Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1893-03-02
3OQ,OOO,OOO AMERICANS
Professor Felix L. Oswald Pre-
diets the Population for 1903.
PROGRESS In SCIENCE AND ART.

Senator PETER Sees Good Time Coming.
Interesting Predictions by Ex-Postmas-
ter General James, Professor Briggs
and NJ. 0uad-Secretary Rusk on the
Future of Agriculture.
Copyright. 1893, by American Press Associa-
toni
A few years ago Mr.. Gladstone favored
the American public with the prediction
that in A. D. 1000 the United States would
have GOO, 900, COO inhabitants, basing his cal
culation on the fact that in the course Of
the last century the population of our re-
public had increased 200 per cent.
He might as w9l have inferred that
pine tree on its twentieth birthday would
be a mile high because in the first ten
years of its existence it had grown from an
inch to height of twelve yards.
In some of the eastern states the rate Of
progress has even now fallen to one-third
of its initial velocity, and will undergo an
additional reduction as the average density
of population approaches that of the trans
atlantic hives of industry. 1t is true that
the delta of the Mississippi is more fertile
than the richest bottomlands of the lower
Danube but, ON the other hand, it is equal
ly certain that the desolation of our west
ern alkali deserts is unparalleled in the
dreariest steppes of eastern Russia, and
drawing the balance of probabilities, there
is no reason to believe that in 1893 the popu-
lation of our present national territory will
exceed 1000, 600.
Politically our federation of states will
by that time comprise Canada and prob
ably Mexico to the lsthmus of Tehuantepec
which, before the end Of the next three dec
ades, will be crossed by n ship railway
The center of population will before long
change its westward line of progress to the
southwest and south. The climatic su-
periority of the southern uplands and the
unrivaled wealth of their natural resources
will ultimately turn the scales against
every combination u prejudice.
Cotton will be spun where it grows,
sleepy old country towns will be reused by
the scream of the locomotive, and the ter
race lands from the Ohio to the upper Rio
Grande will be covered with orchards and
villas. The thirty-fourth parallel will cross
the center of that garden region, and it is
not improbable that some industrial en-
porium of the piedmont country'-per-
haps Birmingham, Ala.-will become the
great city Of the future.
Before the middle of the Twentieth cen
tury the increasing frequency of summer
droughts will confront the farmers of our
middle states with the alternative of ruin
or forest culture The reckless destruction
of woodlands has never failed to make the
summer drier and warmer and the winter
floods more destructive, but Anglo-Amer-
ican common sense will find means to ar
rest the progress of an evil which has
turned the Eden of western Asia into
desert and reduced the productive area of
our planet one-third. Every country road
will be lined with shade trees.
Forest reservations will comprise the
upper ridges of all our east American
mountain ranges, and large areas of the arid
west will be redeemed by multitude of
orchard farms, for there is no doubt that
the exigencies of overpopulation will even
tually suggest the substitution of perennial
for annual food plants. Breadstutfs as
well as sugar and vegetable oils will to
large extent be derived from trees that en-
rich the soil with their fertilizing leaves
and outlive their cultivators, whose labor
they will limit to the pleasant work of the
harvest month, and protect him against the
worst plagueyof the plains by affording shell
ter to myriads of insectivorous birds
In the Atlantic states competition for de-
sirable tracts of real estate will before long
grow fierce, and within the next thirty
years events will prove that, while the risk
of religious war has been greatly over
rated, the danger of a war of races has been
quite as much undeTated. The progress
of education Is gradually assimilating the
intelligent classes of all creeds, but race in
stincts are less transient than dogmas, and
the negro problem will vet loom up as the
black specter of the North American CONT.
nent.
North Of the Tennessee river Sambo
Africanus will vanish as soon as the in
crease of population brings him into seri-
GUS competition with European immi
grants, but there are regions where eli
matte conditions favor the chance of his
survival. On the Rio Grande the aborig-
ines and Philippians may coalesce against
the north. Caucasian races and the strug-
gle for supremacy will involve frequent ap-
peals to the arbitrament of force.
To conclude with few miscellaneous
predictions: The problem of aerial investi-
CATION will be solved within the next twen-
ty years. Transcontinental mails will be
forwarded by means of pneumatic tubes.
The perils of ocean navigation will be
greatly lessened by the introduction Of
companion steamers, starting pairwise and
maintaining communication bya system of
fog bells and electric refractors, and in 1903
millions of dwelling houses will be artifi-
cially cooled in summer, as they are now
heated in winter.
F. L. OSWALD, M D.
Of