CHAPTER X

THE UNITED STATES NEEDS MORE TERRITORY

HE Hay-Herran treaty, which failed in Bogotá, was a convention relating to the construction of the Panama Canal, and it would appear that its terms should have been confined to the business in hand. But it was not; and one of its sections illustrates a prevailing phase of American statesmanship, which may well call forth a protest, on the ground, if upon no other, that it was entirely foreign to the question at issue. The section to which reference is made is that which declared it to be the policy of the United States not to acquire more territory, its somewhat ostentatious profession of friendship for Latin-American countries, and its declaration to the effect that least of all would we think of extending our domains in their direction.

To insert a clause of this nature in a treaty to which it could have no proper relation was careless. What authority had President Roosevelt or Secretary Hay to declare that the United States will not extend its territory into Latin America, or elsewhere in the world? That may be, and doubtless is, the policy of the administration of President Roosevelt, and at the time that treaty was drafted it voiced the opinion of the majority of the American people; but who among us is wise enough to predict that such a policy will meet with the approval of the people and government ten years from that date? Without any reference to our desires in the premises, it may be that we shall have to take these countries, for the purpose of suppressing the eternal anarchy in them, or turn them over to some responsible European power, or face the alternative of fighting all civilization; and if so, of what use would be the obiter dictum in the Hay-Herran treaty?

But this matter of territory should be looked at in another light. I maintain that the United States does want more territory. It may not know that it wants it; but it wants it just the same, and it is going to find out its wants very quickly. For a nation to say that it does not want more land seems as absurd as it would be for a man to say that he did not want any more gold. He should want it, if only for the good he could do with it.

Were the whole domain of the United States to be divided up among its inhabitants, there would be only about thirty acres for each. If a farmer holding only thirty acres of land, urged to increase

his holdings, were to reply that he did not believe in these vast estates, of say eighty or a hundred and sixty acres; if, when he was told that the additional holdings would give his sons elbow room, a chance to raise independent families of their own, he should retort by railing against the commercial imperialistic spirit of the age, — rational men would consider him a fool; and yet his arguments are no less absurd than those of the people who are opposed to any further extension of our territory.

There is no fallacy greater than the belief that we have enough territory. The one thing in the world which is not increasing, in which no increase is apparently possible, is land. The population of the world is increasing, in some nations, particularly ours, at a great rate. But land is essential to support this increase of population. Shall the immense uncultivated tracts of land remain forever waste and unavailable for civilized habitation, because of some technical interpretation of international law or the vague illusions of benevolent theorists ?

If the United States possessed all the land now occupied by Spanish-American countries, there would be only about sixty acres for each individual. To a man in Texas or in Minnesota this will not seem a large amount; nor is it. If the population of the United States keeps on increasing at the present rate for fifty years longer, what will the people do, how will the sons of the succeeding generations acquire homesteads ?

If the United States is wise, it will want more land, and want it while there is a chance to get it. We want more land so that our manufacturers can sell their goods to the populations of those lands; to induce those people to use our soap; to get them to throw away their breech-clouts and wear pants of our manufacture; to induce them to use our steel rails, our machinery, our products. Moreover, our people are now wanting more land to establish homesteads for their children; they want this land under the American flag if they can get it, but at all events they want it under a civilized flag. They do not care to settle in Spanish America under the present governments; therefore they go elsewhere. That large numbers of our people are already seeking cheaper homes for their children will be seen from the following article on American immigration into the Northwest of Canada.

I. AMERICAN IMMIGRATION INTO THE CANADIAN NORTHWEST

In the October number of the "Colonizer," for 1903, a monthly publication of London, England, is reproduced quite a lengthy article written by the Canadian correspondent of the "Times," on the subject of American immigration into the Canadian Northwest. Among other things the writer says:

"Not the least among the many factors that are contributing to the quite unprecedented prosperity now enjoyed by Canada is the steady flow of immigration which is pouring into her western provinces from the United States. There is not the slightest doubt but that it forms one of the most substantial assets that Canada has received within recent memory, and that its highwater mark has in all probability not been reached. In the past year as many immigrants have gone into the Northwest from the United States as from Great Britain, to wit, nearly 40,000 in each case. These Americans of the second, third, or fourth generations are, for reasons tolerably obvious, the very best immigrants that Canada has ever received. As to this I have heard but one opinion, and, with my own knowledge of the States and Canada, never for a moment expected to hear any other. The curious thing is that, while all former immigration into this great Northwest has come in timidly in isolated and ill-organized fashion, these shrewd Americans come in boldly, confidently, and in large companies. Now that they have made up their minds the country is a fine one and of judges in such a matter there can be none better on earth — there is no halting, no half-hearted measures; they come by thousands, and from the very best classes in the Western and Northwestern States.

