ied
one mile more than doubled between 1890 and 1908; freight carried one
mile has nearly trebled in the same period and has doubled in the past
decade. Agricultural products tell a different story. The corn crop has
only risen from about two billion bushels in 1891 to two and
seven-tenths billions in 1909; wheat from six hundred and eleven million
bushels in 1891 to only seven hundred and thirty-seven million in 1909;
and cotton from about nine million bales in 1891 to ten and three-tenths
million bales in 1909. Population has increased in the United States
proper from about sixty-two and one-half millions in 1890 to
seventy-five and one-half millions in 1900 and to over ninety millions
in 1910.

It is clear from these statistics that the ratio of the nation's
increased production of immediate wealth by the enormously increased
exploitation of its remaining natural resources vastly exceeds the ratio
of increase of population and still more strikingly exceeds the ratio of
increase of agricultural products. Already population is pressing upon
the food supply while capital consolidates in billion-dollar
organizations. The "Triumphant Democracy" whose achievements the
iron-master celebrated has reached a stature even more imposing than he
could have foreseen; but still less did he perceive the changes in
democracy itself and the conditions of its life which have accompanied
this material growth.

Having colonized the Far West, having mastered its internal resources,
the nation turned at the conclusion of the nineteenth and the beginning
of the twentieth century to deal with the Far East to engage in the
world-politics of the Pacific Ocean. Having continued its historic
expansion into the lands of the old Spanish empire by the successful
outcome of the recent war, the United States became the mistress of the
Philippines at the same time that it came into possession of the
Hawaiian Islands, and the controlling influence in the Gulf of Mexico.
It provided early in the present decade for connecting its Atlantic and
Pacific coasts by the Isthmian Canal, and became an imperial republic
with dependencies and protectorates--admittedly a new world-power, with
a potential voice in the problems of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

This extension of power, this undertaking of grave responsibilities in
new fields, this entry into the sisterhood of world-states, was no
isolated event. It was, indeed, in some respects the logical outcome of