The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-02-02
MODERN PROSPERITY.

a suggestive paper under the ABOVE tltle
has just been published by Mathew Mar
shall. His text is that the most marked
trait in modern thought is the belief in the
permanence of everything that exists, and
in the constant march Of progress. The
owners of real estate in cities are confident
that they will increase in population and
wealth. Thousands Of miles of new rail-
road are being built every year in the belief
that they will be needed. Additions are
constantly made to manufacturing enter
priSes, new factories built, new mines
opened, new ships launched, from a general
conviction that they will all be wanted as
the world increases in population and
means. Il IS evidently the opinion of peo-
pie at large that the civilized nations are
launched upon career of progress 10 which
there will be no check.
And as matter of fact, the coming
events seem to bear out this view. The
agencies which in past days checked the
march of prOgress-plague, pestilence, wars
and famines-do not check it to-day. Science
arrests the pesiilence, wars come TO a sudden
close. the DEVELOPMENT of transportation has
put an end to famines. 1t seems hardly pos
sible that the career OF prosperous nation
can in one day be cut short by any of those
the joints of history.
Yet, still nothing is impossible. Only 4
century ago Europe was rayaged by a sue
cesSion of wars which depopulated the Con-
tinent and brought industry, science and
commerce TO stsndstill. If Napoleon had
Won the battle Of Waterloo the march of de-
yastatiun might have been continued for
half a century more, and who can say what
the population of the United States would
have been at this time? The cities, the ter
ritory, the armies of the powers which flour
ished before the Dark Ages were as great as
those of the present powers of Christendom.
Yet they have passed away, or they remain
as historical ruins. On what philosophical
ground can We assume that we are assured
immunity from the fate which overlook
Rome, and Egypt, and Babylonia and Persia?
People are so engrossed in watching pro-
greSsiye regions that they pay no attention
to the parts of the world which are slowly
but steadily declining. Ireland has less
population than it had twenty years ago,
and number OF English towns are fast be-
coming deserted villages. Throughout New
England the sections which are remote from
railroads are losing their people. Further
West, in some instances, States which
twenty years ago were marYelS of activity
and prosperity. poverty and debt are now
driving the farmers to indulge delusve
hopes of a renewal of well-being by act of
Congress. Scientific men have figured that
the coal and iron of Pennsylvania Ohio and
Michigan will last so many years and no
more. When they are exhausted, how will
the people OF those fourishing States keep
up their prosperity? The disaster will not
come in our time, nor will the regions which
have been impoverished by the scant re-
wards of agriculture be abandoned by their
people within the lifetime of the present or
the next generation. But if a time can be
set when the last ton of coal shall be dug
and the last pig of iron smelted, aud the
farmers shall waste their time in growing
reduced crops OF wheat in most of the States,
it is evident that our present remarkable
progress is not going to last forever, and
that time will come when prosperity will
take the back track.
Reflections like these are not cheering,
but they will not be wholly idle if thay tend
to make people more content than they are
to bear the ills they endure. Our farmers,
for Instance, are sorely aggrieved at the
small gains which they realize But, after
all, their misfortune is relative. They COM
pare their profits with. those which were
reaped by the farmers of quarter of a
| century ago, when a settler in Kansas
reckored on paying for his land, farm
utensils and seed out Of two crops. 1t does
not occur to them to compare their coud-
ton with that of the farmer of the begin
| ming of the century. who had one coat
which be wore fer years, and only saw
money when he drove a cart full of produce
to town twenty or thirty miles away; who
was not in debt simply because he realized
Indebtedness would ruin him, and to whom
comfortable Undertaking, convenient tools,
medicines and pretty much all the comforts
of life were as unknown as they are to-day
to the subjects of the King of Unyoro
Our farmers are a good deal better off than
he. Theymay be better off than the race O f
farmers who will succeed them at the close
of the twentieth century