On tio <c 
 The Good 
 Ship Earth 
 
 lerbert 
 Quick 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
ON BOARD THE 
 GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 A Survey of World Problems 
 
 By 
 
 HERBERT QUICK 
 
 " 
 
 Author of 
 
 Aladdin & Co., The Broken Lance, etc., etc. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
v\ 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1913 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 
 Main Lib. 
 Sept. 
 
 PRESS OF 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 I WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT 1 
 
 II How DID WE COME ABOARD? 8 
 
 III CHANGING OUR QUARTERS ON SHIPBOARD . . 14 
 
 IV THE RIDDLE OF THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN . 24 
 V FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 36 
 
 VI THE ONLY THING WORTH WORSHIPING FORCE 62 
 
 VII SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 77 
 
 VIII THE IRON AGE AND THEN? 92 
 
 IX OUR WORLD-WIDE METAL OF WORSHIP GOLD . 100 
 
 X "MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH THE EARTH" . . 108 
 
 XI THE KIND OF PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY . 136 
 XII SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY Number One. 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIL 153 
 
 XIII SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY Number Two. 
 
 THE SPANISH-PORTUGUESE PERIL .... 162 
 
 XIV SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY Number Three. 
 
 THE RUSSIAN PERIL 170 
 
 XV SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY Number Four. 
 
 THE HINDU PERIL 178 
 
 XVI SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY Number Five. 
 
 THE YELLOW PERIL 187 
 
 XVII SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY Number Six. 
 
 THE BLACK PERIL 194 
 
 XVIII SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY Number Seven. 
 
 THE WHITE PERIL 202 
 
 XIX THE MINGLING OF THE PEOPLES 207 
 
 XX PATRIOTISM VICE OR VIRTUE? 223 
 
 S8S701 
 
CO NTENTS Continued 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 XXI THE EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT .... 230 
 
 XXII THE REAL WHITE MAN'S BURDEN .... 244 
 
 XXIII THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD .... 259 
 
 XXIV A FEDERATION PROBLEM 267 
 
 XXV THE PREVENTION OF FLOODS 282 
 
 XXVI THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 290 
 
 XXVII THE HAULAGE OF FERTILITY 306 
 
 XXVIII THE RAILWAYS ACROSS THE DECKS .... 314 
 
 XXIX ROBINSON CRUSOE'S LESSON 322 
 
 XXX THE WATER COURSES 330 
 
 XXXI POVERTY vs. MONOPOLY 350 
 
 XXXII THE NIGHTMARE OF MILITARISM 358 
 
 XXXIII SOCIAL OLD AGE AND DEATH 377 
 
 XXXIV THE GREAT MIGRATION 385 
 
 XXXV THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 400 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Of the light-bringing books, one reveals the hidden 
 by cutting us a vista through some jungle of fact. An- 
 other bears us to some mount of vision and shows us a 
 panorama. Of the latter sort is this book. The reader 
 feels as if the author stood beside him on some lofty 
 peak, overlooking all the kingdoms of the earth and 
 all the centuries, and, with one hand on the reader's 
 shoulder gently turning him now toward this quarter, 
 now toward that, with the other he swiftly points out 
 the great stirring features of the scene as with vivid 
 kindling speech he interprets them. Many men have 
 mapped and described segments of the panorama Earth 
 and Man, but I know of no one who has been able in 
 a brief space to draw out of it so much meaning for his 
 readers as Mr. Quick. 
 
 So often men gifted with imagination are wanting in 
 steady intellectual grasp that it is refreshing to meet 
 with a seer who seizes upon a fundamental truth and 
 consistently holds to it. Usually the great principle of 
 population is recognized only by the conservative. Mr. 
 Quick is unique in being a constructive reformer with 
 faith in continuing social progress, who, nevertheless, 
 perceives the fatal tendency of man to defeat his aspira- 
 tions by his blind multiplication. I know of no con- 
 temporary writer who applies the law of population 
 with equal courage and precision, and to the last impli- 
 cation and the last detail I am in agreement with him. 
 
 His eloquent demonstration of the folly of exporting 
 "good, government" to the backward peoples and the 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 wisdom of evangelizing them by means of devoted 
 missionaries and teachers is one of the golden passages 
 of the book. 
 
 At a time when the problems of race mingling and 
 race crossing are befogged by enthusiasts whose ami- 
 able sentiments blind them to essential truths, it is well 
 to hearken to a man of broad sympathies, utterly free 
 from the taint of race prejudice, who, nevertheless, 
 presents with the force of a mathematical demonstra- 
 tion the ugly consequences of the untrammeled mixing 
 of dissimilar races. 
 
 The author's speculation as to the key-reform that 
 will put humanity in the path of progress is certain to 
 provoke earnest dissent. One group of critics will 
 say : "Your reform is not the pivotal one. To-day it 
 is chiefly capital that captures the surplus, not land. 
 Past aristocracies may have rested on landlordism, but 
 private capitalism is the basis of plutocracy to-day. No 
 taking of ground rents for community benefit can dif- 
 fuse the ownership of the mines and the mills or end 
 the capitalist's control over the life and well-being of 
 the workers. The recovery of industrial freedom in- 
 volves the community ownership of the means of pro- 
 duction." 
 
 From another quarter will come the protest: "Your 
 socializing of land values is merely an economic re- 
 form, and nothing very great can hinge on it. More 
 fundamental than the democratizing of wealth, or even 
 the democratizing of welfare, is the democratizing of 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 knowledge and high ideals of life. Ignorance, supersti- 
 tion and vice are greater foes of human advancement 
 than the exactions of landlord or capitalist. The uni- 
 versal diffusion of essential knowledge and of right 
 ideals of life is certain to bring in time whatever eco- 
 nomic reforms may be necessary. But they will not 
 bring it. It is, above all, public education that sets off 
 Occident from Orient and our time from other times. 
 If only education can be broadened and deepened, the 
 constant adjustments called for by the changing cir- 
 cumstances of society will be made promptly and well." 
 The socializing of land values, socialism and educa- 
 tionism these are the most fundamental proposals 
 for the promotion of social progress in the world to- 
 day, and the discussion that rages about them is a ver- 
 itable battle of the giants. Our author's powerful ad- 
 vocacy of land reform ought to bring into action the 
 most redoubtable champions of the rival reforms. 
 
 EDWARD ALSWORTH Ross. 
 The University of Wisconsin. 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
ON BOARD THE 
 GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT 
 
 OFTEN we hear the saying, "We are all 
 in the same boat"; but how seldom do 
 we think of the world- wide, universal, physical 
 sense in which the maxim is true. We are all 
 passengers on the good ship Earth, and all his- 
 tory is the record of the relations between hu- 
 man beings as such passengers. 
 x A great air-ship, is the Earth, twenty-five 
 thousand miles in girth, covered with water, 
 save where the high spots of the solid crust 
 protrude in patches and spots to the extent 
 of a quarter of her deck room. On those spots, 
 called land, we, the passengers, must, in the 
 main, live. It is the great gift of the Creative 
 Principle to all men. 
 
 i 
 
ON EOARJ) THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 The good ship Earth has no crew. She is 
 like an air-ship, automatically controlled by 
 some force not contained in the vessel guided. 
 She has no rudder, no sails, no motors, no en- 
 gines. She works herself. The shove into 
 space which set her going is all the impulse 
 she needs; so on, and on, and on she flies in 
 her predestined path, without a crew, laden 
 with passengers. 
 
 We know that she moves, just as we know 
 that a railway train moves by the way in 
 which things beside her path seem to move. 
 The stars and planets are to the earth what 
 the farms, towns and buildings are to the train. 
 They show us passengers that our good ship 
 Earth is on her way. But we do not know 
 whither she is bound. We are embarked on 
 a vessel that left port eons ago under sealed 
 orders. 
 
 Our air-ship is globular, and spins around 
 and around for the pitcher who hurled her 
 gave her the whirl that means a curve-ball. 
 She holds us to her, so we can not fly off. She 
 draws us, as a magnet draws steel dust, so 
 
 2 
 
ALL IN THE SAME BOAT 
 
 that as she spins from the thumb and finger 
 of God, we stay on. We know that our round 
 ship whirls; just as we know the same thing 
 of a merry-go-round because we pass the 
 same things regularly once every twenty- 
 four hours. The things we pass are the sun, 
 moon, planets and stars our whirling is 
 proven by the identical evidence that proves 
 our forward motion. 
 
 Our forward path, too, is a circle for after 
 three hundred and sixty-five days, we return 
 to the place occupied a twelvemonth ago. 
 This is our trip about the sun, and makes our 
 year. Thus we go spinning like a curved base- 
 ball, and behaving as would the baseball if the 
 pitcher could throw in a circle the sun being 
 the pitcher's box in the center of the ring. 
 
 But do we return to the very spot occupied 
 a year ago? No, for the sun, too, moves, as if 
 the whole diamond and planet-studded out- 
 field were traveling, carrying the great Game 
 with it; or like a ball whirled about the head 
 of a man who walks as he whirls it. Whither 
 does the man walk who whirls about his head 
 
 3. 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 our good air-ship Earth? We do not know. 
 We only know that toward some unimagin- 
 able goal the sun travels, dragging with him 
 all our planets with all their moons, and a 
 great cloud of comets, asteroids and meteors. 
 It is one of the mysteries incident to the fate of 
 the human race that of sailing on their ship 
 Earth under sealed orders. 
 
 We are on this ship as passengers; but there 
 is no cafe service. The passengers must feed 
 themselves. Moreover, they must subsist out 
 of the ship itself. The ship breaks out in a 
 green rash called plant life. On this, millions 
 of things called animals live by taking the 
 green substance into their bodies and making 
 it over into body-tissue. Certain other animals 
 eat these plant-eating animals. The decks of 
 the ship, even the watery parts, are thus full of 
 growing, and eating, and killing and digest- 
 ing. And we, the passengers, who believe all 
 this is for us, are of the sort that eat plants, 
 and devour animals, and do more killing and 
 destroying than any of the other creatures on 
 board. 
 
 4 
 
ALL IN THE SAME BOAT 
 
 Now all these plants and animals are made 
 out of the substance of the ship itself. We 
 are all in the same boat with the plants and 
 brutes in this respect we are made of the 
 earth, and we dissolve back into the earth. 
 When the earth was a molten, uninhabited, un- 
 inhabitable mass, it weighed (save for an occa- 
 sional meteor which we pick up as we fly) to 
 a pennyweight what it weighs now, with its 
 plants and animals and its billion and a half 
 people ; just as a cheese weighs no more when 
 it becomes full of mites. We are earth-mites. 
 We are just bits of earth organized into two- 
 legged bubbles of earth which last a score, or 
 two score, or three score years and ten, and 
 then death pricks the bubble, and we are 
 earth again. We last only for a few whirls of 
 the merry-go-round, the longest-lived of us. 
 
 All the time the high places on which we 
 live the dry parts of the decks called land 
 are being worn down. And when the plants 
 and animals go back into the earth, a part of 
 them only can be turned again into things the 
 passengers can consume. So there is a loss of 
 
 5 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 matter to subsist upon. Furthermore, we pas- 
 sengers multiply in numbers. In some por- 
 tions of the ship, they are already so numerous 
 that we can not find adequate subsistence. We 
 seem to be growing in numbers almost every- 
 where. In our part of the ship, we have a hun- 
 dred millions where a hundred years ago there 
 were not three millions, and we are told that 
 in three hundred years there will be ten hun- 
 dred millions of us here, in the United States. 
 Can so many passengers find subsistence on 
 the ship? We are for the first time in our 
 world's history, as far as we know, possessed 
 of the knowledge and the intelligence which 
 make us able even to ask such questions. One 
 by one the bandages have been removed from 
 our eyes, and we see the good ship Earth 
 round and entire, and we can achieve some ap- 
 proach to a realization of her problems. What 
 are these problems, and how shall we meet 
 them? We can no longer face the future 
 blindly asserting that all will be well. All is 
 not well. All has never been well. We can 
 no longer see nation go up against nation to 
 
 6 
 
ALL IN THE SAME BOAT 
 
 slaughter and burn with the feeling that it 
 does not concern us. It does concern us. For 
 the first time in the world's history, we are 
 able intelligently to ask ourselves what this 
 tremendous voyage on the good ship Earth 
 really means, how we are to treat our fellow 
 passengers, how we are to possess our great 
 vessel, whether life for all of us and all our 
 children is possible, and if not possible, who 
 with his progeny shall survive or should sur- 
 vive. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW DID WE COME ABOARD? 
 
 WHEN the good ship Earth, on which 
 we are all embarked, was first pitched 
 into space, spinning like a curve-ball, she car- 
 ried no passengers. Then there was only ship 
 passengers were created out of the materials 
 of the decks, and walked those decks of which 
 they were but now portions. 
 
 The ship was a great, cloudy, misty mass 
 of gases, which contained all the atoms that 
 now make up the planet. There was no 
 place for plant or animal. The gases drew 
 together and in doing so grew hot, just as the 
 air grows hot when pressed in the cylinder of 
 an engine so hot that even yet the inside of 
 our great air-ship is hot enough to melt rocks 
 and make of them lava. Until this cooled 
 there was no opportunity for passengers on 
 the ship for plant or animal. 
 
 Finally the cooling made the rocks and met- 
 8 
 
HOW DID WE COME ABOARD? 
 
 als solid but the waters were still steam. 
 There was no ocean only clouds of steam 
 whirling in fearful storms about the globe, 
 with its crust of rock and its core of fire. Then 
 as the heat moderated, water was formed, and 
 at last there were land and water. But the ship 
 was still without passengers there were no 
 plants nor animals. 
 
 Then the greatest event in the history of the 
 vessel on which we sail, took place. Some- 
 where in the warm waters about the poles, or 
 in the bubbling swamps between the volcanic 
 mountains somehow, somewhere, sometime 
 the elements came together in such a man- 
 ner that out of the atoms of the ship's sub- 
 stance, a molecule of protoplasm was formed. 
 
 The greatest word the human tongue can 
 form is God, and the next is protoplasm. Per- 
 haps when we know all, we shall see that pro- 
 toplasm and God are the same the one the 
 whole, the other the part from which we can 
 finally arrive at a theory of the whole, if not a 
 conception of it The mind of man has many 
 deities but if, under God, there is aught be- 
 
 9 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 fore which he should bow himself, that some- 
 thing is protoplasm. For in the appearance of 
 protoplasm, on the deck of the good ship 
 Earth, appeared the thing out of which came 
 all that green rash which breaks out and 
 clothes her surface with vegetation, and the 
 moving things that eat the vegetation and 
 one another, and finally, man himself who 
 fondly believes himself the passenger for 
 whose sole accommodation the ship is 
 launched. 
 
 What is protoplasm? It is a strange insig- 
 nificant slime, and looks like the white of an 
 egg but it is the mightiest thing on earth. 
 It is a combination of carbon like that in the 
 diamond or soot of nitrogen that unstable 
 thing of which nitroglycerin and other explo- 
 sives are largely made up of hydrogen that 
 gas which bursts with such flame and thunder 
 when the balloon or the gas works blow up 
 and of oxygen that element which eats up 
 iron and rushes into the arms of carbon so 
 fiercely as to cause flame when the coal burns 
 in the grate. So protoplasm, like man, has in 
 
 10 
 
HOW DID WE COME ABOARD? 
 
 it every factor of revolution, explosion, heat, 
 light, cataclysm, destruction, development and 
 progress. But it is only a slime or jelly. These 
 four elements and others in smaller quanti- 
 ties are combined in so wonderful and com- 
 plex a way in protoplasm, that the wisest 
 chemist does not know the secret of the com- 
 bination. When nobody knows, we say "God 
 knows!" We know the composition of the 
 molecule of water it is made up of two atoms 
 of hydrogen and one of oxygen and even the 
 schoolboy calls it "H 2 O". But God only 
 knows the way in which <he molecule of pro- 
 toplasm is built. The nearest guess at the 
 formula of albumen, or the white of an egg is 
 
 UQ720 H H34 N 2!8 g5 Q248,, ^Jg Jg ^ COmpleX 
 
 for the mind to visualize into a realizable 
 thing; and protoplasm must be more complex 
 perhaps a thousand times more complex. 
 
 But we know that when this molecule is 
 formed in the laboratory of God it has won- 
 derful qualities quite different in kind from 
 any other substance. It has sensibility and ir- 
 ritability. In other words, it feels! It has cer- 
 
 ii 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tain movements of its own. It has the power 
 of forming itself into cells, and each cell of 
 protoplasm has the power of taking other sub- 
 stances from its surroundings, and building up 
 new and wonderful forms, all endowed with 
 those new powers of motion, feeling, and regu- 
 lar and successive adjustments to surround- 
 ings. In other words, the protoplasm molecule 
 has life. 
 
 When out of the substance of the deck of the 
 good ship Earth sailing under sealed orders 
 without crew or passenger, through the depths 
 of space the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and 
 nitrogen of the vessel itself came together in 
 that wonderful molecule called protoplasm, 
 life was born. And with life, evolution began. 
 And through evolution, came the ameba, the 
 protozoon, the shell-fish, the fish, the reptile, 
 the bird, the mammal, and finally, man. Crea- 
 tion reached the man-stage, and the first great 
 cycle was complete. The ship had its pas- 
 sengers evolved from the ship herself. Thus 
 we came aboard. 
 
 If you could take a test tube and make that 
 
 12 
 
HOW DID WE COME ABOARD? 
 
 marvelous molecule, it would have life, just 
 as if God made it in the deeps of the primor- 
 dial ocean. But you can not do it. Perhaps 
 man may sometime perform the marvel but 
 he has not as yet. God had to take the nebula, 
 spread out mistily over billions of cubic miles 
 of space, condense it to a sun, compress the 
 sun to a molten world, and shake this cosmic 
 prescription for eons, as a chemist shakes a 
 vial, before He got the compound to take form 
 in that wonderful substance called protoplasm 
 and then it took millions of years for the 
 life in it to rise to man. 
 
 When man can do this he can create proto- 
 plasm and artificially make life. We, made 
 of this substance and by it, are so far above our 
 primordial slime that we are here in these 
 glimpses of world problems actually facing 
 the question as to whether the doom of man is 
 eventual misery and extinction, or happiness 
 and glory. 
 
 Sublime and wonderful march of life! from 
 the globule of jelly, to the being who questions 
 the force which brought him into existence 1 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHANGING OUR QUARTERS ON SHIPBOARD 
 
 MINDS may differ as to how man came 
 into being on the good ship Earth. 
 Some will see in man the last stage of evolu- 
 tion the end of that great chain beginning 
 with a spot of slime the first tiny mass of 
 protoplasm and ending with us. Others 
 will see in him a creature produced by a spe- 
 cial creative act of God, and quite unrelated 
 by heredity to his fellow beings in the world 
 of life. It matters little to me. However it 
 may be, this is sure, we have been formed in 
 some way out of the dust of the earth out of 
 the planking of the decks of the ship on which 
 we voyage. 
 
 Here we are! We must live. We must live 
 together. We must win our subsistence out of 
 the decks from which we have been formed. 
 Our quarters on the ship must be found some- 
 where on her broad decks those portions 
 
 14 
 
CHANGING OUR QUARTERS 
 
 which rise out of the water, and which we 
 call land. How shall we occupy it? What 
 shall be our relations with one another? Shall 
 we fight and quarrel for the best places, and 
 eat one another up, as people have been known 
 to do when cast away on other ships? Or shall 
 we organize and place the matter under regu- 
 lations? In fact have we not already appor- 
 tioned among us this great original Zeppelin 
 on which we career through space? If so, is 
 the apportionment the best that could be 
 made? 
 
 Is it permanent, or shall we can we? 
 move about, as nations, changing our quarters 
 on the ship moving fore and aft and from 
 starboard to port? In the nature of things, 
 can any apportionment of the Earth among its 
 tenants be permanent? Is there such a princi- 
 ple as right? If so, can it be applied to our 
 earth-tenancy? Do we need to find and apply 
 the principle, if it exists, or will it come into 
 operation automatically by some force out- 
 side ourselves, like the wireless control that 
 guides our ship in her flight? 
 
 15 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Perhaps we shall be able to throw a little 
 dim light on some of these matters. But first, 
 what are the big facts as to our present quar- 
 ters on the ship? 
 
 How many of us are there? 
 
 There are between a billion and a half and 
 two billions of us. We are not very evenly 
 distributed over our land-and-water Zeppelin. 
 Many things tend to make us gather in dense 
 communities in some places, and to scatter 
 very sparsely in others. First, we arc land 
 animals, and the seventy-five per cent, of our 
 good ship Earth which is below the water 
 level, we can not inhabit. So we give it over 
 to the amphibians, the fishes and the other 
 swimmers. This must always be so, or at least 
 it must be so until the water of the earth, like 
 that of the moon, has all been absorbed into 
 the body of the planet, and there shall be no 
 more sea. This will sometime come to pass. 
 Whether or not man will survive to see the 
 day no one can with certainty say. 
 
 And even as to the solid surface of the ship, 
 we find great areas of deck room upon which 
 
 16 
 
CHANGING OUR QUARTERS 
 
 we can not live. The thing most decisive of 
 this is temperature. Life could not appear on 
 earth, until things had cooled down to the 
 liquid point of water from its condition of 
 steam. And life must first have appeared in 
 the then coolest parts of the globe. These cool- 
 est spots were and are the poles; and at the 
 poles or one of them life doubtless first 
 came into being. Perhaps the first nations of 
 men lived, and fought, and struggled with 
 these problems, at the poles. Instead of being 
 the discoverer of the pole, Peary merely re- 
 turned to the ancient home of the race. 
 
 But the poles are now too cold for successful 
 human life. So are the polar regions, reach- 
 ing down a third of the way or more to the 
 lands which lie amidships. Sometime, these 
 arctic regions may grow warmer again we 
 shall speak of that hereafter but now, man 
 must abandon great portions of his ship's decks 
 to the seal, the bear, the fox and their frost- 
 defying fellows. These regions have cooled 
 off so much as to spoil them as quarters for 
 any very large numbers of passengers. 
 
 17 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 So, too, as to the equatorial belt amidships, 
 the temperature has prevented its being the 
 quarters of very dense communities of people. 
 There are some exceptions to this, but on the 
 whole, the torrid zone is too hot for successful 
 human life. The people there are lacking in 
 both numbers and energy. 
 
 The best place on the ship is in that strip 
 each side of the equator where it has cooled 
 off to just the right temperature; and here, 
 principally on the north side of the hot belt, 
 the passengers are mostly found quartered. So 
 dependent are the "lords of creation" on the 
 mere matter of heat and cold! 
 
 But almost as powerful is the factor of 
 moisture. Where it is too dry, the dead matter 
 of the decks of the good ship Earth does not 
 readily fuse into the protean shapes of life. 
 The force which works through that mighty 
 slime called protoplasm, works with water as 
 a tool and whole continents are in a measure 
 unfitted by lack of moisture for the occupancy 
 of man. 
 
 In fact, no limitation is more susceptible to 
 18 
 
CHANGING OUR QUARTERS 
 
 accurate computation than the water limit to 
 population. Living beings must take from the 
 soil the matter for their bodies. Plants are the 
 first agents in this, and without plants there 
 could be no animals. The plant is a factory in 
 which raw material for the making of animals 
 is lifted half-way to animalhood. And plants 
 are able to take their food from the soil only 
 as it is dissolved in water. The amount of 
 water required for the support of human life 
 has been made by McGee the basis of a deter- 
 mination of the possibilities of the United 
 States in the matter of population. He shows 
 that the water falling on the land surface of 
 the United States is sufficient to dilute plant 
 food sufficient for the maintenance of the ma- 
 terial basis of a thousand millions of people 
 here. 
 
 Of course, this determination is subject to 
 all sorts of modifications; but the principle 
 must be admitted, that there is a relation be- 
 tween the water available for plants and the 
 animal life capable of being supported on 
 earth. The life including human life must 
 
 19 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 be limited by the supply of water for the di- 
 lution of mineral plant food. All animal 
 bodies are made up of soil elements dissolved 
 in water. All plants require water to be 
 transpired through their leaves in the process 
 of growth, as well as to be retained in their 
 tissues; and all animals are derived from 
 plants. It is not, therefore, accidental that 
 the word "desert" which really and funda- 
 mentally signifies any place which is deserted, 
 has come in English speech to mean a spot 
 or region waterless or poorly supplied with 
 water. Temperature is the first requisite for 
 life; mainly because it is only within a certain 
 range of temperature that water can act as the 
 universal solvent of the raw materials of 
 plants, animals and man. 
 
 So man must ever be herded into those 
 places where the tyrant spirits of heat and 
 moisture allow him to live. His quarters on 
 the ship are determined by them. 
 
 A third of us are crowded into Southern and 
 Eastern Asia. Fifty millions of us are in the 
 few small islands of Japan, because of the 
 
 20 
 
CHANGING OUR QUARTERS 
 
 moisture and warmth of the climate. Three 
 hundred millions more are in China, and 
 swarms equally numerous are in India and her 
 neighboring hives. 
 
 In the continent of Europe, there are well 
 toward four hundred millions of us. And in 
 North America, we have about a hundred 
 millions. These and some islands are the 
 densely populated places. Here are most of 
 the passengers quartered. 
 
 No captain has sent men to these quarters, 
 except Captain Necessity and Captain Power. 
 They have fought like beasts for them, and 
 the decks of the ship have run red with blood 
 by reason of migrations of passengers from one 
 part of the deck to another. In past ages these 
 surgings back and forth have been blind and 
 mostly unobserved save by those engaged in 
 the fighting. But lately by reason of the very 
 simple physical fact that we have found out 
 how to put thoughts on paper and multiply 
 the papers by machinery, and also send 
 thoughts along wires in no time at all, and 
 because we have found ways of traveling over 
 
 21 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the watery places on the decks, all these con- 
 glomerations of peoples called nations have 
 come to know about one another, and to watch 
 one another; and in some sort of way, to un- 
 derstand one another though not very well. 
 
 And the wise ones among men are wonder- 
 ing how we, in the ages to come, shall occupy 
 this land. They of the crowded spots want to 
 move over into the places which are not 
 crowded. Shall they be permitted to move? 
 Have they the right? Who shall decide? 
 
 There are millions of acres of good land 
 which is sparsely settled because of facts aside 
 from its fertility. It was remote from the 
 place in which the race had its first home; or 
 it was in one of those hinterlands from which 
 the old races were barred because they trav- 
 eled mostly by water; or it was peopled by 
 savages who were kept from multiplying and 
 condemned to perpetual savagery by wars and 
 ignorance of the use of tools ; or it was across 
 the ocean from the body of the human race. 
 Now it is known to all men, and needed by 
 millions yet it is sparsely settled. 
 
 22 
 
CHANGING OUR QUARTERS 
 
 They who abide in the sparser places do not 
 like to have people of other religions, colors 
 and languages coming among them in large 
 numbers. Some nations are more intelligent 
 than others or think themselves so and de- 
 sire to keep out the "inferior races". All, 
 without exception, think themselves the best 
 people in the world. So the nations stand in 
 their various quarters of the globe, each armed 
 to keep others from intruding, and so divided 
 by color lines, lines of race, religion and lan- 
 guage, that the good ship Earth is like a cap- 
 tainless vessel, the occupants of which are 
 ready to fly at one another's throats. And 
 things some slow, some quick are happen- 
 ing which make it more and more difficult to 
 keep the crowded nations cooped up where 
 they are. Thus the future lowers dark with 
 problems and for the first time in world his- 
 tory, the people are wise enough to see the 
 problems. 
 
 And to solve them? Perhaps. But if they 
 solve them they must do it by thinking about 
 them. That is why this is written. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RIDDLE OF THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN 
 
 THE great race problems on the good 
 ship Earth have always grown out of 
 the moving of those great cliques of passengers 
 called nations or tribes from one part of the 
 dry decks to another, and jostling other peo- 
 ples about, throwing them overboard, putting 
 them to death, enslaving and otherwise exter- 
 minating them. 
 
 In the future why should these movements 
 take place? Are they likely to be necessary? 
 And if so, what will make them necessary? 
 Come to the bank of the river the nearest 
 river and I will show you one reason why 
 we may have to move sometime. 
 
 If it be after a rain, the river any river 
 almost will be roily. If it be the Missouri, 
 the Tennessee, the Ohio, the Red, the Platte, 
 the Arkansas, the Sacramento, the Alabama, 
 
 24 
 
THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN 
 
 the Lower Mississippi, or any one of a hun- 
 dred others, it will be found turbid with earth, 
 whether one looks just after a rain or not. And 
 in this fact lies one of the greatest dangers to 
 our part of the ship. 
 
 What is it which discolors the rivers? It is 
 soil. What is soil? I might give you a long 
 and learned definition, but the plain English 
 of it is, "Soil is the looser earth, spread over 
 the surface, and in which plants can grow." It 
 is an essential part of the raw material of man 
 and woman. 
 
 It is the dust which has gathered on the 
 decks of the good ship Earth by the tram- 
 pling of the feet of the rain and hail, the 
 grinding hoofs of the ice, the crushing and 
 prying lever of the frost, the wearing sand- 
 blast of wind-blown particles and the wash- 
 ing of the waters. Until soil appeared on the 
 ship, there were decks clean as cement side- 
 walks, or sterile as piles of building stone 
 but no place for the green rash breaking out 
 on the decks which we call vegetation. And 
 until vegetation came, there were no animals ; 
 
 25 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 because they must have the raw earth worked 
 over in plants or other animals before they 
 can assimilate it. 
 
 It took more centuries than you have hairs 
 in your head to make a good soil. In the mil- 
 lenniums which have passed there has been a 
 race between the accumulation of vegetable 
 matter and the earth-dust made by the ele- 
 ments and the forces carrying it away, in 
 which the deposits of soil have managed to 
 keep just a little ahead of the natural wastage 
 by blowing, washing and other erosion. May- 
 be on a square foot, there would be a teaspoon- 
 ful more of good soil at the end of a century 
 than at the beginning. Increasing at the rate 
 of a teaspoonful a century, given centuries 
 enough, and the soil is eight inches deep, 
 though the average soil is shallower than that. 
 
 In his action on the soil, man has shown 
 most strikingly that he (and he only of all 
 animals) has been clothed with power to de- 
 stroy the globe from which he has emerged, 
 as far as habitability is concerned. He finds 
 a new continent covered with trees. Beetles, 
 
 26 
 
THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN 
 
 scale-insects, moths, funguses and bacteria do 
 the same thing; and they kill trees; but man is 
 the only living being who can keep them 
 killed. Beavers can cut them down; but man 
 alone keeps them cut down. He found the 
 American continent covered with trees, in 
 large part, and that just at the era when tree- 
 cutting machinery had been or was about to 
 be perfected, and he proceeded to destroy for- 
 ests over an area half as large as Europe. He 
 has been obliged to do this in order that he 
 might found states, build a nation and extend 
 civilization. He has destroyed the splendid 
 forests which were the fruition of hundreds of 
 years of growth ; but it is hardly just to blame 
 him, ofio condemn the destruction as waste. 
 
 It was unavoidable destruction, and in the 
 main justifiable. If the Pilgrim Fathers could 
 have landed at Kansas City instead of Plym- 
 outh Rock, it would have been immensely 
 better. The first settlers would have had 
 prairie land quite ready for the plow on 
 which to live. The colonies would have 
 spread over the Mississippi Valley, with their 
 
 27 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 cattle ranges in the semi-arid Great Plains. 
 As more land became a necessity, they would 
 have worked their way into the forests of In- 
 diana, Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota 
 and finally, after densely peopling the prairies 
 of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakotas, 
 and rich forest plains of Indiana, Kentucky, 
 Ohio, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and 
 Tennessee, the black lands of Mississippi and 
 Alabama, the fertile Mississippi Delta from 
 Cairo to the Gulf, and the coastal plain of 
 Texas, the frontier states of the Atlantic Coast 
 would have been reached by the lumbermen 
 and pioneers. New England would not yet 
 have been opened to settlement. The Appa- 
 
 ^btt 
 
 lachian Mountain region would still be a for- 
 est. And the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Up- 
 per Mississippi, the Tennessee and the Mobile 
 would not flow as they do, thick with the 
 liquid soil from the fields of their valleys. 
 But coming in, as the settlers did, from the 
 east, they were forced to lay waste the forests. 
 By the destruction of the forests we have 
 bared the soil in the very regions which should 
 
 28 
 
THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN 
 
 have been left forested. We have stripped the 
 deck of our air-ship to the action of the 
 moving elements, so that the dust of life is 
 being swept off into the ocean where it may do 
 good to some living creatures, after man has 
 disappeared, but can never again be useful to 
 the present passengers of the ship, or their 
 children. The Bible says that we are made of 
 the dust of the earth. So we are. We can exist 
 only so long as the supply of dust lasts. If we 
 have descendants they must be formed of it. 
 And we see it wasting off into the oceans as if 
 it did not concern us at all! 
 
 The wastage of soil in the streams of the 
 United States is 610,000,000 cubic yards a 
 year. A cubic yard is a wagon-load. If we 
 were wickedly throwing this mother-stuff of 
 men into the sea as rapidly as we are letting 
 it wash in, and had a year's loss loaded on 
 wagons waiting to dump at the pier-head, al- 
 lowing one team to the rod, the string of teams 
 waiting to unload would reach seventy-six 
 times around the world! So fast are we al- 
 lowing to be undone the thing which it took 
 
 29 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 all the cosmic forces millions of years to do. 
 Not all erosion is waste. Slow erosion is nec- 
 essary. But the destructive erosion of which 
 we are speaking is a peril to the nations. 
 
 There are great nations which have so culti- 
 vated their lands, that no such waste occurs. 
 They are nations which have kept up the fer- 
 tility of great areas through four thousand 
 years of constant extraction of food and cloth- 
 ing and shelter for man. And those nations 
 only which can do this, are fit for the owner- 
 ship of the ship on which we sail. All others 
 are mere ruiners and cumberers of the Earth. 
 Is it not time for us to begin if we are to 
 qualify as passengers on the good ship Earth? 
 God will surely throw us overboard if we do 
 not meet the demands. 
 
 These nations the Oriental peoples of 
 which the Chinese and Japanese are the best 
 examples are quartered on those portions of 
 the decks of the good ship Earth where hu- 
 man beings are most numerous. Some Euro- 
 peans are almost as good husbandmen, and 
 live as parts of dense populations, too. We 
 
 30 
 
THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN 
 
 have had only a hundred years or so in which 
 to prove our unfitness for the ownership of 
 fertile lands ; and we have gone far to prove 
 it by ruining large areas of good soil and 
 the ruin is going on faster now than ever be- 
 fore. 
 
 We have had several periods of public ap- 
 prehensiveness on account of the immigration 
 of Asiatics into this country. We have adopted 
 the policy of keeping them out. The smug- 
 gling trade used to be confined to the importa- 
 tion of goods ; but now men are smuggled in. 
 The smuggling of Chinamen is a regular trade 
 among the lawless of our Pacific Coast and 
 along the Canadian and Mexican frontiers. 
 The Japanese, too, have shown evidences of a 
 desire to come to this country in large num- 
 bers. Koreans, Hindus, Chinese and Japanese 
 are knocking at the gates of all the sparsely 
 settled countries and asking to be let in. The 
 yellow peril is a reality to our Pacific states, to 
 Western Canada, to Australasia and South 
 Africa. The Asiatics wish to move from 
 lands which seem to be overpopulated to lands 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 which are rich in plant food, have good cli- 
 mates and not too many inhabitants. The 
 deepest thinkers are of the opinion that this 
 tendency on the part of large populations to 
 move is no less important, no less fateful, now 
 than it was when the same tendencies on the 
 part of the same peoples hurled wave after 
 wave of war on Rome and destroyed her. Will 
 Asiatic-exclusion laws always protect against 
 these movements? Before considering these 
 most vital things more in detail, let us see 
 what there is in a soil which makes it able to 
 support dense populations. If it is a property 
 which remains forever, then these nations 
 may be able to stay where they are, and leave 
 the rest of us in peace. But if it is something 
 which is taken from the soil by use, then these 
 massed millions may sometime have to move 
 or starve. 
 
 It is this property and this only which now 
 concerns us the fitness of the soil to furnish 
 food for plants in order that the plants may 
 in turn furnish food for animals. Life is the 
 vapor that distends for the moment the bubble 
 
 3? 
 
THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN 
 
 called an animal or a vegetable or a man; and 
 good soil is a soil from which that vapor can 
 freely emanate. Protoplasm is the only thing 
 that lives; and good soil is the soil that can 
 furnish to the protoplasm of the plants the 
 food from which the protoplasm can build up 
 animals. 
 
 It is possible to tell just what the things are 
 that the plants need. They are ten substances, 
 all of which are found in any good soil 
 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, potas- 
 sium, nitrogen, sulphur, calcium, iron and 
 magnesium. Most of these you can see in 
 some form in any drug-store, or about the 
 house. Soot is carbon; illuminating gas is 
 mostly hydrogen; oxygen is the vital princi- 
 ple of the air, and is given as a gas to some 
 patients by physicians; phosphorus is what 
 glows in the dark when you rub a damp match 
 on your hand; potassium is a soft metal which 
 gives the name to common potash; nitrogen 
 is a gas, hard to obtain pure, but which forms 
 the bulk of the air, and is important in com- 
 pounds the names of which begin with "ni- 
 
 33 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 trous", "nitric", or "nitro"; sulphur every- 
 body knows about; calcium is a brilliant, lus- 
 trous, light-yellow element, which combined 
 with oxygen forms ordinary quicklime, and 
 with carbon is the carbide of the acetylene 
 lamp; iron we all know, but rarely see chem- 
 ically pure; and magnesium is the chief ele- 
 ment in common magnesia, but is not often 
 seen pure outside of chemical laboratories. 
 
 Doctor Cyril Hopkins, of the University of 
 Illinois, is a great authority on soils, and stu- 
 dents of agriculture under him have made of 
 his name a rigmarole by which to remember 
 these necessary elements of plant food. This 
 formula is made up of the chemical symbols 
 for the elements. 
 
 "C Hopk'ns CaFe Mg" is the rigmarole. 
 The boys say it means "C. Hopkins, Cafe, 
 mighty good." The only mysterious thing 
 about the rigmarole to the ordinary reader 
 will be the meaning of the letters which are 
 not the initials of the English names of the 
 elements for which they stand. "C", "H", "O" 
 and "P" are easy. "K" is potassium. All the 
 
 34 
 
THE RAW MATERIAL OF MAN 
 
 rest are easy until we come to "Fe" which 
 means iron. These are the things which the 
 spirit of time put into the soil so that plants 
 might grow. When any one of them is absent 
 the land is a desert. And when the deck be- 
 comes a desert, the passengers have to move 
 or starve. 
 
 Only four of these elements give the farmer 
 any trouble on account of their scarcity ni- 
 trogen, phosphorus, sulphur and potassium. 
 All the rest are found in plenty. And the 
 passengers on the good ship Earth have 
 chosen their quarters on her broad decks with 
 reference to the presence in the deck-dust 
 called soil of these four things nitrogen, 
 phosphorus, sulphur and potassium. Each 
 presents a wonderful world problem a prob- 
 lem in our future peace, as well as our future 
 plenty great enough for a book a library of 
 books. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 THEY say the chameleon feeds on air. 
 Well, so do we. And this calls to mind 
 a true story. 
 
 Once there lived on the good ship Earth 
 and still lives for aught I know an Eng- 
 lishman named North Colonel North, "The 
 Nitrate King". Of all the earth-beings who 
 have gained dominion over their fellow pas- 
 sengers on this great globular Zeppelin, Colo- 
 nel North once seemed to have the greatest 
 dominion greater than that of Rockefeller; 
 or Cecil Rhodes, of South Africa; or Clive, 
 the conqueror of Hindustan; or the "Gentle- 
 men Adventurers" of the Hudson's Company. 
 Greater than the dominion of Genghis Khan, 
 of Tartary, Attila the Hun, Alaric the Goth, 
 or Genseric the Vandal. For it seemed at one 
 time as if Colonel North, the nitrate king, 
 
 36 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 and his descendants would be able through 
 their ownership of the nitrate beds of Chili to 
 make all their fellow passengers buy nitrates 
 of them, until the beds should be exhausted; 
 and then all the passengers of the good ship 
 Earth after moving about from one nitro- 
 gen-exhausted place to another, and warring 
 and wasting and ravaging as peoples always 
 do when they move were to starve together, 
 for lack of nitrates! 
 
 What greater deed could a monopolist hope 
 to achieve than to get hold of something which 
 God made for all of us who are all in the 
 same boat remember, sell it to us at starva- 
 tion prices and lord it over the rest of us; even 
 though at the last we should use up the sup- 
 ply, and all starve? Truly, a gigantic and 
 characteristically nineteenth-century concep- 
 tion! 
 
 The thing the colonel had cornered was ni- 
 trogen for the growth of crops. Nitrogen is 
 one of the ten elements of plant food that must 
 be found by the roots of the plants or they die. 
 And all animal life is based on plant life and 
 
 37 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 we passengers are animals. So there you are I 
 Of these ten elements, only three or four, as 
 we have seen, are often scarce in the soil ni- 
 trogen, phosphorus, potassium and probably 
 sulphur; and the colonel had the nitrogen or 
 so he thought. For though seventy-five per 
 cent, of the air in which every plant grows is 
 nitrogen, the crops can not use it. It is "free" 
 nitrogen, and the crops can't eat it unless it is 
 "fixed" that is, tied up with some other chem- 
 ical element. There are 75,000,000 pounds of 
 nitrogen in the air which rests on every acre 
 of land; and the crop dies for want of it unless 
 it is "fixed" or tied up with something else in 
 chemical bonds! A soil is in good condition 
 for crops if it possesses two tons of this 75,000- 
 
 000 pounds per acre but how to get it? 
 Science was in despair. But Colonel North, 
 
 1 suppose, was in high feather. For in Chili 
 nitrogen has accumulated in the form of ni- 
 trates in the soil until that dry region is the 
 great storehouse of the fixed nitrogen of this 
 great air-ship Earth in which we are all pas- 
 sengers, going we know not where. Sir Will- 
 
 38 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD , 
 
 iam Crookes put on his black cap and gave out 
 the sentence of science. This was the verdict: 
 A good soil possesses only from 2,500 to 
 10,000 pounds of nitrogen per acre. A good 
 crop takes from this store from 75 to 400 
 pounds per acre, depending on the crop. Call 
 it 75 so as to scare ourselves as little as possi- 
 ble, and give every acre 10,000 pounds, which 
 is twice what we can count on, and where 
 are we? Why, we can see our way to 134 
 crops, and a part of another. But there's Colo- 
 nel North with his paper title to the nitrate 
 parts of the decks of the ship which clearly 
 belong in common to all of us how about 
 Colonel North and his nitrate beds? Well, 
 said science, at the present rate of shipments, 
 they will last only a few decades, at most- 
 some said thirty years, some three hundred 
 because nobody knows just how much Colonel 
 North had. And then? Why, then, with that 
 illimitable sea of nitrogen about our heads, 
 we shall all gradually Hie out of starvation! 
 There was no way out of it human life is 
 based on plant life, and plant life on nitrogen, 
 
 39 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 and the fixed nitrogen supply is approaching 
 exhaustion. So said science through Sir Will- 
 iam Crookes. 
 
 But the good farmers of the world always 
 felt that Sir William was a bit off. They knew 
 that when they planted clover, beans, vetch, 
 peanuts, or any other leguminous that is pod- 
 bearing crop, and plowed it under, the soil 
 seemed richer in something afterward. Sci- 
 ence said that that couldn't be. "For," said 
 science, "all the nitrogen the legume gets, it 
 gets from the soil, and you can't get any more 
 by plowing back what you've just taken out." 
 Moreover the scientists "proved" by experi- 
 ment that the pod-bearers don't secrete nitro- 
 gen from the air. 
 
 "But," said the good farmer, scratching his 
 head, "it is richer, for all that!" 
 
 "Nonsense!" said science. 
 
 And then the most wonderful discovery of 
 agricultural science convinced the wise men 
 that the farmer was right. Science found that 
 on the roots of these leguminous plants, are lit- 
 tle knobs like tiny potatoes, and in the knobs, 
 
 40 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 millions upon millions of little plants called 
 bacteria, so small as to be invisible to the naked 
 eye. We used to think they were disease-galls ! 
 Suddenly through the patient researches of 
 science, the mistakes of science were cor- 
 rected; and we were informed that these bac- 
 teria, unlike the big plants, have the power to 
 take free nitrogen out of the air in the ground, 
 and fix it so the other plants can get it! 
 
 Science threw up its hat. We needn't starve 
 for lack of nitrogen! Colonel North's descend- 
 ants can't look forward to the time when the 
 other passengers on the good ship Earth will 
 come crawling on their bellies, begging ni- 
 trates, supplicating for the privilege of living 
 on board a while longer. We can get our ni- 
 trogen out of the air. 
 
 When God started to build a world, he 
 started from the bottom. When the first plants 
 were evolved, they had to be plants which 
 could get nitrogen from the air, because ex- 
 cept for a small amount deposited through the 
 action of lightning, there was none in the 
 rocks. The first plants were one-celled plants 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 which could do this. When the clover began 
 business the bacteria came around and asked 
 the privilege of building houses in which to 
 live on the clover roots. "Certainly," said the 
 clover, "but youVe got to pay rent." "All 
 right," said the bacteria, "we'll furnish the ni- 
 trogen, if you'll look out for the other table 
 board, and the matter of lodging. Is it a go?" 
 "It's a go!" said the legume; and they have 
 been partners ever since, each living on the 
 other, and all taking nitrogen out of the air 
 for themselves and other plants. 
 
 In the crust of the earth there is only a trace 
 of nitrogen, and all there is, as far as I know, 
 is in the soil. I suppose that all of it which is 
 in the soil has been taken from the air by the 
 bacteria and fungi Colonel North's and all 
 the rest. If these tiny, tiny passengers had not 
 come aboard millions of years before us, we 
 could never have come into being. Despise 
 not the day of small things. The basis of all 
 life is too small to be seen by the microscope. 
 
 I often wonder what we should have done 
 about North's monopoly, if Crookes had not 
 
 42 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 been mistaken. Would the other passengers 
 have recognized his paper title to the power 
 to starve them? I wonder! The courts, of 
 course, would have stood up for Colonel 
 North. 
 
 It is, therefore, the clover-plant and its 
 brethren, the peas, beans, alfalfas and the like, 
 that will save the passengers on the good ship 
 Earth from being obliged to go crusading in 
 search of soils provided with nitrogen. 
 
 I am trying to look at some of the larger 
 problems of the world as concretely as pos- 
 sible. We are passengers on a huge ship driv- 
 ing through space as one of Zeppelin's air- 
 ships drives through air, save that we know 
 not what guides us, and that we spin like a 
 curved baseball, and whirl round and round 
 the sun from which, by wireless transmissions 
 over the ninety-five millions of miles of space 
 which separate us from our planetary "con- 
 trol", we get our light, heat and power. 
 
 We are all in the same boat. We did not 
 make the boat we ourselves are made from 
 the dust on the planking of her 'decks. We are 
 
 43 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 divided up into nations, clans, tribes, classes 
 and races ; but we are all tenants of the decks 
 of the ship Earth. Looked at as an original 
 question, what are our rights and what our 
 duties to our fellow passengers, and the great 
 property for the ship is really our property 
 which our children must be made of, and 
 live upon? 
 
 We have learned that as animals we must 
 live either on plants, or on other animals 
 which have been made of plants plants which 
 break out in a green rash all over the decks of 
 the old boat. And that there are ten things 
 which must be found in soil or air before a field 
 can nourish plants every one of the ten : car- 
 bon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, potas- 
 sium, nitrogen, sulphur, calcium, iron and 
 magnesium. Of these there are only three or 
 four that need give us any uneasiness nitro- 
 gen, phosphorus and potassium and probably 
 sulphur. Not that these are any more neces- 
 sary than the other six or seven, but that they 
 are soil elements that are scarce, and the using 
 
 44 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 up of which would puf an end to the human 
 race by putting an end to vegetation. 
 
 We have seen that there was once a scare 
 for fear that the nitrogen would soon be ex- 
 hausted; and that we discovered that certain 
 plants of the clover tribe are taking it from the 
 air all the time when given a chance, and stor- 
 ing it in the soil. So that scare ended. 
 
 Let us now look into the hold of the ship 
 and see how we are supplied with potassium. 
 
 But first, what is potassium? It is the ele- 
 ment which gives its name to potash which 
 any one may make from the lye of wood ashes. 
 It is found in the ashes of any field crop, when 
 the plant is burned. It is plain, then, if it is a 
 part of every one of these plants, that it must 
 exist where the plant can reach it, or no crop 
 can grow. Potassium is not found in the air 
 as is nitrogen so it must be obtained from the 
 soil. 
 
 In the grain of a hundred-bushel crop of 
 corn, there are nineteen pounds of potassium. 
 An average soil contains enough at this rate to 
 
 45 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 make 2,500 crops. No need to worry then? 
 Well, is it any less serious for the race to end 
 for lack of food in 2,500 years, than in one 
 hundred? Or be sent crusading and slaying 
 after new lands in the year A. D. 10,000 rather 
 than A. D. 2,000? If we are wasting what the 
 passengers must some day need, does it make 
 any real difference that we shall not be pres- 
 ent to witness their sufferings? It does not 
 seem so to me. I think we should be as alive 
 to suffering in Europe or Asia to-day, as if it 
 were in the next room ; and as solicitous for the 
 happinesss of the world's passengers a thou- 
 sand years hence, as next week. Especially as 
 our acts make for or against that happiness. 
 
 There are many lands even now which need 
 potassium. We import millions of dollars of 
 it annually. As "kainite" and in other forms 
 it is a very important article of commerce. 
 
 The lands which need it most, are not yet 
 under cultivation to anything like the extent 
 which the future will require. As the passen- 
 gers on the good ship Earth multiply and 
 need land, instead of swarming out against 
 
 46 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 other peoples, they will, let us hope, draw off 
 the water from the lands that are only just sub- 
 merged and reclaim them. In other words, 
 we shall drain swamps. 
 
 By doing this, we may dry up additional 
 deck room in the United States so as to add to 
 our habitable heritage an area as big as the 
 three states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois 
 about 76,000,000 acres. 
 
 We often say of a swamp: "Drain it and it 
 will be the richest land in the world." This 
 is always said, and usually it is true. The land 
 of swamps usually is rich in nitrogen, in phos- 
 phorus and most other plant foods. But watch 
 a corn-field in a drained swamp, and you will 
 often see the corn turn yellow in July, and you 
 will note a failure of yield. This spot is not 
 helping to feed the passengers. The swamp 
 was a peat-bed, and lacks potassium. So, as 
 we drain our swamps, and as we exhaust the 
 potash from other lands, we shall need to put 
 on the fields untold tons of it. And we do now 
 buy it by the millions of pounds. 
 
 Whence comes it? Nitrogen, we recall, 
 
 47 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 comes mostly from Chili, and the nitrate beds 
 with which Colonel North, the nitrate king, 
 dreamed of ruling the world in that dreadful 
 day when the world should crawl to him on its 
 belly for nitrogen that great and awful day 
 of the Lord. 
 
 Is there a potash king, then? Yes, and no. 
 If there is one, he is Kaiser Wilhelm, of Ger- 
 many. The great potassium beds of the world 
 are in his realm. It lies there, in beds 5,000 
 feet deep enough for the world for thou- 
 sands of years, if there were no other place 
 from which to get it. There are no such beds 
 known elsewhere. 
 
 But the kaiser dreams no such dream as 
 that of Colonel North; for he knows that we 
 can get potash elsewhere. Not so cheaply, nor 
 in such accessible masses, but we can get it. 
 There are plenty of rocks that contain from 
 six to eight per cent, of potassium we may be 
 able to grind them and extract their potassium 
 and put it on the land. 
 
 And did you ever run over from the Cali- 
 fornia coast to Santa Catalina Island for an 
 
 48 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 outing? If so, did you notice the great fields 
 of a water plant called "kelp" that grows in 
 huge beds all along that coast? Well, the de- 
 partment of agriculture has discovered that 
 we have in this weed a possible source of pot- 
 ash, to the value of $40,000,000 a year, if we 
 choose to extract it. And out of the weed, too, 
 would come by-products like iodine, glue, 
 shellac and paper. Probably these things will 
 in part or in whole pay for the work, and the 
 potash may be clear gain. Isn't it fine to dis- 
 cover so much food of which we were unaware 
 in the sea? For potassium is food, remember 
 when the crops have worked it up for us. 
 The geological survey, too, have recently 
 found small deposits of potash in the govern- 
 ment domain enough for thirty years. 
 
 The German potash princes and the Ger- 
 man government have been a little stingy about 
 their potash, lately. We have had a fuss with 
 them about it. And I don't blame them for 
 looking closely after so important a matter. 
 But I'd like to see our government develop 
 our potash industry by opening up our mines, 
 
 49 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 and setting up works to make potash out of 
 kelp for the benefit of the human race, whose 
 very flesh must be made of the planking of the 
 decks of the good ship Earth. I'd like to see 
 shiploads of potash come from the kelp of 
 California to the hungry lands of the east, 
 through the Panama Canal, from those gov- 
 ernment works. 
 
 There are pastures in Australia, of a kind 
 of herbage called "kangaroo grass". Live 
 stock fed on this grass for too long a time 
 suffer from a fatal disease of the skeleton, 
 called by the farmers "bone disease". The 
 cause of it has been a mystery until lately. 
 
 Scientists have known that the soil is defi- 
 cient in phosphorus but they did not know 
 that the plants growing out of it were also 
 poor in this element. Recently it has been dis- 
 covered that these plants have adjusted them- 
 selves to the lack of phosphorus so that they 
 have only one-tenth of the phosphoric acid in 
 their make-up that crops must have on which 
 animals with bony skeletons can live. 
 
 50 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 The bone disease is thus accounted for. 
 Phosphorus is an essential part of bone, as 
 well as of blood and of flesh. Any race which 
 possesses "bone and sinew", or "good red 
 blood" must feed on plants receiving phos- 
 phorus from the soil, or on animals which 
 have done so so dependent are we who are 
 made in the image of God, on the very dust 
 beneath our feet, for our moral as well as 
 physical existence. If the soil on which a na- 
 tion lives loses its phosphorus, that nation must 
 die or go out killing and ravaging, seeking 
 other lands. 
 
 Animals have been fed, as an experiment 2 
 on foods deficient in phosphorus. For a while 
 they seemed to do well. Then they collapsed. 
 It takes only three months of a ration without 
 phosphorus to wreck an animal. Individual 
 creatures were killed after a month of this 
 diet, and it was found that the flesh was taking 
 the phosphate for the phosphorus exists in 
 the body in that form from the bones to sup- 
 ply its need. In other words, the body was eat- 
 ing its own bones! When this process had 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 robbed the bones to the limit, the collapse 
 came, and the animal could never recover. 
 
 Now as passengers on the good ship Earth, 
 it will be worth our while to look into the 
 hold of the ship and see. how much phosphorus 
 the cosmic forces put into the bunkers when 
 they flung us spinning out into space, under 
 wireless control, to whirl we know not where. 
 Shall we find enough? Are we as a race 
 doomed after many famines and pestilences, 
 and wars and rumors of wars to die perhaps 
 of starvation, perhaps of bone disease and to 
 leave the ship lifeless, or to plants like those 
 of Australia which have learned to do with 
 little phosphorus, or to boneless animals, fitted 
 for a similar phosphateless life? 
 
 This is the indispensable element in which 
 we find the soils of the world poorest. In the 
 original rocks there are only eleven hun- 
 dredths of one per cent, of it on the average. 
 Good virgin soils are even poorer than this. 
 It is a good soil indeed which has 2,000 
 pounds of phosphorus per acre in the top 
 seven inches of soil. So we see that in the 
 
 52 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 process of making soil, a large part of the 
 original stock is lost. 
 
 Where we have worked over the soil the 
 dust on the planks of the good ship Earth 
 until it is said to be "exhausted" we find that it 
 is usually the phosphorus which is gone or 
 nearly so. Old soils from the level coastal 
 plain of Virginia, said to be too poor to work, 
 test as low as 340 pounds of phosphorus in the 
 upper 2,000,000 pounds of soil. The worn- 
 out fields of Asia are very poor in phosphorus. 
 Some depleted soils in India have been found 
 to show only what the chemists call a "trace" 
 of it too little to measure. 
 
 In the youth of the race, these old fields 
 made men but they are now deserts. 
 
 "They say the Lion and the Lizard keep 
 The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank 
 
 deep: 
 And Bahram, that great Hunter the Wild 
 
 Ass 
 Stamps o'er his Head, but can not break his 
 
 Sleep!" 
 
 And the lion and the lizard will return to 
 53 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 keep the courts where we reign and glory and 
 drink deep when the phosphorus of the soil 
 goes. And then the lion and the lizard will 
 themselves go the same road. And then the 
 good ship Earth will sail the illimitable 
 fields of space without passengers! Is this 
 what the fates have in store for us? 
 
 A fair crop of wheat takes from each acre 
 of the deck room devoted to its culture, 12.5 
 pounds of phosphoric oxide; barley, 15 
 pounds; oats, 12; corn, 18, and other crops ac- 
 cordingly. So even our rich lands possess only 
 enough in the upper eight inches to mature 
 from 1 60 to 250 crops. There is phosphorus 
 deeper than that, and there are richer soils. 
 But where fields like those of Japan, China, 
 Korea and Manchuria have been farmed for 
 forty centuries, we find the farmers now 
 obliged to put back every year as much of this 
 element as they have taken away, or more. A 
 single year's failure to do this on their part, 
 and these nations would begin to starve. 
 
 This depletion of the soil makes a full and 
 enlightened life to be derived from it almost 
 
 54 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 out of the question. The peoples who are 
 forced by necessity to return to the soil all they 
 take from it are bowed down in servitude to 
 the crops. They carry ordure in buckets and 
 make soup of it for the rice. They seek for 
 dung on the highways as for a treasure, and 
 look upon a latrine as an Iowa farmer looks 
 upon a bank. They climb mountains to pluck 
 herbage which they thrust down into the mud 
 of the fields with their feet. They carefully 
 lift the mud from the bottoms of streams and 
 canals and carry it to the fields for the little 
 fertility it holds. They reap the aquatic plants 
 from waterways as we reap harvest fields, and 
 compost them for the crops. They carry the 
 very earth of the fields to their houses, and 
 mix ashes, night-soil and other fertilizers with 
 it, carrying it back in the proper season to 
 feed the crops. All this is wonderful and ad- 
 mirable as agriculture but where the books 
 of the fields are so strictly balanced as to fer- 
 tility the amount of human life expended on 
 the up-keep of the land is almost incredibly 
 near to the volume of vitality which the prod- 
 
 SS 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 uce of the field will sustain. This is the ex- 
 pression in terms of fertility of the economic 
 pressure on the oldest farms in the world. It 
 tells in terms of human life what happens 
 when the deposits in the bank of the soil have 
 been all checked out by farming. 
 
 Yet we, the "civilized", the "progressive" 
 nation, waste our precious store like drunken 
 sailors. The limiting element in even our rich 
 Mississippi Valley soils is already phosphorus. 
 Fifty years of our awful robbery of the store- 
 rooms of the race, takes out a third of the 
 phosphorus a short fifty years! After credit- 
 ing the farms of Wisconsin with the return of 
 everything the farmers put back, the net loss 
 per year in phosphorus to that state is 15,000,- 
 ooo pounds, worth at five cents a pound, $750,- 
 ooo. Our great "balance of trade" of which 
 we so much boast, and with so little reason, 
 would look much smaller if we deducted from 
 it the phosphorus sent away the actual land 
 in the grains and meats and fruits. 
 
 Phosphorus does not exist in the air, and 
 being an element, it can not be artificially pro- 
 
 56 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 duced. We must find it if we get it. We find 
 it in fossil guano and in the phosphate rocks. 
 There are in South Carolina 3,000,000 tons of 
 good phosphate rock, which will pay to grind; 
 in Florida 166,000,000 tons ; in Tennessee, 160,- 
 000,000 tons. We are mining this and export- 
 ing it to restore the depleted soils of Europe 
 for profit. It has been estimated that all this 
 store in our Southern phosphate fields will be 
 gone by 1932 probably it will vanish before. 
 We can grind poorer rock, but there is a limit 
 to the lowness of grade which will return as 
 much food as we shall expend in grinding it. 
 
 Perhaps there is a region where nature has 
 placed her store of phosphorus, as she did in 
 Chili in the case of nitrogen, and in Germany 
 for potash? There are many rocks still un- 
 explored, and there may be much more phos- 
 phate than we know of; but aside from 60,- 
 000,000 tons of high-grade in three South Sea 
 Islands, we know of no great deposits save 
 what Uncle Sam possesses in Idaho, Wyoming 
 and Utah the deposits the conservationists 
 have fought to keep them out of private hands. 
 
 57 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Uncle Sam is the Colonel North and the 
 Kaiser Wilhelm of phosphorus with 9,500,- 
 000,000 tons of good rock in his bunkers. 
 
 But no matter how rich the rocks may be, 
 within any reasonable probability, the supply 
 will give out unless it is rigidly conserved 
 and the race will die. Once there were mil- 
 lions of tons of it called guano in the drop- 
 pings of sea-birds on Pacific islands. The 
 sea-birds catch fish which have much nitro- 
 gen and phosphorus in their bodies. These 
 fish pass through the digestive organs of the 
 birds, the unassimilated parts being dropped 
 on the islands where the nests are made. The 
 old Peruvians protected the sea-birds from 
 destruction; for they knew that these winged 
 benefactors were retrieving from the ocean the 
 lost fertility of the globe. 
 
 But we are civilized, and kill the birds. The 
 last men on earth may be grouped about the 
 spots whose phosphorus has not been lost from 
 the soil spots like the phosphatic soils of the 
 bluegrass region of Kentucky, and similar por- 
 tions of France, and some other countries ; and 
 
 58 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 in regions kept populated by the fertility re- 
 trieved from the sea by billions of sea-birds 
 bred for the purpose. But before that time 
 comes, as unless we change our ways it will, 
 the world will tremble with the tread of 
 armed hosts leaving lands depleted of this 
 phosphorus, and hunting new lands. 
 
 For many years we have believed that there 
 are only three elements of mineral plant food 
 which are likely to give us trouble by their 
 scarcity phosphorus, nitrogen and potash. 
 To these, however, we must now reluctantly 
 add sulphur. The analyses of plants on which 
 chemists relied as showing their needs in sul- 
 phur have been shown to be unreliable, be- 
 cause of the fact that this element escaped in 
 the fumes thrown off in the chemical labora- 
 tory, and was to some extent lost. We under- 
 estimated the amount of sulphur taken out of 
 the soil by the crops. 
 
 We were lulled into security, also, by the 
 fact that sulphur falls from the skies in rain 
 and snow. At Madison, Wisconsin, where the 
 latest determinations have been made by Hart 
 
 59 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 and Stevenson, the annual precipitation of sul- 
 phur in rain and snow is from fifteen to twenty 
 pounds per acre. This is enough for the crops 
 if it were all available; but much of it falls 
 outside the growing season, and a good deal is 
 lost in the run-off of water and carried away 
 by drainage. 
 
 That the supply is not sufficient for the re- 
 quirements of farming is shown by two facts. 
 The first fact is that soils cropped for from 
 fifty to sixty years have lost forty per cent, of 
 their original supply of sulphur. The second 
 is that when sulphur is applied to the soil the 
 crops are improved, which would not be the 
 case if this element were not getting scarce. 
 
 Most authorities disagree with this state- 
 ment as to the scarcity of sulphur. It is a new 
 idea, and is not yet generally accepted. It 
 may be an error. But, if it does turn out to 
 be scarce, fortunately, there is no lack of sul- 
 phur in the earth's crust. A ton of gypsum 
 contains about 900 pounds of sulphur; and 
 gypsum is found in enormous beds in most 
 parts of the world. Phosphorus is ordinarily 
 
 60 
 
FOUR PROBLEMS OF FOOD 
 
 applied either in the form of ground phos- 
 phate rock, or in superphosphate, which is 
 phosphate rock treated with sulphuric acid. 
 This latter fertilizer carries from 200 to 300 
 pounds of sulphur to the ton, in addition to 
 its phosphorus. 
 
 Our ancestors used to apply "land plaster" 
 (which is ground gypsum) to their farms sev- 
 enty-five yeafs ago, with good results. There 
 is every reason to believe that we shall be 
 obliged to return to a modification of this 
 practise. The sulphur problem is not an in- 
 soluble one, but it calls for study, and the res- 
 toration of sulphur to the depleted soil is one 
 of the tasks which confront the mariners who 
 navigate the good ship Earth. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ONLY THING WORTH WORSHIPING- 
 FORCE 
 
 WE honor the man of whom we can say 
 "He does things." We are not so 
 very discriminating as to whether he does 
 things inherently good, or inherently bad. The 
 James brothers were very popular men among 
 their neighbors, as were Dick Turpin and 
 Robin Hood, among theirs in Merrie Eng- 
 land. They did things. 
 
 Napoleon was adored because he did things 
 without reference to whether or not they 
 were good or bad. He murdered France and 
 was adored by France. 
 
 Women fawn on the men who beat them. 
 The rape of the Sabine woman is ever rati- 
 fied by cunnubiality no Rome fails of popu- 
 lation when possessed of men like the ruthless 
 sons of Romulus. The wolf breed conquers by 
 
 62 
 
FORCE 
 
 force, and love follows some sort of love. 
 Dogs lick always the hand of a Bill Sikes. 
 
 In all ages and everywhere, by a universal 
 instinct, the human being worships force. For 
 it is all there is in the universe worth wor- 
 shiping. The instincts of men and women are 
 always justified in the court of last resort 
 the welfare of the race. 
 
 The sun has been worshiped more gener- 
 ally and more intelligently than any other 
 natural object. The ancient Peruvians pos- 
 sessed the most striking temple of the sun, but 
 Greeks, Romans, Parsees, Norsemen, Persians 
 and all the rest have been sun-worshipers. 
 Our day of worship is still Sunday. And if in 
 a really godless world, science were called 
 upon to choose the thing to deify, it would 
 choose force as the god, and could find no such 
 adequate representation of it as the sun. 
 
 We used to say that in all the universe, there 
 are only two actualities, matter and force. We 
 now, by the radium discoveries, find that mat- 
 ter seems to be only a form of force. So our 
 minds are brought to confront the apparent 
 
 63 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 proof that there is only one thing real, and 
 that is force. If so, the blind worship of force 
 is very close to the intelligent worship of God. 
 
 The springs that move every living thing 
 are wound up by the sun. Protoplasm, the 
 only living thing on earth, has movements. 
 These movements exert force. This force 
 comes from the sun. All processes of life, from 
 the blow of the prize-fighter, or the thrust of 
 the lance of Sir Galahad, to the thought that 
 is recorded on this page, or the blossoming of 
 a lily, are the result of cell-activities in plant 
 or animal, and these cell-activities all are 
 made up of impulses from the sun, imparted 
 to the earth through its rays. 
 
 The higher types of animals are warmer 
 than their surroundings. Their heat is ob- 
 tained from inner fires kept burning by sup- 
 plies of fuel in food. An Eskimo uses whale 
 oil or seal or walrus or fish oil for fuel in 
 his body he drinks it and eats it. He also 
 burns it for outward heat. We do the same 
 things we eat oils in nuts, fat meats and salad 
 oils, and we burn it in lamps, stoves and fur- 
 
 64 
 
FORCE 
 
 naces. Oils are merely stored energy from the 
 sun solar heat has given atoms a certain 
 twist, and when this twist is freed the resulting 
 kick shows itself in heat. So of starches, 
 sugars and those foods like lean meats which 
 we call proteins. The sun warms us directly; 
 and indirectly he piles his force up into the 
 atoms of foods and fuels, so that we can utilize 
 the power he poured upon the earth eons ago. 
 
 We ourselves are alive only because the 
 heat-units which our beings make over into 
 life-force have been stored in the decks of our 
 good ship Earth and embodied in us. We are 
 sun-created. We may say we are composed of 
 matter and force. The matter is of the earth, 
 the force is of the sun. 
 
 There are black, dead, cold planets in the 
 voids of space among the bright stars of heaven 
 thousands of them perhaps millions. They 
 do not shine. When one of them comes be- 
 tween us and a star, the light of the star goes 
 out. Some of them are twinned with a shin- 
 ing star, the dead twin and the live one revolv- 
 ing as though connected like dumb-bells by an 
 
 65 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 invisible rod. Some such stars are variable or 
 intermittent, the bright one dimming or dis- 
 appearing as the dark one comes between us 
 and its shining twin. 
 
 These dead suns and dead worlds have lost 
 a great deal of their force or energy. Perhaps 
 some of them still have as much as have we 
 for our good air-ship Earth does not shine 
 as a sun, but only glows moon-like. These 
 worlds, though dark, may be habitable. We 
 do not know. But we can not see how any 
 world can support life, which does not receive 
 from some sun, which is itself too hot with 
 force to be habitable, a supply which the 
 magic slime, protoplasm, may work up into 
 living beings. 
 
 The force we get hourly from the sun, we 
 may use as a family uses such an income as a 
 life annuity. All we can get out of it belongs 
 to us, and when we die, as far as we are con- 
 cerned it stops. If we don't get all we can out 
 of it, we are foolish. We are passengers on the 
 ship and if we do not use the sunshine, the 
 wind and the waters that flow and surge in 
 
 66 
 
FORCE 
 
 tides of force all about us, we have ourselves 
 and our ignorance and inefficiency to blame. 
 
 But in the decking of the ship in that thin 
 crust of rock planking that we stand upon, and 
 which separates us from the molten core 
 within, there are bunkers in which are stored 
 force which came to the good ship Earth while 
 the forces of the cosmos were preparing it for 
 our voyage. In these bunkers are the bodies, 
 brains and blood of the coming race. These 
 are like deposits in bank, which, when drawn 
 out, are not replenished by new deposits. God 
 opened the account and handed us the Book. 
 
 "Increase, multiply and replenish the 
 earth," said He. "I will send my rays upon 
 you as needed. And in future ages after 
 knowledge shall have been increased, you shall 
 discover the oil, the coal, the gas and the 
 power that comes from falling water. Use the 
 income of the planet freely, and make the 
 most of it. But the deposits which are in the 
 bunkers of the ship I have given, exhaust at 
 your peril. For the bunkers once emptied, 
 will never be refilled!" 
 
 67 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 So, while we were savages weak in knowl- 
 edge and knew not of the smallness or the 
 largeness of our Zeppelin Earth we were weak 
 also in power to take from the deposits in the 
 bunkers. We dug a little gold, a little lead, a 
 little zinc and some copper, but no coal, and 
 we knew nothing of the oils and gases be- 
 neath us. 
 
 As for the forests, we had only weak ways 
 of cutting them down, or of sawing the logs, 
 or of carrying them when cut. Only a small 
 part of the deck-dust soil was tilled. Suddenly 
 in less than a century science smiled on 
 us, and we found ourselves blessed or cursed 
 with knowledge and the power to take out 
 the deposits. We have found out how to draw 
 checks on the bank God established for us, and 
 which the sun filled in all those ages, but is 
 now filling no more. 
 
 Shall we use the power unrestrained by the 
 knowledge which comes with it? 
 
 It is the old story of the freedom of the will 
 the ethical riddle of the sphinx. The young 
 world has come of age and we present pas- 
 
 68 
 
FORCE 
 
 sengers are the world. Are we drawing checks 
 recklessly wasting the deposits God gave to 
 us and our progeny or, are we conserving 
 them? Let us see! 
 
 How many readers ever heard of a cement 
 boat? I don't mean a boat loaded with ce- 
 ment, but one made of it. Such craft are 
 in existence and successfully used on some 
 of the waterways of Europe. They are easily 
 mended if stove, and can be made in compart- 
 ments so as to be unsinkable. 
 
