Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/470

 45 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

America is " to show how much room in North America is still available for colonization, and under what conditions the culti- vated area can be still farther extended." l And in North America itself the question how much farming and pasture land can be reclaimed by artificial irrigation from the prairies of the arid West is just as vital as fifty years ago was the question of the acquisition of new territories to replace the Virginia and Carolina tobacco and cotton fields which had become too small and to a certain extent exhausted. Irrigation and immigration are two nearly related problems of the North America of today. When set to the task of filling and using a wide territory, a people transforms itself into a great industrial organism of exploitation, and in all the outward forms of its national life can be detected the influence of this economic ideal. Someone has said of the North Americans that only religion and business share with one another in the interests of the people. 2 An economic kernel crops out in all political questions. Even the profoundly agitating conflict between the free and slave states was, in the last analysis, made inadjustable by the parallel antagonism between the industrial and commercial northern states, and the plantation states of the South, who were for free trade. In the work of cultivation the impulse towards expansion is the great power-wheel whose force is communi- cated to all activities of life, drawing these along with it in its train. It is constantly trying to make politics subservient to itself, and this latter tendency particularly, working after the manner of world-powers, is always a menace to states of medium size.

1 Die landwirthschaftliche Konkurrenz Nordamerikas in Gegemvart undZukunft, p. 62. 1887.

The same thing is true of Australia. "The politics of Queensland are so essentially the product of the development of its natural wealth that it is impossible to speak of them without beforehand describing the country. With few exceptions the best men of the colony are employed in developing its resources. Most of the political questions have their origin in the material needs of at least a part of the colony. No political agitation lasts long unless it brings material loss or gain* and none appears unimportant as soon as it does this." Letters from Queensland by the Times special correspondent, London, p. 93. 1893.