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26 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
indicates that a continuance of this rate of increase may
be considered incredible. I t implies future changes in
the industrial power of the race which we have no
warrant to anticipate. The area of the United States,
exclusive of Alaska, which does not count, is 3 million
square miles, and of this area there are at least I million
square miles, if not more, which are sterile or rainless,
so that cultivation, so far as we can now foresee, is out
of the question. There remain then 2 million p,quare
miles, and on this area a population of 800 millions
would give 400 to the square mile-one-third as much
again as the present population per square mile in the
United Kingdom, twice as much per square mile as the
population of the United Kingdom which is supported
by the home agriculture, and more than twice as much
per square mile as the present population of France.
Allowing for the greater consuming power of people in
the United States as compared with that of the French
people, this is as much as to say that a rate of increase
of population like what has been going on in the Un i ted
States for a century is impossible in the next century,
unless the power of the human race to extract food from
the soil is enormously increased. No doubt the United
States may lose in each decade that special force of
addition to its rate of increase due to immigration. As
its own population increases, the proportion of the
area from which immigrants are drawn will diminish,
and hence there is apparent reason to anticipate that
the proportion of the immigration itself will diminish.
But at present there is hardly a sign of change in the
proportion of the immigration, and for some time to
come at least no material difference seems likely from
this cause in the rate of increase of the United States
population. The increase of population between 1870
and 1880 was almost at as great a rate as any that has
occurred. Besides, it does not follow that the diminu-
tion of the area from which immigrants are drawn
should diminish the immigration itself. Other things
being equal, a larger and larger share of the increasing