ged. St. Louis might have been built at a dozen
different places and would have fared just as well; the same is true of
St. Paul, or of Indianapolis.

Leavenworth at one time was a more promising city than Kansas City, but
the building of an iron bridge over the Missouri River at the latter
place gave it a start, and wide-awake men kept it in the lead. It has
grown at the expense of Leavenworth and St. Joseph, neither one of which
has become a commercial centre. Cairo, at the junction of the
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, has the geographical position for a great
city; it waits for the man who can concentrate the commerce there.

=Adjustment to Environment.=--San Francisco was wisely located at first,
but its grain trade was more economically carried on at Karquinez
Strait, while its oriental trade is gradually concentrating at Seattle.
Philadelphia lost its commercial supremacy when the completion of the
Erie Canal gave return cargoes to foreign vessels discharging at New
York City. Oswego, N.Y., had the advantage of both harbor facilities and
water-power, but Syracuse, with practically no advantages except those
of leadership, has far outstripped it.

Such instances of the readjustment of centres of population have been
common in the past; they will also occur in the future. In nearly every
case the readjustment results from economic causes, the opening of new
lines of transportation, the lowering of the cost of the production of a
commodity, the discovery of new economic processes--all these cause a
disturbance of population, and the latter must readjust itself to new
and changed conditions.

Not all peoples have the necessary intelligence and training at first to
adapt themselves to their environment. For the greater part, the
American Indians were unable to take advantage of the wonderful
resources of the continent in which they lived. The Boers occupied about
the richest part of Africa, but made no use of the natural wealth of the
country beyond the grazing industry; in fact, their nomadic life reduced
them to a plane of civilization materially lower than that of their
ancestors.

People of the highest state of civilization do not always adjust
themselves to their environment readily. The people of the New England
plateau were nearly a century in learning that they possessed nearly all
the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America. When, however,
the great commerce of the country had been wiped out of