Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-07-20
WHAT THIS WORLD Is COM,

feople OF q speculative turn OF mind may
well ask themselves what is to be done with SO
enormous population, how are they TO be
supported, and many other questions that,
though purely speculative now, may assume a
vital importance before the close of the next
century. The total area of the United States.
including Alaska, is 5, $50, 242 square miles, or
1921, 1854, $50 acres. This area necessarily in
cludes the lakes rivers, and unnhabitable
mountains and deserts, yet We find that there
Will be an average Of more than two and one
half persons TO each acre of our total area
when the enumerators enter upon their duties
one hundred years hence. The exact figures
are 1854.
This is the outlook for only the ensuing GEN.
fury. By looking further ahead we find that
applying the same ratio Of increase there will
in the year 2090 be L. S42 sol, 73S people strug-
Cling for an existence in this great and giori-
GUS land OF ours, or nearly six persons to each
acre, available and unavailable What will be
the result? The land, the source of all income,
will not support such population, and the
theory OF the survival of the fttest will find an
ample field for exemplifcation.
But, it will be argued, the figures have
given are themselves but theory, based upon
the assumption that the ratio of increase
which prevails during the last half of the nine
teenth century will continue throughout the
twentieth and twenty-frst Granted that il is
an assumption, there is nothing apparent to
show that it is a violent or an unreasonable
ohc. dtcofO1nB W MI. LOOMS, tDe ratio OIL IN
crease of population by births over deaths.
although much less than il was q century since,
Is at present 20l per cent per annum, or 20.l
each ten years. Accepting. for convenience,
the ratio Of decennial increase as 20 per cent
and casting aside all accretion from immigra-
ton, we find that in the year 1890 our total
population will be more than six hundred and
ten million, and in 2090 but little lesss than
eight thousand five hundred million.
Whether these figures are accepted as rea-
sonably trustworthy or rejected as gross exag-
geration, tRe fact still remains that the natural
and inevitable increase of the population. not
alone of our own country, but Of the whole
world, presents a problem that may well en-
gage the thoughtful mind.
WHAT WILL BE THE FINAL RESULT?
"Shirley Dare, in one of her readable let
tiers to The STAR Of a recent date. presents I'M
Willingly without doubt solution in her argu-
ment that the time is near at hand when the
thoughtful and refined people" looking upon
the welded state as being lustful in inception
and slavish in its effects. will cease to marry
leaving to 1.-THE fools" the propagation of the
race. But atop of this comes the announce
ment that the eminent DR.. Brown-Sequard has
discovered process by which human life may
be indefinitely prolonged. Between the theories
OF the pessimistic lady correspondent and the
French physician, one of which is as repugnant
to the hottest feelings of humanity as the other
is chimerical, things will perhaps be permitted
to move along in the future very much as they
have In the past. A. r.. b.