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22 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
I n other words, the population of the United States
has multiplied itself by sixteen in the course of the
century-this being the result of its doubling itself
every twenty-five years for that period. In another
twenty-five years, at the same rate of increase, the
population will be 100 millions, in fifty years 200
millions, in seventy-five years 400 millions, and at the
end of a century 800 millions! Such is the first aspect
of the broad fact presented to our consideratio(1 by
the increase of population in the United States. The
rate is such as to be fairly bewildering in its probable
conseq uences. The phenomenon is also without a pre-
cedent in history. There has been no such increase of
population anywhere on a similar scale, and above all
no such increase of a highly civilized and richly fed
population. The increase is not only unprecedented
in mere numbers, but it is an increase of the most
expensively living population that has ever been in
the world .. For the idea of such an increase we are
indebted exclusively to statistics. The U niled States,
among the other new ideas of old civilizations they
have had the benefit of, have had the idea of a periodical
census, which is even made a part of their constitution,
and as the result we have before us, not only in a
general way, but with some precision, so that discussion
may have an assured basis, this phenomenon of an un-
precedented increase of population which is perhaps
the greatest political and economic fact of the age.
The fact has altered in the first place the whole idea
of the balance .of power of the European nations. A
century ago the European nations in their political re-
lations thought little but of each other. N ow the idea
of a new Europe on the other side of the Atlantic
affects every speculation, however much the new people
keep themselves aloof from European politics. The
horizon has been enlarged, as it were, and the mere
fact of the United States dwarfs and, I think, restrains
the rivalries at home. European Governments can no
longer have the notion that they are playing the first