free immigrants, now form the population of the country. On the other
hand tropical dominions, like Porto Rico or Egypt, can provide profits
for investors but no homes for settlers.

This distinction negates by definition the claim that imperialism is an
outlet for a redundant population. Of the emigrants from the United
Kingdom during the last thirty years only a microscopic percentage went
to Britain's tropical colonies. In British India in 1911 only one in
every two thousand was British born. Similarly, most French, German,
Belgian and Dutch colonies furnish no {130} outlet to the surplus
populations of these nations. Even in Algeria the Europeans constitute
only one-seventh of the population, and in Tunis only about one-tenth.
The entire European population in all German, French and British
possessions (exclusive of the five self-governing colonies), is less
than the net immigration to the United States every two or three
years.[1]

The opponents of imperialism moreover claim that all the regions fit
for colonisation are already pre-empted. There is room for many
millions in the five self-governing colonies of Great Britain, as there
is in Siberia and South America, but where can place be found in
regions newly acquired by imperialism? Where can homes be had to-day
for some twenty million Germans (the excess of German population in a
single generation), to say nothing of tens of millions of Italians,
British, Austrians and Poles? It is frequently claimed that the new
medical science, which conquers tropical diseases, will make these
regions habitable by the whites. But though the sanitary improvement
in the Canal Zone permitted thousands of Americans to help build the
canal, it did not result in the actual physical work of construction
being performed by white men. Despite sanitary improvements, the
Jamaica negro could endure a hard day's work under the tropical sun far
better than a man from Illinois. The economic advantage of the
lower-priced coloured labour is still more decisive. While in the
highly organised industries of England, Germany or the United States,
high wages frequently mean small labour cost, in the lower-geared
industries of the tropics the coloured man, black or yellow, easily
holds his {131} own. Since the European excess of births over deaths
is about forty millions per decade, the impossibility of finding a
place for this excess population in tropical and subtropical countries