Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1891-09-01

Insuficiency Of food can never be more than
temporary evil in any highly civilized COM
munity. The reasons for this, reasons which
overthrow opinions once held by thinkers of
the Nautilus school, are such facts Of expert
ence as these: Mans food-animals are more
prolific than man, and plants produce more
fruit than animals bear young. This is the
general law Of productiveness which seems to
be well established by the discoveries Of
modern science.
The doctrine Of Nautilus, that population in
creases at a geometrical progression while
mans subsistence, produced at a slower rate,
becomes less competent for the purpose every
year-a law which threatens at some future
time to extinguish human life on the earth-is
no longer tensble. 1t was not necessary for
Levasseur to write three volumes on vital
statistics to explode theory that has been re-
futed by all the classified knowledge Of the
century, and is repuguant TO common sense
itself. But to superficial observers the famines
in the east and such as occasionally depopu-
late parts of Europe indicate the existence offs
least . low ratio incompatible with general
prosperity in some countries These sporadic
starving times in the judgement Of all re-
cent writers on the history of civilization, as
well as of everyday thinkers, are caused by
bad government or an imperfect social organiza-
ton The ryo.s of India and the mujiks Of
Russia perish because the rule over the former
is alien and does not comprehend the wants of
population so different from the rulers in
race, religion and customs; and in the latter
because the tyranny of the white car is
alike ignorant and heartless, caring only for the
means wrung from the peasantry with which
TO maintain costly aristocracy. and bureau
crazy, and wars Of conquest If we knew the
inner working of Chinese administration as
well as we do that OF the Hindoo or the Russian,
II would not be necessary to invent n Malthu-
sian reason for the swarms Of slowly dying ce
lestials hurried by river foods and resulting
famines into the grave. to be worshipped by
their attenuated successors as ancestral del
ties.
LevaSeur cites the United States, where the
race has increased with much greater rapidity
than in Europe, all the time charging the pro-
ductive capacity of plants and animals in pro-
portion to the population. The rate of increase
is diminishing, however. but not because of
any prescience in nature foreboding the APP
proaeh of a struggle for existence. This reduc-
ton in the rate of increase Of population not
outstanding the improvement in sanitation is
geometrical hypothesis. But the alleged arith-
metical progression in the means of subsistence
has no better foundation in facts. About 1920
the French harvested Ia. 900 bushels of
wheat when the population was 81. OO0 000 To-
day, when 1t has increased to 5000, 600, twice
that quantity is gathered. Improyidence, bad
political administration, drought or flood may
produce a shortening Of the volume of subsist-
ence and therefore a shortening of population;
but never, SO long as the United States are gov
erned as well as they are, and Kansas, Mime
sofa, Texas and other states produce as well as
they do Of the bread and flesh consumed for sus-
tanning life, will the writer on vital statistics
find it to be necessary to resort TO an exploded
theory, inconsistent with the other facts of
human history and incomprehensible in view OF
the common belief in the wisdom and goodness
of a Divine Order in the world.