The "Tobacco Trust" had largely monopolized both the wholesale and retail trade in this article of luxury and had also made extensive inroads into the English market.

The textile industry had not only transformed great centers of New England into an American Lancashire, but the Southern States, recovering from the demoralization of the Civil War, had begun to spin their own cotton and to send the finished product to all parts of the world.

American shoe manufacturers had developed their art to a point where "American shoes" had acquired a distinctive standing in practically every European country.
It is hardly necessary to describe in detail each of these industries.
In their broad outlines they merely repeat the story of steel, of oil, of agricultural machinery; they are the product of the same methods, the same initiative.

There is one branch of American manufacture, however, that merits more detailed attention.

If we scan the manufacturing statistics of 1917, one amazing fact stares us in the face.