were often as much as $500,000,000 in excess of the imports, and in fact the annual average excess of exports during that period was about $500,000,000. This was due in the earlier part of that period to the fact that the United States had large quantities of meat and grain to spare for foreign countries, and in the later years to the rapid growth of the exportation of manufactures, which grew from $485,000,000 in 1900 to $1,185,000,000 in 1913.
With the opening of the great European War in 1914 there came a great change in the commerce of the United States, and while it was to some extent temporary it is significant as an illustration of the power of the great manu facturing industry of the country to respond to extraordinary demands from abroad, and suggestive as to the possibilities and prob abilities of the future of our trade. The European countries at war required vast quan tities of war materials, powder, shot and shell, firearms and materials for their construction, metal working machinery, barbed wire, high.ex plosives of various kinds and miscellaneous manufactures for war uses, to say nothing of the demand for horses and mules for the war and materials for feeding and clothing their soldiers and the maintenance of their system of transportation. To all of these demands the producers of the United States, whether manu facturers or agriculturists and mine operators, responded with remarkable promptness and in volume of supplies, and the exports grew from $2,365,000,000 in 1914 to $2,769,000,000 in 1915, $4,333,000,000 in 1916 and $6,290,000,000 in 1917. With the entrance of the United States
into the war there came great demands upon the manufacturers and producers for material for our own armies, and the government also found it necessary to restrict exports to pre vent their passing to the Central Powers of Europe with which we were at war, and as a result the exports were temporarily reduced, de spite the fact that those passing out of the country went at prices far above those pre vailing prior to the war. The total dropped to $5,920,000,000 in 1918 but with the great food re quirements of Europe and the demand for man ufactures in the other grand divisions the fiscal year 1919 made the phenomenal record of $7,225,000,000 exports and $3,096,000,000 im ports, making thegrand total of imports and exports $10,321,000,000 against the former high record of $8,949,000,000 in 1917.
The developments of the last half century have resulted in a widening field for our com merce, both as to imports and exports. With the development of the manufacturing industry there came new demands upon the tropics for manufacturing material and a less demand upon Europe for manufactures, and the in population and the prosperity of the masses increased the demand for the products of other countries,. such as sugar, tea. coffee, cacao, tropical fruits, 'silk for manufacturing, rubber, fibres, tin and other manufacturing ma terials. The wool production of the country was insufficient to meet home requirements and this was also true of hides and skins and other staple requirements of manufacture. As a re sult the value of manufacturing material im ported in a raw state increased from $276,000, 000 in 1900 to $1,110,000,000 in 1917 and $1,251, 000,000 in 1919, and of manufactures for use in manufacturing from $92,000,000 in 1900 to $475,000,000 in 1917 and $606,000,000 in 1919. These two classes .of manufacturing material which formed 46 per cent of the imports in 1900 were 60 per cent of the greatly increased total in 1919. Meantime manufactures showed an equal growth in the share of the rapidly in creasing export trade, aggregating $485,000,000 in 1900, $1,185,000,000 in 1913, $4,136,000,000 in 1917 and $3,337,000,000 in 1919, under the stimu lus of the demands of the war and the increased demand from neutral countries which found their supplies of manufactures from Europe greatly decreased. The manufactures exported in 1900 formed 35 per cent of the total exports of domestic merchandise, in 1913 42 per cent and in 1917 66 per cent.