But the point on which I would lay stress is this. The economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the sociologist, the geographer, the student of literature, of art, of religion--all the allied laborers in the study of society--have contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. These contributions are partly of material, partly of tools, partly of new points of view, new hypotheses, new suggestions of relations, causes, and emphasis. Each of these special students is in some danger of bias by his particular point of view, by his exposure to see simply the thing in which he is primarily interested, and also by his effort to deduce the universal laws of his separate science. The historian, on the other hand, is exposed to the danger of dealing with the complex and interacting social forces of a period or of a country, from some single point of view to which his special training or interest inclines him. If the truth is to be made known, the historian must so far familiarize himself with the work, and equip himself with the training of his sister-subjects that he can at least avail himself of their results and in some reasonable degree master the essential tools of their trade. And the followers of the sister-studies must likewise familiarize themselves and their students with the work and the methods of the historians, and cooperate in the difficult task. It is necessary that the American historian shall aim at this equipment, not so much that he may possess the key to history or satisfy himself in regard to its ultimate laws. At present a different duty is before him. He must see in American society with its vast spaces, its sections equal to European nations, its geographic influences, its brief period of development, its variety of nationalities and races, its extraordinary industrial growth under the conditions of freedom, its institutions, culture, ideals, social psychology, and even its religions forming and changing almost under his eyes, one of the richest fields ever offered for the preliminary recognition and study of the forces that operate and interplay in the making of society. FOOTNOTES: [311:1] Annual address as the president of the American Historical Association, delivered at Indianapolis, December 28, 1910. Reprinted by permission from _The American Historical Review_, January, 1911. [313:1] Van Hise, "Conservation of Natural Resources," pp. 23, 24. [316:1] _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1908, vii, p. 745. [317:1] [Although the words of these early land debates are quoted above in Chapter VI, they are repeated because of the light they cast upon the present problem.] [321:1] [I have outlined this subject in various essays, including the article on "Sectionalism" in McLaughlin and Hart, "Cyclopedia of Government."]