Page 280 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

272 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
occupy too much of our time now to resume the dis-
cussion, and I can only note its importance in passing,
especially the importance of the transitory nature of
one of the causes, the occupation of new lands, which has
given Europe a breathing time for a few generations,
but for a few generations only.
The economic development of the people, I need
hardly say, is even more marvellous. Agriculture has
extended indefinitely over the new territory, and there
have been vast improvements in new and old territory
alike; the figures of trade have been multiplied ten
times and more; the wealth of the peoples all told,
which would probably not have been reckoned at more
than five thousand millions sterling at the beginning
of the century, must be reckoned now by tens of
thousands of millions. It would probably not be far
short of the mark to say that while the millions of the
advanced portion of the human race have increased in
numbers as described, each unit on the average is two
or three times better off than the corresponding unit at
the beginning of the period.
Again, the development is for the most part not
uniform among the European populations; it is most
marked in the Anglo-American section. The increase
here is from a population of not more than about 20
millions, which was the population of the United States
and the United Kingdom together a hundred years
ago, to a population of not less than 130 millions at
the present time. Russia and Germany also show re-
markable increases, but nothing like this; while the
other nations of Europe are by comparison nowhere as
regards this increase, France especially being nearly
stationary. The Anglq-American section shows an
even more significant economic development, which it
is needless to enlarge upon. It is the United States
especially, again, which has been advancing the most
rapidly of all. One explanation, of course, is that -to
some extent the overflow from Europe, including Russia
and Germany, has gone to the United States, which is