“Six hundred millions!” I repeated. “What an enormous number! It takes my breath to think of it. Is it possible so many people can be supported in that territory? Nearly all the really valuable land seemed to be taken up when the population was but 70,000,000.”
“Aye,” said he, “six hundred millions are easily supported, and supported in greater comfort than when the population was but 70,000,000; and they may even double several times more before the capacity of the country is exhausted.”
“I am amazed at what you say,” said I, “but there must be a limit. Let me see, if 600,000,000 are doubled three times it will amount to 4,800,000,000. Is it possible the land could produce food and clothing for so many; and yet from what you say about the rate of increase that enormous number of people will be in this country before the end of the twenty-first century.”
“We will not cross that bridge till we come to it,” he answered, “we will explain that when we come to look forward into the twenty-first century. It is true we shall find a limit. The breeding instinct of any race of animals, not excepting man, would if unchecked and unopposed in the course of time absolutely fill up the earth till it could support no more. Man has for many ages been the dominant animal of the earth. Yet he has failed to stock the world to its capacity or anywhere near it for reasons you can easily supply yourself. In the first place the profession of arms or the art of keeping down the population by war has always held the most honorable rank among human employments; second the human race has been the absolutely helpless victim of pestilence and plague. Hundreds of different kinds of microbes, vibrios, bacteria and zymases have from age to age apparently whenever they saw fit, or thought men were getting too numerous, unseen and unsuspected, planted their colonies in their vital organs, and swarmed in their blood, living at their expense and sweeping them to death by myriads and millions. Next, men were at the mercy of the elements both on sea and land. Whenever a crop failed from drought or flood there followed a famine, and millions were periodically swept away by gaunt starvation, because there was no way of conveying to a needy district, the superabundance that might exist in another. But even where all nature was favorable, and nations happened to be at peace there was always the native and hereditary stupidity of the individual that blinded him to all rational ways of taking care of himself or his dependents and made it impossible for him to rear to maturity more than one out of five of his children. Thus many causes conspired to kill people off almost as fast as they were born and sometimes faster, and many times to prevent them from being born when they ought to have been. These inimical causes have all practically been eliminated. The destructive agencies supplied by nature for limiting the increase of the population having been set at defiance by art, it is evident that art must likewise find a way for limiting the increase of population, or else sometime in the future that increase will by its very success put a stop to itself, and the brutal methods of untamed nature again assert themselves. After all, art is only a subdivision of nature. It may modify the action of nature as to details, but cannot set aside the principles that govern it.”
“You spoke a little while ago of the territory of the United States, as it was in my day. This would appear to intimate that the boundaries have changed since then, is that so?”
“Well yes, you will think so, when you know that the United States of the present day covers the entire Continent of North America, and embraces besides, New Zealand, Australia, the English Colonies in South Africa, Ireland, Cuba and most of the West India Islands, and numerous islands in the Pacific ocean. I see this astonishes you and I will proceed to tell you how it happened. If we begin at the beginning, it appears to have been very largely due to the construction of railroads in Asia by the Russians; that is it, would never have happened if these roads had not been built. The great transcontinental Siberian road was completed from St. Petersburg to Vladivostock on the Pacific ocean in 1904 and formally opened with a great flourish by the Russian emperor. The Russians were not entirely satisfied however with this road. It was essential as a military road, and as a means of settling a vast extent of fertile country in Siberia, but as a commercial line it did not meet their rather sanguine expectations.
“Their ambition was to monopolize the trade between China and Europe. The new road by going around the east side of Mantchooria instead of through it to Pekin, imposed on that trade an unnecessary transportation of 1800 miles. They saw directly that they needed a line to Pekin and Teentsin, from Irkutsk. They obtained a concession from the Chinese government and built this line for commercial purposes. Then, later, they found it desirable to build another line west of the first and reaching the ocean at Shanghai. They also tapped the western part of the Chinese empire by a line from Bokara.
“From these lines others soon grew, commanding the business of the country and mostly owned by the Russians. In no long time jealousy of the enterprising “foreign devils” on the part of some of the more conservative and reactionary of the Chinese, led to outrages on their part which furnished a good pretext for military occupation of the country and finally to its conquest and annexation by the Russians. These encroachments of the Russians had been bitterly, but ineffectually opposed by the English. Their opposition provoked the Russians to place England on the defensive with regard to her Indian possessions so they pushed their railway line through Tartary to the very borders of northwestern India and threatened it with a large army of invasion. The Hindoos who had for years been waiting for such an opportunity to throw off the British yoke now revolted. They had been taught the art of war by their masters and now practiced it upon them, turning upon their teachers the weapons they had put into their hands and taught them to use. The very soldiers that were counted on to repel the Russians took their side against the English. Between the Russians and the Indians the British power in India was totally crushed, and several independent kingdoms were set up under Russian protection. France also assisted Russia in this war, especially on the ocean. British commerce was almost destroyed by Russian and French cruisers. After the war was over these two nations almost monopolized the Indian trade under discriminating commerce regulations, the Russians by land carriage over their railway and the French by sea. In the end the Russians became masters of almost the whole of Asia. Turkey was dismembered, the city of Constantinople and all Asiatic Turkey falling to the Russians.”