THEODORE ROOSEVELT 485 



of President Roosevelt, which has made States a most extraordinary and inter- 

 the vast continental domain a more esting one. This situation discloses 

 fruitful habitat for a happier people, some of the problems which his admin- 

 now and hereafter, has already become istration has had to face boldly, and for 

 one of the most fascinating achieve- which it had to offer solutions. Fer- 

 ments of modern times. haps one of the first things that strikes 



Theodore Roosevelt is a new kind of the observer, if he gets far enough 



geographer. There are static geog- away to take a bird's-eye view, is the 



raphers and dynamic geographers. Mr. chaos both in the economic and political 



Roosevelt is a dynamic geographer, conditions of the entire country ; the 



One studies and describes that geog- anarchy which prevailed among certain 



raphy which man helps to make ; the people and over certain areas ; the mad 



other helps to make that geography and unintelligent scramble to get pos- 



which other men describe. They are session of the raw materials and natural 



necessary complements in the great resources of the Nation ; the prodigious 



scheme of geography, and they bear waste which attended the scramble for 



something like the relation to each these resources, and their concentration 



other (if I may say it reverently) that and final centralization and congestion 



the Bible bears to the encyclopedia, in a few pairs of hands ; finally culmi- 



The dynamic geographer is the efficient nating in the stock gamblers' panic of 



geographer, the constructive geog- last year, whose evil effects have been 



rapher, the busy geographer; the man felt by every man in the civilized world, 



who gets geographical things done ; This panic was brought on by the 



the man who studies the land and wa- stock-gambling regime in the midst of 



ter with an ethical purpose in the back a material prosperity unknown in the 



of his mind, with reference to getting history of the world, in a year when the 



from them, for mankind, the highest production of American farms was 



possible amount of use. The dynamic greater than the entire national wealth 



geographer is the strenuous geogra- fifty-eight years before. It occurred 



pher, and this one has made himself a at the close of a generation in which 



practical incarnation of the principle the material increase of wealth mea- 



of making two blades of grass growl sured in tons of gold coin more than all 



where one grew before, without letting Great Britain had laid up for 500 years ; 



any grow under his feet. at a time when the United States owned 



Just now he is to try a new geograph- one-fourth of the world's wealth and 

 ical role. He is becoming an explorer put out one-third of all the world's 

 in South Africa before he is to become manufactured product, 

 your distinguished guest at this univer- A very interesting statement \vas 

 sity, and, I hope, of this school of geog- made a few months before the advent 

 raphy. It is also said that he is going of this panic by James J. Hill, the rail- 

 lion-hunting. So far his special ani- way promoter. (I might as well say 

 mosity has been the bear. He has hith- that there is a vast difference between 

 erto shown no special grudge against the railway promoter and the railway 

 the lion, especially of the British vari- smasher.) Mr. Hill made the statement 

 ety. But if he does not make some new (1906) after an era of railroad build- 

 and striking contributions to geograph- ing, which in twenty years had built 

 ical dynamics in Africa before he re- enough railroad in the United States 

 turns this way, those who know him to reach three times round the globe 

 will miss their guess. and leave a branch line from here to 



Vladivostock, that there was neither 

 money enough nor rails enough in the 



The first decade of the twentieth cen- world to build track enough to carry 



tury, or, roughly speaking, the admin- the traffic offered. 



istration of President Roosevelt, found The first decade of this century, how- 



the economic situation in the United ever, found 100 men controlling the 



