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THE UTILITY OF COMMON STATISTICS 27
population of older countries will emigrate, and if they
do not emigrate they will have to be supported by the
. import of food from new countries, which comes to the
. same thing. Moreover, a much smaller increase in the
United States than we have supposed, say to 400
miIlions only in a century, would presuppose practic-
ally so violent a change in existing economic condi tions,
that the difference between it and the more violent
chang. which an increase of population to the larger
figure would require need not be considered.
The bare statement of such figures appears to me
quite enough to indicate that the present economic cir-
cumstances of the European family of nations, including
the United States as an offshoot and part of the family,
are not likely to continue for more than a generation
or two. We are within measurable distance of very
~reat changes. No doubt there are other new lands-
In Australia, in Canada, at the Cape, and e1sewhere-
which will be more or less available in the future; but,
singly, the United States is so much the larger field,
that the influence of these other new lands need not be
considered. Assuming the United States to possess
only half the area of new country available for the
European races, a single doubling of the population,
after the United States has been filled up-the work
of a generation or two-would absorb all these other
new lands; their existence only postpones the date
when they will all be in the position calculated for
America alone at the end of a century by thirty years
or so. In the course of a century, then, we may affirm
that the present economic circumstances of the Euro-
pean races which make possible an indefinite expan-
sion of the numbers of the people, coupled with an
increase of their consuming. power, will have entirely
changed.
The facts appear to me so interesting, that I ask
leave to add something more, though the figures I have
now to give you, while easily accessible, are not quite
so much on the surface, and have not been popularized.