At this point, however, one conclusion seemed to emerge from the preceding observations. Suppose North America, instead of employing all the capital at her disposal in her many industries, as well as the capital borrowed from European countries poorer than herself, had done as France is doing in Europe, namely, had invested part of her capital in foreign countries, in loans to governments, cities, railways, industries, trades, and agricultural enterprises, what would have happened? The demand for labour would doubtless have been less in America, and therefore the emigration to it would not have been so startling. Her industries would have developed less, and her cities would not have increased so rapidly. The United States would now have a smaller population to support, and one better distributed between the cities and the country; would have fewer cities, and those smaller. The band of fortunates who have made huge wealth out of the rapid and prodigious development of the cities would be smaller, but the middle and lower classes would enjoy a more comfortable and easier existence. Their condition would resemble much more closely that of the middle and lower classes in Europe. They would earn lower wages, but those wages, though numerically less, would procure them greater comforts and pleasures. It was now that, after my many discussions with others, and my extended solitary meditation on the difficult problem, I thought that I had finally confuted the troublesome doctrine of American progress. What is that progress of which the Americans are so proud but the unbridled rush of enterprise which has so rapidly multiplied the industries, enlarged the cities, and increased the population and wealth of the United States? But in that case it was clear that American progress contradicted itself. By inciting the American people to gather together capital and workers, to open their gates to millions of European emigrants, to invest their gains in new enterprises or in the enlargement of old enterprises, to redouble and multiply in every direction efforts and enterprises, so as to form of them a mountain with which to scale the heavens, the spirit of progress had created in America an opulence which teemed with difficulties, contradictions, and embarrassments, and which meant for a large part of the population a condition somewhat resembling that of King Midas: seeing riches all round him, and not being able to enjoy them. But to produce riches with no prospect of enjoying them is an absurdity. Much wiser, therefore, was old Europe, which, taught by the experience of centuries, refused to let herself be dazzled by this idea of progress, and instead of heaping up riches at top speed as does the New World, was more careful in her choice of new riches to create so that she might enjoy them; so that she might make of them a fount of well-being, not a cause of difficulty for mankind.