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36 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
may show that there is, after all, no room for an in-
definite expansion of population within the settled area
in the United States. I should like to go further, and
suggest that the limits of such expansion, without a
very great and almost inconceivable change in the
agriculture itself, must be very narrow. Comparisons
with European States on this head seem very apt to
mislead. But the figure of 35 per square mile as the
rural population of the older parts of the United States
is, after all, one-fourth of the agricultural pop~lation
of France per square mile; and there are two import-
ant differences between the agriculture of France and
the United States: I. The consuming power of the
United States population is much greater, perhaps
double that of the French population, so that the soil
cannot be expected to support the same number of
Americans as French. 2. The western farmer in the
United States grows for export, not merely to the
towns of the country, but abroad. A rural population
one-fourth that of France may thus be quite sufficient
to 'settle up the country. We must .not come to the
subject with European ideas as to the scale of living.
It would be foreign to my. purpose to indulge in
speculation as to what will be the consequences of this
approach to a complete settlement of the United States,
coupled with the fact that population, whether in the
United Kingdom, or in Germany, or in the United
States, shows no sign of abatement in the rate of
increase. It is sufficient for my purpose to point out
that as the existence of vast tracts of virgin soil in the
United States has permitted, during the last hundred
years, an expansion of the European population with-
out a precedent in history, has made the economic
history of Europe in that period entirely different
from what it would otherwise have been, so now the
approach to a complete settlement must profoundly
affect the world. The conditions of economic growth
will be fundamentally altered. Possibly there may be
chemical or other inventions rendering possible great