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28 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
These figures relate to the actual appropriation of land
for settlement, and the actual growth of population in
the new and old States respectively. What I wish to
bring out is that a much larger portion of the available
area of the United States has been "taken for settle-
ment" than is commonly imagined; that in fact not
only the thirteen original States and their three sub-
sections have been so taken for settlement, but what
are known as the Western States, exclusive of the
Pacific territories, have also been taken for settfement;
that the growth of rural population in this second group
of States has now brought them nearly to the level of
the rural population in the older States; that there is
no longer much room for growth by taking up new
lands in all these portions of the States i that the re-
maining available area is so small as to render inevit-
able its being taken for settlement before very long;
and that from this point, probably within twenty or
thirty years, the new economic circumstances I have
been referring to must begin to make themselves felt.
The total area of the United States, according to the
last census, exclusive of Alaska, is given as 3,025,600
square miles, of which there is a. land surface of
2,970,000 square miles. Of this the portion belonging
to each of the three groups named, with the quantities
of each respectively taken for settlement, is as follows,
the figures being worked out from the data of area and
population as given by the last census: