226 HISTORY OF ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS 



ibility of the semi-tropical regions, of the West Indies and Central 

 America, make many new foodstuffs available and in quantities 

 practically unlimited. Measured in food, these regions can support 

 as great a population as can the United States, and cost is less than 

 that of the home supply. We need only a fruit and a vegetable-loving 

 population to utilize these new food materials, and it is at hand in the 

 emigrants from Southern and Central Europe, who already have 

 habits and traditions favorable to a vegetable diet. Surely, then, 

 their influence will cause a break in Anglo-American traditions and 

 a nearer approach of the American diet to the possibilities of Ameri- 

 can conditions. 



This food supply could not be made available nor could the 

 absorption and assimilation of Southern races take place without 

 the recent cheapening of the cost of transportation. Even delicate 

 fruits can be carried halfway round the world at a reasonable cost, 

 and with ice and cold storage they can be evenly distributed through- 

 out the year. The new diet can therefore have a freshness and 

 variety superior to any before available. 



Coincident with this improvement in food and transportation 

 have come social betterments that have lengthened life and made 

 people more healthy. Great scourges like the medieval plagues 

 are no longer possible, and fevers are so well under control that 

 they have ceased to be grievous afflictions. A normal length of life 

 is for the first time possible to the working p6pulation; and when 

 traditions of hygiene and right living have developed among them, 

 suffering from ill health will be a negligible quantity. 



To attain all these advantages, a rapid increase of capital is neces- 

 sary; and fortunately the growth of the saving instinct has kept pace 

 with other improvements. A slight change in the rate of interest 

 calls forth capital enough for our great enterprises. There is as 

 little limit to its growth as there is to our other resources. When 

 it is freely used by healthy, well-fed men, civilization enters a stage 

 distinct from any of its past forms. 



Food, health, capital, and mobility of men and goods are the 

 four essentials to progress. All of them are now abundantly supplied 

 and capable of indefinite increase. Must not this be the basis of a 

 great social transformation, changing our institutions, habits, and 

 traditions until they establish a social adjustment as complete as the 

 present economic situation permits? If there was a break in tradi- 

 tions, institutions, and ideals when civilization moved from South- 

 ern to Northern Europe, a still greater crisis is before us when Ameri- 

 can civilization matches American possibilities. History repeats 

 itself when economic conditions remain static, but the crude appli- 

 cation of its maxims aggravates evils when economic transformations 

 are in progress. 



