The fact that the immigrants in this country do not, to any great extent, take up this unclaimed public land does not destroy the significance of this comparison. As long as there was a strong movement of the native population westward, it was not so much a matter of concern, if large numbers of foreigners were entering the Atlantic seaboard. And this was exactly the case during the middle of the nineteenth century. This was the period of the great internal migration to the new lands of the Middle West. In point of fact also, at this time, many of these pioneers were actually immigrants. It is scarcely necessary to say that nothing comparable to this is going on at the present time. The frontier, which has had such a determining influence on our national life, is a thing of the past. Of the 424,202,732 acres remaining in the public domain in 1906, only a very small part consisted of valuable farm lands, such as existed in great abundance when the Homestead Act was passed in 1862. Evidence of this fact is furnished by the act recently passed allowing homesteads of 640 acres to be taken up in certain sections of Nebraska, where it is impossible for a man to make a living from less. Not only are the incoming hordes of aliens not now counterbalanced by an important internal migration, but there is an actual movement, of noteworthy dimensions, of ambitious young farmers from the United States to the new and cheaper wheat lands in Canada. This set of conditions may be stated in another way by saying that the United States has changed from an agricultural to a manufacturing and commercial nation.[341] In the early nineteenth century the rural family was the typical one, to-day it is the urban family. Then the simplicity and independence of the farm gave character to the national life; to-day it is the complexity and artificiality of the city which govern. The nineteenth century was a period of expansion. Particularly in the earlier part of it was the subduing of new land the fundamental consideration of national development. This was the period of internal improvements, the building of roads and canals, and later of railroads. It was the adolescence of the American people. At such a period the great demand is for accessions of population, and it is no wonder that many of the writers of that day were frank in their demands for the encouragement of immigration. And even in the thirties and forties, though the miserable shipping conditions and the large number of incoming paupers aroused a countercurrent of opinion, still the immigrants found a logical place on the great construction works of the period, as well as on the vacant arable lands.