Politics & Power Quote by Josiah Strong

The brag here wears a clerical collar, but it’s boosterism all the way down. Strong sets England up as the old-world benchmark - “by far the richest nation of Europe” - only to knock it over with the insinuation that America has already “outstripped her” and is still just warming up. The ellipses in the quotation feel almost like a practiced pause from a pulpit: we’ve “seen” the evidence, the verdict is settled, and any doubt starts to sound like disloyalty.

Strong’s intent isn’t merely to admire growth; it’s to sanctify it. By framing wealth as a “race,” he turns economics into a moral sport, a test of national character that America is destined to win. The subtext is providential: resources aren’t just geological facts but latent blessings, waiting for the right people to “develop” them. That word does heavy ideological lifting. Development implies rightful use, not extraction; progress, not conquest; stewardship, not greed.

Context matters because Strong is writing in the high industrial, late-19th-century moment when the U.S. was flexing into global power: rapid urbanization, railroads, corporate consolidation, and a swelling confidence that the future belonged to Anglo-American modernity. As a clergyman, he functions less as a critic than as a translator, converting economic expansion into a story of national vocation. Underneath the optimism sits a quiet warning: if America has “only begun,” then restraint is the real heresy.