lmost free virgin wheat soils, explanations of the more
recent period when high prices are giving new energy and aggressiveness
to the demands of the new American industrial democracy.

Enough has been said, it may be assumed, to make clear the point which I
am trying to elucidate, namely that a comprehension of the United States
of to-day, an understanding of the rise and progress of the forces which
have made it what it is, demands that we should rework our history from
the new points of view afforded by the present. If this is done, it will
be seen, for example, that the progress of the struggle between North
and South over slavery and the freed negro, which held the principal
place in American interest in the two decades after 1850, was, after
all, only one of the interests in the time. The pages of the
Congressional debates, the contemporary newspapers, the public documents
of those twenty years, remain a rich mine for those who will seek
therein the sources of movements dominant in the present day.

The final consideration to which I ask your attention in this discussion
of social forces in American life, is with reference to the mode of
investigating them and the bearing of these investigations upon the
relations and the goal of history. It has become a precedent, fairly
well established by the distinguished scholars who have held the office
which I am about to lay down, to state a position with reference to the
relations of history and its sister-studies, and even to raise the
question of the attitude of the historian toward the laws of
thermodynamics and to seek to find the key of historical development or
of historical degradation. It is not given to all to bend the bow of
Ulysses. I shall attempt a lesser task.

We may take some lessons from the scientist. He has enriched knowledge
especially in recent years by attacking the no-man's lands left
unexplored by the too sharp delimitation of spheres of activity. These
new conquests have been especially achieved by the combination of old
sciences. Physical chemistry, electro-chemistry, geo-physics,
astro-physics, and a variety of other scientic unions have led to
audacious hypotheses, veritable flashes of vision, which open new
regions of activity for a generation of investigators. Moreover they
have promoted such investigations by furnishing new instruments of
research. Now in some respects there is an analogy between geology and
history. The new geologist aims