brener@milrat.DEC (10/25/84)
Up to the 1890's, the industrial capitalists of the United States were for the most part able to satisfy their desire for profits and reinvest, their accum- ulated wealth within the country's continental borders. The first turning point came in 1893 when U.S. capitalism entered its most serious and prolonged depression since the Civil War. Overproduction set in - the domestic market was saturated and could no longer expand at the prodigeous rate of earlier decades. Unsold goods piled up in eastern ware- houses. Factory production slowed, and bankrupcies and layoffs became wide- spread. Confronted with the economic and (consequently) social crisis that showed few signs of abating, the most forsighted representatives of the capitalist class began urging a major expansion in the export of U.S. manufactured goods. They also sought new sources for raw materials and arenas for profitable invested. For example, addressing the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1895, U.S. diplomat Charles Enroy Smith noted that "like Alexander we sigh for new worlds to conquer". Relating to the Phillipines: In May 1898, while the war with Spain was still being fought, Henry Cabot Lodge had met with McKinley and argued as follows, as paraphrased by historian Daniel B. Schirmer: "The home market was no longer sufficient to meet the productive capacity of American industry; foreign markets must be secured such as the Phillipines would provide. Annex these islands, and their ten million inhabitants would have to buy American goods, and American manufactures would have so much more additional trade." Lodge wrote Roosevelt the next day that "the administration is grasping the whole policy" and would shortly send 20,000 troops to the Phillipines. steve b