This hopefulness of the American is, however, as short-sighted as it is intense.

As a rule, it does not look ahead beyond the next decade or score of years, and fails wholly to reckon with the real future of the Nation.

I do not think I have often heard a forecast of the growth of our population that extended beyond a total of two hundred millions, and that only as a distant and shadowy goal.

The point of view which this fact illustrates is neither true nor far-sighted.

We shall reach a population of two hundred millions in the very near future, as time is counted in the lives of nations, and there is nothing more certain than that this country of ours will some day support double or triple or five times that number of prosperous people if only we can bring ourselves so to handle our natural resources in the present as not to lay an embargo on the prosperous growth of the future.
We, the American people, have come into the possession of nearly four million square miles of the richest portion of the earth.