PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 193 



institutions that were imported. Then it was that the American 

 people, psychologically considered, originated. But little attention 

 has been given to the period, aside from its military aspect. 



The generation that followed the Civil War has yet to read its 

 history also. The time would seem to have come when the histo- 

 rians should bestow some of their attention upon the wonderful 

 development of the nation since the reconstruction period. How 

 profoundly our whole life has changed in that period, it is unnecessary 

 to say. The vast organizations of labor and capital, the tremendous 

 increase in immigration whereby the American stock has been 

 modified, the extraordinary growth of transportation facilities, 

 and society with them, the concentration of industries, the spread 

 of our commerce abroad, and the rise of the United States into the 

 position of a world power, the new political issues are but a few 

 of the subjects as yet dealt with by the historian in only a cursory 

 way. 



From the lack of attention to our recent history, it follows that 

 the area between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains an 

 empire in itself is almost virgin soil for the historian. Nor is it 

 a region without interest. It is doubtful whether anywhere more 

 profitable work could be done than in the interpretation of the 

 formation of society in this vast domain of the prairies. 



Perhaps the first problem of all one that I shall content myself 

 with stating merely is the problem of how to apportion the field 

 of American history itself among the social sciences. The conception 

 that history is past politics is now but little regarded, and the con- 

 ception of history as the study designed to enable a people to under- 

 stand itself, by understanding its origins and development in all 

 the main departments of human life, is becoming the dominant one. 

 But the history of the American people forces upon our attention 

 the fact that no satisfactory understanding of the evolution of this 

 people is possible without calling into cooperation many sciences 

 and methods hitherto but little used by the American historian. 

 Data drawn from studies of literature and art, politics, economics, 

 sociology, psychology, biology, and physiography, all must be used. 

 The method of the statistician as well as that of the critic of evidence 

 is absolutely essential. There has been too little cooperation of 

 these sciences, and the result is that great fields have been neglected. 

 There are too many overlapping grounds left uncultivated owing 

 to this independence of the sciences, too many problems that have 

 been studied with inadequate apparatus, and without due regard to 

 their complexity. I propose no solution of the difficulty; but it is 

 important fairly to face it, and to realize that, without the combined 

 effort of allied sciences, we shall reach no such results in the study of 

 social development as have been achieved in the physical world by 