 Once there was made a huge cement craft 
 in the form of a raft only it was many miles 
 long. It was reinforced to some extent, but 
 was really not subjected to much strain, on 
 account of being so much longer than any 
 wave, and every square yard of it being up- 
 held by the water, just the same as every other 
 square yard. The strain was no greater than 
 that upon an island. A rim was made about 
 the edge, and the decks filled in with good 
 rich earth to the depth of several feet. Great 
 caves were made running through the cement 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 island, which were at the same time air-tight 
 compartments, and roomy cabins for all sorts 
 of purposes mostly living-rooms. The earth 
 was planted in various trees and crops^ and in 
 a warm climate which was the sort for 
 which it was intended the artificial island 
 could produce all the food the thousand men 
 and women on board needed. The raft was 
 made with a lagoon in the center, like a coral 
 atoll, and there was a braced passage for the 
 entrance of ships. 
 
 It was built for a floating breakwater and 
 dry dock for a Pacific location, where the na- 
 tion building it had no harbor and no right to 
 anchor permanently inside the three-mile 
 limit. It was really a floating harbor and 
 'colony. 
 
 Running through the cement structure were 
 certain great chambers, which were filled, 
 some with coal and some with oil and some 
 with compressed gas, for fuel, light and 
 power purposes. The coal was dumped into 
 these cavities, covered with gunny sacks and 
 the cement poured over the top to harden, so 
 
 70 
 
FORCE 
 
 there was no waste room the cavities were 
 filled chock-full. 
 
 This great artificial floating island was lost 
 on its way around Cape Horn, by a storm 
 which wrecked most of the steamers that 
 were towing it and blew the rest away. With 
 all its people a thousand men and women it 
 drifted into the Sargasso Sea, where the cur- 
 rents run about the Atlantic in an immense 
 circle, making a great slow whirlpool, out of 
 which nothing ever drifts. It is full of sea- 
 weed and wreckage all slowly drifting round 
 and round and inward toward the center and 
 has strange fishes and birds all of its own. The 
 thousand people were lost for the Sargasso 
 Sea is out of the track of the ships that cross 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 There was artificial land sufficient to make 
 subsistence easy enough, by a resort to inten- 
 sive gardening. The trees soon grew so as to 
 make the place beautiful. In fine weather 
 everybody slept in the gardens on deck. The 
 living-rooms below were well lighted with 
 gas, and were really pleasant when the 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 weather was rough outside. It was not so bad 
 a place, after all. Here the people lived and 
 married and had children and died and were 
 buried in the green depths of the sea. 
 
 One day, it was discovered that the coal in 
 the bunkers was being wickedly wasted. 
 Three-fourths of it were being thrown away 
 just because it was inconvenient to handle. 
 What was used was burned in such a manner 
 that not half of it did anybody any good ; the 
 portion wasted in smoke made life on board 
 disagreeable to all, and worse still, the portion 
 used for making electric light was more than 
 ninety-nine per cent, lost in converting its en- 
 ergy into current! This was one of the first 
 real troubles they had; for they did not know 
 what would become of them when the coal 
 was gone. 
 
 A meeting was called. The people on board 
 asserted that they were all equally interested 
 in those supplies on which the well-being of 
 all depended. But those who were handling 
 the coal business refused to admit that the 
 others had any rights in the case. For on di- 
 
 72 
 
FORCE 
 
 viding up the island when they were cast 
 away, the decks, on which opened the hatches 
 leading to the coal bunkers, were assigned to 
 these coal people and therefore the coal in 
 the bunkers had passed into private possession, 
 and become private property. The passengers, 
 however, laughed at this theory of private 
 property when it was put forth by the coal 
 "owners", and took possession of the coal as 
 a part of the common property of all, and be- 
 gan a course of economy in taking out and 
 using it by which they so conserved the coal 
 that when the island was finally rediscovered 
 and the people taken off, there was still a 
 great deal of coal in the bunkers, though sev- 
 eral years had elapsed. 
 
 The above is an allegory, or as Jesus called 
 such stories, a parable. It is the shortest way 
 I know to tell you the coal problem which 
 confronts us passengers on the good ship 
 Earth. 
 
 There is only just so much coal in the earth. 
 Does it belong to all of us, or only to those 
 who have deeds to the land above it? I don't 
 
 73 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 mean in law I know what the courts would 
 say but in real truth and in real fact, by that 
 higher law which forbids the waste of those 
 things on which the race must base its future 
 life? Careful estimates have been made lead- 
 ing to the conclusion that if we keep up the 
 increase in the consumption of coal at our 
 present rate, the supply will give out in one 
 hundred and fifty years. I believe there will 
 be much of coal long after that; but this is cer- 
 tainly true sometime it must be exhausted if 
 we keep on mining it. That's as certain as 
 death. And we are as wicked and cruel in our 
 waste if we bring this awful catastrophe pre- 
 maturely on the world ten thousand years from 
 now, as in ten years. Can one escape that con- 
 clusion? 
 
 The people who are handling the coal busi- 
 ness for us on the good ship Earth are wast- 
 ing the coal. From one-half to three-quar- 
 ters of the anthracite and half the soft coal are 
 wasted in mining. It costs less to take out only 
 that which comes easiest, so a great deal is 
 left to be hidden forever when the props come 
 
 74 
 
FORCE 
 
 out and the roof caves in. Thus, the com- 
 panies make more money, and we get cheaper 
 coal than if it were properly mined. 
 
 There are nearly a hundred thousand bee- 
 hive coke ovens in the United States which 
 waste fifty million dollars' worth of the good- 
 ness of the coal annually all the gas, all the 
 tar, all the heat developed in the coking 
 process and all the fertilizer are wasted fer- 
 tilizer our hungry soils need so sorely. Ovens 
 such as are used in really civilized nations 
 would save these and make their owners 
 money. One-twelfth of all our coal goes up 
 in black smoke or $40,000,000 a year. Me- 
 chanical stokers would save almost all of this. 
 Van Hise says that in one fair-sized plant 
 the smoke-preventing machines save more 
 than a third of the coal. It is certain that this 
 smoke curse could be prevented. 
 
 Only one per cent, of the coal's energy is 
 realized in light when burned to make elec- 
 tricity! We should make our lights of other 
 things water-power, for instance. 
 
 In using coal for power, much more could 
 
 75 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 be made if the fuel elements were converted 
 into gas and used in gas engines instead of 
 steam engines. It is perfectly well settled that 
 coal converted into producer gas gives more 
 than two and a half times the power that it 
 does when used to make steam. Think of 
 saving two-thirds of the coal burned in sta- 
 tionary steam engines! But it takes better 
 men, more intelligent men, to run such en- 
 gines. So what we need is more intelligence 
 in the mine owners, more intelligence in en- 
 gineers, more intelligence and better morals 
 all along the line. We could get along with 
 less than half the coal we burn, if we tried 
 hard. And there is a way by which we might 
 do a great deal better than that 
 
 The big question is, of course, to whom the 
 supplies belong which God has placed in the 
 hold of this good ship Earth. Suppose they 
 were threatened by an accidental conflagra- 
 tion, how the coal barons would call on every 
 good citizen to fight for the "heritage of the 
 race I" Why isn't it our heritage when a 
 money-making conflagration is ravaging it? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 IN these sketches of world problems, we 
 have considered how the passengers on our 
 terrestrial Zeppelin have been assigned their 
 present quarters, and why they are crowded 
 so largely into Europe, Southern and Eastern 
 Asia, and Eastern North America. The basic 
 reason lies in the supply of potash, nitrates 
 and phosphorus in the soil, on the planking 
 of the decks. For where these things occur 
 Mother Earth has that blessed breaking-out 
 of green rash on her skin, called vegetation 
 and on that animal life is based. But there 
 are many regions in which these elements are 
 plentifully found, but where the climate for- 
 bids successful community life, or, at any rate, 
 forbids a dense population. It is too hot as 
 in the tropics; or too hot and wet as in the 
 forests of Central Africa or Central South 
 
 77 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 America; or too hot and dry, as in the Sahara; 
 or too dry with a good temperature, as in 
 much of North America; or too cold, as in a 
 great deal of Canada, Labrador, Siberia, and 
 portions of Russia and Patagonia. Greenland, 
 Iceland and the unknown antarctic continent 
 are almost always frozen. 
 
 With the human race so growing in num- 
 bers, it seems certain that new lands will have 
 to be occupied peaceably; or the old fierce 
 game of war and conquest and extirpation 
 must be resumed. 
 
 The passengers used to kill one another off 
 more than now. Away off in the unknown 
 wilds of Eastern Asia, some great brute of a 
 murderer like Genghis Khan would arise and 
 assail his fellow men using other fellow men 
 as a weapon, and the tribes and nations 
 would begin to be driven against one another 
 like a row of falling bricks. The huge con- 
 tinent would shake with war and finally, the 
 wave would surge westward until our an- 
 cestors in Europe would be involved. Under 
 the beating of such waves, Greece was sub- 
 
 78 
 
SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 merged, and the Roman Empire went down in 
 ruins. The passengers were seeking new quar- 
 ters, that's all. But now, we seem to have 
 ceased for a while to do this in their way at 
 least. And with the falling off in murder 
 there is an increase in people. 
 
 To help on this increase, science is master- 
 ing disease. So in spite of famine and, pov- 
 erty, men are so multiplying that new quarters 
 will one day be absolutely necessary. The pas- 
 sengers are in many places getting too nu- 
 merous. In peaceful China and prolific India, 
 and probably -in some other countries, the 
 limits of subsistence are already being pressed 
 upon by sheer force of numbers. Where is 
 the new land for the new billions? 
 
 There are two directions in which the land- 
 swarmings of the future may move. They are 
 north and south. In both directions the cli- 
 matic conditions are so rigorous as to have 
 kept men from multiplying under them to 
 any great extent for the hot regions of the 
 air-ship amidships, and the cold regions at 
 stem and stern are both sparsely supplied with 
 
 79 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 angers. Where, as in some densely-peo- 
 pled tropical regions this is not true, the com- 
 munity life is not successful. 
 
 Climate! This is the one thing man has 
 never yet been able to control. Almost every 
 other phase of his environments, he can mod- 
 ify. He can cause new and more useful ani- 
 mals and plants to supplant the ones Nature 
 gave the earth. He can annihilate distance. 
 He can chain the spirits of coal. He can 
 harness the winds and the rivers. But he has 
 never yet changed a climate. There be those 
 who think that arid climates grow moister 
 with the cultivation of the lands, but such 
 minds are duped. There does not fall on the 
 average a drop more of moisture on any acre 
 of our great arid and semiarid plains than fell 
 there on the average before a plow was put 
 into them. Climate has always been the mas- 
 ter of man. 
 
 But will this always be so? No, without 
 intending to do so, man is already affecting 
 the climate of the whole earth. 'He is doing 
 this by a thing never done before in the his- 
 
 80 
 
SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 tory of the globe the burning of coal. When- 
 ever a ton of coal is burned, there passes off 
 into the air a great many vapors. Among them 
 is carbonic acid, or carbon dioxide. This is 
 the gas that gathers in the well and kills the 
 man who unwarily goes down to clean it. It 
 passes into the air as a product of combustion 
 everywhere that combustion takes place, and 
 always has. It is breathed in by the leaves of 
 plants. It is fatal to animal life if breathed 
 in too strong a mixture, but in the amount 
 usually found in the air, unless in an unven- 
 tilated room, or well, or mine, it is not hurt- 
 ful; in fact it is probably useful. The forest 
 fires, the prairie fires, the rotting of vegeta- 
 tion, the transpiration of plants all these 
 have always kept in the air a certain amount 
 of carbonic acid gas. 
 
 And now man is adding to the amount by 
 burning coal as nothing was ever burned on 
 earth before since the fires of its glowing core 
 were quenched by its crust. Up to 1845, man 
 had burned 27,700,000 tons in all history. In 
 the one year of 1911 we burned not less than 
 
 81 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 500,000,000 tons! This is a terrific thing to 
 contemplate the passengers engaged in such 
 a tremendous robbery of the coal bunkers 
 but we are now concerned only with carbonic 
 acid gas, and its effects on the climate. 
 
 If we keep up the increase to even half the 
 extent which seems certain, we shall pour into 
 the air enough carbon dioxide to double the 
 amount of it in the atmosphere in eight hun- 
 dred years. The probabilities are that the 
 amount will be tripled in less than a thousand 
 years and your children and mine will be 
 here then! 
 
 One of the greatest scientists in the world 
 is Arrhenius, of Sweden. He is a chemist and 
 physicist, and has studied this matter. He 
 shows that this proportion of carbon dioxide 
 in the air will make the climate warmer, by 
 acting like the glass roof of a greenhouse. 
 With the carbon dioxide increased from two 
 and one-half to three times, the temperature 
 of the whole world will be raised eight to nine 
 degrees centigrade and Greenland will have 
 a good climate for farming. All the good soil 
 
 82 
 
SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 of Canada will be in as temperate a climate 
 as that now enjoyed by Missouri. 
 
 Corn will be grown in the Peace River Val- 
 ley. Oranges will be an orchard fruit in Ar- 
 kansas and Virginia. The suburban residents 
 of Chicago may literally sit under their own 
 fig trees and scuppernong grape arbors. Cot- 
 ton will be a staple crop in Iowa. Bananas 
 will fringe the shores of the Gulf. Siberia 
 will become the greatest farming country in 
 the world. The great antarctic continent 
 one of the greatest on earth in extent will be 
 the Western Canada, the Scandinavia, the 
 Siberia of that day, and will have millions of 
 people. The interior of Alaska will be as 
 warm as Maine now is. And the heat of all 
 the tropics will be augmented for thousands 
 of years. 
 
 The increased heat will cause more evapora- 
 tion of water vapor from the oceans and as 
 what goes up must come down, this will cause 
 moister climates almost everywhere, and our 
 dry-farming regions will become as wet as 
 Ohio. 
 
 83 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 And then, the passengers on this good ship 
 Earth will have vast fields of good land upon 
 which to multiply as it seems to be their fate 
 to do. All this will take place in a time 
 shorter than the history of England since the 
 Norman Conquest in twice the time which 
 has elapsed since the governor's palace was 
 built in Santa Fe, New Mexico our youngest 
 state! 
 
 This voyage on the good ship Earth differs 
 from other voyages, in this, that nobody gets 
 off the ship death is only a name for be- 
 ing reabsorbed into her decks; and birth is 
 only an expression of the idea that portions 
 of the decks have taken on the form of a baby, 
 which will take into itself more and more of 
 the ship, until it grows up. And with birth 
 embodied in the earth of the body, and with 
 death disembodied from it, is the mystery of 
 the soul. 
 
 And inasmuch as nobody gets off, the num- 
 ber that are born among us becomes an im- 
 portant matter we shall come to a fuller con- 
 
 8 4 
 
SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 tact with that problem later. Just now what 
 concerns us is the fact that in spots the pas- 
 sengers are getting too thick. New quarters 
 must be found for the increase. 
 
 Millions may be stowed in the places now 
 recognized as desirable and still unoccupied 
 or only half occupied. Then we are going 
 to spread northward in the northern hemis- 
 phere into Siberia, Canada and other lands 
 now sparsely occupied by reason 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 consumption 
 of coal and we shall even be able to re- 
 people 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 unin- 
 habited or sparsely peopled jungles and llanos 
 and pampas and silvas? 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 
 
 85 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 human life is based? Far from it. The richest 
 lands in the world, judged by their products, 
 are in the tropics of Southern Asia, Central 
 Africa, Central South America, and such 
 huge islands as Borneo, Papua and the Phil- 
 ippines. They are well watered. They bring 
 forth amazingly. Where scientifically culti- 
 vated, as in Hawaii, they prove themselves 
 capable of producing food and shelter for 
 dense populations. 
 
 Why, then, do not all the crowded passen- 
 gers in the ship go to the tropics, where these 
 rich lands are, by the millions of acres, occu- 
 pied only by the wild beasts, birds and the 
 riotous vegetation? 
 
 There are many reasons reasons of state, 
 reasons of race prejudice, reasons of difficulty 
 on the part of the migration of poor people. 
 And there are inherent 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 impassable 
 in a few weeks. The trees and vines and huge 
 weeds are foes to man. They overwhelm him. 
 
 86 
 
SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 They daunt him. They make it almost impos- 
 sible to him to clear the land, and almost as 
 impossible to keep it cleared. 
 
 Then there is the question of health. Until 
 recently white men have found it impossible 
 to live a full strong life in the tropics, or to 
 perpetuate their race there. The British in 
 India last but two or three generations. Our 
 people in the Philippines may be expected 
 to perish in the same way, unless unless we 
 Gorgasize and Goethalsize the Philippines. 
 I mean, unless we do 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. Doctor Gorgas and his health depart- 
 ment, under the rule of Colonel Goethals, have 
 made the most pestilential spot on earth, per- 
 haps, a region where white men can work, 
 and work hard, and where white family life 
 seems perfectly possible as a permanent thing. 
 
 This is a greater achievement than the 
 building of the canal itself! 
 
 Disease comes in the tropics, as elsewhere, 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 mostly in the form of evil bacteria in the 
 blood, and animal parasites in the body. 
 These produce diseases. The proverbial in- 
 dolence of the nations of the tropics is largely 
 the result of disease like hook-worm. These 
 germs and parasites affect both the men and 
 their live stock. The tsetse fly fights back 
 farming by killing the domestic animals in 
 South Africa. The sleeping sickness kills off 
 the people. Cholera ravages the tropics, and 
 bubonic plague and yellow fever and hook- 
 worm and many other plagues. But these dis- 
 eases are one by one being conquered. Yel- 
 low fever and malaria are mere questions of 
 mosquitoes, and the Panama and Cuban ex- 
 periences prove that they can be coped with. 
 A simple remedy and very effective prevent- 
 ives are known for hook-worm. New anti- 
 toxins and serums are found every year. We 
 can now see the end of the terrors of the 
 tropics for the white race. 
 
 The other great scourge of the tropics is 
 commercialism, and its accompanying slavery 
 and peonage. The horrid debauch of greed 
 
SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 in the Congo State under the accursed Leopold 
 was commercialism hunting ivory and rubber. 
 Yucatan and henequen, Bluefields and 
 bananas, Hawaii and Java and sugar these 
 sinister couples might be added to indefinitely. 
 Spanish America and her princely haciendas 
 are other names for land monopoly and 
 slavery. The destruction of men in the tropics 
 by disease germs and parasites is not so awful 
 as that by human parasites ! 
 
 The slogan for the human race seeking to 
 move into these great vacant spaces on the 
 decks of the good ship Earth, therefore, is 
 science, democracy and cooperative industry. 
 Science will ward off disease and point the 
 way to successful production. Democracy will 
 eliminate privilege and give to each man the 
 same rights to use of the decks of the good 
 ship Earth as any other man. And cooperat- 
 ive industry cooperative farming, cooperat- 
 ive manufacturing replacing the wage system 
 will furnish the capital, the engineering 
 skill, the sanitation and the willingness to 
 wait, necessary to the reclamation of those 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 wide and overgrown regions which present 
 problems too difficult for the unaided man. 
 
 In that day, the valleys of the Congo, the 
 Niger, the Upper Nile, and the Zambeze 
 the whole interior plateau of Africa will 
 hold more happy people than Europe ever 
 possessed, and the civilization will outshine 
 that of Carthage or ancient Egypt, or of the 
 Moors, or of present-day Europe or America. 
 
 And the Amazon, the Orinoco and the La 
 Plata will carry commerce between the 
 densest populations in the world. There are 
 areas greater than half a dozen Texases along 
 those rivers where not the highest wages will 
 now tempt even the natives to go for rubber, 
 the conditions are so lethal. All that will be 
 cured. Science, democracy and cooperative 
 industry will make of Brazil and her neigh- 
 bor states the beautiful and prolific home of 
 more people than now exist on earth. The 
 vacant spaces there are greater than the whole 
 of the United States and naturally richer than 
 the Mississippi Valley. 
 
 In those days, the Caribbean and the Gulf 
 90 
 
SOME IMPENDING MIGRATIONS 
 
 of Mexico will carry the busiest commerce in 
 the world, perhaps, for across them will lie 
 ferries from the South American and Central 
 American ports to the West Indies, and our 
 southern states. The Mississippi Valley and 
 the valley of the Amazon will fill those seas 
 with shipping, and drop wealth and plenty on 
 all shores. 
 
 To the accomplishment of this future the 
 passengers are now almost ready to address 
 their efforts. We have the science Goethals 
 and Gorgas have shown us that. To-morrow 
 will bring the democracy and the cooperative 
 commonwealth, with the right to the use of 
 the good ship Earth assured to every pas- 
 senger no matter how humble. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE IRON AGE AND THEN? 
 
 NOW that we think of it, every one of us 
 must see that it's our business if the sup- 
 plies for the maintenance of the passengers on 
 the good ship Earth are in danger of running 
 out. It's everybody's business, no matter who 
 has the paper title to the supplies. For every- 
 body is a passenger, and the descendants of 
 everybody must be passengers. 
 
 The supply of coal is absolutely essential 
 to civilization. Mankind in their present 
 numbers can not be supported without its heat, 
 and the work it does. The coal will last much 
 longer than it would otherwise do, because in 
 burning it we fill the air with carbon dioxide 
 which in a few hundred years will cover all 
 countries like the glass of a greenhouse, and 
 make the climate of the ship warmer than now. 
 So we shall not need to burn so much coal 
 per capita. 
 
 92 
 
THE IRON AGE AND THEN? 
 
 But there is another necessary of life in the 
 bunkers of the ship which must be used with 
 coal if civilization is to be maintained. It 
 is iron. As steel, and under its own title, this 
 metal gives name to our epoch the Iron Age 
 or the Age of Steel. Think of a world with- 
 out iron and except in a small way the world 
 was practically without it, just a few genera- 
 tions back. No factories. No engines. No 
 motor-cars. No watches. No effective tools. 
 No nails. No bolts. No railways. No tele- 
 graph. No telephone. No sky-scrapers. No 
 truss bridges. No typewriters. No steel pens. 
 No printing presses. No reapers. No thresh- 
 ers. No cotton gins. No machine-made shoes 
 or factory cloth, or machine-made anything. 
 No guns. No battle-ships. No real ships of 
 any sort, not even sailing vessels. No stoves or 
 furnaces. No steam heat. No chains. No 
 ropes for metal machinery is used in mak- 
 ing them. No cordage or thread of any sort 
 save hand-twisted strings. No needles. No 
 sewing-machines. No pianos. No saws, and 
 therefore no lumber. No houses only caves 
 
 93 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 or huts. No gasoline or kerosene for the pe- 
 troleum business is based on iron pipes and 
 iron machinery. No gas. No ice in summer. 
 No exhaustion of the soil, through agriculture. 
 No waste of coal by mining. No coal. No 
 wastage of oil or natural gas. No whale oil, 
 even. No fish-hooks, save bone ones. No 
 denudation of forests through cutting, by rea- 
 son of lack of axes. No conservation prob- 
 lem. No civilization. Nobody to write es- 
 says like this about the good ship Earth. 
 Nobody able to see the questions. This is 
 indeed the Age of Iron, and coal is the agent 
 by which alone it can be thawed for use, 
 
 Of necessity I speak of the iron in the bunk- 
 ers of our Zeppelin as it careers through 
 space, as "ours." I hope in doing so I do not 
 offend Judge Gary of the United States Steel 
 Corporation. Once I spoke of that Colonel 
 North who believed himself to have the nitro- 
 gen of the world reduced to possession in the 
 nitrate beds of Chili so effectively that his de- 
 scendants would have the power to starve our 
 descendants if they chose. Science found a 
 
 94 
 
THE IRON AGE AND THEN? 
 
 I 
 
 way out of the North clutches. Who shall 
 show us a way out of the clutches of Judge 
 Gary of the United States Steel Corporation? 
 For he or rather his immortal entity the cor- 
 poration itself is the Colonel North of Iron. 
 
 Fellow passengers on a wild air-ship named 
 the Earth! Our Zeppelin can not stop to take 
 on supplies therefore consider this: 
 
 Most of our iron now available is in the 
 Lake Superior bankers the supplies for the 
 steel and iron works on the lakes and in the 
 Pittsburgh district come from there Gary, 
 South Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Buffalo, 
 Cleveland, Conneaut, Lorain and the rest. 
 These stores, amounting to 1,500,000,000 tons, 
 are owned mostly by Judge Gary's immortal 
 entity which we created by law. In the 
 southern iron bins God has stored almost twice 
 as much Andrew Carnegie thinks about 
 2,500,000,000 tons and the best of this the 
 entity picked up one stormy day in 1907 when 
 Mr. Roosevelt let Gary have the Tennessee 
 Coal and Iron Company to prevent a panic! 
 Altogether we have in the United States about 
 
 95 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 10,000,000,000 tons of iron, which is worth 
 taking into account. That's what the Laird 
 of Skibo thinks but he also says that the ore 
 bodies when worked out usually fall short of 
 the estimates. 
 
 There is no reason to think we shall find 
 any great supply to add to these not in the 
 United States. Canada is a promising place 
 to search, and in the unexplored mountains of 
 the other continents a great deal may be found 
 but to depend on such a thing is like throw- 
 ing found money to the dogs in the confident 
 expectation of picking up treasure-trove be- 
 fore it's gone. Germany and Britain and 
 Sweden have the only other supplies compar- 
 able to ours though Cuba and Brazil have 
 immense deposits but they do not relieve the 
 anxieties much, of a passenger who cares what 
 becomes of the folk on board. 
 
 Now without any increase in the rate of 
 mining, the known supply in the Lake Su- 
 perior region will give out within thirty 
 years. Judge Gary's entity will empty those 
 bunkers. By 1938 half the workable ore in 
 
 96 
 
THE IRON AGE AND THEN? 
 
 this country will be gone and all the time 
 Sweden, Britain and Germany will be eating 
 up their supply, and then, resorting to the 
 poorer ores, the work will go on, until by the 
 year 2000 our supply will be gone. 
 
 I think the case is one that demands atten- 
 tion on the part of those who expect to leave 
 descendants or who care about the descend- 
 ants of others and that ought to take in 
 nearly everybody. 
 
 We as a race should see to it that iron is 
 saved by all possible means. For this reason, 
 if for no other, we should provide for the 
 carrying of freight on natural or artificial 
 waterways, so as to prevent the loss of iron by 
 the wearing out of steel rails in carrying an 
 unnecessary amount of traffic. It is the cheap- 
 est way of carrying freight, anyhow. More 
 waterways, and less spending of iron on rail- 
 ways. And it would save half the coal bill for 
 transportation, too thus easing up the empty- 
 ing of the coal bunkers. 
 
 We should use concrete for all erections for 
 which it is adapted for there is cement and 
 
 97 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 stone in plenty for all ages. The next age 
 should be the Age of Concrete. 
 
 We should stop building battle-ships. 
 
 Think of robbing the bunkers filled by the 
 Master who built and launched the ship with 
 things necessary to the highest good of the 
 passengers, and of making the goods over into 
 murder-factories like war-ships! And the 
 war-ship industry is what keeps a lot of steam- 
 shovels at work scooping out our iron, day 
 after day, year after year. Imagine the pas- 
 sengers on any vessel using the supplies as 
 weapons with which to kill one another. 
 
 Then we should see to it that all iron when 
 worn out is saved, worked up into new forms 
 and used instead of iron newly-taken from 
 the earth. For iron, unlike coal, is not lim- 
 ited to one occasion of use. It lasts. Probably 
 as the store in use increases, the need for dig- 
 ging it out of the bunkers will lessen. Let us 
 hope so. But those steel ships sunk in war 
 they are lost forever! Let us stop wasting our 
 iron on war-ships! 
 
 For, be as optimistic as we will, we should 
 
THE IRON AGE AND THEN? 
 
 remember that only two of the five con- 
 tinents are at all well supplied with railways, 
 and that when the two-thirds of the passengers 
 who do not mine iron, or use many machines, 
 really wake up, we may face an iron famine, 
 which will endanger civilization itself. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 OUR WORLD-WIDE METAL OF WORSHIP GOLD 
 
 THERE are other metals in the bunkers 
 which we should be sorry to do with- 
 out. Copper is immensely important and 
 when we come to the work of using all our 
 water-power to save the depletion of the coal 
 in the ground, we shall need to use a great 
 deal more of copper. Therefore, it would be 
 a sensible deprivation to all of us if the sup- 
 ply of copper were to be exhausted. So with 
 zinc, which is needed for utensils, for the pres- 
 ervation of iron and steel by galvanizing, as 
 an alloy of copper in the making of that very 
 useful metal, brass, and for paint. Lead is 
 the basis of a very important industry, is wide- 
 ly consumed as paint, and is almost essential 
 to many kinds of construction which we should 
 scarcely know how to dispense with. And 
 even the new metal, aluminum, and manga- 
 nese, vanadium, mercury and many more, 
 
 100 
 
GOLD 
 
 mostly with names ending in "um," from the 
 precious platinum to the unfamiliar molybde- 
 num, are all useful, and yearly becoming more 
 so as we find out more about their properties 
 all are important; but we need not worry 
 about the exhaustion of our stores of these. 
 
 We need not worry because they are not 
 so essential to civilization as are iron and coal ; 
 nor to life, as is the soil. We need not worry 
 for the additional reason that the same moral 
 uplift that carries us to the height of looking 
 after the iron and coal and forests and soil, 
 will bring us to the point of looking after 
 these subordinate good things placed in the 
 bunkers of the good ship Earth for the use of 
 all the passengers alike. 
 
 But I must mention two metals because of 
 their wonderful interest to the world for the 
 reason that they have been taken as measures 
 of value for other commodities. Though not 
 extraordinarily useful in themselves, they exert 
 an influence upon our prosperity which would 
 be incomprehensible to a person brought up 
 outside their sway. I mean silver and gold 
 
 101 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 These metals are useful in fact, if they 
 were plentiful, they would take the place of 
 the baser metals in many of the arts. As in 
 the case with zinc, copper, lead, nickel, 
 platinum and other of the rarer metals, there 
 is no way of telling how much of them the 
 earth contains. We keep continually look- 
 ing for them and the supply varies from 
 century to century as we have good luck 
 or bad luck. When Columbus discovered 
 America, he led the way to the mines and 
 gold and silver treasures of Mexico and Peru. 
 For a hundred and fifty years the precious 
 stream flowed into the world's strong boxes at 
 a rate never before equaled. Then it dwin- 
 dled. With the opening of the mines of Cali- 
 fornia, the fountains were again set flowing. 
 Australia liberated her great output. Then 
 came other new "finds" in the Rocky Moun- 
 tain regions, and in South Africa furnishing a 
 tonnage of gold equal to any of these. Lastly 
 comes Alaska. And all the while, the science 
 of the world has labored to make the methods 
 of extraction more efficient until the output 
 
 102 
 
GOLD 
 
 of gold and silver has become greater than 
 ever before, and seems to promise a continu- 
 ous supply. 
 
 Now this has a great influence on pros- 
 perity, strange to say. For gold and silver, 
 owing to their beauty, have been for ages de- 
 voted more to the processes of hoarding than 
 of consuming. It is as if the squirrels paid 
 so much attention to the hoarding of nuts as 
 to forget that the real object of saving is eat- 
 ing. We human squirrels do eat gold and sil- 
 ver when we consume them in the arts but 
 mostly we have always hoarded them up in 
 bars or ingots or round pieces called coins, 
 and by this hoarding have created a per- 
 manent scarcity of them which appears to 
 have a great deal of effect upon their value 
 as compared with other things of value. These 
 gold and silver nuts we human squirrels store 
 in mints and national treasuries and banks and 
 safe-deposit vaults and use them as things by 
 which to measure the value of all other com- 
 modities. 
 
 In past ages gold and silver were both 
 103 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 used and still are in some countries. But lat- 
 terly the world, at the request of the financiers, 
 has rapidly abandoned silver as a measure of 
 value and adopted gold. I think the feeling 
 of the bankers was that by the use of gold 
 alone the value-measure would not be so apt 
 to grow small as if both gold and silver were 
 used. Financiers are people who have debts 
 due them, and these debts are promises to pay 
 a certain number of dollars, pounds, copecks, 
 marks, yen or doubloons, at some time in the 
 future. These denominations of money were 
 all by law equal to so much weight of gold or 
 silver. When the double standard was in 
 effect, the debtors would, of course, pay in the 
 one that happened to be the cheapest. The 
 financiers put in effect their schemes in the 
 double standard countries to adopt the single 
 gold standard, because it looked as if silver 
 was going to be so plentiful that it would dis- 
 place gold entirely. Hence the "cross of gold 
 and crown of thorns" speech in '96 and the 
 "crime of '73" luridly described in many cam- 
 paigns. 
 
 104 
 
GOLD 
 
 Now a dollar's worth under the gold stand- 
 ard, is the value of the number of grains of 
 gold in a legal dollar. If gold should get as 
 plenty as mud, one could still weigh out the 
 same number of grains of it for a dollar to 
 one's creditor, as now, and take up his note 
 promising to pay a dollar. If a region were 
 discovered where gold could be mined in un- 
 limited quantities with steam-shovels as is 
 iron in the Lake Superior country, every- 
 body could pay his debts easily it would be 
 equivalent to a universal act of bankruptcy. 
 That is, a gold dollar would not exchange 
 for more cloth, lumber, meat, wheat or 
 other commodity than would an iron washer 
 of the same weight; and the producers of 
 other commodities besides gold would be 
 able to get gold enough for a load of hogs 
 for instance to pay off the mortgage on the 
 farm. Prices, as measured in the now base 
 metal, gold, would go kiting as high as they 
 did in the south as measured in the credit of 
 the confederacy when it depreciated. 
 
 Now, while we have not found any such 
 105 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 mountain of gold, we are producing so much 
 that it is depreciating as compared with other 
 things. In 1907, in all the world there was 
 gold to the amount of about seven billions of 
 dollars. Half of that had been mined in the 
 previous ten years, and the other half in all 
 the previous history of the world. 
 
 Just think of it as much in a single decade 
 as in all the time since Solomon went into the 
 market for gold for his temple! No wonder 
 the dollar won't buy much! Now the great 
 low-grade silver-standard nations like those 
 of South America, Mexico, India and China 
 are most of them trying to place themselves 
 on the gold standard, and are absorbing this 
 new gold in an astonishing way; but when 
 their wants are satisfied, if the gold keeps 
 pouring in, we shall find that we squirrels 
 have piled up so many nuts that their value 
 is going down tremendously. We shall have 
 higher prices, increased cost of living in- 
 creasing faster and faster for years. Labor- 
 ers will be obliged to struggle harder and 
 harder to keep their pay up to the living wage 
 
 1 06 
 
GOLD 
 
 scale, debtors will be able to pay their debts 
 easier and easier, there will be more labor 
 trouble, more freedom from debt, more tur- 
 bulent conditions than we have ever seen 
 and I believe greater actual prosperity, even 
 if more grief all because the passengers are 
 taking from the bunkers a great deal of metal 
 which is not very useful, but which is uni- 
 versally worshiped, and which is used as a 
 measure of value. 
 
 It is as if wages and prices and debts were 
 all payable in cloth measured by an india- 
 rubber yardstick, which were growing shorter 
 all the time. Good for debtors, bad for wages, 
 and sure to boost prices. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 "MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH THE EARTH" 
 
 I HAVE spoken in these chapters of new 
 lands to which man may go to support in- 
 creased population. Let us see if these lands 
 will suffice. One of the funniest stories of these 
 times of ours is that written by Ellis Parker 
 Butler, entitled Pigs is Pigs. It relates to the 
 troubles of a rural expressman, who kept all 
 the rules of the company as to taking care 
 of a crate of prolific guinea-pigs, while un- 
 raveling the red tape of a dispute over the rate. 
 Long before the correspondence was ended, 
 the office, the freight house, the platform and 
 the surrounding city blocks were full of 
 guinea-pigs. There was famine in all the 
 things eaten by guinea-pigs. And the young 
 pigs were arriving by Nature's own express 
 line, in hourly consignments, each greater 
 
 108 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 than the original one. In another month of 
 such increase the guinea-pigs would have 
 been knee-deep in the streets. 
 
