Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-18
BY JOHN F. SINCLAIR.


special Dispateh to The star.
NEW YORK, August 1s.-I was talk
ing with Frank Vanderlip after his
investigation of the financial methods
Of European countries.
Had been the finance minister OF
Germany during the imitation period
I confess I do not see where 1 could
have done any better than did the
German minister" he remarked.
There is a notion widespread among
business men in the United States that
they are a race with super business
acumen and extraordinary industrial
leadership, and with greater capacity
for organization than other peoples. 1t
is this sort Of assumption that sets
up serious obstacles to q real under
standing of world business problems.
How lucky the United States has
heenl Why, in the first place, Is the
effect Of the growth Of population upon
the business Of the United States
ignored?
Importance Of Frontier.
within approximately three-quarters
of a century, after 1888, the entire area
now embraced in continental United
States, including Alaska, was acquired.
of major importance, came into being.
No one can over-eStimate the important
part of the frontier in determining the
economic and cultural life of any peo-
pie. Some day a great book Will be
written to interpret the growth OF
civilization in general and the devel-
opment of the very notion of culture
in terms of the frontier.
The frontier serves always as the re-
agent which causes the restless, Gre
alive element scattered through the
whole mass to be drawn to 3 certain
place, to crystalline in new forms OF
amazing capacity for constructive or
ganization. 1t is the clearing ground
for business unrest. It calls for the
ambitious and daring and fearless to
embark on new adventure. 1t Is a
challenge to any civilization.
It was the Western frontier civiliza-
ton which enabled the tradition and
process of ChriStiandom to be pushed
effectively through East and Southeast
ern Europe and through the Levant, in
persistent fashion from the eleventh to
the nineteenth centuries. And in Q
very definite sense the frontier of all
Europe, with its characteristic contri-
buttons taken together, crossed the At
lantic Ocean at the end OF the fifteenth
century.
Influx Of Europeans.
Every civilization needs and must
have a frontier. North and South
America alike have been in a very real
way the frontier of Europe since the
fafteenth century. They became the
salvation for Europe's unrest the
safety valve of the social order. just
as America was the frontier for Europe,
so the Western plains became the from
tier for American life and expansion.
The steady influx of Europeans,
growing in volume through the latter
part of the seventeenth and the entire
eighteenth centuries, represented the
volume of pressure before which the
population, no matter how hostile, had
to give way. So the population of the
new Republic spread West, North and
South, ever reinforced by the growing
volume of European immigration.
This cannot be forgotten in any seri-
Gus discussion of the economic forces
that have made America.
Another major fact is that from
about 1920 until 1914 there came into
the United States 100000 adults,
mostly from Europe, to work, produce,
consume, grow families and settle the
country. It was a great economic tonic
in which all were consumers, and con-
sumers of quantities of whatever could
be produced. Production was stimu-
lated to such an extent that for the
better part of q century the United
States lived practically upon the prin-
ciple that all production had to be