As I sit quietly thinking over my seventh visit to the United States, some impressions take a definite shape. I may here repeat a phrase which I used yesterday while speaking to the representative of an English newspaper who had called to interview me:

'This last visit has left me more than ever impressed with the colossal greatness of the American people.'

The progress they have made during the last five years is perfectly astounding—progress in commerce and industry, progress in art and science, progress in architecture. The whole thing is simply amazing. And the ingenuity displayed in the smallest things!

Really, this morning I was pitying from the bottom of my heart a poor English carman, who was emptying sacks of coal into a hole made in the pavement, as in New York, in front of a house.

He had to go and fetch every sack of coal, put it on his back, carry it with his bent body, and then aim at the hole as best he could. In New York the cart is lifted one side by means of a handle, an inclined tray is placed at the bottom of the cart, with its head over the hole, and down goes the coal as the man looks at the work done for him.

It is in thousands of little things like this that you understand how the American mind is constantly at work. I do not know whether America makes more inventions than other nations (I believe that France is still leading), but there is no country where so many inventions are perfected.

In a great measure I attribute the commercial prosperity of the Americans to the soundness and practicability of their principles in the matter of the commercial education of their youth. It is partly due to the existence of the 'business college,' which has no counterpart in England, but which is as great and powerful an institution in the States as public schools are in England. Until Europe has such colleges, she will never breed leaders of commerce and industry as they are bred in America.

France possesses the best artisans in the world—glass-cutters, cabinet-makers, book-binders, gardeners—simply because boys of the working classes choose their trade early, work long apprenticeships, and study.

The English boy of these classes becomes a plumber at thirteen, then he tries everything afterward. He is in turn a mason, a gardener, anything you like 'for a job.' In America it is the mind of boys which is prepared for commerce in the business colleges. At twenty they are practical men.

Of course, my mind is full of trusts. Is it possible that in a few years all the great industries of America—its mines, its railroads, its telegraphic and telephonic systems, its land, its land produce—will all be amalgamated and transformed into trusts?

I am not inclined to look on this great system of trusts in too pessimistic a fashion. In my view, they may eventually lead to the nationalization of those gigantic enterprises, and in this way bring about the greatest good for the greatest number, by the simple reason that it will be much easier for the State to deal with all those different trusts than with thousands of different companies and individuals.

One day the earth will belong to its inhabitants, not to a privileged few. Trusts may lead to the solution of the question.

Another impression deeply confirmed more than ever: the English may talk of the 'blood-thicker-than-water' theory, but it will never stand the test of a political crisis.

Of course, there are the '400' of New York who are entirely pro-English, and half apologetic for being American; but the population of Greater New York is 4,000,000. If out of 4,000,000 you take 400, there still remain some Americans. And these have no love lost for England.