 This humorous story illustrates strikingly 
 the most wonderful, the most momentous fact 
 about living things embarked on our air-ship 
 Earth their tendency to multiply. In view 
 of the fact that we are living things, that we 
 have this same tendency to multiply, and that 
 deck room is already very valuable, let us con- 
 sider the so-called command, "Multiply and 
 replenish the earth." 
 
 The first plants and the first animals were 
 one-celled little bags of protoplasm. The 
 long-shaped ones pinched themselves in two 
 in the middle, and each became two, and so 
 on. The round ones shoved out arms like 
 snails' horns, and these horns pinched off near 
 the parent, and went off as independent or- 
 ganisms, and thus multiplied. Some threw 
 out buds, which separated from the parent, or 
 dropped off and lived on. Many peculiar 
 ways of multiplication were developed but 
 
 109 
 

 ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the living things did what no non-living 
 things had ever done they multiplied. The 
 most beautiful and most dreadful operation of 
 life was set going. 
 
 When the higher plants developed they 
 multiplied by fruits and seeds. They de- 
 veloped ways for these fruits and seeds to live 
 over winter when the parent died, and to be 
 scattered, and for the plant to persist by a 
 thousand ways. And among these higher 
 plants, the crucial fact of all facts sex 
 developed. The young plant was made up 
 of the union of the mother-cell and the father- 
 cell a new individual organism made of the 
 union of cells from two parent individual or- 
 ganisms. Another fateful step! 
 
 The multiplication of the lower animals 
 was accomplished and still is by ways quite 
 similar in simplicity splitting, budding and 
 the like. And with animals as with plants, 
 as soon as evolution produced species a little 
 advanced above the lowest, the fact of sex de- 
 veloped the greatest fact of life. 
 
 Among animals as well as among plants, 
 no 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 save in the lowest forms, the new individual 
 organisms is made up of the union of cells from 
 two parent organisms. In this fact lies more 
 of the mystery of life heredity, variation, 
 love material, paternal, conjugal, platonic 
 jealousy, poetry, religion, the family, the clan, 
 the state, the nation a thousand million great 
 things than in any other fact in the universe. 
 
 The problems of sex should be studied, not 
 sneered at; looked at reverently, not giggled 
 at; faced soberly and respectfully, not blinked 
 and hidden and dodged. For in the problems 
 of sex lie the great riddles confronting all 
 the passengers on the good ship Earth. 
 
 All animals and all plants multiply or 
 tend to do so to the very limits of the ca- 
 pacity of the earth to give them food and 
 space. Just now, I am not discussing this 
 tendency in man if it exists I shall come to 
 that later. But all other animals do, and all 
 plants. 
 
 The smaller and simpler species multiply 
 faster than do the larger and more complex. 
 The elephant is thirty years old before it 
 
 HI 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 brings forth its first solitary young, while ani- 
 malcules so small as to be microscopic are able 
 to multiply from a single pair to the number of 
 170,000,000,000 in four days. Yet the elephant 
 and the animalcule alike obey the imperative 
 command to "multiply and replenish the 
 earth" just as fast and just as far as the 
 earth's conditions will permit. The oak tree 
 is found almost all over the earth though it 
 increases more slowly than many other plants, 
 it lives a thousand years. The smaller wheat 
 plant, if given space and plant food, would 
 spread all over the surface of the earth while 
 the oak was getting ready to bear its first 
 acorn but the wheat plant does not occupy 
 more of the decks of the good ship Earth 
 than the oak, for all that or would not if left 
 unaided in the struggle. Both increase to the 
 limits which their food and their enemies will 
 allow. 
 
 That green rash which breaks out all over 
 the decks of our good ship Earth, called 
 vegetation, is then, composed of an innumera- 
 ble host of warring plant-forms. Each tries 
 
 112 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 to crowd the other out. The fittest survive. 
 Some produce innumerable seeds, and trust 
 to chance for the planting thereof. Some live 
 by thorns. Some stick their seeds fast to ani- 
 mals. Some produce good fruit with hard 
 seeds inside so that birds and animals will 
 scatter them. The ones with the most success- 
 ful tricks survive. 
 
 So with animals. Each multiplies to the 
 limits allowed by its food-supply, and its dis- 
 eases and its enemies. 
 
 There are always other animals whose exist- 
 ence and multiplication are at the expense of 
 any animal in question. There are pests and 
 parasites. And there is the question of get- 
 ting food. If food is plenty, and enemies are 
 scarce, and diseases and pests are absent, the 
 animal increases whether it be giraffe or 
 dodo or sparrow. If the food is scarce, or the 
 enemies successful, or the diseases and pests 
 bad, the race decreases. There is always a 
 tide in the affairs of animals and plants as in 
 those of men it either ebbs or flows. Some- 
 times it ebbs until a race is wiped out like 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the fossil animals we read of and see in the 
 museums : the dodo just spoken of, and the pas- 
 senger pigeon which many people now living 
 have seen, but which is no more. This ebbing 
 and flowing of the racial tide is called a 
 "moving equilibrium." It is like the tug of 
 war when two sides pull at a rope each side 
 is always losing or gaining until one def- 
 initely wins. 
 
 Enemies keep the race from increasing 
 that is war. 
 
 Pests and diseases prey on the race and keep 
 down its numbers that is pestilence. 
 
 Food supply grows too small for the multi- 
 plied hosts and they starve that is famine. 
 
 War, pestilence, famine! These are the 
 genii with which Nature keeps her balance 
 even between the warring species of both 
 plants and animals. Without war, pestilence 
 and famine, there is not one species which 
 would not eventually ruthlessly crowd every- 
 thing else off the earth, driven as they all are 
 by the irresistible urge to multiply. 
 
 But man is an animal is he exempt from 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 the rule? Did God place him on this huge 
 round Zeppelin of the skies, and decree that 
 he, too, must multiply until the good ship 
 "Earth can no longer nourish him, and there- 
 fore unless he is decimated by war, he shall 
 fall by the sickle of pestilence, and if he es- 
 capes war and pestilence, that poverty must 
 destroy him by famine? 
 
 "Is this the thing the Lord God made, and 
 
 gave 
 To have dominion over land and sea?" 
 
 And is this the sort of "dominion" He gave? 
 
 War, pestilence and famine these three 
 are essential to the keeping in check of the 
 multiplication of all plants and animals. 
 War with the plants and animals which 
 struggle with them for food and space and 
 which prey upon them for there are plants 
 that prey upon other plants, and even on 
 animals. Pestilence which is merely the in- 
 roads of other plants and animals too small to 
 be seen, and of weaknesses of constitution and 
 their effects. Famine- which is the failure 
 of a part of the species to get food. 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 These three check all organisms in their 
 conquering march to possess the earth. They 
 must in the nature of things. For if war fail, 
 and pestilence withhold its stroke, the myriads 
 will grow so great that famine will come as a 
 matter of course. 
 
 It is a law of nature. It applies to all liv- 
 ing things, unless man be the solitary excep- 
 tion. 
 
 There have been those, like Malthus, Spen- 
 cer and their school, who have insisted upon 
 war, pestilence and famine among men as a 
 part of the natural order owing to the tend- 
 ency of human beings to multiply beyond the 
 resources of the earth to afford them means 
 of living. 
 
 There are many others who, lacking the 
 fortitude to look the predicament of man 
 squarely in the face, have said: "Oh! There's 
 a way, and always will be a way for all men 
 to live. Why, the state of Texas would sup- 
 port the entire population of the world, if 
 it had to! Let's be optimistic!" 
 
 Others there have been, and of these Henry 
 116 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 George is the best example, who, looking the 
 case fairly in the face, have denied the tend- 
 ency of the human race to multiply beyond the 
 limits of subsistence, and Mr. George has 
 even suggested that it does not increase in 
 numbers in the long run at all. He denies that 
 density of population has ever in the world up 
 to this time necessarily produced poverty. And 
 until it does so produce poverty he refuses to 
 admit the inherent inevitability of the sweep- 
 ing off of redundant population by either war 
 or pestilence. 
 
 Men of the George school have made the 
 strongest case which has been made against the 
 argument that man, an animal, like all other 
 living beings, tends to multiply, if given a 
 chance, to the limits of subsistence. And their 
 appeal to Divine justice, and their defense of 
 God against His alleged detractors has been 
 perhaps the most impressive of their appeals 
 to the world. 
 
 "Has God," they say, "more inhuman than 
 the cruelest ship-owner, placed on the ship 
 Earth a potential population which the sup- 
 
 117 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 plies are inadequate to feed? Has He so ar- 
 ranged matters that if these human beings 
 escape pestilence, and in obedience to the pre- 
 cepts of love refrain from killing one another, 
 they must die of want? No blackguard on 
 the water-front would do such a thing! God 
 has not done it!" 
 
 In spite of the tremendous force of this ar- 
 gument, let us look at it. For there is tre- 
 mendous force in the principle of multiplica- 
 tion, too. Let us first ask ourselves, Does the 
 race tend to increase? And does it actually 
 increase? 
 
 It has been pointed out that in the old na- 
 tions Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia 
 there were immense populations. There 
 were ; but we have no means of determining 
 what they were. There is no reason to believe, 
 though, that they were as great as our popula- 
 tions of to-day or that the increase the world 
 over was ever so rapid as now. Within the 
 past century, the world has come under ob- 
 servation to an unprecedented degree, and we 
 
 118 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 know as never before what the roster of the 
 passengers amounts to. 
 
 Gibbon calculates the population of the 
 Roman Empire at its height at 120,000,000. 
 The regions then included in the Roman Em- 
 pire are now more than twice as populous. 
 Five hundred years ago, Europe had probably 
 about 50,000,000 people; she now has 380,- 
 000,000. North America has a population of 
 100,000,000 drawn from Europe and natural 
 increase, in the main, which she has gained in 
 a hundred years, save about 5,000,000. 
 
 Whatever may have been the state of knowl- 
 edge in the past, there is now no lack of proof 
 that the tendency of population is to increase. 
 We can see a startling increase in our day. 
 
 This is an age in which famines are much 
 less frequent than of old, and wars, while fre- 
 quent, do not destroy such large populations 
 as formerly. In the civilized nations sanitation 
 and scientific progress are reducing disease to 
 the point of greatly weakening the factor of 
 pestilence in checking increase. 
 
 119 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 In 1882, the total population of the world, 
 according to statistics which while not exact, 
 are reasonably so, was in round numbers 
 1,433,000,000. In 1907 it had increased to 
 1,606,000,000. The increase, in exacter fig- 
 ures, in the twenty- five years was 172,738,000. 
 
 Thus in twenty-five years, we passengers on 
 the good ship Earth increased by more than 
 the whole population of the western hemis- 
 phere ! We grew in numbers by as many peo- 
 ple as twice the population of the United 
 States at the beginning of the period. 
 
 If it were really a ship, and the passenger 
 list were growing at that rate, would you not 
 feel anxious if you were on board and could 
 not get off? And yet, that is the situation. 
 
 At this rate in twenty years from now, there 
 will be 1,767,000,000 on board; in forty- five 
 years, 1,943,000,000; in seventy years, 2,138,- 
 000,000; in five hundred years 10,000,000,000; 
 and in six hundred years, we shall be making 
 a growth in the number of people every quar- 
 ter of a century, equal to the whole population 
 of the globe in the year 1900! 
 
 120 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 Some of you may have smiled at the idea 
 I have developed that the warming of the cli- 
 mate of the earth by the carbonic acid gas 
 in the air may, and probably will, bring into 
 use as good farming countries millions of 
 square miles now too cold. But if this in- 
 crease keeps on, shall we not need it? And 
 shall we not need to save the phosphorus and 
 potash and nitrogen of the soil, and haul on 
 all we can find, and save the washing of the 
 soil, and conserve the forests, and look after 
 the nitrates and the coal? 
 
 Does it not look as if the Malthusians and 
 Spencerians are right? Are not war, pestilence 
 and famine necessary? If they do not check 
 this multiplication, what will? 
 
 After all, is not God mocked? 
 
 These things demand further consideration. 
 
 Increase of population is usually regarded 
 as a good thing. We Americans are espe- 
 cially prone to think of a growing popula- 
 tion as a great thing for the country. We 
 strive to attract people to our states, our 
 cities, our towns. We stuff local census 
 
 121 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 figures sometimes to show growth even when 
 we have had none. We hide our heads in 
 shame when the statistics show a loss of pop- 
 ulation, or a gain supposed to be too small. 
 
 This excessive esteem for mere numerical 
 increase arises from the fact that our deck 
 room on the good ship Earth a hundred years 
 ago was poor in people and rich in space which 
 hungered for them. There were few passen- 
 gers and much deck room. Life on board 
 was poor and starved because there were so 
 few people that they could not well help one 
 another, nor build up a full and complete life. 
 It is much better in most ways in America 
 with a hundred millions than it was with five. 
 
 And it really has been in some way discred- 
 itable to an American state or city or town not 
 to grow. It meant that the soil was poor, or 
 the government was bad, or the people dis- 
 agreeable. So shame is the proper feeling in 
 the one case and regret in the other at the fail- 
 ure of population to increase. 
 
 But we must not get into the habit of think- 
 ing because the ship once had too few passen- 
 
 122 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 gers on a part of the decks shut off from the 
 others by water, and that a hundred years ago, 
 that the steady increase of numbers on the part 
 of the human race the passengers on the 
 great terrestrial air-ship Earth is good, or a 
 salutary thing, no matter what any one may 
 say. 
 
 In the quarter of a century succeeding 1882 
 the population of the Earth increased one- 
 eighth. At this rate, in five hundred years 
 there will be ten billions of us. In six hun- 
 dred years our increase every twenty-five 
 years will be more than the whole number of 
 us in 1882! 
 
 And there is every reason to believe that 
 never in history were the passengers multi- 
 plying as fast as now. 
 
 It behooves us to consider what happens 
 when populations get too dense. 
 
 Statistics show that Belgium is more thick- 
 ly peopled than any other nation, but such sta- 
 tistics mean nothing. Belgium is mainly a 
 cluster of cities, and a city is not self-sustain- 
 ing. It is one end only of the equation, one 
 
 '123 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 member of the proportion. Belgium, Hol- 
 land, Manhattan and the island of Great Brit- 
 ain are places where people are gathered to- 
 gether to do certain things; and those on 
 farms, in ships, in railway cars, in wilder- 
 nesses, and on sheep ranges and cattle ranches, 
 and in forests, who are coworkers with these 
 city dwellers to make up a complete indus- 
 trial community, should be taken into ac- 
 count when density of population is reckoned. 
 
 Cheyenne, Wyoming, is densely populated, 
 but the Cheyenne territory is sparse of settlers. 
 When the crew of a ship gathers to furl the 
 sails, the yards are thickly populated; but the 
 ship may be undermanned. So, while Bel- 
 gium, Holland, Great Britain, Manhattan 
 and Cheyenne may some of them be over- 
 populated, they are not all so, and may none 
 of them be. For they are the places where the 
 passengers who are also the crew of the 
 good ship Earth are gathered to work the 
 vessel for mutual aid and cooperation. 
 
 To find the places where the Earth is really 
 over-populated, one must go to the Orient to 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 China, Japan, Korea and India. And here, 
 where the population presses on subsistence, 
 we find what we shall one day find in these 
 dear states of ours, if the universal law of mul- 
 tiplication goes on unchecked. We find 
 squalor unspeakable, misery indescribable, 
 fear in the heart of every man, and four-fifths 
 of the thoughts of every mind and of the ut- 
 terances of every mouth related to food! 
 
 Extremes meet. When animal life began, 
 it began in the ameba, an animal which was 
 all stomach. And in the twentieth century, 
 where human life has followed the line of 
 animal increase to the very limit, man gravi- 
 tates back to the point of losing "the upward 
 looking and the light," and becoming again 
 a creature, eighty per cent, of whose intellec- 
 tual activities are monopolized by the de- 
 mands of his hunger. He has again become 
 for all human purposes, an embodied stomach. 
 In all the list of tragedies there is none so 
 awful. 
 
 In these crowded spaces, meat is scarcely 
 ever eaten, not because of any belief in veg- 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 etarianism, but from the fact that more than 
 five times as many people can be fed from the 
 land with vegetable food as with meats. Flesh 
 and blood are so cheap that they drive out 
 steam and steel in such work as sinking piles 
 and carrying burdens. Animals can not be 
 used in tillage where men are so plentiful. A 
 man will carry a ton of canal mud for fer- 
 tilizer five hundred feet for three and a half 
 cents. For this he can buy only eight eggs, or 
 five ounces of pork so it is clear that his life 
 can not be supported on animal food at such 
 wages. The three and a half cents will there- 
 fore be spent for ten ounces of potatoes, or six 
 pounds of clover to be cooked and eaten, or 
 two and a half pounds of beans, or a pound 
 and a half of peanuts, or three pounds of 
 shelled corn, or a pound of bean curd, or, as 
 is, of course, usually the case, for a mixture of 
 these. 
 
 "Incredibly small," says Doctor Ross, "are 
 the portions prepared for sale by the huckster. 
 Two cubic inches of bean curd, four walnuts, 
 five peanuts, fifteen roasted chestnuts, twenty 
 
 126 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 melon seeds make a portion." No wonder 
 that in six weeks he saw only one man read- 
 ing and he had fallen asleep over his book. 
 No wonder that instead of asking a chance- 
 met person how he makes his living, the Chi- 
 nese asks, "How do you get through the day!" 
 
 No wonder that girl babies are exposed and 
 allowed to die. Who shall say that this is not 
 the truest mercy? No wonder that the chief 
 magistrate of a Chinese city on being told 
 that the infection of bubonic plague could be 
 kept out, asked why it should be kept out, in 
 view of the fact that there are too many peo- 
 ple! The Chinese, their multiplication un- 
 checked by the wars they have found out how 
 to avoid, may be excused if they choose pes- 
 tilence rather than famine. 
 
 I know that many readers will say that this 
 poverty must come from the fact that the peo- 
 ple are robbed by the aristocracy, or by the 
 monopolies, or by the government, or that they 
 do not make the best use of their resources 
 or that there is some other reason for this su- 
 premely dreadful condition of affairs than 
 
 127 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 mere pressure of numbers on the possibilities 
 of food production. If God is not to be ac- 
 cused of the supreme cruelty of placing more 
 passengers on this good ship Earth than she 
 can carry, then some other reason must be 
 found for this poverty, you say? 
 
 That question which carries us to the 
 greatest of all human questions must be 
 glanced at hereafter. Just now it is well to 
 remember that increase of population is the 
 greatest evil by which the world is threat- 
 ened. 
 
 Let us assume a pair of guinea-pigs in the 
 Ark, and her voyage so long as to bring into 
 play the forces that filled with young guinea- 
 pigs the life and the vicinity of the hero of 
 Pigs is Pigs. 
 
 This would have presented a puzzling 
 problem to our grandsire Noah, would it 
 not? We can imagine the venerable prophet 
 troubled at the growing scourge of guinea- 
 pigs. The provisions would have been inade- 
 quate for them. 
 
 128 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 But suppose the Noah family themselves 
 had so multiplied? Would the case have been 
 any better than if the famine had come from 
 guinea-pigs, lions, tigers or serpents? Would 
 it not have been the worst case possible, if 
 the increase had been in human beings? For 
 guinea-pigs, lions, tigers or serpents could 
 have been killed and thrown overboard or 
 eaten; while against the thinning out of the 
 redundant passengers, there was set the com- 
 mandment, "Thou shalt not kill." 
 
 I have been trying to get some light on the 
 very problem I have imagined as confronting 
 the Noah family. For our good ship Earth 
 seems to be in some of her decks already over- 
 populated not with properly killable brute 
 beasts, but with men and women and children. 
 This over-population, I have suggested, is the 
 cause of the poverty of the masses in China, 
 Japan and other Oriental parts. Many readers 
 protest, saying: "If poverty comes from the 
 irresistible forces of nature urging living be- 
 ings to multiply forces which rule man as 
 imperiously as brutes and plants, then why 
 
 129 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 try to justify the ways of God to man, or to 
 cure poverty? Why not let loose the dogs of 
 war, and close the medical research labora- 
 tories and the health bureaus? Is it not better 
 to keep the passengers thinned out by war, 
 than for them to perish by pestilence? And 
 is not quick decimation by pestilence better 
 than that slow killing of the soul as well as the 
 body which comes from poverty?" 
 
 These are questions which can not be 
 evaded, but must be met I hope to meet them 
 fairly in good time. 
 
 The poverty of the masses in the Orient is 
 full of awful interest to us of awful warning 
 and of a sort of fearful hope. It shows us the 
 dread condition which comes from over-pop- 
 ulationwhich is a matter for fear. It in- 
 forms us of the long, long road we have to 
 travel before we reach that point which is 
 food for hope hope that we may on the jour- 
 ney find some way out of the toils of our own 
 fecundity. 
 
 Those who say that such poverty as we Cau- 
 casians now suffer from is in no manner caused 
 
 [130 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 by over-population are right. We have in these 
 United States still more than twenty acres for 
 the sustenance of every person. In Japan 
 there is bat a third of an acre. Some Jap- 
 anese, however, are supported by trade and 
 manufactures, and draw their support from 
 other acres than those of Japan. But in the 
 Shangtung province of China, Doctor King 
 found lands supporting 3,840 people of a 
 strictly rural population to the square mile, or 
 240 to a forty-acre farm. The island of Chung- 
 ming, with 270 square miles, has 3,700 people 
 to the square mile, and only one large city 
 any part of whose people could draw sus- 
 tenance from outside the island. It is safe to 
 say, therefore, that until our population 
 doubles once or twice, such poverty as we have 
 must be laid to other doors than that of the 
 increase of population. 
 
 Even China and Japan may by collective gov- 
 ernmental energy bring into use lands which 
 the very agony of individual struggle for ex- 
 istence has not been able to utilize. Engineer- 
 ing and flood prevention may make room for 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tens of millions more in China. Mining of 
 fertilizing rocks may increase crops, and again 
 bring in exhausted and denuded areas. Japan, 
 if all hillside lands with a slope of fifteen de- 
 grees or less are brought under tillage, may 
 add sixty-five per cent, to her farmed acreage, 
 and thus allow an increase of population to a 
 hundred millions. But no discovery of science 
 can, so far as can be seen, take from the soil 
 what is not in it, nor enable agriculture to 
 make food of anything but plants fed from the 
 plant food in the soil. So that poverty is sure 
 to recur, if the present birth-rate of these na- 
 tions keeps up, no matter if the whole earth 
 were theirs. They are not made poor by their 
 oppressors, but by their birth-rate. 
 
 It might be possible to make some show of 
 denial of this as to the Japanese; for they have 
 most of the paraphernalia of industrial rob- 
 bery and exploitation. But in the Hoang-Ho 
 Valley of China, and especially in such fertile 
 areas as the Chengtu plain, where from three 
 to four thousand people live on each square 
 mile, the law of the pressure of population on 
 
 132 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 substance caused by redundancy of population 
 is in stark, plain, full operation. 
 
 "Are not these people in some way robbed?" 
 I asked of Professor E. A. Ross. "The per- 
 centage of production which goes to the non- 
 producers," said he, "can not be more than 
 two or three per cent." Wipe out even that 
 small concession to parasitic hands, and the 
 birth-rate would restore poverty in its orig- 
 inal awfulness in a year. In his book, The 
 Changing Chinese, he repeats this. "Nor," 
 says he, "is the lot of the masses due to ex- 
 ploitation. In the cities there is a sprink- 
 ling of rich, but out in the provinces one may 
 travel for weeks and see no sign of a wealthy 
 class no mansion or fine country place, no 
 equipage befitting the rich. There are great 
 stretches of fertile agricultural country where 
 the struggle for existence is stern and yet the 
 cultivator owns his land and implements and 
 pays tribute to no man." 
 
 The long strife with nature for subsistence 
 has stripped off even the parasite from the 
 shoulders of these sober, honest and thrifty 
 
 133 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 men. There is no surplus on which the non- 
 worker can live. Farming is so perfect that 
 even the greatest agricultural expert of our 
 time, the late F. H. King, could see no way in 
 which our science can materially help them. 
 Our best agricultural practise seems barbarous 
 compared with theirs. If good farming, good 
 soil, feverish and unremitting industry, prac- 
 tical freedom from taxes, and the enjoyment of 
 practically all the produce of their labor could 
 keep them from poverty, these people would 
 not be poor. Yet they are so poor that eight 
 out of ten of their children die in infancy. 
 The land can not support the increase. 
 
 So, while we need not yet lay any of our 
 western poverty to pressure of population, we 
 should remember that this awful evil seems to 
 be approaching. Our population has grown 
 from 38,000,000, in 1870, to 92,000,000; 
 Japan's in the same time from 33,000,000 to 
 50,000,000; Russia's from 73,000,000 to 160,- 
 000,000; Germany's from 41,000,000 to 64,- 
 000,000; Great Britain's from 31,000,000 to 
 45,000,000; Italy's from 26,000,000 to 34,- 
 
 134 
 
"MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH" 
 
 000,000; Austria Hungary's from 35,000,000 
 to 51,000,000; while even France, whose pop- 
 ulation increases more slowly than that of any 
 other nation, has grown from 36,000,000 to 
 39,000,000. 
 
 The urge to multiply bears man on to the 
 same goal, apparently, as the sparrow and the 
 worm to the exhaustion of subsistence. Doc- 
 tor W J McGee has made calculations that in 
 three hundred years the United States will 
 have acquired a population of a billion and 
 reached the limit. The limit means conditions 
 like those in Chengtu. Let the passengers on 
 the good ship Earth consider these things I 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE KIND OF PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 FATHER NOAH, on the Ark, fortunate- 
 ly had a voyage so short that the tend- 
 ency of his live stock human and brute to 
 swarm and increase in numbers, probably gave 
 him no trouble. 
 
 But we on board the good ship Earth are 
 doomed to a voyage of Infinite length. 1.1 is 
 an awful truth that every living thing on 
 board tends to multiply, and that plants and 
 animals all do multiply until their further in- 
 crease is stopped by lack of food which is 
 famine; by encroachments on their increasing 
 numbers which is war, or by parasites and 
 pests which is pestilence. 
 
 We know, too, that man tends to multiply 
 the Noah family already numbers thirty- 
 two people to every square mile of land on 
 our old Ark, Earth, counting in desert, swamp, 
 rock and sand, as well as arable. 
 
 -136 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 And this human swarm is growing faster 
 than ever. There are great authorities who 
 declare that war, pestilence and famine are as 
 inherent in the frame of human society, as in 
 that of wolves, rabbits, worms and fishes. 
 
 All we can say is that if this is not true, man 
 is the only living thing of which it is not true. 
 
 But if it is true, what shall we say of a God 
 who placed us here, with the urge upon us to 
 multiply so coercive that it has filled the 
 Orient with three thousand people to the 
 square mile? 
 
 Two of the most virile minds in the world 
 are Theodore Roosevelt and' Rudyard Kip- 
 ling. In many ways they are alike. Both are 
 something in the Berserker line stark sav- 
 age men, each with a bushel of brains. Each 
 has his ideas on this matter of population 
 and they seem to be opposite ideas. In a re- 
 cent story Kipling, prophesying of the year 
 2000, sees the population of the world de- 
 creasing to six hundred million, five hundred, 
 and then to four hundred and fifty. "The 
 planet," says one of his characters, "has taken 
 
 137 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 all precautions against crowds for the past 
 hundred years." "Anyhow," says another, 
 "men live a century apiece on the average, 
 now." "We are all rich and happy," says an- 
 other, "because we are so few and live so 
 long." In this story Kipling sees human 
 powers so far increased that a girl runs a cul- 
 tivator by means of an electric switch in the 
 house. So, if I have got his meaning, prophe- 
 sies Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 Roosevelt, on the other hand, seems to fear 
 evil from a decreasing birth-rate. He cries 
 out against what he calls race suicide. I do 
 not think he has uttered his full thought in 
 the premises, perhaps for reasons of policy. 
 I suspect that there be people whom he would 
 like to see having fewer children, and those 
 whom he would fain see rear more. 
 
 This brings us passengers on the good ship 
 Earth to a consideration of the kind of passen- 
 gers who do multiply, and the sort, if any, who 
 do not. If there is a sort which do not, are 
 they better or worse passengers than those who 
 do? If we are to stay on this spinning air-ship 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 as it shoots through space if we can not get 
 off save by death, and if our descendants are 
 to sail on after we have been absorbed back 
 into the decks from which we rose, the ques- 
 tion must be of interest. If we really think, 
 must it not be the one of the most interesting 
 of all questions? 
 
 The Chinese have an annual birth-rate of 
 between fifty and sixty to the thousand. In 
 Russia it is forty-nine. In French Canada it 
 is probably equal to the Russian rate. In 
 Japan it is only a little, if any, less. In Ger- 
 many it is thirty-five. In German Austria and 
 Spain it is thirty-four. In Italy, Holland and 
 Finland it is about thirty-three. In Norway, 
 Denmark, England, Scotland and Belgium it 
 is about twenty-nine. In the United States as 
 a whole it is probably about the same. In 
 Australia and New Zealand it is about twenty- 
 five. In Ireland it is twenty-three. In France 
 it is twenty-one. 
 
 Look at it! Russians, Chinese, Japanese 
 and such similar populations, already swarm- 
 ing as those of Hungary, growing like genera- 
 
 139 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tions of midges as compared with the Yan- 
 kees, Irish, British, French and the British 
 Colonials! 
 
 Note this, too wherever there is a high av- 
 erage of intelligence, the birth-rate is low. 
 This is true within the limits of every society. 
 We must not imagine that all classes in Rus- 
 sia, China, Hungary, French Canada or else- 
 where are so astonishingly prolific. We may 
 be sure that there, as here, the huge families 
 are found mainly in the tiny homes of the 
 ignorant. Is there not here a glimpse of the 
 two courses open to the world widely dis- 
 seminated high intelligence and a low birth- 
 rate, as against a high birth-rate and general 
 and widespread ignorance? 
 
 We are here looking into the very core of 
 the riddle of the Sphinx. 
 
 It is of importance, too, to every passenger 
 on the good ship Earth to take notice of the 
 fact that while we are animals, the conditions 
 which are favorable to the multiplication of 
 all other animals do not seem to affect the 
 human race in the same way. This is some- 
 
 140 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 thing which we are only just beginning to 
 realize. Herbert Spencer denied it. But the 
 facts show that man in the conditions deter- 
 mining his tendency to multiply is different 
 in some respects from all other animals. 
 
 All other animals multiply faster when they 
 have plenty of food and adequate shelter in 
 other words, when they are in vigorous con- 
 dition physically, and when life is easy. But 
 look at the facts as to man. 
 
 Sir J. A. Baines says that in France "gen- 
 eral well-being reaches probably a lower 
 depth in the community than in any other part 
 of Europe" in other words, France has the 
 highest general average of comfort. She has 
 the lowest birth-rate in the world. 
 
 There are some special reasons for the low 
 Irish birth-rate, but the principal ones are the 
 high comparative intelligence and prosperity 
 of the island. 
 
 The poorest people in North America north 
 of the Spanish nations are the French 
 Canadians, and the most illiterate and their 
 birth-rate is the highest. The thrifty and in- 
 
 141 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tellectual Yankees, of New England, probably 
 have the lowest birth-rate on this continent. 
 
 The Boers, of South Africa, have a very 
 high birth-rate and are very prosperous but 
 they are extremely ignorant. 
 
 The Russian peasants, degraded, ignorant, 
 besotted, illiterate and poverty-stricken, are 
 almost as prolific as the Chinese. The Hun- 
 garians belong to the Central European group 
 of oppressed peasantries whose high birth- 
 rate helps to keep them in bondage. 
 
 The Colonials, of New Zealand and Aus- 
 tralia, are among the most intellectual and 
 prosperous people embarked on the good 
 ship Earth, and their babies scarcely suffice 
 to keep their numbers good, though they have 
 a continent to occupy. 
 
 After one of Colonel Roosevelt's outbursts 
 against "race suicide," Mr. Dooley observed 
 that "race suicide," like the tariff, is a local 
 question. They might be troubled by it on 
 the Lake Shore Drive, but it was the least of 
 their worries on the Archey Road. So it is 
 all over the world. The poor and the unedu- 
 
 (142 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 cated multiply. The well-to-do and the in- 
 tellectual do not. China and Russia, French 
 Canada and Japan are the Archey Roads of 
 the world. Australia, Great Britain, France, 
 the United States and the nations of Europe 
 generally are its Lake Shore Drives. One of 
 the deepest truths in human thought is in the 
 old saying, "A poor man for children." 
 
 Maud Muller's case is one which shows the 
 insight of the poet. In one couplet Whittier 
 compresses the whole philosophy of popula- 
 tion. 
 
 "She wedded a man unlearned and poor, 
 And many children played round her door." 
 
 This is more comprehensive than the maxim 
 "A poor man for children;" for small fam- 
 ilies are the rule in many communities among 
 the poor as well as the rich. But where the 
 people are both ignorant or "unlearned"- 
 and poor, large families abound. The Boers 
 are well-to-do, but they are very illiterate and 
 unprogressive and prolific. The French 
 
 H3 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Canadians are not poor in the slum sense, per- 
 haps, but they are not strivers after wealth as a 
 race, still maintaining the happy-go-lucky at- 
 titude toward the rearing of children which 
 we Yankees maintained when we had, as they 
 have, a wilderness at our doors in which we 
 might freely live. They are illiterate, and 
 very prolific. The Russians and the Central 
 European peasantry generally, are both poor 
 and ignorant. 
 
 The rule is this. The simple life produces 
 large families. The complex life cuts down 
 the birth-rate. As the good ship Earth "spins 
 down the ringing grooves of change", if hu- 
 man beings are not to make their lives on 
 her decks a hell through the miseries of pov- 
 erty, they must live more and more the com- 
 plex life, and less and less the simple life. 
 This is the solution of the riddle of popula- 
 tion. 
 
 There must be no poverty. Some way must 
 be found to eliminate the injustices which 
 make the inequalities that doom so many mil- 
 lions, even in our sparsely peopled land, to lives 
 
 144 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 of simple, stark, dead struggle for existence. 
 Such a state of freedom from poverty is pos- 
 sible in the western world for ages to come, 
 and if attained before the people are ground 
 down into "the simple life" will forever save 
 us from a swarming existence of poverty from 
 which, once completely plunged into it, we 
 shall have no way of escaping fulfilling the 
 sordid law of Malthus, and carrying us down 
 into that "amorphous gulf," "that gulf of an- 
 archy whose pit is hell." There must be a 
 way found through which all men may escape 
 from poverty. 
 
 The case of the simple life vs. the complex 
 life is another way of stating the old 
 struggle which Spencer describes of individ- 
 uation vs. genesis. The complete, perfect 
 and complex individual does not multiply as 
 does the simple, small and limited individual. 
 The house-fly is credited with the power to 
 produce 199,000,000,000,000,000 of young in 
 a season, if all her eggs hatch, and all her 
 young go "unswatted." The very fact of size 
 carries with it the gift of more complex life. 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 The elephant is committed by his very 
 weight to a struggle with gravity he can not 
 carry about such a body and keep it nourished, 
 and still have left the vital force to multiply 
 like the house-fly. So the birth-rate of the 
 elephant is low and that of the house-fly high, 
 just as one lives on a high plane, and the other 
 on a low one. 
 
 Small birds breed faster than large ones of 
 the same genus. The golden eagle has fewer 
 young than does the sparrow hawk. The tapir 
 is a slow breeder, while the peccary swarms. 
 These things are not accidental. They inhere 
 in the principles of biology. Organisms are 
 restricted in producing progeny as soon as they 
 begin to do anything else. 
 
 But no merely brute life compares in its 
 capacity for becoming complex with human 
 life. The bushman lives a simple life for a 
 man, but the gorilla reduces existence to still 
 lower terms. 
 
