bad
geographical position. Its commerce, even its coast-wise commerce, may
be at the mercy of a foreign country, or it may not control the mouths
of its own rivers, or may be shut off completely from the sea.
Switzerland, Hungary, Bohemia cannot secure their economic independence
of Spain or France, but must depend upon the good will of other
nations. Because of such geographical conditions an otherwise pacific
nation may fail completely to build up a resistance to war.

An event in our own history will illustrate this point. From 1783 to
1803, our settlers in the Ohio Valley were entirely dependent for the
sale of their products upon an outlet through the Mississippi River.
Unless Spain and later France would permit the rude arks, laden with
tobacco, flour and bacon, to unload at New Orleans, the West would be
shut off from markets. Railroads had not yet been invented and there
were no good roads over the mountains. Animosity towards the owner of
New Orleans was therefore inevitable,[1] since unless we could {173}
control the mouth of the Mississippi, we could not secure the
allegiance of our own settlers west of the Alleghenies. The interests
of our citizens lay beyond our borders; the key to our door was in the
hands of a foreign power. But for the lucky accident that peacefully
gave us Louisiana, we should sooner or later have been forced into war.
The cession of this territory tended to establish for us an economic
completeness.

An economic completeness for the United States does not of course mean
that we should become a hermit nation, absolutely shut up within our
tariff walls. It would be manifestly undesirable to prohibit foreign
commerce or the foreign investment of American capital and no such
sacrifice, even if possible, would be necessary to prevent a too
violent friction with Europe. There is a more direct way in which to
increase America's economic reliance upon herself and diminish her
dependence upon the accidents and hostilities of the world competition.
It can be done by a better utilisation of our own resources. As yet we
have merely skimmed the cream of one of the richest parts of the earth,
and have exploited, rather than developed, our great continental
territory. We have been superficial not thorough, hasty not
scientific, in our utilisation of our resources. We have still a
margin in which further to develop agriculture and other great
extractive industries in order to lay at hom