A more impressive illustration of the same fact is seen in Fig. 30, which shows the total commerce per inhabitant of each country. For eign commerce and domestic commerce, as well as other kinds of busi ness, generally reach their greatest activity in the places where people have much energy.
The Effect of Size on Foreign Commerce.—The amount of foreign commerce depends on other factors beside the general activity of domestic commerce and industry. This is evident from the fact that' the United States, which is one of the most progressive of all countries, is not included in the five having the greatest foreign commerce per capita. In fact, its pre-war figure was only $43.15, which places it nineteenth. This, of course, is far below its rank in civilization. Cuba, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and even Dutch and British Guiana all stand ahead of it. China, like the United States, stands low in foreign commerce per capita, being third from the bottom. Such places are Paraguay, Haiti, Formosa, and Portuguese-Africa stand well above it, although certainly their civilization cannot rival that of China. Again Russia, with an annual foreign trade of $8.56 per capita stands lower than Serbia, $9.69, Paraguay, $11.16, Bul garia, $15.37, and Roumania, $33.63.
Thus the per capita foreign trade of a small or sparsely populated country, or of one with no great variety of occupations, is almost certain to be larger than that of an equally progressive, large or populous country with a great variety of products. For example, the United States, China, and Russia being large, populous countries, with varied resources, stand relatively low compared with such small countries as Cuba, the Guianas, Paraguay, and Roumania. Again, in Europe the little countries of the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland all have more foreign commerce per capita than the larger countries of Great Britain, France, and Germany. Yet in the large countries business is quite as active as in the small countries.
The reason for this seeming contradiction between the foreign trade of large and small countries can easily be understood from two examples. Suppose that the Netherlands and Belgium should unite. The domestic trade within their area would probably increase, but their combined foreign trade would be less than their trade when separate, because all the goods which now pass across the border between Belgium and the Netherlands, and which are reckoned as part of the foreign trade of each country, would be classed as domestic commerce. In
the same way because Cuba devotes itself largely to sugar and tobacco, it relies on the United States not only for manufactured goods but for food for its sugar raisers. Hence it has more foreign trade per capita than the United States. Now suppose the United States were divided into several countries so that the manufactures of the north east were exported to the prairie states in exchange for food, to the South in exchange for cotton, and to California in exchange for fruit and winter vegetables. The per capita foreign commerce of these new countries would rise far above that of the present United States. Hence, we conclude that while the foreign trade of a country is an index of its progressiveness, careful allowance must be made for the fact that a large country, especially if its products are varied, does not have so great a trade per capita as an equally progressive small country, especially if the small country produces only one or two main products.
Conditions Which Promote an Active Exchange of Products.— Let us now sum up all the main conditions which lead to an active exchange of products, no matter whether the exchange be between foreign countries or different parts of the same country. The chief of these are as follows: (1) Racial depends on inheri tance, health, and energy, and is one of the chief causes of the supremacy of northwestern Europe, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia in commerce and other kinds of business.
(2) Diversity of is determined largely by climate and mineral resources, but also by relief and soil. The accidental introduction of an industry may also be important, as when Flemish weavers introduced their art into England, and Greek miners moved into Turkey. Tropical countries owe most of their trade to the fact that their products differ from those of temperate regions. Venezuela and India, for example, would have little foreign trade if people from other climates in the United States and Europe did not come to them for products that are found only within the tropics. Nevertheless, the fact that the two tropical countries have produCts different from those of the northern regions may in the future stimulate trade far more than at present.