Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-01-30

it grows up. And, with birth en-
| bodied in the earth of the body, and
with death disembodied from 1t, Is
| the mystery of the soul.
And inasmuch as nobody gets OH,
the number that are born among us
becomes an important matter-We'l II
come to a fuller contact with that
problem later. Just now what con-
Germs us is the fact that in spots the
passengers are getting too thick. New
quarters must be found for the in
crease.
Millions may be slowed in the
places now recognized as desirable
and still unoccupied or only half oc-
cupied. Then we are going to spread
northward in the Northern Hemis-
phere into Siberia, Canada and other
lands now sparsely occupied by rea-
son of the cold-because the climate
Of the whole world will grow warmer
and warmer as the air is filled With
carbonic acid gas from the consump-
ton of coal-and we shall even be
able to repeople Greenland and
spread toward the South Pole into
the Antarctic Continent. All this
within a thousand years, as there is
reason to believe.
But are we to leave the tropics as
uninhabited or sparsely peopled jun
giles and llanos and pampas and sill
vas? We have never been able to
develop successful collective life in
the torrid zone. Why? Is the land
there lacking in the elements of
plant food on which alone human life
is based Far from it. The richest
lands in the world, judged by their
products, are in the tropics of South
ern Asia, Central Africa. Central
South America and such huge islands
as Borneo, Paqua and the Philippines.
They are well watered. They bring
forth amazingly. Where scieutifical-
ly cultivated as in Hawaii they prove
| themselves capable Of producing food
| and shelter for dense populations.
J Why, then, do not all the crowded
passengers in the ship go to the
tropics, where these right lands are
| by the millions of acres. occupied only
| by the wild beasts, birds and the riot
Gus vegetation?
/
! state, reasons of race prejudice, rea-
sons of difficulty on the part of the
migration of poor people. And there
are natural reasons.
! The very richness Of the tropics
| makes them hard to reclaim. In the
canal zone, a road built to a farm is
grown up and impossible in few
| weeks. The trees and vines and huge
| weeds are foes to man. They over
whelm him. They daunt him. They
make it almost impossible for him to
! clear the land, and almost as impos-
sible to keep it cleared.
| Then there is the question of health.
/ Until recently white men have found
/ il impossible to live full strong life
! in the tropics, or to perpetuate their
race there The British in India may
| be expected TO perish in the same
way, unless-unless we Gorgasize
and Goethalsize the Philippines.
| mean, unless we do to them as we
have done in the canal zone.
In making the Panama canal, we
seem to have solved the problem of
white life in the tropics. DR.. Gorgas
and his health department. under the
| rule of Colonel Goethals, have made
the most pestilential spot on earth,
perhaps, a region where white men
! can work, and work hard, and where
white family life seems perfectly pos
| sible as permanent thing.
This is bigger thing than the
canal itself!
Disease comes in the tropics, as