 Let us contrast the simple life of the Chi- 
 nese peasant with that of a struggling Ameri- 
 can family. The American boy goes to school, 
 
 1146 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 the Chinese boy works bowed down to serve 
 the rice. The American boy goes to high 
 school ; the Chinese boy at the same age takes 
 a wife, and becomes a father. He is repeated- 
 ly becoming a father, while the American 
 boy goes to college, or spends years becoming 
 "able to marry." Out of a thousand American 
 boys a great many will take up studies or ap- 
 prenticeships or other complexities of life 
 which will defer their marriages and if they 
 do not their sweethearts will. Nothing of the 
 sort in China in one case in a hundred thou- 
 sand. 
 
 The difference between Gladys and Tzi is 
 even greater. Tzi has her feet bound and 
 suffers the tortures of hell for years, and this 
 is the only complexity entering into her life. 
 At last it only makes life simpler and con- 
 fines her more closely to her sole business of 
 motherhood as it keeps her vegetating in the 
 hovel she calls home. At thirteen she is given 
 in marriage, and while Gladys is working 
 through the grades at school, Tzi is having 
 babies. If her husband is able he hires a wet 
 
 H7 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 nurse for the babies, so that Tzi may become 
 a mother of tener. 
 
 Tzi and Ching marry in their early teens ; 
 Willie and Gladys wait and in waiting may- 
 be change their minds. Tzi and Ching, liv- 
 ing the simple life, couch in a hovel with their 
 parents and relatives ; Willie and Gladys must 
 have a home of their own. Gladys's mother 
 insists that her daughter "shall have a few 
 years of just being a girl ;" the mother of Tzi 
 hands her over to the father of Tzi to give 
 away to a husband who has never seen Tzi's 
 face. 
 
 And when Willie and Gladys marry, they 
 have their social work, their church work, and 
 their clubs and societies to take care of; but 
 Tzi and Ching have babies only babies and 
 awful grinding work. Willie and Gladys 
 must have a piano; Tzi and Ching have 
 babies. Willie and Gladys must have rugs and 
 bathrooms and a bungalow at some lake. Tzi 
 and Ching know nothing but work and babies. 
 Willie and Gladys want to know something 
 about this great universe of ours, they reach 
 
 148 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 out after the stars, they delve into the myster- 
 ies of knowledge; but as for Tzi and Ching, 
 
 "Slaves of the wheel of labor, what to them 
 Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 
 What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 
 The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?" 
 
 Ross says of Tzi and Ching's country, 
 stripped to the bare machinery of production 
 as it is: "The founts of inspiration and poetry 
 dry up, and life sinks to a dull sordid round 
 of food-getting and begetting." 
 
 And again, these variations are not acci- 
 dental. Here also they inhere in the very 
 principles of biology. All the things done by 
 Willie and Gladys in addition to the simple 
 labors of Ching and Tzi take time and vital 
 force. Human beings, like animals, but to a 
 degree infinitely greater, are inhibited from 
 multiplying to the exact extent, on the aver- 
 age, to which they exercise their powers to do 
 anything else. This must be so. It is possible 
 for a horse to trot a mile in just a little more 
 than two minutes. It is possible for the same 
 horse to draw a ton. But it is not possible for 
 
 149 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the same horse to do the two things at the 
 same time. 
 
 Jesus came to earth that we might have life, 
 and that more abundantly. This must mean a 
 more complex life, more needs, more grati- 
 fications, more desires. Like the daughters 
 of the horse leech we cry, "Give, give!" to na- 
 ture and to life. And this is right. Give us 
 a more complex life, not a simpler one; bet- 
 ter children, even though they be fewer; and 
 women with unbound feet, unbound minds, 
 with freedom to develop in every way a free- 
 dom and development which will make their 
 children great, whether they be many or not. 
 Thus will the ship be saved from over-peo- 
 pling. 
 
 This is the application to political econ- 
 omy of the universal law of the conflict be- 
 tween individuation and genesis. It recon- 
 ciles the law of evolution with the law of 
 justice, and transforms the evolutionary prin- 
 ciple from a sentence of social death to a gos- 
 pel, like that of the Nazarene, of "good tid- 
 ings to the poor". It recognizes the truth in 
 
 150 
 
PASSENGERS THAT MULTIPLY 
 
 the doctrines of those who have preached di- 
 minishing returns, redundancy of population, 
 the struggle for existence, and the survival of 
 the fittest, as reasons for poverty. It takes 
 cognizance of the truth in those other writings 
 which assure us that there is something in 
 man's mentality which takes him out of the 
 operation of the Iron Statute of the universal 
 tendency of all living things to out-multiply 
 their means of living. It identifies that re- 
 demptive Something. It shows that in this 
 respect, as in all others, man must work out 
 his own salvation. He was naked, and clothed 
 himself. He was shelterless, and he learned 
 to build. He taught the beasts to give their 
 increase for his food, the fields to bring forth 
 for him. In all these cases man finds himself 
 within some saving natural law as soon as he 
 rises to its level. This principle of the con- 
 flict between individuation and genesis takes 
 him out of the operation of the law of fecun- 
 dity, as soon as he rises to the moral and intel- 
 lectual heights to which, unless by his own 
 sociological failure his development is frus- 
 
 15* 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 trated, he is destined. He rises above this law, 
 not alone by any Malthusian "prudential" or 
 "preventive" check on population ; but by the 
 force of natural law which works in plant and 
 beast as well as in man. In the process of 
 evolution, man steps upon the stage a savage, 
 but with the complex life which half solves 
 the great riddle. In civilized man, under con- 
 ditions of justice, freedom and enlightenment, 
 the law of multiplication gives way to the law 
 of complex, full, manifold and absorbing life. 
 Redundancy of offspring is supplanted by re- 
 dundancy of life. 
 
 "Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to 
 them that know the law,) how that the law 
 hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? 
 . . . But now we are delivered from the 
 law, that being dead wherein we were held; 
 that we should serve in newness of spirit, and 
 not in the oldness of the letter." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY NUMBER ONE. 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIL 
 
 AS passengers on a ship which has no 
 ports of call, the cliques, cabals, classes 
 and divisions among the people aboard must 
 be important. It was always so. For even in 
 the days of old, the rise of a new dynasty in 
 Asia filled the nations of Europe with fire 
 and sword, by the mere ebb and flow of bat- 
 tle across the decks. 
 
 But now, we have learned to go to the re- 
 motest^parts of the planet in vessels, each of 
 which will carry an army; and we have sup- 
 plemented the horse and camel with the train, 
 the motor-car and the aeroplane. We have 
 learned to go to other peoples in such wise 
 but we often forget that they also have learned 
 to come to us. The good ship Earth can not 
 be ever again the planet in which nations can 
 
 153 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 live isolated lives. We are all in the same 
 boat and more and more we are driven to 
 look upon the huge problem of life upon it 
 as a single problem. 
 
 When one reads the story of sea adventure, 
 he finds his first thrill in the description of 
 the swarthy nondescript crew of Lascars, Ma- 
 lays, Kanakas and Portuguese. No matter how 
 fair the skies or how favorable the breeze, 
 the reader is aware that in another part of the 
 ship lurks that crew, with knives in their 
 belts and murder and mutiny in their hearts. 
 But how about the swarthy crew on other parts 
 of the decks of the good ship Earth? Are 
 affairs on this spinning Zeppelin on which we 
 sail perfectly free from danger from them? 
 
 There are several questionable cliques of 
 sinister aspect on board with us, and of these 
 I shall now speak of one the Mohammedan 
 peril. 
 
 We who are at least nominally Christians, 
 are prone to think that the religion founded by 
 Mahomet 1,300 years ago is a dying or de- 
 cadent one. No mistake was ever more egre- 
 
 154 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIL 
 
 gious. Mohammedanism is making three 
 converts to Christianity's one! 
 
 It is growing in Russia, where the alliance 
 of the decadent absolutism of the czar with 
 the dying Greek Catholic church leaves the 
 field free for the missionaries of Islam. It 
 is sweeping over Central Asia like an infec- 
 tion. It is spreading through the islands of 
 the Pacific, where it already is the ruling re- 
 ligion in Sumatra, Java, Celebes, Borneo and 
 some of our Philippines. It is wiping out 
 paganism in Africa, where it seems bound to 
 become the universal faith of the black race. 
 It is conquering Abyssinia, that kingdom of 
 blacks in which Christianity of a mongrel sort 
 has fought back Islam for a thousand years. 
 
 Mohammedanism makes fighters of its con- 
 verts. Its weakness and its strength lie in 
 this fact. Italy can not conquer the Trip- 
 olitanians. She may finally kill them, but she 
 can not make them submit. 
 
 Mohammedanism unites all the races of the 
 faith in one brotherhood. Freemasons and 
 knights of various orders take oaths of mutual 
 
 1 55 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 aid but none of them clings to one another as 
 do Mohammedans. Russia in Central Asia, 
 England in Egypt and India, France in Tunis, 
 and Spain in Morocco were all disturbed by 
 the rage of Mohammedans against Christians 
 when Italy attacked Tripoli. 
 
 The Mohammedan nations of the world 
 possess 1,500,000 trained soldiers, armed with 
 modern weapons. There are perhaps ten mil- 
 lions of first-class fighting men, fierce, brave 
 as any men in the world, but untrained, who 
 are ready to die happily in the cause of Islam 
 against the hated unbelievers. 
 
 Mohammedanism is a religion of sex-indul- 
 gence, of temperance, of hate against all other 
 faiths, and is based on the principle that it is 
 right to kill those who refuse to accept the true 
 religion as they fanatically believe theirs to 
 be. Such a faith so held is a world-wide 
 portent. 
 
 This faith is as strong now as ever it was. 
 As strong as when the Mohammedans con- 
 quered Spain, and were kept from making us 
 all Mohammedans by nothing but the tre- 
 
 156 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIL 
 
 mendous genius in battle of Charles the Ham- 
 mer, grandfather of Charlemagne, who beat 
 them back in a seven days' battle at Tours, in 
 which the Mohammedans left 375,000 dead 
 on the field. They had already conquered all 
 of Spain and half of France. This was twelve 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 From that time, the Moslems were held 
 back at the Pyrenees, and were finally ex- 
 pelled from Spain; but all the time they were 
 fiercely beating at the other door of Europe. 
 They wiped out the last vestige of the Byzan- 
 tine Empire, which held them in check for 
 more than a thousand years. From this we 
 should learn that Mohammedanism never 
 quits. Nine hundred years after Charles the 
 Hammer broke them to pieces at Tours, John 
 Sobieski, of Poland, and Prince Eugene, of 
 Savoy who fought beside Marlborough, of 
 England, at Blenheim saved Christendom a 
 second time, by victories in a series of terrible 
 battles in what is now the Christian empire of 
 Austria. 
 
 When one of the Moorish officers in Spain 
 
 157 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 kept for himself a beautiful maiden, Abder- 
 Rahman his general put him to death for 
 keeping a treasure which should have gone to 
 the caliph the head of the church. And 
 when the Mohammedans took Spain, thirty 
 thousand fair women were sent as a present to 
 the caliph. The Turks of to-day are the same 
 as those who stormed Constantinople in 1453. 
 Their war on the Albanians just prior to the 
 attack on Turkey by the Balkan Allies was 
 the same fierce Mohammedan war. Still girls 
 are the reward of valor. The Circassian maid- 
 ens of 1912 find their market in the harems of 
 Islam. 
 
 Only one thing keeps the Mohammedans 
 from resuming their march to conquer the 
 world for Islam. Not lack of numbers there 
 are 220,000,000 of them, the best soldiery of 
 the world. No, it is lack of money and scien- 
 tific knowledge. Time was when the Arabs 
 were the best educated people in the world, 
 and the Mohammedan court in Spain was for 
 three hundred years the center of science, 
 wealth and culture. The great world danger:. 
 
 " 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIL 
 jn^Mohammedanism is that some 
 
 these enl^ who WJll_b_e_StQW on 
 
 them knQwledgJ3J_lhe^cie&rpg and finann'al 
 
 honesty and ability again. If that time comes 
 before Mohammedan fanaticism is weakened 
 by general and liberal education, we shall 
 need all the Charles Martels, all the John 
 Sobieskies, and all the Prince Eugenes which 
 the rest of the world can muster, to keep the 
 good ship Earth from passing under the 
 blight of the most seductive and the most de- 
 grading superstition on earth a faith which 
 enslaves woman, flouts democracy, and know- 
 ing nothing of rights, bows to power alone. 
 
 Just now the Crescent seems to be waning 
 more pronouncedly than for centuries. The 
 Balkan Allies have won a brilliant victory, 
 and as this is written, Janina has fallen to the 
 prowess of the Greeks, and Adrianople seems 
 on the very point of surrendering to the Bui- 
 gars. The Turk seems crowded almost off the 
 map of Europe. 
 
 But the Turk is not Islam. His headship 
 has not been for a hundred and fifty years a 
 
 159 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 good thing for Islam. The decay of Turkey 
 does not mean that the Mohammedan peril is 
 a thing of the past. Nine hundred years 
 elapsed between the defeat of the Moors at 
 Tours and the victories of the armies of Eu- 
 rope over the Turks at Vienna. During those 
 nine centuries the Moors had been expelled 
 from Spain and driven across the Strait of 
 Gibraltar, as the Turks may soon be expelled 
 from the Balkan Peninsula and driven across 
 the Bosphorus. But Islam still lived. There 
 may now be living in some Bedouin tent, or 
 some Afghan village, on the steppes of Russia 
 or Siberia, in some city of Hindustan or in an 
 African hut the man whose son will ride the 
 wave of resurgent Mohammedanism. Or if 
 not his son, his grandson, his great-grandson, 
 or his descendant a hundred times removed. 
 The world of the Crescent is wide, and its cav- 
 erns and penetralia very, very deep. Out of 
 them almost anything may come at any time. 
 Out of them, instead of mad mullahs, veiled 
 prophets, and beaters of tom-toms, Genius 
 will assuredly come sometime. It may be the 
 
 160 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN PERIL 
 
 genius of civilization, or the genius of con- 
 quest and slaughter. That it is so likely to be 
 the latter is what makes the Mohammedan 
 peril a real one. 
 
 The triumph of science in the Christian 
 world was the destruction of superstition. Let 
 us hope that the Mohammedan world may be 
 disenthralled and enlightened by the same 
 process. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY NUMBER TWO. 
 THE SPANISH-PORTUGUESE PERIL 
 
 INSTEAD of the good ship Earth, let us 
 suppose it were only our associations on 
 the Mauretama or the Olympic of which we 
 have to think. We sail on, first-cabin, second- 
 cabin and saloon passengers getting along 
 finely. None of them thinks of the massed 
 steerage passengers, for their condition is of 
 no consequence. They are cut off from the 
 rest of us. We are in another world. 
 
 But suppose the decks of the great ship 
 should suddenly become permeable, so that 
 saloon, cabin first and second and steerage 
 no longer kept their classes separate? We 
 should all at once realize that it is a matter 
 of the utmost moment what sort of people are 
 in the steerage. 
 
 Great Britain and Ireland, France and Ger- 
 162 
 
THE SPANISH PERIL 
 
 many, Austria, Switzerland, and the Low 
 Countries, Canada, the United States, Aus- 
 tralia, and New Zealand, and British South 
 Africa are the saloon, and first and second cab- 
 ins of the good ship Earth. There are found 
 on the average and among the masses of the 
 people the maximum of intellect, luxury and 
 comfort, and the minimum of poverty 
 though enough of that is found everywhere 
 in all conscience. The steerage passengers 
 surge like a sea all about these select-club na- 
 tions. Just now we spoke of the Moham- 
 medans 220,000,000 of them, who occupy 
 the mountains and deserts from which they 
 may one day descend and emerge, following 
 the green flag of Islam in holy wars that shall 
 shake the world again. 
 
 Let us now consider another danger to 
 humanity one scarcely recognized with any 
 concreteness the Spanish-Portuguese factor 
 among the steerage passengers in the good 
 ship Earth. 
 
 The Spanish and Portuguese at their best 
 are among the finest of races. They are brave, 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 poetic, hardy, industrious and efficient. But 
 for some reason, they have never learned the 
 lesson of justice and democracy. They do not 
 know how to govern, to educate, to dwell to- 
 gether on terms of equity. They do not know 
 how to establish liberty of the press or of 
 speech. They have not the gift of kindly 
 feeling and mercy to the lowly or to beasts. 
 They are the most rapacious landlords, and 
 the cruelest slave-drivers in the world. 
 
 And because they were bold soldiers and 
 magnificent sailors and fighters four hundred 
 years ago, they now have possession of the 
 best portions of the good ship Earth. I shall 
 say nothing of Spanish North Africa, or of the 
 Spain-dominated Philippines, or Guam, or 
 Portuguese empires in Africa, but shall con- 
 sider only the wonderful and sinister manner 
 in which the evils of four hundred years ago 
 live yet in the Spanish-Portuguese control of 
 America. 
 
 Sixty-five millions of people in the new 
 world live under Spanish and Portuguese 
 republics. But their numbers are small, com- 
 
 164 
 
THE SPANISH PERIL 
 
 pared with what they monopolize. From the 
 Rio Grande south as far as the world extends it 
 is all theirs. They hold sway over nearly 9,000,- 
 ooo square miles of the Americas more than 
 a sixth of the land surface of the world. They 
 possess half a dozen Californias, and at least 
 three Mississippi valleys. In their moun- 
 tain regions are Utahs and Colorados 
 almost unnumbered. Two-thirds of the 
 western hemisphere are theirs as against one- 
 third owned by the English-speaking peoples, 
 and these two-thirds comprise not less than 
 three-fourths of the richness, the capacity to 
 support population of the western world. 
 
 Brazil is Portuguese, and all the rest 
 Spanish. But in the danger that lies in these 
 peoples for the welfare of the good ship 
 Earth, there is nothing to choose between 
 these two branches of the Iberian tree. 
 
 In all these great nations the common peo- 
 ple are debauched in superstition and crushed 
 by tyranny. Cruel sports and cruel customs 
 hold them down to the level of beasts as far 
 as such things can do so. In Mexico, while 
 
 165 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 families average five or six children, the in- 
 fant death-rate is fifty per cent. So population 
 grows slowly, if at all. The people neglect 
 their children and live insanitary lives. They 
 are slaves through peonage. With Diaz, or 
 Madero, or Orozco, it is all the same with 
 them. 
 
 In Central America the birth-rate is high 
 and population increases with great rapidity 
 between wars. But the people are ignorant 
 and enslaved. Through all South America 
 a continent so huge and so wonderful in 
 capacity for supporting population that the 
 imagination fails to measure it the story is 
 the same. 
 
 Everywhere Spanish and Portuguese me- 
 dieval ideals rule. The lands are monopolized 
 by landlords, some of whom own millions of 
 acres. The common people are peonized and 
 ground down. In rich, rich Paraguay, while 
 the common people are rather free from pov- 
 erty, the grossest ignorance and superstition 
 prevail. In Chili the death-rate among in- 
 
 166 
 
THE SPANISH PERIL 
 
 fants is seventy-six per cent. In Bolivia the 
 devils of cruelty and greed seem loosed. Not 
 even in more sophisticated Argentina and 
 Brazil do we find conditions much better. 
 The whole of this great part of the good 
 ship Earth is given over to land monopoly, 
 peonage, ignorance and immorality. The 
 percentage of illegitimate births in all these 
 nations runs from twenty per cent, to fifty per 
 cent. 
 
 It is not necessary to say that this indict- 
 ment can not be made to lie against all the 
 people of these nations. Here, as everywhere, 
 there are many who stand for the highest 
 ideals, and live lives of purity, altruism and 
 idealism. And even in their faults, we of the 
 less backward races have no right to look down 
 on them; for they stand in the place we occu- 
 'pied not so very long ago; and among us are 
 millions who now rank with their lowest. But 
 the depressing thing about them is that the 
 forces of evil and oppression seem to be in 
 almost undisputed control, and the justifica- 
 
 167 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tion for any optimistic forecast for them is not 
 apparent. 
 
 There is a world peril in this. The other 
 passengers will need to move into these fertile 
 wastes one day and will find them "owned" by 
 such influences as I have described. What 
 will happen then? No one can prophesy 
 certainly no one can prophesy peace. 
 
 The passing of a part of the Earth into 
 such hands is a dreadful thing. It would have 
 been far better had the lands now occupied 
 by the Spanish and Portuguese republics been 
 left in the hands of their Indian aborigines 
 until now. The worst thing that could happen 
 would be for these peoples to obtain scientific 
 education and fail to gain democracy. For 
 with sanitation and modern medical practise 
 their birth-rate would fill up the land in a few 
 centuries with a race of slaves as dense in 
 population as are the Chinese, and with war- 
 like blood in their veins which might make 
 them the war-lords of the world. 
 
 Let us hope that these oppressed peoples 
 168 
 
THE SPANISH PERIL 
 
 may gain the reality, of which they all have 
 the shadow real democracy, and with it 
 emancipation from landlords, from supersti- 
 tion, from ignorance. Until they do this the 
 rest of the passengers must look askance at the 
 Portuguese and Spanish Americans. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY NUMBER THREE. 
 THE RUSSIAN PERIL 
 
 CRATCH a Russian," says an old adage, 
 
 and you find a Tartar." 
 This is true in many senses. The Russian 
 is more Asiatic than European. Russian 
 writers among them Tolstoy were until 
 recently in the habit of speaking of Russia as 
 non-European. And though the Slavic race 
 seems to have been in Europe as long as has 
 the German, it has always been in close contact 
 with Asia. It was overrun by the Mongols 
 and Tartars. Its princes once were khans. 
 And when the Russian czardom was built up 
 by the Ivans and Bazil, beginning about four 
 hundred years ago, the princes of Muscovy 
 saddled on the humble and docile Slav peas- 
 antry, a tyranny with the unbridled power and 
 barbaric splendor of the Tartar court they had 
 
 170 
 
THE RUSSIAN PERIL 
 
 displaced, combined with the pomp and dis- 
 play of the Eastern Roman Empire, then re- 
 cently overthrown by the Turks. 
 
 I put down Russia as the third of the Seven 
 Perils of Humanity. As a passenger on the 
 good ship Earth, whose posterity must in- 
 habit the same whirling ball with the Slavs, 
 I am not sure that it should not be ranked as 
 the hugest peril of all. 
 
 And yet, the Russian people have the quali- 
 ties that may make of them our greatest bless- 
 ing instead of our greatest curse. Seven- 
 eighths of them are farmers no crowded 
 slums and fevered city-plague here. 
 
 Eighty-five per cent, are of the peasant class. 
 And the question of their part in the future of 
 the good ship Earth lies in the uncertainty as 
 to whether they will be allowed to develop 
 their virtues, or be utterly debauched by 
 their vices for which they are not at all to 
 blame. For the Russian aristocracy has long 
 since adopted a systematic and diabolical pol- 
 icy of both blinding and debauching the 
 masses. 
 
 171 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 The Slav peasant is democratic. He has 
 village communities in which he governs 
 himself in peasant matters, a good deal as the 
 New Englanders do in their town meetings. 
 There was a republic in Novgorod which the 
 Muscovite czars destroyed in the building up 
 of their Tartar tyranny. The peasants have 
 a love for village life, and will not separate 
 into lonely farms as we do. They have long 
 known how to associate into cooperative bodies 
 so as to hire out, buy and sell and the like to 
 better advantage. On these foundations there 
 is every reason to hope that a great and bene- 
 ficient democracy might be built up, were it 
 not for the curse of the czardom. 
 
 The Russians are increasing faster than any 
 other race and they have more open ground 
 over which to spread. 
 
 That is what makes them a world peril. 
 
 Fifty years ago there were 75,000,000 of 
 them. In 1897 they had increased to 129,- 
 000,000. In 1904 their numbers had swarmed 
 to 143,000,000. In 1906 the central statistical 
 committee counted up 149,000,000. In 1910 
 
 172 
 
THE RUSSIAN PERIL 
 
 the Russian Year Book sets down their num- 
 bers at 160,748,400! 
 
 This is an awful, a portentous showing. It 
 includes, of course, all the classes and all the 
 races of the Russian empire, but the Slav and 
 the fine Finnish races make up nearly nine out 
 of every ten of them. At this rate, and there 
 seems to be no reason to doubt their increase, 
 unless their birth-rate is checked by enlighten- 
 ment and prosperity, or their death-rate in- 
 creased by war, pestilence and famine there 
 will be 260,000,000 Russians in 1950; 520,- 
 000,000 in the year 2000; 1,020,000,000 in 
 2050; and in the year 2100 with your chil- 
 dren and mine, dear reader, on this great air- 
 ship Earth to voyage along with them, there 
 will be 2,020,000,000 Russians or twenty per 
 cent, more than all the world now contains in 
 population. 
 
 If they were always a peaceful people, willing 
 to stay in one place and breed and starve, as the 
 Hindus, the Chinese and Koreans do, it would 
 be a different matter. They would then in- 
 crease to the limit of subsistence, as the Chi- 
 
 173 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 nese have done ; and be swept off by infant mor- 
 tality and famine, so that the swarms would 
 remain always at about the same numbers. 
 But the Russians will not be apt to do this. 
 They have under their sway one-sixth of the 
 land surface of the decks of our great air-ship. 
 More unoccupied land is in their name than 
 any other people owns. If the scientists are 
 correct, who say that for a thousand years or 
 more the carbonic acid gas, accumulating in 
 the air through the burning of coal, will make 
 the climates of this world warmer and warmer, 
 the thawing of the frigid north in Russia and 
 Siberia will make their lands the most desir- 
 able from the standpoint of producing a virile 
 race, in all the world. To me it seems reason- 
 able to suppose that this will come to pass. But 
 no change in climate is required. The lands 
 now open to reclamation and occupancy for 
 the Slavs are almost illimitable. 
 
 What kind of people are they? They are 
 naturally a good people. They have won- 
 derful musical ability, their novelists are the 
 greatest, perhaps, the world has produced, and 
 
 174 
 
THE RUSSIAN PERIL 
 
 they are painters, poets and reformers when 
 given a chance. 
 
 But their future will be a struggle between 
 the good Slav nature and the Asiatic, the 
 Tartar influences that govern them. The peas- 
 ants are starving and, of course, multiplying. 
 People as poor as they never are guilty of 
 "race suicide." They live "the simple life." 
 
 The emancipation of the serfs only plunged 
 them into deeper bondage to the landlord 
 through interest on their allotments of lands. 
 This so-called emancipation was the most 
 awful piece of robbery ever committed. Half 
 the land "belongs" to the royal family. The 
 peasants have not one-tenth as much as they 
 need for their support. They are leaving 
 their villages by millions to wander about as 
 tramps in search of work and food. They arc 
 denied education. Good men and women 
 who try to teach them are sent to Siberia or 
 scourged by the police. They are systemat- 
 ically debauched by drink. The government, 
 not so civilized as that of China, which is put- 
 ting down the opium trade, is glad to have the 
 
 175 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 peasants' brains benumbed with vodka, lest 
 they think. 
 
 If these peasants, rising from this awful 
 tyranny, can yet summon up the resolution to 
 die by millions, if necessary, in order to throw 
 off the czardom, to take from the privileged 
 classes the lands and distribute them to the 
 people, to make the state the universal land- 
 lord, as Tolstoy seems to suggest, paying the 
 rent to the people themselves in the form of 
 a land-value tax, and using it for schools and 
 roads if they can do this, they will grow in 
 intellect, their birth-rate will fall off, they 
 will spread more slowly over their wide 
 domains, and they may lead the world in civ- 
 ilization, in virtue and in unselfishness. But 
 Russia is like a huge boy who is wavering be- 
 tween genius and the deepest degradation 
 with the chances in favor of the latter. 
 
 If prayers can avail, prayers should be 
 offered up for the redemption of Russia. For 
 unless these swarming millions are redeemed 
 the world may have an awful reckoning with 
 
THE RUSSIAN PERIL 
 
 them one of these days when tyranny shall 
 marshal them in arms and drive them to battle 
 under the slogan "The World for Holy 
 Russia!" 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY NUMBER FOUR. 
 THE HINDU PERIL 
 
 BY the Hindu peril I mean the peril that 
 confronts the fellow passengers on the 
 good ship Earth from the people of that 
 part of Asia lying south and southeast of the 
 Himalaya Mountains. Most of it is British 
 India. Farther India and its neighboring 
 lands belong with them in a broad way. I 
 call them the Hindu peril because the Hindus 
 are the most numerous of them and the vast 
 majority of them live in Hindustan. 
 
 These peoples are as numerous to use an 
 old simile as the sands of the sea, and they 
 are not good passengers for the good ship 
 Earth. Sometime they may become such, but 
 it is to be feared that long before they cease 
 to be a menace to the welfare of all on board 
 the problem of what our attitude shall be 
 
 178 
 
THE HINDU PERIL 
 
 toward them will become a world nightmare. 
 
 Whenever a British writer begins to tell of 
 India he protests that it is not a nation, but a 
 continent. Well, it is large, but to American 
 minds not amazingly so. Take a map of the 
 United States, place your finger at Eastport, 
 Maine, and follow the Atlantic Coast to Key 
 West, Florida. Now follow the west coast 
 of Florida to Pensacola, shoot northwest 
 through Minneapolis and St. Paul to Prince 
 Albert, Saskatchewan. Thence through the 
 Canadian wilderness, travel eastward to New- 
 foundland and down the coast to Eastport 
 again, and you will have made about such a 
 journey as would bound British India. 
 
 It contains 1,766,000 square miles, while 
 the United States has more than three millions. 
 But while we have less than a hundred mil- 
 lions of people, British India has 300,000,000, 
 (244,36 1, 056 in 1901). 
 
 These 300,000,000 fellow passengers of ours 
 are very poor, and very ignorant and unen- 
 lightened. Therefore they multiply rapidly. 
 Wherever there is found on the good ship 
 
 179 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Earth a people which has a very high birth- 
 rate, the masses will be found living on a low 
 intellectual plane, on a low plane of pros- 
 perity, or both. The Hindus meaning all 
 the Indian peoples are as far as the masses 
 are concerned, not only poor beyond the con- 
 ception of an American, but they are plunged 
 into an intellectual slavery that is appalling. 
 Therefore they multiply very rapidly. 
 
 In the absence of the accepted checks on 
 population war, pestilence and famine and 
 in the absence of the check which must come 
 in to prevent those by checking multiplication 
 the extirpation of poverty and the attain- 
 ment of high intellectual life the people of 
 India will at the rate with which their popu- 
 lation has grown since first it was computed, 
 amount in 1950 to 450,000,000; in A. D. 2000 
 it will be 675,000,000; in A. D. 2050 it will 
 be 1,012,500,000; and in A. D. 2100 it will be 
 1,518,750,000. 
 
 There is, of course, no room in their pres- 
 ent habitat for such swarms. There are many 
 unused natural opportunities in their coun- 
 
 180 
 
THE HINDU PERIL 
 
 tries. There are coal, iron, water-power 
 and irrigable lands; but even at the present 
 rate of increase all these opportunities will 
 be overtaxed in a hundred years. The Hindus 
 are robbed by taxation, and exploited by land- 
 lordism and monopoly, but with a perfect sys- 
 tem of distribution of wealth, if such were to 
 be hoped for, multiplying as they are doing, 
 poverty would overtake them through sheer 
 swarming in the absence of the enlighten- 
 ment which diminishes progeny. 
 
 For their increase does not show their birth- 
 rate. War has been forbidden them by the 
 Roman peace of the British rule. But still 
 their ignorance and squalor, their neglect of 
 sanitation and supineness under disease keeps 
 down the multiplying hordes. And famine 
 descends upon them whenever rain fails to 
 come with the southwest wind which is called 
 a monsoon the rain-bringer for the Hindus. 
 The government puts aside some millions of 
 rupees every year as a famine-insurance fund 
 to keep the people from starving in years of 
 drought; but this can do no good. More peo- 
 
 181 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 pie will live over this famine and therefore 
 there will be more mouths to feed when the 
 next famine comes. The cause of famines in 
 India is not drought, but too many people and 
 bad distribution of wealth. And if the distri- 
 bution be remedied the people will at once 
 multiply to take up the slack liberated by 
 better institutions. The situation is perfectly 
 hopeless in the absence of enlightenment and 
 the adoption of sane beliefs. For population 
 depends more on beliefs than on food and 
 clothing and shelter. 
 
 So, unless the Hindu myriads can in some 
 way lift themselves, or be lifted to a higher 
 and more active intellectual life, there is no 
 hope for them. And we, their fellow passen- 
 gers on the good ship Earth, must not allow 
 ourselves to think that it is a matter of no im- 
 portance to us that these teeming millions lie 
 there, sodden, servile and squalid. 
 
 It is of importance to all of us. It is of im- 
 portance in a thousand ways. For one thing, 
 plague festers among them all the time and 
 now has found foothold in California and 
 
 182 
 
THE HINDU PERIL 
 
 threatens the United States. For another, we 
 can not as human beings, be happy with these 
 brethren miserable. 
 
 And there are more concrete dangers. When 
 the Mohammedan peril takes form, as it may 
 one day, and Islam marches forth under the 
 green banner of Mahomet, the caliph of all 
 the faithful will find in India his best base 
 of operations. Islam lacks mastery of indus- 
 trial craft the making of powder, guns, rail- 
 ways, ships, smelting ores, mining coal, all 
 the facts and processes of science. She will 
 find them in the 62,000,000 Mussulmans now 
 in India. She will find ports and cities and a 
 British-drilled army. Here she may establish 
 her new Cordova. Her first blow will be to 
 close the Suez Canal and seize India. 
 
 The unrest of the darker-colored races un- 
 der the domination of the whites may play into 
 the hands of such an irruption of Mussulman 
 fanaticism into India. Since the Japanese 
 won their victory over Russia, the attitude of 
 the browns and yellows toward us has changed 
 all observers are agreed as to that. They 
 
 183 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 have always hated the white man; but they 
 have feared his seemingly irresistible power, 
 and respected his apparently enormous supe- 
 riority over them. But now yellow men have 
 shown themselves able to meet one of the five 
 greatest of the white nations on .the field of 
 battle, and defeat it. Yellow men have given 
 evidence of being at least the equal of white 
 men in science, organizing ability, financial 
 genius and every other branch of the great 
 game of statecraft. There is stirring among 
 all the Asiatics and Africans a feeling which 
 tends toward the solidarity of all of them 
 against us. Should Islam ever reappear in 
 the Indo-Gangetic Plain with her embattled 
 hosts marching against the white man's armies, 
 there is good reason to believe that under com- 
 petent leadership she would find countless mil- 
 lions of the brown men leaning to her side, 
 rather than to that of the successors of Clive. 
 Can India and her related nations ever 
 emancipate themselves from their poverty and 
 benightedness? That question is the one 
 which constitutes the Hindu peril to humanity. 
 
 '184 
 
THE HINDU PERIL 
 
 I do not know. The curse of these three hun- 
 dred millions is caste. Caste means that the 
 hundreds of different classes hate one another 
 and despise one another. There is no love or 
 sympathy between class and class. How could 
 we make any progress toward better institu- 
 tions if the preachers loathed and despised 
 the doctors; the doctors the lawyers; the law- 
 yers the merchants; the carpenters the 
 masons^ and if to each the ones below were so 
 unclean that they could not eat together, or 
 marry together, or associate in any way on 
 terms of equality? Yet such is the caste system 
 of India. The scavenger's son must be a scav- 
 enger and marry a scavenger's daughter. 
 There is no rising in the world, in our sense. 
 It is an awful thing when to one occupation 
 those below are unclean; but when Such un- 
 cleanness is supposed to inhere in the flesh of 
 every baby born to it the belief is too terrible 
 for utterance. 
 
 Caste keeps the people from uniting for 
 better things. It keeps them under the British 
 dominion. It makes them the prey in all ages 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 of some conqueror. On a mission in Bombay 
 is a sign which reads, "Caste is our curse, but ' 
 Christ is our salvation." That caste is their 
 curse is true. And their salvation, if not 
 Christ, must be that democracy for which 
 Jesus stood, and which we nominal Christians 
 have yet to put fully into effect. Until, 
 through democracy, these people gain enlight- 
 enment and general prosperity the Hindu 
 peril will always lower over the passengers of 
 this good ship Earth. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY NUMBER FIVE. 
 THE YELLOW PERIL 
 
 FROM time to time the terrors of the 
 world have been aroused at the dreadful 
 thought of the Mongolian race in arms against 
 the rest of us passengers on the good ship 
 Earth. As the barriers between nation and 
 nation and between continent and continent 
 become worn thin by science in eliminating 
 time and distance and the strangeness of peo- 
 ple to people, this fear must again and again 
 rise to disturb us as we career through space, 
 embarked with these yellow millions on this 
 huge air-ship and doomed to sail with them 
 willy-nilly, as long as Earth shall last. 
 
