130 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



mainly by the arts of destruction, but rather by their superior 

 mastery of the arts of production. A weak race, on the other 

 hand, is not uniformly successful when its members come in 

 contact with outlying peoples. As a consequence its numbers 

 incline to pile up in the home country, where they are protected 

 by their own political and legal institutions against the equal 

 competition of outside peoples. But as a result of this piling 

 up of the population serious social and political problems arise. 

 The surplus population, instead of moving out and colonizing 

 those sections of the earth where lands and opportunities for 

 achievement are abundant, congregate in the centers of popu- 

 lation and clamor for a share of the wealth which has been 

 accumulated. When that becomes the characteristic attitude of 

 the mass of the people, national decay has set in. Artificial 

 colonization or the preaching of a gospel of enterprise will do 

 little good when the national pioneering spirit has decayed and 

 the quality of the race has deteriorated. 



II. WAYS OF ECONOMIZING LAND 



Importance of the question. For a country which is too far 

 advanced in civilization to be willing to acquire new lands by 

 military conquest, and so situated as not to be able to acquire 

 them in any other way, the question of questions is that of 

 economizing the land which it already has. Foreign markets 

 are limited, and their possession is always more or less uncer- 

 tain ; therefore it is hazardous for any country to neglect its 

 material resources and attempt to maintain an increasing popu- 

 lation by manufacturing and commerce alone. As shown in 

 the preceding chapter, these methods of maintaining a grow- 

 ing population depend upon foreign markets, and the stress 

 of international competition for the control of markets is al- 

 ways severe. In this competition those nations will have the 



