Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/467

 STUDIES IN POLITICAL AREAS 453

aims are shown with unusual clearness by the history of the United States. There we see the expansive policy of the state, not merely supported, but also prepared for, by the bold advance and spread of farmer and merchant, as well as of discoverer and soldier. The spirit of expansion goes through the whole people, who, as they spread industrially, clear the way for polit- ical extension. This combination became historic when the economic system peculiar to^the southern plantations, with their ever-growing demands for fresh territories, stamped upon the policy of the United States the expansive tendency which rap- idly, one after the other, drew into its political control the Mis- sissippi basin, Texas, and the whole West as far as the Pacific Ocean, and, except for the rupture with the northern states, would have pushed still farther south towards Central America and the West Indies. Here the political expansion went far in advance of the industrial. But, if today we see European statesmen inclined to look upon the Pan-American schemes of the North American as political phantasies, on the other hand we must consider the growing economic influence of the citizens of the United States, especially in Cuba and Mexico. He who takes cognizance of this situation and preparation does not get an impression of something chimerical, but much rather calls to mind how the colonial policy of the Germanic races in particular has always possessed a certain character of health and endur- ance, just because it advanced on soil industrially prepared, or went hand in hand with industrial expansion, never forgetting "the immense size of the physical problem." From this point of view greater significance is to be attached to the railroad lines of northern Mexico, built with North American capital, to the mining and industrial investments of the North Americans there, and to the Panama and Andes lines. We think we see in them the veins through which political influence finds its way. A similar cause explains the success of the Chinese in welding to their old empire, which was the smaller, the lands of Mongolia and Manchuria, with an area nine times that of Germany. It was the slow, thorough work of these smallest forces, politically