 Let us look the problem in the face. How 
 many of them are there? Chinese, Koreans 
 and Japanese, with their fringing outposts, 
 600,000,000 a third of all us passengers. 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Are they strong people or weak, intelligent 
 or stupid, good passengers or bad? They are 
 strong people. They are intelligent. As to 
 whether or not they are good or bad passen- 
 gers depends on what the future shall bring 
 forth. 
 
 In the main and as to their masses they are 
 backward in all that makes up a full and com- 
 plex human life. They are very poor and if 
 our beliefs are correct as to the validity of our 
 sciences and arts and literatures as necessary 
 evidences of enlightenment, and steps toward 
 it, they are, except for a few thousand of them, 
 unenlightened. 
 
 As they are poor and miserable, one expects 
 to find them multiplying with great rapidity 
 and we do so find them. They breed like 
 rabbits. The four hundred millions of Chi- 
 nese have a birth-rate of fifty to sixty a thou- 
 sand per annum. 
 
 The yellow terror, to us of the western 
 world, has usually taken the form of fear of 
 these numberless millions in arms against the 
 white race, joined, perhaps by the browns and 
 
 188 
 
THE YELLOW PERIL 
 
 blacks of India and Africa. Just now the 
 white race seems to have convinced itself that 
 while the Japanese are invincible soldiers, the 
 rest of the yellows are hopeless from a military 
 viewpoint. And with the belief that the Chi- 
 nese will not fight, goes the conviction that the 
 Japanese have lost the confidence of China, 
 and thus have forfeited their prospect of be- 
 coming the military teachers of the Mongolian 
 race. 
 
 Both these optimistic ideas are fallacies. 
 They are based on merely temporary and sur- 
 face facts. Ten years hence may see the Jap- 
 anese and Chinese cheek by jowl; and ten 
 years are an instant only. There is no doubt 
 that any power controlling China, and pos- 
 sessed of money to pay soldiers, can recruit 
 them in any number of millions desired from 
 the sturdy masses of the Flowery Republic; 
 and the deeds already done by Chinese 
 soldiers properly trained, well paid and ade- 
 quately officered, show that such an army is 
 quite as capable of subjugating the Eurasian 
 continent as were any of the old-time migra- 
 
 180 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tions westward from China, of yellow men in 
 arms. 
 
 There is more reason to fear the yellow race 
 in arms now than ever before. Japan has mas- 
 tered our arts and sciences. China is on the 
 way to pass through the same sort of awaken- 
 ing. This yellow peril, therefore, has what 
 the Mohammedan peril lacks knowledge of 
 the modern game of war, finance, science and 
 exploitation. 
 
 But the military threat in the yellow race 
 is not its most fearful portent, daunting as 
 it is. Its greatest danger to the rest of the 
 world lies in the demands on the earth's sur- 
 face by the yellow men, by reason of their 
 tremendous rate of multiplication. They are 
 like a gas in a closed vessel enlarge the vessel, 
 and the gas fills it immediately. The Chinese 
 already are in a constant state of famine from 
 mere pressure of population on the power of 
 the land to feed it. There are many unused 
 opportunities for supporting population, but 
 the moment the usable land is increased by a 
 square mile the awful birth-rate will people 
 
 190 
 
THE YELLOW PERIL 
 
 it in a moment of the nation's life, and the 
 case is as bad as before. The case of Japan 
 throws light on this. By bringing into use all 
 lands having a slope of less than fifteen 
 degrees farms may be provided to accommo- 
 date the population for the empire until it 
 reaches 86,742,388, instead of the present 
 51,742,398, without further crowding. The 
 new lands will not be so good as the old, but 
 maybe it will be possible to better the Nip- 
 ponese farming practises, splendid as they are, 
 so as to make the enlarged area support as 
 many people to the square mile as the present 
 cultivated area does. 
 
 But by the time this land can be reclaimed 
 the people will be bred to fill it up. There 
 are 3.4 people to every cultivated acre in Japan 
 now. The average farm in Japan is 2.6 acres 
 and supports a fraction less than nine people. 
 
 This means that as long as their birth-rate 
 keeps up the yellow race must either find new 
 lands or remain miserable. They will con- 
 tinue to murder their girl babies. They will 
 still as now be able to think of little save 
 
 191 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 food. They must still carry the excrement 
 from latrines, mud from canal-bottoms, forest 
 leaves from mountain tops and dung from 
 roads to fertilize their lands. They must live 
 lives stooped to the service of the rice and 
 never have "the upward looking and the 
 light." And they must continue looking out 
 over the world on the lands of Australia, of 
 New Zealand, of California, of Mexico and 
 South America, with longing and with need 
 a need which must bring on wars, perhaps the 
 greatest the world has seen, when they try to 
 supply them. This pressure of population 
 on land is the real and portentous yellow peril. 
 And there seems little hope of any let-up in 
 the birth-rate for generations to come. The 
 ordinary tendency of poor and benighted peo- 
 ples to spawn is intensified by the beliefs of the 
 yellows and beliefs have more to do with 
 birth-rates than does the Spencerian factor of 
 plenty of food. The ancestor-worshiper 
 must have a son to offer sacrifices to the gods 
 or he can not be happy in the spirit world. So 
 he thinks. They breed here that they may not 
 
 192 
 
THE YELLOW PERIL 
 
 be lost hereafter. So long as this pernicious 
 belief persists we can be sure that there will 
 be in the world a yellow peril a peril that 
 may fill the seas with armadas, crimson the 
 waves with blood and send hosts greater than 
 those of Attila, to the very hearts of Europe 
 and America. Enlightenment must come or 
 danger will remain. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY NUMBER SIX. 
 I THE BLACK PERIL 
 
 IN that darkest stoke-hole of the good ship 
 Earth, called Africa, live nearly 200,000,- 
 
 000 of her 1,600,000,000 passengers about 
 one-eighth of the total list. Not all of these 
 belong to the black race, but most of them do. 
 And scattered over the world are many mil- 
 lions more of negro or negroid peoples. 
 They tinge much of South America with 
 black. They dominate the island of Hayti. 
 They are struggling for the dominion of Cuba. 
 
 And they exist as a part of this great nation 
 of ours in the proportion of one in every nine 
 or even a greater proportion. So many 
 fellow men of such a marked type would con- 
 stitute a problem on any ship and they are 
 a problem on the good ship Earth. To us of 
 the United States they are so much of a 
 
 1 194 
 
THE BLACK PERIL 
 
 problem that I am conscious as I write this 
 that many thousands of negroes will read these 
 very words, and that what I shall say here will 
 in one way or another, greatly or slightly affect 
 this problem. 
 
 The black race constitutes, not only a world 
 problem, but a world peril. Jj^is a race_ol 
 jstrong people. It is a race of brave people. 
 It is a race capable of great evil and great 
 good. It is now rapidly passing under the 
 rule of the Mohammedan faith and because 
 that faith is one of armies and of conversion 
 by the sword, aacLQLa possible holy war, the 
 fact that the negro is a brave soldier and prone 
 to religious fanaticism makes the black race 
 a part of the great Mohammedan world pe 
 In this the negro is a brother to the Hindu./ 
 
 But the negro is a world peril because of 
 the fact that he is a temptation to other races. 
 He has of all races the greatest plasticity and 
 the least power of racial resistance to force. 
 This threatens to make him a weapon in the 
 hand of Islam. 
 
 The black peril consists largely in the 
 
 195 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 negro's capacity for enslavement. He breeds 
 and flourishes in captivity. Jn the days nf 
 slavery he was the most submissive of 
 
 .chattels the only_race__thf slqypg nf 
 enriched their masrers.and multiplied in num- .. 
 .bers under conditions of servitude. 
 
 In these days of industrial slavery the negro 
 still plays his ancient role in slavery which 
 is damning to himself and his enslavers alike. 
 He serves in the Kongo basin in rubber and 
 ivory. He slaves in South Africa in the mines 
 and on the cattle ranches. If he had been like 
 the gorilla of his own forests incapable of 
 subjugation, willing to die rather than serve, 
 ready to strike down his master with the first 
 blade placed in his hands as a tool, a grim 
 free fighter to the last it would have been 
 better for the world. But the negro is affec- 
 tionate, yielding, happy even in slavery, a 
 good servant, true to the interests of those hav- 
 ing dominion over him and he has been, and 
 is, the temptation and dl~.TWL Qf__thQSg_^sdia- 
 have taken hirii_injiieir toils. 
 
 196 
 
THE BLACK PERIL 
 
 The black peril has been thought pecul- 
 iarly an American question, but it is not. It 
 is a South African question, a German ques- 
 tion, a Belgian question, a Canadian question, 
 a world question. 
 
 In the United States it has been our 
 greatest question since the constitution was 
 adopted recognizing slavery without mention- 
 ing it. The black peril made labor disgraceful 
 in half of the United States and cursed the 
 poor whites and the rich whites. It was, of 
 course, an economic question slavery and 
 exploitation always are. But out of the prob- 
 lem of the competition of the submissive black 
 and the poor white for the labor offered by the 
 rich white a problem as acute now as in 
 1860 grows another problem and peril the 
 darkest phase of the black peril to humanity. 
 This is the sex phase of the problem. 
 
 This we ordinarily refuse to discuss in a 
 public way, or we talk in generalities against 
 race admixture, or we criminally allow Judge 
 Lynch to blazon terror to the negro. The 
 
 197 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 question ought to be discussed in the open field 
 of thought. It is the biggest part of the race 
 problem. 
 
 In a splendid address to the world a negro 
 congress once said in effect this : "The white 
 race through slavery gave us the precious 
 blessing of the Christian faith, but it robbed 
 us of the virtue of our women 1" Without 
 admitting its general applicability, I accept 
 this admission as racially true. The white 
 man does not believe in the ability of the negro 
 woman to preserve her sexual integrity against 
 him. To his mind she is not strong enough in 
 will power. Yet he fails to throw about her 
 the protection which other women receive 
 who are of like weakness. He would not use 
 as a harem a hospital for nymphomaniacs, or 
 women of feeble will; yet he seeks negresses 
 to whom his philosophy denies the will power 
 to protect themselves! 
 
 Whites where there is a negro problem 
 enact laws against racial intermarriages. They 
 do this in a struggle to protect the purity of 
 
 198 
 
THE BLACK PERIL 
 
 blood of the white race. I believe in this as 
 a great and splendid struggle. Aside from 
 any question of superiority of one race over 
 the other, I think that the mating of white 
 and black is accomplished only through a 
 biological as well as a moral shock, which is 
 evil. The races are too far apart ethnically 
 to be crossed with sociological success. In a 
 state of perfect freedom, and in the highest 
 development of both races I do not believe 
 there would be any crossing. 
 
 But how does the white man live up to his 
 ideal regarding such unions? William Archer, 
 the British writer, says in effect: "The pres- 
 ence in the community of large numbers of 
 physically well-developed women of an in- 
 ferior race places an unfair strain upon the 
 virtue of the white man." But unions repug- 
 nant to racial purity should constitute no 
 "unfair strain." If white men believe their 
 own talk about the crime of miscegenation 
 they should look upon it as they look upon 
 incest as a crime against the race, tempting 
 
 199 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 to the pervert only. In old civilizations the 
 marriage of brothers and sisters was common. 
 Then the presence in the same family of the 
 sisters may have been pronounced an "unfair 
 strain" by some Egyptian Archer. But with 
 the advent of a better civilization comes that 
 finest thing in the world, the family circle. 
 The temptation has departed, driven out by 
 better ethics and purer love. 
 
 If the negro woman can not take care of her- 
 self the white man is bound to protect her as he 
 protects other defectives. He should be con- 
 demned for rape if he sins herein. If the in- 
 tegrity of the white race is at stake in the 
 matter the white man who sins is guilty of a 
 crime like incest and should be punished ac- 
 cordingly. Let the white women of the lands 
 of mixed population demand a higher ethics 
 from their men. Let the white men do like- 
 wise for themselves. To claim superiority is 
 not enough the white race can prove supe- 
 riority in only one way by being superior. 
 
 The black peril may be turned aside by 
 economic freedom for all, by justice to all, by 
 
 200 
 
THE BLACK PERIL 
 
 the taking up by the white man of the real 
 white man's burden that of really living up 
 to his claims. Until these things are done, and 
 pending some great racial uplift in the negro 
 race, the black peril will hang like a cloud 
 over the broad decks of the good ship Earth. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SEVEN PERILS OF HUMANITY NUMBER SEVEN. 
 THE WHITE PERIL 
 
 WHEN rulership begins in human af- 
 fairs peril begins. Public servants 
 come only with successful democracy, and are 
 blessings. But rulers are always a peril. The 
 white race is the ruler of the good ship 
 Earth and is a world peril. Of all the seven, 
 the white peril is the greatest. 
 
 Japan is the only nation which is not ruled 
 in ways more or less direct by the white race. 
 Ushering in the era of discovery, the white 
 race, finding the peoples in weakness and ig- 
 norance, made it an era of conquest, exter- 
 mination, enslavement and exploitation. 
 
 This has never ceased. The grabbing of 
 Tripoli is the latest of a horrid catalogue of 
 which the conquest of Mexico may be taken 
 as the first. Africa has been subdued and en- 
 
 202 
 
THE WHITE PERIL 
 
 slaved. South America went to Spain and 
 Portugal, where the whites, after establishing 
 their prestige in landlordism and aristocracy 
 cut loose from Spain and founded mixed- 
 blood "republics" ruled and ruined by whites. 
 Northern Asia and Mongolian Finland and 
 Lapland have yielded to Russia; England, 
 France and Holland have seized the South 
 Seas, Farther India and Hindustan. Britain 
 took and peopled North America, save for 
 poor Mexico which crumbled into slavery 
 under the Spanish conquistadors. 
 
 Only in lucky valorous Japan, in the Ara- 
 bian and African deserts, and in mountain 
 eyries like Nepal and Abyssinia are found free 
 nations of brown, black or yellow men. The 
 white man is at present supreme. 
 
 Our race accepted in Christianity the per- 
 fect system of ethics. It took the headship in 
 intellect when it unrolled the marvelous book 
 of modern science. It had a sublime oppor- 
 tunity to uplift the colored races in the era 
 brought in by Columbus and Da Gama. At 
 the wheel of the good ship Earth stood the 
 
 203 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 white man steering it whither he would. He 
 was captain. He had the firearms. He alone 
 knew invention and science. He had the chart 
 in the command "Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
 as thyself," and he had the Golden Rule as 
 compass. He knew the form of the ship 
 none other knew. To him was given the great- 
 est opportunity ever known, the most fearful 
 responsibility, the most awful opening for 
 service. He had the chance to remake a 
 world ! 
 
 He failed. He refused the opportunity. 
 He, as captain, betrayed his trust. Accepting 
 the cloak of Christianity, the white race has 
 denied Jesus a million times each hour. False 
 followers of the Prince of Peace, the white 
 race took to pagan lands undreamed-of engines 
 of murder and unheard-of efficiency in it. 
 Professing the faith which began in a crude 
 communism which gave to each as he had need 
 from those who possessed, and under which 
 none wanted, the white races have not only not 
 tried to extirpate poverty among themselves, 
 
 204 
 
THE WHITE PERIL 
 
 but they have impoverished, enslaved and 
 extirpated whole empires for money. 
 
 The white races accepted Christianity, and 
 paganized it. They threw away the democ- 
 racy of the Sermon on the Mount, and quarrel- 
 ing over the theology of Paul, followed Mars, 
 Thor and Moloch as of old. They have never 
 developed a Christian nation. Feared and 
 hated all over the world, the white race is 
 largely responsible for the imminence of the 
 other world perils. Our very physiognomy is 
 repulsive to people of other races we are the 
 Great White Beasts of humanity. 
 
 And now, as if to give us another chance 
 for redemption, there is being revealed to the 
 white race and to it almost exclusively the 
 vision of democracy. This is the real Second 
 Coming of Christ. This vision comes to an 
 intellect in which honesty and candor have 
 been deified through the redemptive grace of 
 modern science. So the crisis of the white 
 peril is on, in the question as to whether the 
 white race will be true to Christianity as re- 
 
 205 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 vealed'in democracy, or will be false to it as 
 it was to its first revelation. 
 
 It is not too late for the white peril to be 
 turned into the hope of the world. It may 
 be. We have lost the confidence of the other 
 passengers on the good ship Earth, and we 
 can win it again only by bringing our govern- 
 ments up to our highest ideals and living 
 down our past. Not until we have so lived 
 our Christianity and our democracy that our 
 purposes shall be known to be pure, and not 
 until we have extirpated our unchristian pov- 
 erty and oppression, can we expect our brother 
 races to believe in us as true soldiers of the 
 common good. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE MINGLING OF THE PEOPLES 
 
 IS Mars inhabited? 
 Professor Lowell, of Harvard, says yes. 
 Probably most people of ordinary intelligence 
 believe him. 
 
 Life came to the good ship Earth, not by 
 a mile-long string of animals moving up the 
 gangplank "two by two," as we are tunefully 
 told was the case when Noah took on his pas- 
 sengers, but with the evolution of that mar- 
 velous slime, protoplasm, of which we have 
 spoken. Mars has as good a chance to have 
 had life, as the Earth. Like the Earth, Mars 
 was once gaseous, then was compressed by 
 gravity, growing hot in the process. On Mars, 
 as on the Earth, God shook the cosmic pre- 
 scription for millenniums. 
 
 Why should we not believe that there, on 
 some creative day, as here, in the process of 
 
 207 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 this mighty shaking, the atoms of carbon, 
 hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen were piled up 
 into the inconceivably complex molecule of 
 protoplasm? 
 
 Professor Lowell in the canals discovered 
 by Schiaparelli, sees strips of irrigated lands. 
 He sees the water flowing from the pole 
 where all the water on Mars is found and 
 irrigating these long strips, and broader 
 spaces where the canals have their junctions. 
 
 Arrhenius, the scientist who has told us that 
 owing to the carbonic acid gas which we are 
 pouring into the air in the process of burning 
 the coal taken from the bunkers of the good 
 ship Earth, the climate of the globe is becom- 
 ing gradually warmed, and will continue to 
 grow warmer for a thousand years Arrhenius 
 denies Lowell's conclusions. He thinks the 
 canals of Mars instead of being strips of crops, 
 are huge cracks in the Martian surface, like 
 the long straight fractures in plate-glass or 
 the curved cracks we sometimes see. 
 
 I have heard Arrhenius, and his arguments 
 are very strong; but Lowell still holds to his 
 
 208 
 
THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES 
 
 original beliefs. He regards the canals as the 
 results of the labors of intelligent beings. If 
 so, these beings are like us in intelligence. 
 They are engineers for the lines run as 
 straight as a stretched cord for thousands of 
 miles. Some of them, too, run in curves but 
 perfect curves like those made by an engineer, 
 and not like the accidental curves one sees in 
 fractured glass. Sometimes these canals are 
 double as if the supply of water were more 
 than could be economically distributed by 
 laterals from one great ditch, wherefore 
 another is supplied to use the surplus, when it 
 exists, as in a wet season. I do not think that 
 Arrhenius fully disposes of this very fascinat- 
 ing argument of Lowell's. 
 
 The lesson to us is the same, whichever is 
 right. The canals as Lowell sees them illus- 
 trate the advantages to the inhabitants, if they 
 grow intelligent enough to see that the planet 
 on which they live is their common inherit- 
 ance, and must be managed as a unit if it is 
 to accommodate their multiplied hosts, espe- 
 cially when the globe waxes old and much 
 
 209 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 of its capacity for sustaining life has been lost 
 
 In our case, we are losing life-stuff by its 
 washing out into the seas, and by chemical 
 changes and absorption. 
 
 In the case of Mars, we know not of the 
 other conditions, but we do know that her 
 supply of water has so been absorbed into the 
 globe that there are no longer oceans such as 
 we have, but at most, only small seas at the 
 poles a condition that will sometime prevail 
 on our planet. 
 
 Such enormous works as the Martian canals 
 are only possible to a world in which such 
 organizations as tribes, states, peoples and 
 nations have been abolished, and all peoples 
 have been merged in the Parliament of Man, 
 the Federation of the World. 
 
 For the Martian canals run from the poles, 
 clean across the equator, and down the other 
 hemisphere as if with us a canal were drawn 
 as true as a straight-edge from Cape Horn to 
 Winnipeg, or from St. Petersburg to the Cape 
 of Good Hope. 
 
 We passengers on the good ship Earth 
 210 
 
THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES 
 
 could not do such things, if we knew how. 
 We have not the intelligence, in the first place, 
 to move such huge amounts of earth with such 
 economy as to gain food enough by the opera- 
 tion to replace that used up in the work. So 
 for us, it would be economically impossible. 
 The great tribes we call nations would stand 
 in the way. The passengers on one part of the 
 decks would use armies and navies to keep 
 their fellow passengers on other parts of the 
 decks from carrying out projects having for 
 their object the improvement of the ship as 
 a place of residence as a craft in which to 
 voyage to the Unknown. 
 
 We are still so narrow! 
 
 If Lowell's theory of Mars is correct, the 
 Martians are as superior to us in organization 
 and capacity for government and collective 
 action as they are in the power to move earth 
 and rocks. 
 
 In Mars, the people know that the planet 
 belongs to the people born into life upon it; 
 as the good ship Earth belongs by every rule 
 of righteousness, in common to us Earth- 
 
 211! 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 beings who are similarly born into life upon 
 our wildly-flying air-ship. 
 
 The Martians know that Mars is theirs in 
 common. We know that the Earth is ours in 
 common. The Martians evidently act on a 
 world-wide scale to conserve and use their 
 planetary resources. We are not yet proven to 
 possess the ability to conserve our natural re- 
 sources even on the small scale of the nation. 
 
 And see the problems that confront us! 
 
 We must save the soil. We must keep the 
 coal from being wasted. We must look after 
 the iron, the silver, the gold, the copper, the 
 manganese. We must build our waterways 
 a job less only than that which Mars seems to 
 have accomplished. We must save the coal 
 by using water-power wherever possible in its 
 place. We must use the huge peat supplies 
 for fuel. We must see that the supplies of 
 phosphorus, nitrogen, potash and sulphur, on 
 which the fertility of the soil depends, are not 
 wasted nor monopolized. We must restore 
 and conserve our forests. We must sweeten 
 the acid soils of the Earth with lime. We must 
 
 212 
 
THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES 
 
 put under lock and key against waste the oil 
 and the natural gas. We must see to it that 
 the manures are restored to the soil from the 
 towns and cities, and that the human waste 
 now exhausting our lands by the loss of sew- 
 age, is saved that the human race may be saved. 
 
 And we must extirpate poverty, lift the 
 masses of all lands to that plane of intellectual 
 activity and opulence which will cause them 
 to cease to multiply as the poorest races now 
 do and always will multiply. We must stop 
 the survival of the unfit, by making every- 
 body fit. 
 
 Can we do these things while our right and 
 wrong are notions bounded by lines of states, 
 nations, or even races? 
 
 Can we do these things in the absence of 
 action and feeling on the cosmic scale con- 
 sidering this our Earth as a unit the Mar- 
 tian way? 
 
 The Lusitania has to be controlled as a 
 whole. Otherwise she would go on the rocks. 
 We have fancied that the planet Mars is 
 
 213 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 managed as a whole one single planetary 
 nation. The good ship Earth may sometime 
 need to pass under planetary control I do not 
 see how in the last analysis her greatest ma- 
 terial resources soil, phosphorus, potash, oil, 
 coal, iron and other treasures locked up in her 
 bunkers, can be managed in the absence of 
 planetary control. For the present we can 
 do without it. The good ship Earth steers 
 herself by automatic wireless control from the 
 batteries of the infinite force. 
 
 It is well she does. For we are miserably 
 divided we passengers into cliques and 
 groups and gangs, cabin, forecastle, cook's gal- 
 ley and on deck. What a motley crew is the 
 human race! Pirates, pilgrims, coolies, blacks, 
 whites, yellows, browns, Kanakas, Lascars, 
 Yankees, Japs, Portuguese, Malays, mission- 
 aries, convicts, slaves, Eurasians, Alan Brecks 
 and Captain Dodds, Captain Kidds and Mid- 
 shipman Easies. All these with their conflict- 
 ing ideas where they have any ideas at all 
 make world-wide team-work in conservation 
 or even conversation, the wildest of dreams. 
 
 214 
 
THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES 
 
 And yet that is what is required for planetary 
 control. 
 
 The races know one another better than they 
 used to do that is quite true. But does this 
 new acquaintanceship really mean anything in 
 the way of the wiping out of national or racial 
 lines? Are we of the Earth's crew any closer 
 together spiritually than we were when igno- 
 rant of the existence of the remoter parts of the 
 ship on which we sail? Are we close enough 
 so that we may mix nation with nation ad 
 libitum? Has the principle of brotherhood 
 so far approached attainability that men of 
 one nation have the moral right to enter 
 another nation's doors at will? These are the 
 greatest practical questions in the world poli- 
 tics of the future. And they must be settled 
 according to their right and wrong, rather 
 than on the basis of weak vs. strong if our civ- 
 ilization is to stand the test of the future. 
 
 The right of expatriation is the complement 
 of the right of immigration. These two prin- 
 ciples test our understandings with our fellow 
 nations. The English-speaking nations have 
 
 2IS 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 led in maintaining the right of citizens to 
 enter freely and dwell in the territories of 
 other nations. The British navvy by the road- 
 side will tell you on all occasions that his is a 
 "free country" and he really means free 
 free to enter, free to leave. But Englishmen 
 are asking whether or not this freedom to enter 
 England is not carried a bit too far. Canada, 
 with her great unoccupied spaces, is turning 
 "undesirable" immigrants away she will 
 soon close her doors against Asiatics. Aus- 
 tralia and New Zealand are still more insistent 
 on their right to say who shall come in in 
 spite of their sparse populations. 
 
 In fact, it seems that our increased knowl- 
 edge of one another as peoples, is coming with 
 a world-wide reaction against the untram- 
 meled intermingling of nation with nation. 
 We find that we like some of our fellow pas- 
 sengers better than others; and curiously, these 
 likes and dislikes are determined more by color 
 than anything else. Is this pure unreasoning 
 prejudice? I prefer to think that it is a 
 psychic recognition of the fact that the sort 
 
 216 
 
THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES 
 
 of cross-breeds which would result are unde- 
 sirable. This sort of repugnance is not con- 
 fined to the human race it is found sown all 
 over the field of hybridization. 
 
 The test of any social act or at least any 
 governmental or sociological proposition, is 
 its bearing on democracy. Will the inter- 
 mingling of the races further or hinder the 
 perfecting of democracy? This is to be de- 
 cided in every case on the basis of the charac- 
 ter of the races proposed to be mixed their 
 ethnic character, and their beliefs and 
 thoughts. That we have a right to keep out 
 of our nation undesirable factors seems ob- 
 vious. Other nations have the same right. I 
 think we should make very undesirable citi- 
 zens of Hindustan or Japan if we emigrated 
 thither in large numbers. It would not be so, 
 perhaps, in the case of emigration to France 
 or Ireland. The Japanese ought to keep us 
 out in such a case. We have the right to keep 
 out the Asiatics. They will interfere with our 
 working out of the great experiment of democ- 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 racy, if they come. We have one race ques- 
 tion. We can not live with another. 
 
 Our quarters on the good ship Earth are 
 ours because we find ourselves in them. Our 
 title is the same as the title of a club to its club- 
 house and we have the same right to keep 
 out those who are not clubable. 
 
 There are immigrants who must under- 
 stand that we will not allow them to come in 
 large numbers to dwell among us. This does 
 not imply enmity toward them on our part. 
 It does not imply superiority on our part or 
 impute inferiority on theirs. It all depends 
 on other matters. 
 
 We have a democracy to work out; and we 
 are already divided into laboring classes, 
 leisure classes, aristocrats, monopolists, nobles, 
 commoners, Latins, Slavs, negroes, whites, 
 financiers, tramps and the like. We are not 
 at all sure that we can make a success of it as 
 things stand now, without making them any 
 worse. 
 
 Now we are so constituted that the presence 
 218 
 
THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES 
 
 among us of people who look pronouncedly 
 unlike us at once starts a race question. Silly 
 of us, maybe, but it can't be denied, nor argued 
 out of us. Prejudices, instincts, intuitions are 
 all very important. We are all the time find- 
 ing how much better founded they are apt 
 to be than are some of our reasoned convic- 
 tions. Anyhow, peoples can not be made over, 
 but must be accepted as they are, save for the 
 ameliorating influences of time and progress. 
 Intimate relations between races are not 
 always improper. Where outward appear- 
 ances will allow the commingling to take place 
 without shock, this mingling seems not a bad 
 thing. Americans do not seem any the worse 
 for the fact that they are the contents of a 
 melting pot of nations. When Lafcadio 
 Hearn and Sir Edwin Arnold fell in love with 
 the life of old Japan, that love was the title of 
 each to naturalization in Nippon. That great 
 American chemist who is a Japanese by birth 
 won the right to American citizenship when 
 he became enamored of American life. Thou- 
 sands of similar cases of real intellectual and 
 
 219 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 spiritual naturalization may be found in 
 stations both exalted and lowly. 
 
 But most of our immigration is thrust into 
 our nation's body like a nail into wood by 
 economic forces. Where the foreign body is 
 capable of assimilation, as has been the case 
 with most of our European immigration, this 
 is not necessarily a fatal thing, though it is al- 
 ways a bad thing. But the negro, the Jap- 
 anese, the Hindu and the Chinese fester in our 
 flesh. Tens of millions are ready to come, not 
 because they love us or our institutions, but as 
 human merchandise. On the one side is the 
 awful poverty of their lands from which they 
 would flee to a land of plenty; and on the other 
 is the greed of steamship companies itching 
 for the dividends to be made by transporting 
 them hither and the greed of employers itch- 
 ing for cheap labor. On both shores of our 
 continent the poorest and most unassimilable 
 of Europe; the Semitic races from the Medi- 
 terranean Basin; and the Hindus, and Mon- 
 golians on the Pacific they would land in 
 swarms, were we to allow them. 
 
 220 
 
THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES 
 
 The oceans can no longer be regarded as 
 impassable barriers against actual migrations 
 of peoples. The ships exist, or can be built. 
 The would-be immigrants for the most part 
 honest and industrious are ready to mort- 
 gage their earnings for passage. The finan- 
 cial power exists to finance the migration. 
 The danger is a real one, and one which will 
 grow with the increase of knowledge and the 
 progress of the arts and sciences. 
 
 Australia has the same problem, and so has 
 Canada, South Africa and South America. 
 The Spanish-American peoples are peculiarly 
 exposed to this danger of race mixture minus 
 human affinity. 
 
 The present war in Turkey shows the result 
 of such intermingling. For five hundred 
 years the Turks have festered in the flesh of 
 Europe a foreign body. Such festerings 
 must cause wars. As between such conditions 
 and wars, the wars are far more tolerable. 
 
 Sometime things will be splendidly other- 
 wise. We shall have solved the critical prob- 
 lems of our civilization democracy per- 
 
 221 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 fected, poverty extirpated, enlightenment 
 made universal. So will the other nations, 
 unless there be some beyond redemption. 
 There will be no economic pressure toward 
 emigration. There will be less tendency to- 
 ward race admixture; and what there is will 
 be natural and good. Immigration now 
 brings that bodily contact which Swinburne 
 tells us of in the story of the French man-of- 
 the-people and the lady of high degree, who, 
 during the Terror were stripped naked and 
 cast bound together into the Seine. In that 
 better day it will be the drawing together of 
 affinities, not the crushing together of op- 
 posites and strangers. Until the better day 
 comes, there will be more of evil than of good 
 in it. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 PATRIOTISM VICE OR VIRTUE? 
 
 IT was a race of children who first popu- 
 lated the decks of the good ship Earth, and 
 from whom we are descended; but not in all 
 respects children like ours. They were very 
 low in intelligence. They had much of the 
 fierceness and cruelty of the beasts of the field 
 and forest and they never grew up. Our 
 children pass through the various stages of 
 low intelligence, deceitfulness, cruelty and 
 the like very swiftly, and guided by our civili- 
 zation. These remote ancestors of ours who 
 once made up the passenger list of the old ship 
 were every one of them cases of arrested de- 
 velopment. They became men and women 
 physically, but never passed mentally beyond 
 the child stage of development. 
 
 We may easily understand this if we will 
 consider such a tribe as the White Eskimos 
 
 223 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 just discovered by Steffansson in Arctic Can- 
 ada. They are probably descended from 
 Norse emigrants who possessed all the prog- 
 ress our ancestors had a thousand years ago; 
 but they have lost all the civilization that 
 filled Iceland with poets, and produced a 
 literature which is still studied in every cul^ 
 tured nation. They have no marriage rite, no 
 books, no firearms, no aspirations. They only 
 hunt and eat, beget descendants, and struggle 
 with nature. Theirs is a case of arrested 
 development arrested by the very circum- 
 stances which stopped short of our racial stat- 
 ure all the early races of men. 
 
 Civilization is not a matter of inherent 
 racial capacity. Rather it is a thing of racial 
 accumulation, like the limestone reefs built 
 by the coral insect. We seem greater because 
 we stand on what our ancestors built. And in 
 the course of the long millenniums there has 
 been a slow race development, from the man 
 of the Neanderthal skull to the man of to-day. 
 But this is so slow that it can not be measured. 
 We are in no perceptible way naturally 
 
 224 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 superior to the German savages, the Norsd 
 vikings and their crews, the Romans, the 
 Greeks, the Assyrians or the Babylonians. Our 
 development has not been quite so quickly ar- 
 rested that is about all the difference. 
 
 Now these crafty, cruel, lying, thievish 
 children, our ancestors, seem to have been in- 
 clined to live solitary lives like some other 
 animals the grizzly bear, the tiger, the lion. 
 The wonderful strength of the family ties 
 which was the beginning of civilization held 
 them together into families, and from families 
 the tribe sprung. The tribes preyed upon 
 one another. Hate was the rule of life toward 
 all but "our people," and "our tribe." Even 
 the gods were tribal, with a divine jurisdiction 
 stopping at the village limits. 
 
 As family grew to tribe, so strong tribes 
 grew to nations. The germ of organization 
 was germinating. And out of the strange, 
 childish-savage hatred and cruelty of tribe to 
 tribe, there was born a curious, glorious, con- 
 temptible, admirable vice-virtue called pa- 
 triotism. It still persists, as the most univer- 
 
 225 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 sally-claimed and the most generally-pos- 
 sessed of social qualities. All men are nor- 
 mally patriots, becoming traitors only under 
 anomalous conditions. Scoundrels are quite 
 as good patriots as decent people and as a 
 rule far more vociferous ones. The quality, 
 therefore, is not possessed by good people 
 alone, like unselfishness, nor by bad people 
 alone, like cruelty. It inspires such literature 
 as Scott's "Breathes there a man with soul so 
 dead", Collins' "How sleep the brave", and 
 Hale's Man Without a Country. Its most 
 gross and obvious emblem is the flag, or the 
 "Emperor's coat", and its cheapest badge is 
 punctilious outward respect and worship of 
 these emblems. It still carries with it much of 
 the hate of olden times, and is the sentiment 
 upon which the predatory powers play in 
 securing public support for our monstrous 
 militarism. 
 
 Now why should we, who inherit a portion 
 of the deck of the good ship Earth, look any 
 the less kindly on a fellow man because he 
 lives across the line in Canada, or over the 
 
 226 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 water in Japan or Germany? A man once 
 sat dry-eyed and unmoved through a sermon 
 which drew tears to all other eyes. "Why are 
 you so cold and hard?" he was asked. "I don't 
 live in this parish," said he, "I'm just passing 
 through." 
 
