United States and shows how closely the curve representing immigration follows the curve of imports per capita. If he could have taken account of the departing aliens as well, the showing would probably have been still more striking. The search for the reasons for this economic superiority of the United States involves an investigation too complicated and extensive to be undertaken in the present connection. There are two factors, however, which may be pointed out, which, at the beginning of our national life, gave us an advantage possessed by no other modern nation. The first of these was the small ratio between men and land, which we have commented on before. The territory of the United States was a vast, newly discovered region, with untold natural resources and every advantage of climate and configuration, inhabited by a mere handful of settlers, at a time when the nations of Europe had long since struck a balance between population and land, on the customary standard of living. The countries of Europe have also profited, it is true, by the opening up of this great new world. But their benefit has been transmitted and indirect, while the American people have been the direct and immediate recipients of this great advantage. The importance of this factor can hardly be overestimated. The second of these great factors is the character of the American people themselves. We have seen that this was well formed and distinctive at the time of the Revolution. The early settlers of the North American continent were in many respects a picked body, taken from the best of the populations of Europe. Their descendants were also subjected to the stern selective processes of the struggle with, and conquest of, the wilderness, and the establishment of their own economic and political independence. As a result, the American people at the beginning of our national life had certain qualities both of physical and intellectual character,—hardihood, enterprise, daring, independence, love of freedom, perseverance, etc.,—which set them apart from any of their contemporaries. It has been the combination of these two factors—a unique people in a rich virgin land—which, more than anything else, has accounted for the eminent position attained by the American nation in the economic life of the world. Many other circumstances have doubtless contributed to the result, but they would have been powerless to accomplish the end, without these two essential prerequisites. With the disappearance of these two distinguishing features the United States will begin to lose her position of economic superiority.