In one hundred years the population has increased more than thirteen times, and the foreign trade more than twenty-five times. In 1810 the per capita foreign trade of America was about $21, and in 1912 it was nearly $40. These latter figures are really much more significant than appears at first glance, for the population of America, as estimated in 1810, was composed of a larger proportion of effective producing units than in 1912. Few but white people were counted, the percentage of women and children was smaller, and virtually every white American was self-supporting. The estimate of to-day includes, therefore, a much larger percentage of human beings who, though counted as units in population, are not so potential in the material activities of the nation. The $40 per capita of 1912 is much more significant of the growth of American foreign interests, therefore, than merely the increase from the $21 of 1810 appears. Speaking generally, the foreign trade of the United States has doubled every twenty years since 1830, regardless of wars, changes of government, administrative policies, the rise or decline of shipping interests, the increasing power of foreign competition, or the opening and development of competitive territory in other parts of the world. The development of industry in a country is usually written on the character of the imports and exports, and the changes that take place in the proportions of raw material and manufactured goods are most significant. In the case of the United States, these are strikingly shown in the more or less shifting percentages of a long period in the growth of the nation--a period fully covering the time the United States has figured to any marked degree in the economic affairs of the world. In the last eighty-two years American foreign trade has been roughly classified by percentages as follows: _IMPORTS_ _1830_ _1870_ _1912_ Crude food-stuffs and food animals 11.77 12.41 13.93 Food-stuffs partly or wholly manufactured 15.39 22.03 11.86 Crude manufactured material 6.72 12.76 33.63 Manufactures for use in manufacture 8.22 12.75 17.77 Manufactures ready for consumption 56.97 39.82 21.78 Miscellaneous .93 .23 1.03 ------ ------ ------ 100.00 100.00 100.00