"The subject, I am aware, is not wholly new in England; but let us recall once more the conditions which cause the movement. The first lies in the simple fact that all the free or cheap lands of really good quality in the States and worthy of a skilful farmer's labor have been occupied. Furthermore, the Canadian Northwest has now proved itself beyond any question a much better wheat country not merely than the Northwestern States are today, but than they ever were. These immigrants come mainly from Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Iowa, and in a less degree from Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, and even Missouri. Every Canadian I have seen and they are many - who has had to do with them speaks of them with unqualified praise. The mass of these men own farms in one or another of the States above mentioned, which were bought at prairie value or homesteaded in the seventies or early eighties, and are now worth $40 to $75 an acre improved, well-cultivated farms, accessible to towns and railroads. It is a notorious fact that American immigration westward has leaped forward during periods of prosperity and each successive frontier remained comparatively stationary during the intervening periods of depression. Just now prosperity is rolling its tide westward. Buyers from the East and Middle West are stirring among the improved farms of the belt beyond them, which twenty to thirty years ago was the frontier. Prosperity, too, in America produces a certain demand for farms among the newly enriched business men of the newer towns and cities. Still, it may fairly be asked why the owner of a fine improved farm of 300 acres in Iowa should wish to leave it, even though he gets a good price, and move on to the cheap lands of remoter prairies. The answer is simple enough as regards a certain number of such people — namely, those who have sons in that the old farm provides only for one, while for the rest of the family there is no local opening on the land whatever, except in the purchase, at a high price, of a neighboring farm which has presumably approached or reached its limit of value; but the Iowa or Dakota farmer, blessed with sons and looking prudently into the future, reflects that with the money derived from the sale of his farm he can acquire enough virgin land to settle all his family in life and have abundant capital left to build and to buy stock with.

"I have talked with scores of these American immigrants, both on trains and in hotels, and with many of those who have been here a year or two on their own farms. Most of them seem to have from $10,000 to $15,000, some much more. Two car-loads, for instance, of these people with stock, furniture, and effects went up the Edmonton line one day in the past season, representing a cash capital, so one of their number told me, of $300,000. Nor is it only the money these Americans bring in, but quite as much the men behind the money. Anything more widely different than these men from the $10,000 or $15,000 amateurs from the old country could hardly be imagined.

"Perhaps the most curious thing about this immigration is the methods by which it is worked. For nearly all of it is controlled and moved by land companies founded for purposes of profit by American capitalists. A big company is formed in the first instance and purchases a block of several hundred thousand acres. Small companies then buy smaller blocks from the former and retail it in farms, through real estate agents, who go among the farmers in the various districts of Iowa, Dakota, or wherever the field is most promising. As stated above, these American companies buy immense blocks of land wherever they can secure it of good quality and within easy reach of railroads. In all these tracts, however, every alternate section (640 acres) is the property of the government, available only as a free grant on the homestead conditions. Some of these may be already occupied, but as a rule there is very little settlement where the American companies have purchased. They acquire their land at, say, $3 an acre, and either directly or through subcompanies bring in their settlers in wholesale fashion from south of the line. These last buy at, say, $7, but, settling thus in communities, by the very force of their own numbers they make the land at once worth that much or more. Many, if not most of them, take up the alternate section or part of a section if available, according as the numerical strength of their family admits of a homestead or free grant. The retention of this involves at the end of three years' probation an oath of allegiance to the British Crown, and there does not seem to be the least reluctance on the part of the Americans to assume this rôle of British subject.

"In conclusion, I will indicate roughly the districts of the Northwest to which these American immigrants are chiefly proceeding. Manitoba, which is still mainly a wheat-growing Province, has attracted comparatively few. Probably there are not sufficiently large blocks of cheap land any longer available for the American companies. Assiniboia has been largely patronized. In the southeast over thirty townships have been acquired by the Americans. All along the line running from the American border to Moose Jaw, near Regina, the capital of the Territories, the new-comers are settling thickly. Up the Prince Albert line from Regina, through northern Assiniboia and Saskatchewan, are three great blocks of land - one of them, I believe, a million acres acquired by Americans for actual settlement, not to speak of smaller colonies. Alberta, however, seems upon the whole the favorite "stamping ground" - that belt of country within 100 miles of the Rockies and in sight of them, where ranching, small and great, is the main industry and grain a supplement. Edmonton, at the terminus of the branch line, some 200 miles long, running north from Calgary, on the Pacific Railroad, is a popular centre with its grain-growing facilities. And, again, south of Calgary, in the direction and in the neighborhood of Fort McLeod, there has been considerable American investment. Several thousand Mormons, too, are to

be found nearer the border, the best of settlers. In another place 5000 acres are being prepared by an American syndicate for the cultivation of the sugar beet, a totally new experiment."

It is clear that these citizens are lost to the United States, so far as citizenship is concerned. Their labor from now on will go to increase the wealth and power of Canada. They will be absorbed into the institutions of Canada; and the laws, customs, and the very government itself are so nearly like our own that these immigrants will scarcely notice the difference.

Nor can it be assumed that we will get these citizens back in a possible future annexation of Canada. No event is more improbable than this. Canada is a highly civilized country with a good government, at least as good as it would be if it were a part of the United States. Canada may be relied upon to remain a stable integer of the British Empire, if reliance can be placed upon anything in this world. Certain it is that we could never seriously entertain the question of Canadian annexation unless she herself should ask for it and England give her consent, things so improbable as to render their discussion inutile. Those of our own citizens who overflow into Canada are aiding in building up a great, rival, and let us hope friendly, nation to the north of us.

But the people of the United States must have more territory in which to exercise their boundless energy. The pressure is being felt to-day; in a short time it will burst all bounds. Spanish America is the great field of opportunity, lying all uncultivated before us. We should go into Spanish America for the purpose of developing it as we have developed Ohio and Illinois, Texas and Minnesota. We cannot go at all while there are anarchy, revolution, and bandit governments in those countries, defended, aided, and abetted by the United States. We cannot go unless we have there the protection of law and the guaranties of civilization; and these things will not come while the class to which the military Jefes belong controls affairs.

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But if we do go- and we will a dozen Monroe Doctrines, and a thousand obiter dicta of the Hay-Herran kind will only put off the day- then will education, civilization, decency, law, order, prosperity, justice, and scholarship take the place of the assassinations, intrigues, despair, and disease which now curse that most unhappy of all continents.