 "My country!" ran the "patriot's" toast. 
 "May she be ever right but right or wrong, 
 my country!" Such patriotism launches every 
 battle fleet of aggression, and has put to the 
 sword a thousand cities. Such patriotism fills 
 the world to-day with the debt, destruction, 
 waste and penury of the tremendous militarism 
 which astonishes and appals every thinking 
 mind. 
 
 But, as individual hate grew to family love, 
 as family enmities were lost in tribal good 
 will, and as tribal wars ceased in the wider 
 brotherhood of the nation, so there is strug- 
 gling into birth a new thing International- 
 ism. When Great Britain attacked the Boers, 
 there were great men in England who were 
 frankly and openly pro-Boer, because the 
 Boers were right. Many in the United States 
 
 227 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 frankly and openly sympathized with the 
 Filipinos in their resistance to our aggressions. 
 Hundreds of thousands in Russia and Austria 
 the day this is written, are protesting against 
 war with the Balkan Allies, or the opposed 
 powers of Europe, not because of cowardice 
 or reluctance to take the chances of war, but 
 for the sake of brotherhood. 
 
 Patriotism can not be dispensed with, any 
 more than inter-family hate could have been 
 in its time. Each is a sort of temporary defen- 
 sive provision of nature, like the white plu- 
 mage of birds in snow-time. But it is gradually 
 blossoming into something higher. It can not 
 be accounted among the eternal virtues. We 
 shall gradually rise above the vulgar enmities 
 implied in the hate of those who live else- 
 where on the decks of the good ship Earth; 
 and from these come most of what we call 
 patriotism. 
 
 When men begin asking themselves as to 
 the relations of their nations with other peo- 
 ples, "Is our attitude right or wrong?" pa- 
 triotism takes on a glorious new aspect. There 
 
 228 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 was never so much of this international con- 
 science as now. "My country, right or wrong," 
 is giving way to "Is my country right, or 
 wrong?" 
 
 Universal peace 1 Universal disarmament 1 
 Universal good will! These can come only 
 with universal prosperity and universal under- 
 standing. When they come, patriotism in its 
 present sense, will have died. Fraternity will 
 have taken its place, and the old word pa- 
 triotism, still holding place in the language, 
 will have come to mean a localized phase of 
 universal love and brotherhood. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 THE notion of a fusion of all nations, the 
 end of independent nationality, is not a 
 new one. It is more complete than formerly, 
 for we know the shape of the great air-ship on 
 which we sail, and its size. The ancients did 
 not. But Alexander the Great set out to con- 
 quer the whole earth. He did not expect to 
 subdue the monsters that lived in the Greek 
 imagination to the east and the west. And 
 to the north were the Hyperboreans and the 
 ice, and to the south were seas that boiled with 
 heat. These were not in the world of Alex- 
 ander, but all he knew, he conquered. 
 
 So it was with other conquerors of the an- 
 cient world. What they knew they tried to 
 seize. The world trust was in their minds, just 
 as it is in the minds of the Socialists now but 
 in diametrically different form. In the one 
 
 230 
 
EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 case it was the centralized rule of a conqueror 
 and a tyrant; in the other it is the centralized 
 rule of the majority. 
 
 The dream of world power seems to have 
 passed away for a while from the minds of 
 kings and emperors. The government trust, if 
 one is making, is at the stage of the splitting 
 of the government business into huge blocks. 
 Russia, China, Japan and England control 
 most of Asia and are absorbing the rest. Eng- 
 land and the United States govern most of 
 North America, and are gradually absorbing 
 the rest. England, France, Holland, Brazil 
 and Argentina govern most of South America, 
 and are kept from absorbing the rest only by 
 the Monroe-Doctrine overlordship of the 
 United States. England, Holland, Germany, 
 France and the United States rule most of the 
 great islands of the East and West Indies. Eng- 
 land, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, 
 Spain and Italy rule Africa with negligible 
 exceptions. Europe is ruled by two groups 
 England, France and Russia in the Triple 
 Entente, and Germany, Austria and Italy in 
 
 231 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the Triple Alliance. Thus is the good ship 
 Earth in the hands of a certain great commu- 
 nity of interest in government. It is for all the 
 world like the system of interlocking direc- 
 torates by which Wall Street parcels out the 
 industrial rulership of the United States. 
 
 Now this system of spheres of influence 
 works against the little country and the little 
 peoples. It works in various ways in relation 
 to self-government. In the English speaking 
 dominions of the British empire, it works for 
 local self-government and democracy. There 
 are no better governments than those of Can- 
 ada, Australia, New Zealand and South 
 Africa. In the dominions of the other mem- 
 bers of the government combine, it works 
 against democracy. Over most of the colored 
 and backward races, this dominion, which is 
 mostly a white man's dominion, is frankly 
 cruel and tyrannical at its worst, like the rule 
 of Japan in Korea or Italy in Tripolitania, or 
 at its best, is paternalistic like British rule in 
 India or ours in the Philippines. And this 
 latter phase of the problem leads us to the 
 
 232 
 
EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 question of the perils of enforced good gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 There is an almost general feeling that we 
 justify our conquest of a free people when we 
 give that people what we call "good govern- 
 ment." This is of all things most fallacious. 
 In the first place, of course, our good govern- 
 ment usually turns out the worst in the world 
 even from our own viewpoint. England's 
 dominions are well governed only in those 
 cases where she has abandoned the attempt to 
 rule and turned the government over to the 
 people. Her rule in India, like ours in the 
 Philippines, is highly praised, but is also bit- 
 terly condemned by good judges. 
 
 It is perfectly true, however, that an enlight- 
 ened conqueror may, and frequently does, im- 
 pose on a backward people a better govern- 
 ment, judged solely by present-day results, 
 than they could give themselves in their pres- 
 ent stage of development. We may give the 
 Filipinos railways, public baths, sewers and 
 a health bureau which will fight the tropic 
 plagues and the insanitary practises of trop- 
 
 233 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 ical ignorance and depravity. England may 
 do the same in her empire. So may each of 
 the members of the great earthly government 
 combine. This is what Kipling means when 
 he urges the British for he never speaks to 
 any audience wider than the white society of 
 the empire to "take up the White Man's 
 Burden." "Go bind your sons to exile," he 
 sings, "to serve your captives' need!" These 
 "captives" are the "new-caught, sullen peo- 
 ples, half-devil and half-child." 
 
 In spite of these fine rantings, however, the 
 real danger to the world in the imperialisms 
 of the government combine, lies quite as much 
 in the success which Kipling claims for Eng- 
 land in India, and demands everywhere, as in 
 the failures which Belgium makes in the 
 Kongo and Russia in the Caucasus. Bad and 
 cruel government of the tyrant over the con- 
 quered may exterminate an undeveloped peo- 
 ple, but a "good" government, accomplishing 
 for a people through compulsion all the out- 
 ward ameliorations which they should win 
 for themselves may produce a result much 
 
 234 
 
EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 worse for the good ship Earth than the ex- 
 termination of any people. 
 
 Good government, to be worth anything, 
 must be won through the evolution of popular 
 government. The winning of it develops the 
 power to perpetuate it. We learn to govern 
 ourselves by governing ourselves it can be 
 done in no other way. Mexico may be far 
 from democracy, but she is nearer it for her 
 ninety years of effort than she would have 
 been by submission to Spain and the same 
 is true of all the Spanish-American republics. 
 They are falling down, but learning to walk. 
 India will never learn to govern herself under 
 present conditions, nor will the Philippines, 
 nor Porto Rico, nor any "pacified" colony 
 denied self-government and its perils. 
 
 But the worst danger in enforced good gov- 
 ernment lies not so much in the paralysis of 
 development in the people, as in its effect on 
 the increase and multiplication of the unfit. 
 Good government tends to make its most rapid 
 progress in the saving of life especially in- 
 fant life through sanitation, vaccines, serums 
 
 235 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 preventive medicine and surgery. This is 
 true not only in colonies, of course, but in em- 
 pires and republics called self-governing. 
 
 The revolution which is taking place in the 
 healing art has already transformed it, and has 
 only begun. Its finest manifestation is to be 
 seen in the changed mental attitude of the 
 medical profession toward the problems of 
 health. Science has made the medical pro- 
 fession honest, just as it is making the whole 
 world honest. The physician of the olden 
 time did business on the strength of secret po- 
 tions and marvelous lotions and unguents. His 
 stock in trade was his closely-guarded for- 
 mulas. The present-day medical man is in 
 disgrace as soon as he refuses to tell the whole 
 world his discovery. The first duty of an in- 
 vestigator is to publish abroad what he has 
 learned. In fact, as soon as a medical re- 
 searcher has found something significant, even 
 though it be the result of one step only in his 
 investigation, he is called upon by the ethics 
 of his profession to make it public, to the end 
 that others may be encouraged to join in the 
 
 236 
 
EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 work or that they may receive light on some 
 of their own peculiar problems. 
 
 The result is a sort of teamwork that is ac- 
 complishing wonders. We have found out 
 that many of our ills are caused by minute 
 animals or plants which find their way into 
 our bodies. Disease thus becomes a mere mat- 
 ter of fact. There is nothing more mysterious 
 about a thousand billions of little plants in- 
 festing the body as a germ disease than there 
 is in the matter of a part of one plant thrust 
 into it in the form of a sliver in the finger. 
 The problem is more complex, that is all. 
 
 Drugs are becoming obsolete, except as they 
 justify themselves in the rays of the new light. 
 Nature is consulted. How does the body nat- 
 urally deal with these intruders? That our 
 bodies have adjusted themselves to the old 
 warfare with germs is shown by the fact of 
 immunity. We do not always contract dis- 
 eases when exposed to them; and we have 
 found out why. The body has means of fight- 
 ing the germs. When we have had certain 
 diseases we are immune to them. A very in- 
 
 237 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 genious but not altogether satisfactory theory 
 of immunity has been built up, and progress 
 in sanitation is largely dependent on the fact 
 not the theory of immunity. Vaccines and 
 antitoxins are merely man's additions to the 
 strength of nature's forces. They have already 
 won in the contest with smallpox, diphtheria 
 (which has been identified with membranous 
 croup), typhoid fever, cerebro-spinal menin- 
 gitis, tetanus, and to a very large degree with 
 cholera, bubonic plague, hydrophobia and 
 some others of the worst diseases. The pros- 
 pects are that cancer and leprosy will soon 
 yield. As this is written the world is filled 
 with hope that the Friedman antitoxin for tu- 
 berculosis will do what Koch's seemed to have 
 accomplished a quarter of a century ago but 
 failed. 
 
 Even in the matter of medication, great 
 progress has been made. Salvarsan and neo- 
 salvarsan are almost specifics for syphilis 
 or seem to be. Quinine as a drug takes place 
 with smallpox vaccine as old and accidental 
 discoveries of things which modern science 
 
 238 
 
EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 finds good the former as a cure for malaria, 
 an4 the latter as an attenuated virus for the 
 prevention of smallpox. The study of the 
 causes of diseases opens to governmental ac- 
 tion tremendous possibilities in the way of 
 stamping them out. We know that malaria 
 and yellow fever, for instance, come to human 
 beings through the bites of mosquitoes and in 
 no other way. So that by the extermination 
 of mosquitoes, or their avoidance, we can do 
 away with the necessity of quinine as a cure 
 for malaria, and make up for our lack of a 
 vaccine or antitoxin for yellow fever one or 
 the other we may expect to be discovered at 
 any time. 
 
 The work of Stiles on hook-worm is per- 
 haps the most brilliant ever performed in this 
 great field of brilliant work, and has resulted 
 in a cheap and simple cure by means of a 
 medicine for this plague, which probably ac- 
 counts for more of the torpor, lassitude and 
 lack of enterprise of the peoples of warm cli- 
 mates than we have yet suspected. Spotted 
 fever has been traced to the tick and its host, 
 
 239 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the rodent; bubonic plague to the fleas car- 
 ried by rats, squirrels and other small animals, 
 and the hunt is on for the probable insect or 
 animal carriers of pellagra, leprosy and many 
 other diseases. There is no contagious or in- 
 fectious disease which is not under surveil- 
 lance by these skilled detectives of science, and 
 the hopeful thing is that they all have clues. 
 The hunt is an intelligent hunt, now, whereas 
 all through the ages of the past it has been a 
 mere matter of groping in the dark. Man is 
 in the field against disease armed with weap- 
 ons which will surely give him the victory. 
 
 Marching ahead of the physician, has gone 
 the surgeon with aseptic surgery, and anes- 
 thetics. These things relate largely to the me- 
 chanics of the healing art; and their history 
 is a tale of wonders with which the average 
 mind is more familiar than with the more 
 complex matters of immunity, anti-bodies, 
 phagocytosis and opsonins which forbid most 
 of us to pry into the new medicine. But sur- 
 gery is scarcely less important in the cure of 
 
 240 
 
EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 disease than its coordinate branch of the heal- 
 ing art. 
 
 Now, no people can voluntarily take advan- 
 tage of these things in the absence of intelli- 
 gence. The developed man will not have 
 hook-worm; the undeveloped and untaught 
 will never avoid it. Savages may be told about 
 the causes of bubonic plague, malaria, yellow 
 fever, sleeping sickness, smallpox, diphtheria 
 and the like, and may have the cures or pre- 
 ventives placed in their hands, and the result 
 will be negligible. Nothing but a "benefi- 
 cent" tyranny can impose these things upon 
 such people. I am firmly of the opinion that 
 such a well-meant coercion, in so far as it 
 could be made effective, would be a bad thing 
 for the world. 
 
 It is an iron law of the world's welfare that 
 only those ought to be saved who can accom- 
 plish their own salvation. Educate the people 
 of all lands in sanitation, preventive medicine, 
 all phases of the healing art; but except per- 
 haps in the case of a salvable minority lagging 
 
 241 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 behind the national march of intellect, the 
 practise of these arts should be left to the peo- 
 ple themselves. When they have so far pro- 
 gressed that they understand these things, be- 
 lieve in them and practise them voluntarily, 
 they will have become fit for salvation from 
 pestilence and insanitary lives. Not before. 
 
 Enforced good government good govern- 
 ment carried ahead of the people's develop- 
 ment by governing classes of educated people 
 tends to an undue multiplication of the pas- 
 sengers on the good ship Earth and of those 
 least fit to survive. 
 
 Seven out of every ten Chinese babies die in 
 infancy. The same is more or less true in 
 India, in Russia, and wherever poverty and ig- 
 norance are found on a fertile soil. The birth- 
 rate among the poor in Mexico, Central 
 America and South America is enormous. To 
 enforce on these peoples governments which 
 would allow the birth-rate to express itself in 
 multiplication would not be a good thing, but 
 a great evil. 
 
 When people win good government for 
 242 
 
EVILS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT 
 
 themselves, they do so by a process of edu- 
 cation, struggle, development and evolution 
 which immensely complicates their lives. Our 
 own case and that of the educated and enlight- 
 ened classes everywhere are instances in point. 
 This increase in the complexity of life, the 
 freeing of women, the long period of educa- 
 tion in fact, civilization makes a high birth- 
 rate impossible. The imperialists demand that 
 the benefits of civilization be conferred on 
 these peoples in advance of their development. 
 This is not truly kind to them, and it is a peril 
 to the world. Let us help these peoples 
 through education, missionary effort, every 
 freely-offered stimulus to development and 
 stop there. 
 
 Their high birth-rate and their shocking 
 death-rate come from the same causes. To re- 
 move one result by force and leave the other 
 unaffected would be a crime against the civ- 
 ilization of the world. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE REAL WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 HERE we are, the whites the saloon pas- 
 sengers on the good ship Earth. We 
 have the most roomy quarters. We have the 
 wireless service, the reading-rooms, the music 
 and the daily journals of our flight through 
 space; while there be those of darker skins 
 and darker fate who "sit in darkness" in the 
 steerage. 
 
 We have Christianity, in an imperfect and 
 undeveloped form in our lives and still more 
 perfectly in our thoughts. We have the won- 
 derful new bible of science which has gone far 
 to redeem our souls from quibbles and uncan- 
 dor, and has brought us into the presence of 
 essential honesty for the first time in the his- 
 tory of the race. We have the Christ come 
 again truly in the perfected theory of democ- 
 racy. These things have come to be current 
 
 244 
 
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 coin in the commerce of speech and thought 
 in the upper circles of the passenger list of the 
 good ship Earth among the whites. 
 
 They are spreading to the yellows, browns 
 and blacks, to be sure. Human brains are 
 alike, whatever may be the tinge of the skin 
 and souls have no distinctions of color. But 
 in the main, the great germinal conceptions 
 which make for progress are the possessions 
 of the white race. 
 
 Have we a duty toward those "that sit in 
 darkness"? Is there a real "White Man's Bur- 
 den" of which Kipling's barbarous image of 
 jailorship is a shadowing-forth? Does it make 
 any real difference to the white man as to what 
 the fate of the other races turns out to be? Can 
 he do anything for the other races, even if he 
 tries? 
 
 He must do something for them. The 
 blacks, yellows, reds and browns are contend- 
 ers with us for the occupancy of the ship. 
 They constitute the yellow peril, the Moham- 
 medan peril, the black peril, the Hindu 
 peril, and to a large extent, the Spanish-Por- 
 
 245 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tuguese peril. The races on the earth are like 
 the cat, the dog and the fox which were sewed 
 in a bag and hung in a tree they can not ig- 
 nore one another. 
 
 What do the other races lack which we pos- 
 sess? Broadly, they lack the essentials of good 
 safe companionship on this great and mysteri- 
 ous voyage. 
 
 They lack that redeeming honesty of 
 thought which science has given our best 
 thought, and without which truth can not be 
 attained. 
 
 They lack the understanding and apprecia- 
 tion of democracy, which is the hope of the 
 world in that it makes for the development of 
 every human being, rather than of an upper 
 class standing on the masses' necks. Lacking 
 that they must always be Lascars, Kanakas, 
 beach-combers and pirates of the ship's crew. 
 
 They lack knowledge of the truths of Chris- 
 tianity. And lacking that, they lack the spirit- 
 ual basis of the political redemption through 
 democracy, and the candor and good faith of 
 science. The golden rule is the summation of 
 
 246 
 
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 more redemptive politics and redemptive sci- 
 entific conduct than any other utterance ever 
 given to the world. The Sermon on the Mount 
 is the magnetic pole of ethics to which all com- 
 passes of life must point, even when the voy- 
 ages are frankly otherwheres. These things 
 the white race possesses. It owes to the other 
 races the duty of carrying them to all peoples. 
 
 In short, the real white man's burden is not 
 that of conquest, but of evangelization. This 
 must be done, not through soldiers, but 
 through missionaries. The greatest profession 
 of the future among us must be, not arms, but 
 teaching. 
 
 And first, we must purge ourselves of our 
 own gross and apparent sins, errors and short- 
 comings. Our message is that of the redemp- 
 tive power of the principles of love, knowl- 
 edge and democracy. Well, then the white na- 
 tions must cease to kill, to oppress, to threaten. 
 Otherwise they can not preach love. We must 
 cease to suppress truth, even though it may 
 seem destructive or damaging to great inter- 
 ests. Otherwise, we can not teach our knowl- 
 
 247 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 edge with authority. We must do away with 
 every obstacle to the exercise of the popular 
 will in our own countries. Otherwise, we can 
 not teach democracy. Love, knowledge and 
 democracy are all stultified while poverty re- 
 mains among us as our hoariest institution; 
 and while that persists, we can not preach our 
 message successfully in any of its forms. 
 
 The missionary efforts of the Christian 
 world have not been more successful, because 
 even savages divine the fact that we do not 
 practise, or really believe our Christianity 
 and intelligent non-Christians know it. Why 
 should they change one form of belief for an- 
 other which makes no promise of a better life 
 in this world? It is this world which needs 
 missionary efforts the future life will be bet- 
 ter served than otherwise, I suspect, by prop- 
 erly serving this. We must show the nations of 
 the world that our ideals may be lived up to in 
 city, state, nation and Christendom. We must 
 be able to hold out to the suffering peoples 
 who sit in darkness white and colored a re- 
 demption from their sufferings in this world. 
 
 24* 
 
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 We shall need to do greatly, and dare greatly, 
 within our own borders if we are to do that 
 and such is our first task. 
 
 In the meantime, and after, a different sort 
 of missionarying must go on. We must enlist 
 recruits from the great intelligent peoples 
 the Japanese, Hindu, Chinese they must help 
 us as their fitness grows with ours. The white 
 man's burden will become the developed 
 man's burden. Our missionarying will reach 
 every nook of the world, white, black, brown 
 and yellow, with demonstration stations of 
 right living the living of the full, complex, 
 complete, civilized life. It will be backed by 
 millions of money, but not a single weapon. 
 Where their manner of living can not save 
 them, these missionaries will refuse safety. 
 They will reject the protection of the powers, 
 and punitive expeditions will no longer refute 
 the truths of the teachers they are ostensibly 
 sent out to aid. There will be an age of mar- 
 tyrs. The jungles of the tropics will receive 
 many who will never come out. But if the 
 white man's burden is to be carried, the 
 
 249 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 knights and ladies of the future must ride by 
 millions into dangers greater than those of 
 Arthurian romance. 
 
 They will carry, not swords, lances and 
 armor, but tools, laboratories and libraries. 
 They will seek to inspire, not to control or 
 govern. They will be patient, for they will 
 know that a century is but a moment in this 
 great game into which they are sitting. If 
 they are killed, they will die unresistingly, and 
 others will take their places. They will not 
 ask for protection or retribution. And through 
 this sort of assumption of the white man's 
 burden will the world be redeemed, and the 
 Kingdom of God be set up not at Jerusalem, 
 but over all the earth. Heaven will take care 
 of itself, when people live these principles. 
 
 We passengers on the good ship Earth have 
 been kept apart, have quarreled and fought, 
 have ravaged and murdered for thousands of 
 years because we could not agree about God! 
 
 This is the strangest of human tragedies. In 
 the oldest of known books, perhaps, the ques- 
 
 250 
 
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 tion is asked "Canst thou by searching find 
 out God?" The implied answer is that the 
 thing can not be done. And yet, the breech- 
 clouted savage is willing to bet his life in bat- 
 tle on the wager that he knows all about God. 
 It is one of the first things he thinks he abso- 
 lutely knows. Very soon after he has mas- 
 tered it, however, he becomes satisfied that the 
 stars and the moon are simple things which he 
 quite fully comprehends. And the last thing 
 to yield to civilized man's questioning is the 
 soil under his feet save one the soul in his 
 own body! 
 
 So it is that the lower man may be in devel- 
 opment, the more impossible it is for him to 
 comprehend the idea of a universal religion, 
 or to assent to its desirability. To the savage, 
 God is a being belonging in fee simple to his 
 tribe. The next tribe has a god of its ow r n, 
 freely conceded to be a god, though a stranger. 
 It takes a mighty march of mind to enable 
 man to conceive of a universal religion, 
 reached by diverse ways, through develop- 
 ments of many faiths. 
 
 2511 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 And yet, either by right or wrong methods, 
 we are coming into view of such a develop- 
 ment. A learned man was recently asked to 
 write for a New York publishing house a 
 series of books on the founders of the great 
 world's religions Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, 
 Zoroaster, Moses, Mohammed. In discussing 
 the matter he expressed the view that we have 
 now for the first time in the history of man 
 reached a point where such a series may be im- 
 partially written. "For the first time," said 
 he, "such a series may be given the world in 
 the light of a universal philosophy of re- 
 ligion." 
 
 To the Christian no less than to other reli- 
 gionists, the idea is difficult. Most people on 
 the earth at this time have passed the stage of 
 believing in a god belonging in fee simple to 
 the tribe, the state or the empire. The concep- 
 tion has mastered the world that God is God 
 universal, omnipotent, omnipresent. This is 
 a wonderful advance toward a universal reli- 
 gion and yet there is something in it that 
 stands in the way of religious accord. For 
 
 252 
 
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 each religion claims to be based on some 
 peculiarly correct and authoritative revelation 
 of God. The believer therefore is filled with 
 the faith that his religion is the only true 
 world religion, and that the universal religion 
 can come by no means save the complete tri- 
 umph of his faith. The Mohammedan be- 
 lieves this no less devoutly than the Christian 
 and this belief is stored with perils to the 
 world. 
 
 But let us look back to the childhood of 
 many of us when our parents and grandparents 
 were perfectly sure that their Christian sect 
 or church was the only one capable of saving 
 souls from hell. The heathen themselves were 
 no worse off than the communicants of the 
 little church which held aloft its wooden spire 
 or cross on the other side of the street. These 
 creeds are substantially the same as then, but 
 the old idea of God as the property in fee sim- 
 ple of one denomination has vanished with the 
 concept of God as the property in fee simple 
 of the tribe. Christians have come to think 
 less of dogma, and more of love. They have 
 
 253 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 drawn nearer to one another by rising to a 
 common plane. 
 
 May not the same thing take place with the 
 the great world's faiths? There came to this 
 country in 1892 to the World's Congress of 
 Religions which may take its place in history 
 as the first definite step toward world-wide 
 religious peace many of the more tolerent 
 spirits of the non-Christian faiths. Among 
 them was B. Nagarkar, a Hindu, who looked 
 like a prophet and talked like Saint Paul. He 
 was then, and for aught I know still is, the 
 head of the Brahmo-Somaj, a reform religious 
 body of India. He did not believe in caste, 
 nor inherited uncleanness or damnation. He 
 did not believe in child marriage. He was 
 working for universal education and perfect 
 democracy. He wanted for the Hindus all the 
 benefits of science, invention and progress. He 
 was a real progressive. His church uses a 
 ritual in which are collected as inspired writ- 
 ings, the choicest gems of the holy books of 
 India, our Old and New Testaments, the 
 Koran, the Zoroastrian and Confucian scrip- 
 
 254 
 
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 tures. The Brahmo-Somaj is a religion of the 
 Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount, 
 of progress and enlightenment. 
 
 Nagarkar's creed and personality would 
 have made him an acceptable pastor for al- 
 most any Unitarian church, and he was not 
 much at odds with, and would no doubt have 
 been admitted to, membership in some de- 
 nominations regarded as orthodox. He was a 
 deeply religious person but the background 
 of his faith was Hindu, not Christian. Out of 
 this background he had emerged, and his 
 church with him, to a field of almost common 
 ground with the great mass of Christian 
 thought. 
 
 Are there not, then, uplands of the soul, on 
 which we passengers on the good ship Earth 
 may all meet and commune with the saints of 
 all faiths? May it not be that God is moving 
 through such faiths as the Brahmo-Somaj in 
 the Hindu world, and the Babists, or Bahaists 
 in Islam to abolish caste, intolerance and pov- 
 erty? Bahaism is the religion of a Moham- 
 medan sect not more than seventy-five years 
 
 2SS 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 old which seeks to establish "Humanity bound 
 together by sympathy and unselfishness; a 
 world in which there is neither intolerance 
 nor war; a universal religion in which there 
 shall be but two essentials love for man and 
 love for God; a universal language, and a 
 universal educational system." Here is an 
 outgrowth of Mohammedanism which is 
 Christian in everything but the acknowledg- 
 ment of the Godhead in Christ. Its acceptance 
 by the Mohammedan world would be a thing 
 of such magnificent promise to all of us as to 
 be beyond description, and almost beyond 
 imagination. 
 
 We may then look forward to the end of 
 religious enmities. We may believe in a good 
 time coming when Mohammedan, Parsee, 
 Hindu, Shintoist, Confucian and Christian 
 will feel no more hatred toward one another 
 than Methodist and Congregationalist now do. 
 There seems to be a pole toward which all 
 spiritual compasses tend to point the Pole 
 of Divine Truth. We started far, far away 
 from it, back in the long ago, when the huge 
 
 256 
 
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 air-ship Earth first generated the insect Man 
 from her decks, and the compasses were 
 deflected from the pole by all sorts of disturb- 
 ances, but we have been struggling up nearer 
 and nearer this pole, millions and millions 
 of us. And not from the Christian nations 
 alone do these spiritual explorers come, 
 but from every earthly land where there is a 
 soul which in love seeks light. Every such 
 case develops its spiritual Peary. 
 
 And as we win nearer to truth, we draw to- 
 gether. We see one another more clearly. We 
 find less to quarrel about. We find more in 
 which we can share. After the exploring souls 
 press the rest of mankind. We dare not be- 
 lieve that any jungle holds a people incapable 
 of redemption by this quest for the Holy Grail. 
 
 I do not know how this may affect the wel- 
 fare in the next world of those who win to the 
 plane of tolerance and sympathy universal. 
 That is a thing of which I profess to know 
 nothing. But what a difference it will make 
 in this world! 
 
 Suppose that at the time when Alva the 
 257 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Catholic carried fire and sword through Hol- 
 land because the Dutch did not believe in the 
 Pope, or that later time when Maurice of Nas- 
 sau, the Protestant, butchered forty thousand 
 Dutch because they did not believe in infant 
 baptism, the religious people of Europe had 
 been as good Christians as Nagarkar the Hin- 
 du, or Abd-ul-Baha the Mohammedan what 
 a difference it would have made! 
 
 There has been progress. Even Christianity 
 is not what it used to be. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD 
 
 ONCE more we have worked our way 
 through the ocean of thought to the 
 vision of a time when there shall be no more 
 of isolation among the groups of people who 
 make up the passenger list of the good ship 
 Earth. We asked the question once, "Why 
 not manage the earth as a unit?" and we de- 
 cided that even though the Martians may be 
 able to lay out their whole planet, and ditch 
 it as a farmer ditches a field, our field, the 
 deck room of the good ship Earth, is still in 
 too many separate and hostile hands. 
 
 But we have now glimpsed the vision of a 
 world religion. Can we not see the picture of 
 a world government a United States of the 
 World, in which there shall be no more of 
 exclusiveness in travel or trade between Ger- 
 many or Japan and these states of ours, than 
 
 259 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 there now is between Iowa and Missouri or 
 New York and Illinois? 
 
 It is a divine vision! But it is not a new 
 one. The poets are men who see more deeply, 
 and speak more truly than the rest of us, and 
 are therefore prophets. It is to Tennyson the 
 Prophet that we must go for the best expres- 
 sion of this old vision. 
 
 "For I dipt into the future, far as human eye 
 
 could see, 
 
 Saw the Vision of the world, and all the won- 
 der that would be; 
 
 "Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argo- 
 sies of magic sails, 
 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down 
 with costly bales." 
 
 And remember, Prophet Tennyson wrote 
 this about the heavens filling with commerce, 
 and the pilots dropping down with costly 
 bales, before Langley built his first aeroplane, 
 or Zeppelin his dirigible, or the Wright 
 brothers rode their first glider at Dayton. And 
 Tennyson, in his dip into the future, saw the 
 horrors of aerial warfare. 
 
 260 
 
THE UNITED WORLD 
 
 "Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and 
 
 there rain'd a ghastly dew 
 From the nations' airy navies grappling in 
 the central blue." 
 
 But he did not stop here. He looked on to 
 the development of peace from war, 
 
 "Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and 
 
 the battle-flags were furl'd 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of 
 the world!" 
 
 Is this anything more than the baseless 
 fabric of a vision? Will there ever be any 
 such a thing as a parliament of man, a federa- 
 tion of the world? I believe that there must 
 be in the fulness of time. 
 
 To be sure, there was never a time when 
 there seemed less prospect of the Universal 
 Government Merger than now. Great Britain 
 still holds sway over her uncounted millions 
 of souls and scores of nations by force rather 
 than by accord, save in the case of her English- 
 speaking colonies. Every great power grasps 
 its sheaf of subject peoples who hate their con- 
 querors and is reaching for more. Italy 
 
 261 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 has just snapped a mouthful from the flank of 
 staggering Turkey in Tripolitania. Bulgaria, 
 Servia, Montenegro and Greece are eating 
 into the vitals of the same decadent power. 
 Austria stands ready to leap upon Servia in 
 anger at the stealing of a bone in the form of 
 an Adriatic port. Russia is placing armies in 
 the field to daunt Austria. Germany clenches 
 her mailed fist in support of Franz-Joseph. 
 France sharpens her knife for that portion of 
 Germany's back called Alsace-Lorraine. Great 
 Britain keeps up steam in her mighty pack 
 of dreadnaughts in case Russia and France 
 need aid. Japan and Russia are gradually 
 gnawing into the huge passive bulk of China, 
 which stirs, and sends out a new army for the 
 defense of Outer Mongolia. Mexico and the 
 Spanish- and Portuguese-American repub- 
 lics, sheltered under the Monroe Doctrine, 
 look upon their mighty protector, remember 
 the attacks on Mexico and the Philippines, 
 and wonder whether the Yankee pigs are not 
 more like wolves protecting sheep until a time 
 of hunger. It is nearing Christmas, 1913, as 
 
 262 
 
THE UNITED WORLD 
 
 this is written and when was there ever ap- 
 parently less of peace on earth, and good will 
 to men? 
 
 The federation of the world will not come 
 save through the need of it. Is there any need 
 to be satisfied by federation? 
 
 Yes, there is as much need of world-federa- 
 tion now, as there was of colony-federation in 
 America in 1775. There are many world 
 problems that can not be solved save through 
 it. There are world slums, which the advanced 
 nations may be obliged to clean up and purify. 
 There are world pest-holes which the world 
 may wish to make sanitary, or to isolate. There 
 are areas of darkness on which the world may 
 find it necessary to turn the light. It is only 
 because of our home problems and their press- 
 ing nature that we have found it possible to 
 delay so long a world movement for the per- 
 fecting of society in the steerage and the fore- 
 castle of the good ship Earth. 
 
 Moreover, there are questions of the divi- 
 sion of the lands, and the natural resources of 
 the Earth. The population is very unevenly 
 
 263 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 distributed over the decks and much of the 
 best lands is unused. Suppose that Brazil fails 
 to reclaim and populate the great Amazon 
 Basin is not the rest of the world, especially 
 the over-populated portions, interested in hav- 
 ing Brazil's delinquency remedied? Shall 
 half the good deck room of the good ship 
 Earth go half used because of one or two 
 nations' lack of energy or initiative? 
 
 Suppose the world's supply of potash is 
 finally found to be localized in Germany, and 
 the phosphorus in the United States, as seems 
 to be the case. Suppose that the iron mines 
 and the coal mines also fall into the hands of 
 one, two, or three nations. And suppose these 
 nations, or as many as control them, either 
 allow them to be exploited by private owners 
 or refuse their product to the world on just 
 terms, or take too much for themselves, or 
 allow the priceless heritage of all the peoples 
 of the earth to be wasted. Have not the 
 wronged peoples a right to be heard in pro- 
 test? Will there not be need of a federation 
 of the world to deal with these problems? 
 
 264 
 
THE UNITED WORLD 
 
 Already there is growing up a thing never 
 known until this era of ours a world public- 
 opinion. The world will never be federated 
 in government, until it is federated in thought 
 save by tyranny. 
 
 Consider two only of the great federating 
 tendencies. The Socialist party is the same 
 party everywhere. It seeks to build up in 
 every nation, .another nation of working peo- 
 ple, and to bring about a condition of indus- 
 trial democracy in which all will be working 
 people. Its growing power makes its world- 
 wide success a thing to be regarded as far out- 
 side the bounds of impossibility. Its triumph 
 would be in itself a federation of the world. 
 The other great radical school of thought, not 
 less powerful that Socialism in its influence 
 on affairs, is the school of the Georgians or 
 single-taxers. This school bases it propa- 
 ganda on the principle that this huge Zeppelin 
 the Earth is in justice common property, and 
 that rent is the wedge that separates the priv- 
 ileged from the unprivileged. The triumph 
 of this school of thought would at once estab- 
 
 265 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 lish a federation of the world, and could not 
 fail to lead to a listing of our world proper- 
 ties, a division of our natural resources on 
 lines of recognized principles, and some cen- 
 tral body with power to care for the common 
 property of the race, and administer it for 
 the common good. 
 
 Such a federation would draw the line be- 
 tween those activities which are national, con- 
 tinental or planetary functions and those 
 which are better performed locally, and 
 would usher in an era of local self-govern- 
 ment in local affairs. It would be consistent 
 with perfect liberty and seems essential to it 
 
CHAPTER XXIV, 
 
 A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 WHEN the United States of the World 
 is organized as it must be some day 
 the federation will find a great many problems 
 clamoring for solution. There will be de- 
 manded at once, not the Syndicate of Intellect 
 that Kipling suggests as the world govern- 
 ment, but a zodiac of constellations of human 
 stars, each constellation a commission for the 
 study of its own great series of questions. 
 
