the same in the two groups, and that this average number is four; that is, in both groups the average married couple brings four children to maturity and marries them off. The total number in each group, therefore, doubles in each generation. But group A will double four times in a hundred years, whereas group B will double only three times. Under these circumstances group A will have increased from one thousand to sixteen thousand at the end of a hundred years, whereas group B will have increased to only eight thousand. If, in addition to this, group B should have fewer children on the average, so that they doubled only once in two generations, the contrast would be still greater. In this case they would number fewer than three thousand at the end of a hundred years. If, through so many failing to marry at all and the rest having so few children, they should not increase at all from generation to generation, the two groups, at the end of the century, would bear the ratio of 16 to 1. Now it is rather obvious, is it not, that it makes a great deal of difference whether group A represents the more capable men and women in our nation and group B the less capable, or vice versa?

CHAPTER VIII

THE GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION

The human factor is the most important factor in national prosperity. Nevertheless the natural situation is a factor which must be taken into consideration. However gifted and courageous a race may be, it will find it easier to expand and become prosperous, powerful, and great in a favorable than in an unfavorable environment.

Importance of environment. But what is a favorable environment? It is easy to overemphasize the bodily comfort of living in a warm as opposed to a hot or a cold climate and to ignore the bracing effects of changeable weather. It is also easy to overemphasize the tremendous productivity of certain tropical regions and to forget that they produce the enemies as well as the friends of man in great profusion. It is equally easy to go too far in the opposite direction and to hold that hard conditions, such as a harsh climate and a sterile soil, are best for man's development. If hard conditions are all that men need the Eskimos of the Far North are peculiarly blessed.

Advantages of the temperate zones. If we take everything into consideration it is probable that the temperate zones are most favorable to man's development, as well as to his prosperity. He has here fewer unconquerable enemies than in the tropics or in the frigid zones. He finds a wider variety of useful materials, such as grass, timber, and minerals, and he finds them in greater abundance here than elsewhere. Here the advantages to be gained by work are more obvious and more easily comprehended by the average intellect than anywhere else. The intelligence required to see the advantage of building shelters, making clothing, and kindling fires, especially in a

place where, along with the cold weather, there is an abundance of material suitable for these purposes, is not very great. It requires much more scientific knowledge to enable men to guard against the hookworm and the various harmful bacteria which infest the tropics. These, together with venomous insects and reptiles, not to mention the larger beasts of prey, imperil the lives of the dwellers in the tropics quite as much as our cold winters imperil the lives of dwellers in these northern latitudes.

Northern-grown crops are generally best. It is a fact of observation, however we may account for it, that many of our farm crops reach their highest perfection very near the northern limits of the areas within which they can be grown without injury from frost. The Cotton Belt of this country, though confined to the Southern states, is in reality near the northern limit for cotton. Our Corn Belt is likewise near the northern limit for corn. The oranges of California and Florida are likewise grown near the line where frost will destroy the crop. The potato and the sugar beet do better either in high altitudes or in high latitudes, where the summers are barely warm enough and the seasons barely long enough to mature the crop. One explanation of this general rule is that by migrating northward a plant escapes many of its ancient and hereditary enemies. When seed corn is saved, dried, and protected during the winter, and special care given it during the growing season, it can grow farther north than would be possible if it had to shift for itself. Its natural enemies in its original habitat, not having man's help, cannot live over winter or mature between frosts in our Corn Belt. Therefore the corn plant escapes some of its worst enemies. The same is true of the cotton plant, though some of its ancient enemies seem to be following it northward, and also of other plants which seem to flourish under cultivation in latitudes where they could not survive without cultivation. This is one important factor in enabling large numbers of men to produce an adequate food supply in northern latitudes. Similarly, when man learns to keep himself warm by building houses,

manufacturing clothing, and making fires, he can live in latitudes which enable him to escape some of his ancient and hereditary enemies, such as the hookworm and the germs of yellow fever, malaria, etc. The northern limit of his best development, however, must coincide with the northern limits of the production of abundant means of satisfying his multifarious desires. Another advantage of growing food crops as far north as the seasons will permit is that during the summer the days are longer in high than in low latitudes. This gives plants more light while they are growing. The proportion of sugar in sugar beets, for example, seems to depend partly upon the amount of sunlight which they get while they are growing.

Buckle's generalizations. In his famous work "The History of Civilization in England" Henry Thomas Buckle makes a great deal of several other factors in the geographical situation. These he groups under four heads; namely, climate, food, soil, and the general aspect of nature. He goes to the extreme of attributing to these factors a controlling influence not only on the economic prosperity of the people but even on their intellectual, moral, and religious development as well. Without following him to these extremes we may profitably give attention to some of his observations regarding the influence exercised by these factors on the industrial development of a people. No one is likely to deny that the presence of cheap coal has had a great deal to do with the economic development of Europe and America, or that the former abundance of timber in this country had a great deal to do with the kind of houses we built and are still building. A shingled roof, for example, is unknown except in countries where timber has been abundant.

That ancient civilizations arose in regions where labor applied to land was highly productive is a commonplace in history. The fertile river valleys of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China supported civilizations when our European ancestors were still savages. Here food was so abundant that men had time to do other things besides satisfying their immediate daily needs; or, rather, a part of the population could produce food

enough to support the rest while the latter gave their time to other things. Art, architecture, philosophy, religion, and government could, therefore, flourish. The civilizations which have grown up since then in latitudes farther north may not have exceeded those earlier civilizations in physical magnificence, but they have exceeded them in all that makes for the comfort and well-being of the average man.

On the other hand, the overpowering influence of the terrific productiveness of nature in certain tropical regions is sufficient to discourage man's enterprise. Kipling's story entitled "Letting in the Jungle1" gives a vivid picture of the way in which the jungle struggles to reassert itself,-to flow back, as it were, upon a cleared area and overwhelm it as with a flood of rank vegetation. Concerning India, Buckle writes:

Besides the dangers incidental to tropical climates, there are those noble mountains which seem to touch the sky, and from whose sides are discharged mighty rivers which no art can divert from their course and which no bridge has ever been able to span. There, too, are impassable forests, whole countries lined with interminable jungle, and beyond them, again, dreary and boundless deserts,—all teaching man his own feebleness and his inability to cope with natural forces. Without, and on either side, there are great seas, ravaged by tempests far more destructive than any known in Europe, and of such violence that it is impossible to guard against their effects. And as if in those regions everything combined to cramp the activity of man, the whole line of coast from the mouth of the Ganges to the extreme south of the peninsula does not contain a single safe and capacious harbor, not one port that affords a refuge which is perhaps more necessary there than in any other part of the world.

In contrast with India, Buckle points to Greece as a country where everything invites man to dominate. There is nothing to terrify or overwhelm him. Everything tends to exalt the dignity of man, while in India everything tends to depress it. The zone of the founders of religion. Peschel, in his "Races of Man," quotes from an old Arabian geographer who divided

1 In "The Second Jungle Book."