2 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



two and one fourth million of people, and with the density of France 

 would have more than four times as many, or nearly ten and one half 

 million. Iowa now has 13.39 acres of improved farm land for each 

 one of her population. With the greater density she would have about 

 three acres for each person, while France now has two and one third 

 acres. In general fertility the odds are probably in favor of Iowa. 



The mineral output of France is now relatively much greater than 

 that of the prairie state, but it is by no means certain that the ratio 

 would be maintained under full development of the new region, whose 

 building stones, clays and gypsum are but in their commercial begin- 

 nings. In that prime necessity, coal, Iowa has quite the advantage, for 

 she mines annually 2f tons for each resident, against £ ton in France. 

 The latter people imports much fuel, while the vast resources of Iowa 

 for the most part lie still beneath the surface. Not many are probably 

 aware that Iowa has 7,000 square miles of forest, more than at any 

 previous time within the ken of the white man. She has, indeed, nearly 

 as much forest for the proposed ten million people, as France now has 

 for an equal number. It seems reasonable, therefore, to forecast for 

 the prairies an occupation as dense as that of France or Austria. 



It would be fatal to the peace of any student to omit the west in 

 such a discussion as this. The writer recently made before the Inter- 

 national Geographic Congress at Geneva what seemed to him the mod- 

 erate and innocent assertion, that the center of our population would 

 always remain some distance east of the geographic center of the 

 United States. He was sharply reminded by a fellow American that 

 such sentiments openly expressed on the Pacific Coast would make him 

 the subject of a lynching excursion. As he is at present at a safe dis- 

 tance he retains his view, but is willing to accept tentatively a generous 

 prophecy for the Cordilleras. Suppose we take seventy-five per cent, of 

 the figure already hazarded for the areas of reclamation, or 60,000,000. 

 And that we may not seem to be dominated by cramped eastern notions, 

 let us concede, since no data are available, that when the arid lands are 

 turned into paradise and a full trade established up and down the 

 Pacific and across its wide waters, that the coast and its cities, the wet 

 belt of the border, the mining centers, mountain valleys and arid pas- 

 tures will harbor an additional 40,000,000 people. This allows 100,- 

 000,000 people west of the prairies, a region that in 1900 had a popu- 

 lation of 4,654,818 and a density of 3.5. Here is an increase of twenty- 

 one and a half times, a proposal which can hardly be charged with 

 parsimony, and raises our total for the whole country to 305,000,000. 

 If we think the Cordilleran estimate out of bounds, it would yet be 

 easy on the basis of European comparisons to find place for compen- 

 sating millions in some of the geographic regions east of the Mississippi 

 Eiver. 



