seen, consists ultimately of his relations to material things. The basis of economic activity is the material environment. . . . The economic aspects of the natural environment may be subsumed under the four heads of the climate, the geological structure, the flora and fauna, and the geographical location.

Only a portion of the globe is habitable. The uninhabitable parts, moreover, change with the geologic ages. Large sections of Northern Europe and America which are now the homes of a vast population were æons ago in the perpetual embrace of the ice king. On the other hand, explorations in the sandy wastes of the Asiatic deserts have brought to light the ruins of numerous and populous cities. Not only economic life, but all life, is at the mercy of the elemental forces of

nature.

Even in the habitable portions of the globe the climatic conditions are of the first importance. At the very outset the influence of temperature is obvious. The rigor of the arctic regions and the bounty of the trop ical zone are alike hostile to economic progress. Where the food supply is scanty and the low temperature benumbing, human resources are taxed to the utmost in securing the bare wherewithal of life, and no surplus energy is left to accumulate a store of wealth. Where, on the other hand, nature pours out her treasures with a lavish hand, and the torrid heat enervates and lulls into lethargy, scarcely any activity is needed to procure subsistence, and little is ordinarily exerted for other purposes. Although we have had civilization in hot countries, the real home of the greatest economic progress has always been in the temperate zones, where man is goaded out of his natural laziness by the prick of want and lured on to effort by the hope of reward.

In many other ways does climate affect economic life. The alternations of heat and cold, both seasonal and occasional, are of commanding importance. The character and length of the seasonal alternations condition the size and quality of the harvest. The variations of intraseasonal temperature with its sudden oscillations go far to explain the nervous, active American temperament and its economic results, as compared with the comparative stolidity of the English, due to an equable climate. Scarcely second to the influence of temperature is the significance of the rainfall and the humidity. Insufficiency of moisture and lack of sunshine are alike inimical to economic welfare. Not only will differences in rainfall affect the forestry conditions, as well as the size and therefore the economic utility of the rivers, but in addition the laborious contest with a semiarid region will create in the individual stalwart economic and political qualities. The so-called Anglo-Saxon individualism is largely the product of climatic conditions. When the

Englishman leaves his moist and fertile home for the almost riverless wastes of the antipodes, he becomes, if not a socialist, at all events the next remove to one. In Australia we accordingly find government railroads, government insurance, government steamships, government frozen-meat industry and many other examples of government activity which would be viewed with dismay in the mother country.

In the same way the individualist theory in America is largely the product of definite economic conditions, resting on a new climatic environment. What careful interpreter of American history does not know that the arduous struggles with a rebellious soil and an inhospitable climate caused the American of a century ago to turn to government whenever he thought he might secure help? State roads, state canals, state railroads, state bounties, state enterprises of all kinds suited to the needs of the settlers were the order of the day. When, however, the mountains had been crossed and the fertile valleys of the Middle West, with abundant rainfall and a genial climate, had been reached, there came a wondrous change. Conscious of their new opportunities, the citizens now desired only to be let alone in their quest for prosperity. Private initiative replaced government assistance and the age of corporations was ushered in. Insensibly the theory of governmental functions changed, and the doctrine of laissez faire carried all before it. The theory of individualism was a natural result of the economic, and at bottom of the climatic, conditions of a new environment.

While the climate is one of the causes that influence the earth's surface, the economic life is profoundly affected by the entire geological formation. In the first place we have the fundamental fact of altitude, including the distinction between mountain and valley, coast and plain, with their varying degrees of production. Furthermore, upon the chemical ingredients of the soil rests in last analysis its original fruitfulness. The difference between the soil of the black belt and the hill lands of Alabama explains the varying aspect of the negro problem there; and in like manner the contrast between the arable and the grazing lands of the Far West enables us to comprehend the economic and political conflicts between the farmer and the ranchman.

Of still more importance than the surface of the earth is what lies beneath the surface. There are writers who interpret the entire progress of humanity in terms of the metals. While this is assuredly an exaggeration, there is no doubt that the metals have played a dominating rôle in the history of economic progress. In more primitive times the advance of civilization was in many places in large measure bound up with the copper and tin deposits. Even at present, with the active interchange of commodities, the mineral wealth in the shape of copper

and iron fields, gold and silver mines, lead and tin deposits, goes far to explain the preponderance of the fortunate countries or sections where they are found. If we add to the metals the coal, the diamond and the oil fields, we shall readily recognize the enormous influence exerted, especially in modern times, by the existence of these mineral treasures in such places as Colorado, Pennsylvania, Western England, and South Africa.

The character and extent of the vegetable and animal life are a result of the climatic and geological conditions that have just been mentioned. Upon the union in proper proportions of rain, sun and chemical ingredients of the soil depends the possibility of raising all the staple crops like hay, wheat, cotton, rice, tobacco, sugar, coffee or tea, or of obtaining the timber, rubber, cork and other products of the forest. The American Indian civilization was built up to a large degree on maize, as that of the Asiatic Indian largely rested on rice. If cotton was king in the South before the war, wheat and hay were to a great extent the monarchs in the North. The control of these natural resources is responsible for many of the mutations of nations. To give only two examples: the struggle for the spice islands of the East is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the European political contests of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the sugar situation in Cuba led to the revolution which brought about our recent Spanish war, and thus indirectly the expansion of the American republic into imperialism.

