Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/269

Rh north in Europe, until Holland, and then England, became the dominant power. From lands of more genial climates to lands of colder and longer winters, but also of the most active and energetic races, the migration has taken place.

Present-day Migrations in the Temperate Zones.—Within the north temperate zone especially, and also across from the north to the south temperate, vast, peaceful migrations are taking place, determined to no small degree by climatic considerations. From Europe and Asia to the United States alone, a million people a year are now migrating. These aliens have shown marked tendencies to settle where climate, soil and occupations are most like those of their old homes, although the fact that most of them land at one port on the eastern seaboard, the concentration of industries in certain sections, and other artificial controls, have operated very effectively to counteract and interfere with this tendency. Scandinavians, for example, have gone largely into the northwest; and in the future, unless steps are at once taken to prevent it, the southern parts of the United States will doubtless have a population predominantly of Latin blood. I say this although I am well aware of the very homogeneous "native" character of the southern population to-day, and of the high birth-rate among that population. Canada has grown slowly, partly on account of the repelling effect of her long, cold winters and her generally severe climate.

This migration within the temperate zone is peopling Canada, South Africa and Australia with the same stock as that which occupies the home-land of the British Isles. Therefore, institutions and government essentially similar to those at home are possible in these colonies of England beyond the seas. The case is very different in tropical climates, as has been seen. Russia will later be found to gain great strength from the fact that she has expanded eastward within the same zone. I think it was Leroy-Beaulieu who first pointed out what a unifying influence in Russia is the severe winter cold and the snowfall. In spite of the many factors which make for diversity and lack of coherence, there comes a great factor of unification in the possibility of continuous sleighing over those immense stretches of country, from north to south and from east to west, when the frozen rivers can be crossed without bridges and when the traveler, on his sledge, can journey straight across country to the farthest limits of the empire.

It is interesting to observe how immediately controlled by the special weather conditions or even one season these voluntary migrations may be. Years of sufficient rainfall and abundant crops in the United States are always followed by a large immigration. A failure of crops in Europe, whether it be of wheat in one country, or of fruit in another, or of potatoes in another, resulting from drought, or storms, or excessive rainfall, always promotes a larger exodus from the country