SOURCE: A review of The New Empire, in Journal of Political Economy, 1902, pp. 314-17.

In the following excerpt, the reviewer unfavorably assesses Adams's The New Empire.

Pursuing a line of argument already worked out in his Law of Civilization and Decay, Mr. Adams offers an explanation, a theory it may be called, of the rise and decline of successive "empires" from the dawn of history to the present. The objective point of the argument is to account for the present, or imminent, supremacy of America as an imperial power. This supremacy has, in Mr. Adams's mind, all the certainty of an accomplished fact. While it takes the form of a political supremacy, its substantial ground is the commercial leadership of the new imperial organization; the reason for commercial leadership being, in its turn, the possession of superior material resources, particularly mineral resources, together with the convergence of trade...