Of at least equal importance in early economic progress is the existence of animals that can easily be domesticated. The fact that the horse, the cow and the sheep were found in Asia rendered possible the transition from the hunting to the pastoral stage and laid the foundation of the later economic edifice of the more advanced Asiatic and European races. For these animals subserved the various ends not only of food supply and provision of clothing, but of means of locomotion and above all of beast of burden. Their absence in recent geological periods in America was perhaps the chief cause of the backwardness of the Indians. Where a relatively advanced civilization was reached, as by the Incas in Peru, it was in great part due to the existence of the llama, although the inferiority of this animal to the horse, the cow and the sheep explains in large measure the backwardness of the South American civilization. In Australia there was not even this resource, for the kangaroo could not be utilized and the blackfellow remained a savage.

In contrast to the flora and fauna which are of importance from the first, favorable situation, although it also plays a rôle from the outset, becomes of signal importance in the later stages of economic life when commerce has developed. Proximity to the sea, possession of a safe

and ample harbor, location on a river, - all these explain the maritime supremacy on which so much of past civilization has rested. It is no mere accident that the world's progress centered for many centuries around the Mediterranean, and that Egypt, Greece and Rome in turn controlled for thousands of years the destinies of the human race. Passing over the medieval Italian seaports and the German Hansa towns, it is again significant that the two greatest metropolitan centers of the world to-day, London and New York, have attained their position chiefly because of their maritime importance. Some writers have even gone so far as to maintain that all civilization can be expressed in terms of the great rivers and seas. Of the twenty largest cities of the United States, nine are found on the seacoast, five on the Northern Lakes, and five on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

It would, however, be a mistake to lay too much stress upon mere water communication. Trade conducted on terra firma has played a scarcely smaller rôle. Many a populous city is nothing but the development of a crossroads village, become the busy mart of transit on a great thoroughfare. The centers of the Babylonian and Assyrian civilization of old were largely of this character; and to a similar favorable inland situation must we ascribe the prosperity of numerous cities in all parts of the world to-day, such as Berlin, Manchester (England), and Denver, especially where the rivers are few or small. A distinguished French. author, Demolins, has even ventured to explain the existence of the primary social types of humanity by the land routes which the various nations traversed in the course of the long migrations from their ancestral home to their present abodes. However exaggerated this insistence upon a single factor may be, there is little doubt as to the cardinal influence of location upon commercial opportunities.

With the further development of economic life, commerce becomes a handmaid not only to agriculture but to industry. The industrial centers are dependent not only on the commercial facilities for disposing of their products, but also upon the ease with which they can secure the raw material and cheap power. Contiguity to the coal and iron fields explains the growth of the great steel industries. The presence of local water power made possible the early centers of the textile industries in New England, as well as the rapid growth of Minneapolis in milling. The grain fields of the Middle West are responsible for the breweries in the western and the distilleries in the eastern states adjoining the Mississippi.

The slaughtering and meat-packing centers have gradually moved west with the change in the ranching frontier, and the incipient industries of the Pacific slope are still largely determined by their propinquity to the forests, the orchards or the river fisheries.

24. Lines of social movement. The contour of the earth's surface has always exerted a determining influence upon the movements of peoples. Other things being equal, migration, colonization, and emigration, as well as routes of trade and communication, follow lines of least geographic resistance.

Finally, the contour of the surface determines the lines of social movement. Physical forces always follow the lines of least resistance. This is true alike of the projectile's regular curve, and the lightning's jagged path. The primitive horde gradually forms beaten tracks about its abode. These tracks, and in fact all intercourse with other peoples, are determined by the easiest courses, and necessarily avoid all obstacles. Civilization and culture follow these same lines, for they can only go where social and economic intercourse have preceded. Caravans still traverse natural courses from Egypt into Palestine, and from Babylonia up to Syria. These ancient avenues of civilization, and even the direction which civilization should take, were determined by the contour of the earth's surface. War and conquest have always followed lines marked out for them beforehand. Ancient and modern migrations have been similarly directed. Sometimes the course of an ancient horde overrunning a part of Europe, can be followed in detail, and each deviation from a straight course is explained by natural obstacles, or by the physical strength of those already in possession of the soil. To-day, emigration is from some crowded quarter to the spot which seems to offer opportunity for an easier and richer life. Every redistribution of the parts of society has its physical side, and, like any redistribution of matter, it follows the lines of least resistance. "The final and highest truths of the geographical sciences are included in the statement that the structure of the earth's surface, and the differences of climate dependent upon it, visibly rule the course of development for our race, and have determined the path for the changes of the seats of culture; so that a glance at the earth's surface permits us to see the course of human history as determined (or, one may say, purposed) from the beginning, in the distribution of land and water, of plains and heights."1

25. Fertility of the soil. Bluntschli, following Buckle in the main, emphasizes the disadvantages of extreme fertility of soil as well as those of sterility.

Certainly a very barren soil is unfavorable for social life: for man is then obliged to procure his food from a distance, by means of commerce. 1 Peschel," Geschichte der Erdkunde," S. xv.