 And I think the first great commission will 
 be appointed to determine what shall be done 
 to stop the world-wide waste of coal. 
 
 This commission will indict the state of 
 Pennsylvania as a criminal against the world 
 for allowing the great coke companies of the 
 Connellsville region to waste all the gas, all 
 the tar, all the heat and all the fertilizer in 
 making coke. It will indict the state of West 
 
 267 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Virginia as a criminal against the world for 
 allowing the fuel gas to be wasted. It will in- 
 dict all the gas producing states for the same 
 crime against the people of the world, and all 
 the coal mining states for allowing the waste of 
 one-half to three-fourths the coal in mining. 
 It will indict as criminals against the world's 
 supply of coal all those states, communities, 
 corporations and individuals which allow 
 black smoke to escape from flues and chim- 
 neys poisoning the atmosphere and destroying 
 property and wasting a very considerable 
 percentage of the coal burned. It will indict 
 as criminals against the world's welfare every- 
 body everywhere who is responsible for the 
 crime of burning coal in steam-engines when 
 from two-thirds to one-half of the fuel could 
 be saved by throwing away the steam-engine, 
 getting better educated operators and con- 
 verting the fuel into producer gas for use in 
 gas-engines. All these things it would do to- 
 day, if there were a federation of the world, 
 on the strength of the knowledge we now 
 possess. 
 
 268 
 
A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 Of all these crimes we are now guilty, and 
 we know it. Our only excuse is that, after all, 
 the shortage of coal is possibly only a scien- 
 tist's chimera ; that, anyhow, the crisis will not 
 come until after we are dead and that money 
 must be made in this life if at all. 
 
 God said, "Let there be light" and there 
 was light. And the voyage of the good ship 
 Earth was so ordered that millions of years 
 ago when the air was full of carbon, great 
 swamps existed in which grew huge plants 
 which, through light and heat, took the carbon 
 from the air and by reason of the repeated 
 flooding and draining of these fields, coal was 
 made. So coal is the light of millions of years 
 ago stored in the bunkers of the good ship 
 Earth. It is also light spiritual, and light 
 intellectual. It is civilization. By means of 
 its innumerable uses it is God's chief present 
 agency for carrying over to us in world prog- 
 ress the light commanded "in the beginning." 
 
 The first great commission on the world's 
 coal supply will find immense beds left in 
 the bunkers of the good ship Earth. In Eu- 
 
 269 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 rope, aside from the greatest mines, coal is 
 produced in France, Austria, Hungary, Spain, 
 Russia, Holland, Bosnia, Rumania, Servia, 
 Italy and Sweden. But in none of them is 
 there a supply known to exist which is more 
 than will be needed in the nation possessing 
 the mines, if we allow for progress and devel- 
 opment in the future. Of those named, Rus- 
 sia has the greatest supply, but the mighty 
 development of Russia under the democracy 
 and justice which the world hopes to see the 
 Russian people win, will call for the local use 
 of every ton of coal under Russian soil. 
 
 Africa is poorly supplied with coal. The 
 climatic conditions when the coal was laid 
 down do not seem to have been favorable for 
 its formation in the equatorial regions. There 
 is a coal industry in the Transvaal, in Natal 
 and in Cape Colony; but a developed Africa 
 will draw on the rest of the world for most of 
 its coal, so far as can now be seen. 
 
 Similar conditions exist in Australia. There 
 is a coal industry in almost every province of 
 Australia, and in both Tasmania and New 
 
 270 
 
A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 Zealand ; but there is no reason to believe that 
 there is more than the Australasia of the future 
 will need. 
 
 India has a good deal, but probably needs 
 it all. Mexico has about a six months' supply 
 for the United States if it were all taken out 
 next year 300,000,000 tons. She will need it 
 all and more. Brazil has a good deal of rather 
 poor coal. There is no reason to expect a sur- 
 plus there. Chili mines less than a million 
 tons a year, and has no great supply. In Vene- 
 zuela and Colombia coal exists in small quan- 
 tities in scattered localities. Peru has exten- 
 sive deposits of both anthracite and bitumi- 
 nous which are worth looking into by the 
 coal commission of the federation of the 
 world. Aside from these, South America 
 seems barren of coal, save for small deposits 
 of poor fuel. 
 
 The world's supply, therefore, must come 
 from North America, China, Great Britain, 
 Belgium, Germany and localities mentioned 
 above which can not long furnish surpluses. 
 
 One authority says that at the rate of min- 
 271 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 ing in 1900 the fields of Central France, Bohe- 
 mia, Saxony and North England would be 
 worked oXit in one hundred to two hundred 
 years; the other British fields, and those of 
 Waldenburg-Schaftzlar and North France 
 might last two hundred and fifty years; the 
 mines of Belgium, Aachen, and Westphalia 
 were rated good for six hundred to eight hun- 
 dred years, and those of Upper Silesia for a 
 thousand years. But this does not take into ac- 
 count the startling acceleration of consump- 
 tion going on all over the world. Neither 
 does it reckon on the fact that as one district 
 fails, the demand will rest on the others, until 
 the last to go will be mined with a fierceness 
 never seen before. The last of a field plows 
 off fast. 
 
 As for the American supply, the Geological 
 Survey has reversed itself and passed from a 
 position of extreme pessimism since Campbell 
 indicated the exhaustion of our fields in one 
 hundred and fifty years, to that of extreme 
 optimism in a recent report in which it is 
 pointed out that at the end of 1910 there 
 
 272 
 
A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 remained in the ground a supply equal to 
 four thousand times the amount mined that 
 year. This too fails to reckon on the ever- 
 increasing demand which will make the con- 
 sumption of 1910 look small within ten years; 
 nor on the concentration of the world's demand 
 on the good mines when the smaller fields are 
 worked out. 
 
 The last great field to be considered is that 
 of China. The province of Shansi is one vast 
 coal field, practically untouched, both an- 
 thracite and bituminous, and covering 30,000 
 square miles. Some years ago the Baron von 
 Richthofen said that China had enough coal 
 to last the entire world several thousand 
 years. Probably the baron had not considered 
 when he made the statement the manner in 
 which we are speeding up in coal consumption, 
 but there seems to be no doubt that China has 
 the greatest coal fields in the world. A free, 
 educated, justly-organized China may find in 
 these great mines a means whereby the Chi- 
 nese can redeem themselves from poverty, and 
 the "sordid round of getting and begetting" of 
 
 273 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 which Ross speaks as now constituting the 
 Chinese life. 
 
 More mines will be discovered many 
 more and more uses for coal. The coal 
 commission of the good ship Earth will, 
 however, claim every ton of it as the property 
 of the people of the world, and not that of any 
 nation, or state, or corporation, or private 
 owner, or class of private owners. And it will 
 ordain that useless and wasteful consumption 
 be stopped everywhere. 
 
 The coal in the bunkers of the good ship 
 Earth is a product made millions of years 
 ago by the radiant energy of the sun light 
 and heat acting through the life-force in 
 plants. Once used, it is gone forever. For 
 the carboniferous era can not return to the 
 earth or if it could, it would exterminate the 
 human race. 
 
 But there is a way to utilize the radiant 
 energy of the sun coming to us day by day. 
 And yet we mostly waste it. It is as if a man 
 with an income half sufficient for his living, 
 
 274 
 
A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 should throw it away while drawing on a 
 bank-account to which no deposits could ever 
 be added. 
 
 Remember that in dealing with this matter 
 of coal we are considering force. Force must 
 be used up in every human product. Force is 
 another name for work. Coal is another name 
 for work. It does what would else have to 
 be done by man or beast. And as coal is more 
 powerful than all the men and beasts in the 
 world, it does work that could not otherwise 
 be done at all. Our bridges, railways, sky- 
 scrapers, Panama Canals, factories and mills 
 are greater than the works of all the other ages 
 notwithstanding the Pyramids and Karnak, 
 the Colosseum and the Parthenon just be- 
 cause we have coal to do the work for us. 
 Those old works were done by slaves, and we 
 do ours with free labor just because we have 
 the coal. Well it will be for us when we have 
 a federation of the world to find out how 
 much coal we have, and to see to it that it is 
 saved, and not wasted. 
 
 All the while we have been burning coal so 
 275 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 fiercely, the sun has been ready to do more 
 than half the coal work by the force of 
 yesterday's sunlight, instead of that of the 
 carboniferous age. The sun is a giant, which 
 lifts millions of tons of water every day 
 to a height of thousands of feet in the air 
 through evaporation from the oceans. This 
 water floats out over the land, and falls in 
 rain and snow. Much of it falls on mountains 
 and highlands, from which it runs in rapid 
 streams. For ages man has used the power 
 so stored in water, to turn mills and do some 
 work; but within recent years we have found 
 out ways by which we may turn it into elec- 
 tricity, and wonder of wonders! from elec- 
 tricity back again to heat and to light as of 
 the sun. 
 
 This descending water is called "white coal" 
 because it will do almost everything that coal 
 can do. Indeed, a great deal of the coal we 
 burn is turned into electricity, by a process 
 so wasteful that more than nine-tenths of the 
 power of coal is lost in the process! Thus 
 
 276 
 
A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 far, the invention of the dynamo and electric 
 motor, instead of being a means of saving coal, 
 has actually increased its consumption and 
 accelerated its waste. 
 
 The coal beds are our bank-account on 
 which new deposits are never made; and the 
 water-power is the daily income capable of 
 sufficing for more than half our needs which 
 we waste, waste, and all the time waste! 
 
 There is nearly 3,000,000 horse-power con- 
 stantly wasting down the slopes of the moun- 
 tains of our eastern states. We are giving 
 away the sites to power companies who will 
 claim the privilege of making future genera- 
 tions pay for this work of God's sun ; but we 
 as a people are not developing the power. 
 These Appalachian streams, if dammed and 
 furnished with all wheels it would pay to in- 
 stall, for those portions of the year when the 
 current is strong, would give us an output of 
 6,000,000 horse-power, worth a hundred mil- 
 lions of dollars a year. By storage reservoirs 
 to hold back the flood waters we might not 
 
 277 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 only prevent most of our terrible floods, but 
 we should increase this output of horse-power 
 many fold. 
 
 We do build dams, but we are guilty of the 
 incredible crime of refusing to utilize the 
 power our own publicly-owned dams develop. 
 The dams the United States government has 
 already built for the benefit of navigation now 
 waste, even in low water, power which might 
 turn wheels to the enormous amount of 
 1,600,000 horse-power; and they might prof- 
 itably during half the year send it out at the 
 rate of 4,000,000 horse-power per year. There 
 are grave doubts as to whether or not under 
 the Constitution of the United States we have 
 the legal right to generate and distribute profit 
 from our own rivers even though we may 
 build the dams! But fortunately the Consti- 
 tution is not a cosmic fact. 
 
 The New York, Pennsylvania and New 
 England water-power is not included in the 
 above estimate, and is enormous. All the Great 
 Lakes states have tremendous power possibili- 
 
 278 
 
A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 ties. The Pacific and Rocky Mountain states 
 have it in still greater volume. The rivers 
 of Canada offer power in quantities simply in- 
 calculable and inconceivable. Mexico, South 
 America and Asia no one has even esti- 
 mated the water-power available to the pas- 
 sengers on the good ship Earth in these re- 
 gions. Wherever the rivers of Africa the 
 Nile, the Kongo, the Niger, the Zambesi- 
 flow over the mountain rim of the dark 
 continent, there are cataracts wherewith to 
 light it light it in myriad ways. 
 
 We are using power counting coal-power 
 a l so _i n the United States at the rate of less 
 than 20,000,000 horse-power. There is avail- 
 able water-power running to waste to turn 
 every wheel of this. There is water-power 
 running to waste to turn every wheel now 
 turned by steam in all the world. The power 
 sites are not always near where the wheels are 
 located. In many cases they are too far from 
 the centers of population to be transmitted 
 profitably by our present-day methods. But 
 
 279 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 we shall learn more about transmission. There 
 are some uses for which coal is essential, and 
 always will be. 
 
 But the age of white coal is a future cer- 
 tainty. The captains who rule the good ship 
 Earth in the days of the United States of the 
 World, will gradually cause the load of our 
 increasing work to be laid on water, and taken 
 from coal. We shall use daily the sun-energy 
 of this year, and save our lessening deposit of 
 the sunlight of the carboniferous age. Copper 
 highways will gridiron the world for the 
 accommodation of the current from the wilds 
 where the cataracts are found. Population 
 will shift slowly from the coal regions to the 
 power sites. The great manufacturing cities 
 of the future will be built in the Alps, about 
 the reservoirs of the Appalachians, along the 
 slopes of the Andes, the Himalayas and the 
 Sierras wherever power and raw materials 
 can be bought together. 
 
 It will be a cleaner sweeter age than the 
 age of coal. It will express in all its life the 
 science which will be the universally dis- 
 
 280 
 
A FEDERATION PROBLEM 
 
 tributed wealth of all minds. After a while 
 the burning of coal will be confined to those 
 uses which are not to be served by electricity. 
 The depletion of the coal beds will be so re- 
 duced that their exhaustion can be regarded 
 as indefinitely postponed. Such additional 
 fuel supplies as gas, wood, petroleum, alcohol 
 and peat will be eked out by science so as to 
 make the fuel problem less and less important. 
 Means may be found to get heat directly from 
 fuel by chemical reactions, and thus save the 
 waste in burning. The rays of the sun, the 
 waves and tides of the sea, the winds and even 
 the interior heat of the earth may finally be 
 available for the work of the world, in the 
 days when the captains of the good ship 
 Earth shall ordain the age of white coal, under 
 the claim for the people of the Earth of the 
 right to and sway over every watt of power 
 which the sloping decks of their ship may be 
 capable of generating from the rains of 
 heaven, 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE PREVENTION OF FLOODS 
 
 NOTHING could be more beyond con- 
 trol, to the mind of the primitive man, 
 than a flood. The imagination has selected 
 the flood as the most ineluctable of all catas- 
 trophes. It visualizes a drowned world as the 
 penalty of sin; and Noah, representative of 
 the saved, finds safety, not in controlling the 
 waters but in yielding to them. 
 
 Floods seem to defy resistance. Fires may 
 be fought, but floods come straight from the 
 hand of the Almighty. When the windows 
 of heaven are once opened, civilized man 
 dwindles again to the feeble stature of a sav- 
 age. Paris, the center of civilization on board 
 the good ship Earth, tamely submits when 
 the Seine leaves his banks. In the Lower Mis- 
 sissipi Valley American civilization stands 
 by helpless when the Father of Waters as- 
 
 282 
 
THE PREVENTION OF FLOODS 
 
 sumes a father's prerogative of chastisement. 
 The patient Chinese, bowing to the power of 
 the flood, call the Hwang-Ho the "Ungovern- 
 able". For four thousand years they have been 
 righting the floods, always failing to govern 
 the "Ungovernable", but always trying again, 
 and again, and again, after every failure, with 
 a persistence which is both sublime and touch- 
 ing. The "Great Yu", 4,200 years ago, filled 
 a position a good deal like that of the head of 
 the corps of engineers of the United States 
 army only Yu had the Hwang-Ho to fight. 
 He was a great engineer when our ancestors 
 were savages. Greece and Rome have risen 
 and fallen, the Germanic races have spread in 
 savagery over Europe and developed civiliza- 
 tion, the Moslems have in successive waves 
 almost swamped Caucasian civilization, 
 America has been discovered and peopled, the 
 Moslem wave has receded, the summit of pros- 
 perity and activity in all the world's history 
 has been reached in a continent which was un- 
 known to the civilized world 3,500 years after 
 the "Great Yu" was appointed superintendent 
 
 283 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 of works in China in charge of river improve- 
 ment and still the Hwang-Ho is called "Chi- 
 na's Sorrow", "the Scourge of the Sons of 
 Han" and like names, by the wonderful peo- 
 ple who live so simply and laboriously along 
 its banks. 
 
 As recently as 1898 the "Ungovernable" 
 devastated thousands of villages and cities. In 
 1877 it destroyed a million people and these 
 are only some of the most dreadful paroxysms 
 of "China's Sorrow". 
 
 Floods grow more and more dreadful as the 
 deck room on the good ship Earth becomes 
 more crowded. The fiercer struggle for sus- 
 tenance forces people to live on the rich lands 
 which are below high-water level. The Amer- 
 ican people are forced upon the Mississippi 
 bottoms by necessities similar to those which 
 have for thousands of years driven the Chinese 
 not only to the banks of her rivers and canals, 
 regardless of safety, but actually out upon her 
 waters by millions. 
 
 Those who are directly imperiled by floods 
 are the poor the rich live on the high lands 
 
 284 
 
THE PREVENTION OF FLOODS 
 
 and they can always move. Our greatest 
 floods are small in destructive power com- 
 pared to those of other lands, simply because 
 we have not so many poor, and have not uti- 
 lized our river bottoms so completely. Unless 
 something is done to control floods, we shall 
 gradually reach the state of China a state of 
 things in which millions of people will be 
 drowned annually in the inundations of the 
 Ohio, the Missouri-Mississipi, the Tennessee, 
 the Sacramento, the Alabama Rivers, and the 
 streams flowing across the Atlantic coastal 
 plain from the Appalachian Mountains. 
 
 Nothing is more pitiful than a city or a 
 farm devastated by a flood. A fire is at least 
 clean and definite in its conclusion. A flood 
 is most endurable at its height. When it 
 recedes, its misery grows. The sodden houses, 
 the clothing and bedding spread out to dry, 
 the household goods desecrated, the house ren- 
 dered unwholesome for occupancy, the furni- 
 ture falling apart, the disease, the fields 
 stripped of crops and perhaps of soil, or 
 strewn with sand and gravel from the hills a 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 flood brings the very abomination of desola- 
 tion. 
 
 And yet, most floods might be controlled by 
 modern engineering, directed with all the en- 
 ergy of a great people. There is reason to be- 
 lieve that what China needs more than any- 
 thing else, now, is a modern successor to the 
 Great Yu. This man would command the re- 
 sources of all China to reclaim the whole Chi- 
 nese lowland from the danger of floods and 
 in doing so, he would make room for millions 
 of people to live in plenty. 
 
 Each river system is a problem in itself, as 
 far as floods are concerned. The rivers of 
 China rage in freshet and dwindle in drought 
 for the same reasons that cause all the streams 
 that fall into the gulf east of Texas, all that 
 fall into the Mississippi from the east, and all 
 that empty into the Atlantic to do the same 
 things because of the destruction of the for- 
 ests on their headwaters. The deforested hills 
 of China are desolate, and breed floods. The 
 deforested hills of New England, and the mid- 
 dle and south Atlantic states are going the 
 
 286 
 
THE PREVENTION OF FLOODS 
 
 same way. Water runs off a plush-covered 
 seat or a forested hill or mountain slowly. It 
 runs from a varnished seat or a bare hill or 
 mountain rapidly. Where man has stripped 
 the forest-plush from the high portions of the 
 decks of the good ship Earth, the rainfall 
 rushes roaring down into the scuppers, called 
 valleys, bringing destruction to those who live 
 down there. 
 
 When we become really civilized, we shall 
 reclothe the mountains which our need and 
 our greed have stripped of their forest cover. 
 This will in itself stop the worst of the floods 
 and furnish us with the timber we shall so 
 sorely need. In this way can some of the "Un- 
 governables" be governed. 
 
 Irrigation will call for more and more of the 
 water which now wastes down in floods. The 
 Roosevelt Dam in Arizona is an instance. 
 Never again will a drop of flood water pass 
 out of that valley. Every drop will be used 
 for the crops, and will seep slowly back into 
 the stream. The Yellowstone in Montana will 
 all be used for irrigation and so of many 
 
 287 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 other rivers. If the Dakotas and Montana 
 were to be plowed twenty inches deep, scarcely 
 a tenth of the water which now goes from 
 them to swell the Missouri would flow from 
 the soil. It would sink in and the soil needs 
 that deep plowing. 
 
 The problem of the Mississippi floods is 
 largely a question of getting rid of the waters 
 from the Ohio and its branches. Plans have 
 been sketched out for holding back these 
 waters in a great system of reservoirs, stretch- 
 ing from the headwaters of the Alleghany to 
 those of the Tennessee. Other great reservoirs 
 are possible along the Upper Mississippi 
 where, indeed, many have already been con- 
 structed. "Water conservation," says Lyman 
 E. Cooley, "demands storage, and four per 
 cent, to six per cent, of the area in reservoirs 
 will equalize the flow of streams. By fish 
 culture such reservoirs will have greater value 
 than the land taken. They add to the land- 
 scape, and make places of recreation for the 
 people." 
 
 Let the world rise to the occasion, and the 
 288 
 
THE PREVENTION OF FLOODS 
 
 floods will be at an end. With the ending of 
 the floods will come in the age of water-power 
 or white coal. The waters, as they flow down 
 from the mountains, are more valuable than 
 the lands they devastate if their devastation 
 were necessary. But they need bring no such 
 devastation and they canjbe made to do more 
 work than our coal can do, and instead of de- 
 stroying the lands below, they may be made to 
 enrich them beyond measure. This is work 
 for each nation on the good ship Earth and 
 if the nations fail, it is work for the federation 
 of the world. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 F I ^HE decks of ships are scrubbed by a 
 A process called holystoning. The holy- 
 stone called so, perhaps, because the use of 
 it was once a regular Sunday function on sail- 
 ing ships is a block of soft sandstone, with 
 ropes attached, which is pulled and hauled 
 back and forth by the sailors, over the wet 
 deck. 
 
 The decks of the good ship Earth are holy- 
 stoned all the time Sundays and week-days. 
 The Alps and the Rocky Mountains are rough 
 spots which have not been scrubbed very long, 
 as time is measured by earth conditions. They 
 are rough and rugged but the holystoning is 
 going on all the time, and one day they will 
 be low and some day they will be level with 
 the plain. The Appalachian Mountains are 
 rounded and lower and covered with trees 
 
 290 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 they are old, old mountains, and have been 
 holystoned by nature for many more cen- 
 turies. The plains are pretty well smoothed 
 down by the sailors wind and sun and frost 
 and water. 
 
 This process of wearing down is a thing 
 which we passengers on the good ship Earth 
 may do much to accelerate or to retard. That 
 is we may make the process of erosion either 
 more or less rapid. 
 
 Let us imagine a court room in America in 
 the year 2000. A farmer is brought into court 
 by an officer. 
 
 "What is the charge against this man, Mr. 
 Officer?" asks the court. 
 
 "He is charged with a violation of the ero- 
 sion laws, your Honor," replies the officer. 
 
 "What is the evidence against him?" 
 
 "There was rain yesterday, your Honor," 
 testifies the officer, "and on inspecting the 
 fields below his farm, I found muddy water 
 flowing. I traced it to its source, and I find 
 that he is so cultivating his farm that the soil 
 is actually flowing down into the brook in 
 
 2911 
 
ON, BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 turbid streams. It is clearly a violation of the 
 
 statutes." 
 
 The farmer protests that the rain was tor- 
 rential, or the cover crop failed, or he urges 
 some other excuse for letting muddy water 
 run from his fields; but never for a moment 
 does he suggest to the court that the muddy 
 water is his affair, not the state's, that it is his 
 soil, not the state's, or that he has a right to 
 farm his own land as he will. For remember, 
 this is the year 2000, and it has become a tru- 
 ism on the good ship Earth that the old ship 
 herself belongs to the passengers in common, 
 and that the soil is the people's. The farmer, 
 like the town dweller, simply has the right to 
 the home he has built upon it the right to a 
 home forever; but he must treat the soil which 
 belongs to all in such a way as to keep intact 
 the most precious heritage of the race that 
 black crust of dark earth, only a few inches 
 thick, which it has taken so many years to ac- 
 cumulate, and which once destroyed can 
 scarcely be replaced. 
 
 Does this sound like a dream a Utopian 
 292 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 'dream? Not so fast! I read only a few weeks 
 ago in a report of a Japanese experiment sta- 
 tion that the Japanese government had forbid- 
 den the use of lime in a certain way on certain 
 lands. "This soil belongs to the people of 
 Japan," says the law, in effect. "We have 
 tried experiments and found that the use of 
 lime on that soil is bad for it. You must 
 stop it!" You see, the Japanese are doing 
 it now! 
 
 In Japan a man who owns a tree may not 
 cut it down at will. He must get permission 
 of the public officials, and when he cuts the 
 tree after receiving permission, he must plant 
 young trees to the number called for by the 
 rules. A similar policy prevails in Germany. 
 
 What has this to do with erosion? It has 
 this to do. Erosion is merely muddy water 
 flowing from lands. No muddy water flows 
 from a prairie in a state of nature, or from 
 a forest. The process is going on all the time, 
 but it is by the slipping of a few grains per 
 year per square foot to a point an inch or so 
 lower it is so slow that the soil is not carried 
 
 293 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 away any faster than the subsoil is turned to 
 soil. Erosion of this sort does no harm it 
 does great good. It has made the Earth hab- 
 itable. The richest lands have been made by 
 it. But when man plows the prairie or clears 
 the forest, erosion starts up fiercely and de- 
 structively. Thousands of square miles of the 
 Appalachian Mountains and of those of Cali- 
 fornia have been destroyed for human use by 
 it. We dare not build the reservoirs for flood 
 prevention and water-power now if we would 
 or they will silt up with mud. We may not 
 make our rivers the great waterways they 
 should be until erosion is stopped, because 
 they are filling up with the mud from the 
 hills, the valleys are being ruined by gravel 
 and sterile detritus spread over the once fer- 
 tile bottoms. We are criminally ruining the 
 decks of the good ship Earth for the use of our 
 own descendants. 
 
 Destructive erosion of mountains an'd hills 
 can be stopped by national systems of forests. 
 Destructive erosion of farms can be stopped 
 by various well-understood methods. Hills 
 
 294 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 too steep for farming should not be plowed; 
 but they often make good pastures and they 
 will not wash away when in sod. Good hilly 
 land may be farmed in such a way as to pre- 
 vent washing. The southern plantations be- 
 fore the war were laid out in terraced fields 
 to be plowed and planted according to the con- 
 tour of the hills no matter how steep the hill, 
 the furrows and rows ran level. This hinders 
 erosion when properly done. Every farmer 
 in a hilly region should be shown how and 
 obliged by law to adopt the plan. Hillsides 
 may be terraced, so that they become a suc- 
 cession of levels which will not wash for the 
 steep slopes will be grassed over. Hillsides 
 should never be cultivated with long exposed 
 slopes of plowed earth the slopes should be 
 broken by strips or balks of grass which will 
 catch the wash and hold the melted soil in 
 place. 
 
 But, after all, these plans are not equal to 
 the occasion. The real need is that the silt 
 of our rivers be saved, and the mineral plant 
 food carried out upon the lands and caught 
 
 295 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 in the soil by percolation. The Chinese and 
 Japanese show us how this is done. Their rice 
 paddies, even on hillsides, are graded to a 
 water level, and furnished with a rim of earth 
 all around to keep the water from running off. 
 It is caught thus, so that each field is a lake, 
 the water of which soaks down through the 
 earth, and leaves its mineral plant food in the 
 soil. Sometime we must come to this. When 
 that time comes, the Mississippi floods will 
 be controlled not only by reservoirs in the 
 hills, but by canals spread all over the At- 
 lantic-Gulf coastal plain. Doctor King points 
 out a plan which must be followed if North 
 America ever supports the population of 
 China. A canal like the Grand Canal of 
 China will run from the mouth of the Ohio 
 to the mouth of the Rio Grande, skirting the 
 hills all along, and catching the waters from 
 every stream from the northwest. Another 
 will run from the spot on the left bank of the 
 Mississippi where the bluffs end near the 
 mouth of the St. Francis and will follow the 
 base of the hills across the states of Mississippi, 
 
 296 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Vir- 
 ginia, to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. 
 This canal will catch the waters of all the 
 streams coming down from the mountains 
 east of the Mississippi and south of Pennsyl- 
 vania. It will be a great waterway; but its 
 main use will be to distribute the waters over 
 the lowland plains, now so inferior in farm- 
 ing value in the main, and make of them an- 
 other China in fertility. A thousand sub- 
 sidiary canals will bring all this land under 
 irrigation which it needs as much as do the 
 lands of China indeed, the laboriously irri- 
 gated lands of the Hwang-Ho Valley have 
 more rainfall than any of these in the south of 
 our own country. The real limit of popula- 
 tion, as has been pointed out by McGee, is the 
 water limit and that limit can be raised in 
 only one way the conservation of water. 
 
 The final center of population of the United 
 States will be in Dixie. When the prairies of 
 Iowa and Illinois shall have been exhausted, 
 the balmy southern lowlands, irrigated by a 
 great system of canals, drained by tiles, graded 
 
 297 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 to level fields, its swamps filled by making 
 them settling beds for river silt and drained 
 by pumping, will be the region where our 
 most teeming population will live in plenty. 
 And this without much reference to the sort 
 of land it now is. In a hundred years the 
 farmers of Denmark have made themselves 
 the richest people in average wealth in Eu- 
 rope by farming a waste of sand-dunes like 
 those of the North Carolina littoral. 
 
 Freedom, justice and the exercise of public 
 dominion over the use of the land these are 
 the essentials to progress, and almost the only 
 ones. 
 
 "Boil the water!" 
 
 This is the cry all over the land, save in 
 favored localities. Our streams and lakes are 
 polluted. All up and down the Ohio and its 
 branches typhoid rages in recurring epi- 
 demics. Chicago used to regard her water 
 supply, coming as it does from a great, cold, 
 clear inland sea, as unimpeachable. It became 
 polluted, and Chicago dug through to the Il- 
 linois River and sent her pollution down to 
 
 208 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 
 the Gulf past St. Louis and a dozen other 
 cities. She then thought herself amply pro- 
 tected. 
 
 But she is mistaken. The bodies of the 
 Great Lakes themselves are becoming con- 
 taminated. Careful studies show that typhoid 
 is unduly prevalent in almost all the cities and 
 towns of the Great Lakes. Those who know 
 say that their waters are "dangerously con- 
 taminated." 
 
 On the soil of China, where from two to 
 three thousand people live on each square 
 mile, and have done so for thousands of years, 
 one does not expect to find the water of the 
 soil fit for drinking and does not find it so. 
 But why is it that our lakes and streams are 
 growing so vile at such a rate of speed? 
 
 It is owing to a modern invention the 
 sewer. The excreta of any animal are poison- 
 ous to it and human excreta are poisonous to 
 man. We are pouring this poison into the 
 lakes and streams at a fearful rate. 
 
 The pollution of the waters is a serious 
 thing but it is not the most serious phase of 
 
 299 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the matter of sewage. Sewage is fertility of 
 the soil temporarily rendered unfit for animal 
 sustenance. Let the plants take it up, and 
 they will make it over into fruits, flowers, 
 grains, woods into every shape of beauty and 
 charm the landscape displays or hides. 
 
 The sewers, therefore, are open veins from 
 which is flowing the life-blood of the race. 
 Never until this age of sewerage did such a 
 danger confront the passengers on the good 
 ship Earth. It is a new thing and a new 
 danger. Sewage contains potash, nitrogen 
 and phosphorus the precious mineral ele- 
 ments which the plants must have or starve, 
 and in the absence of which no soil can pro- 
 duce crops. These elements come from the 
 fields in the meats, the bread, the vegetables 
 and the fruits which are consumed by the peo- 
 ple of our cities. The soil from which they 
 come is poorer for their removal; and when 
 they are flushed into the streams, the waters 
 are poorer in all that goes to make up the 
 riches of the waters, and the fertility is lost 
 forever. 
 
 300 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 This loss amounts in that most precious 
 element of fertility, phosphorus, to not less 
 than two pounds per acre of all the cropped 
 soils of the United States per year. It would 
 take 1,200,000 tons of phosphate rock per year 
 to replace this fertility in the soil. Ground 
 phosphate rock, not so good for crops as this 
 sewage would be, is worth on the average over 
 the United States not less than seven dollars 
 a ton. So in phosphorus alone, it costs us 
 $8,400,000 a year to pollute the streams and 
 lakes. It costs us the typhoid, too, and the 
 loss of life, and the expense of sewage dis- 
 posal. This estimate does not include anything 
 for the nitrogen or the potash. It does not in- 
 clude many things in the destruction of the 
 cleanness and purity of our forests and streams, 
 which are beyond all price. And it includes 
 nothing for the cost of boiling the water so as 
 to make the intestinal bacteria harmless for 
 drinking. 
 
 The city of Berlin has sewage farms upon 
 which the outflow of the city sewers is al- 
 lowed to spread. The area of these farms is 
 
 301' 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 43,009 acres! In 1910, in addition to disposing 
 of the sewage which is a costly thing for 
 most American cities this sewage paid the 
 city of Berlin a profit of $2.66 for every mil- 
 lion gallons handled. And the produce of 
 these acres must have decreased the cost of 
 living in Berlin and vicinity. At any rate, the 
 drain of fertility and the pollution of the 
 waters were stopped. This is called "broad 
 irrigation," and is practised extensively both 
 on the continent and in Great Britain. It is 
 used at Pasadena, California, and was in use 
 at Los Angeles, where the people seem to 
 have been frightened out of the plan by find- 
 ing that the Chinese truck-gardeners were 
 using the sewage in growing such things as 
 
 radishes and lettuce, for which it is unfit. With 
 
 i 
 
 these few exceptions, there has been no at- 
 tempt in this country to return sewage to the 
 soil from which it is drawn, and to which in 
 economic morals it belongs. 
 
 But there are ways of saving the fertilizer 
 in sewage other than by irrigation. At Mad- 
 ison, Wisconsin, it has been found that the 
 
 302 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 sludge of the sewage, dried, is worth about 
 $8.00 a ton for fertilizer. At Columbus the 
 sales of fertilizer and grease from the sewage 
 more than pay for the operation. At Glas- 
 gow, the sludge is submitted to pressure, and 
 the liquid, carrying much fertility, no doubt, 
 is wasted in the river; but the dried residue 
 is sold to farmers for $4.29 a ton. "Yorkshire 
 grease" is extracted from the sewage at Bed- 
 ford, England, and sold for $40.00 a ton. The 
 solid residue brings $2.50 a ton for fertilizer. 
 Similar methods are followed in other British 
 cities, while at Chorley the sludge is used in 
 making gas. The dried sludge at Manchester 
 is readily bought for their land by farmers at 
 $5.00 a ton. At Kingston-on-Thames the sludge 
 is mixed with other fertilizers by concerns en- 
 gaged in the business of preparing them, and 
 sent back to the soil. At Norwich the grease 
 is extracted and the residue made into fer- 
 tilizer. In Leeds ammonia is made from it. 
 In some of these forms sewage is utilized at 
 Oldham, Dublin and many other cities. 
 
 The drain on the soil of the United States 
 
 303 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 by the exportation of grains, meats and other 
 products of our soil is enormous; but it does 
 not necessarily represent an actual loss to the 
 fertility of the globe. Shipped away from 
 our farms, it may reappear in those of our 
 brethren on the other side of the water. This 
 is not a world question, but a national one. The 
 loss through the sewers, however, is a world 
 question. It represents a weakening of the 
 vital powers of Mother Earth through her 
 abuse by her children. 
 
 Van Hise, of Wisconsin, says: "It has been 
 held that in this country it is impracticable to 
 use sewage for fertilizer. The answer is, it is 
 being done in other countries. The phos- 
 phorus of sewage can be saved either by direct 
 use of the sewage, or the separation of the 
 phosphorus by some method to be developed. 
 It is certain that one of these must be done, if 
 in the future we are to conserve the fertility 
 of the soil." 
 
 When the good ship Earth shall pass un- 
 'der the control of the captains who shall wield 
 the power of her peoples' will in the days of 
 
 304 
 
THE SOIL IN JEOPARDY 
 
 the federation of the world, no such childish 
 question will be asked as to whether it will 
 pay to keep our streams and lakes pure from 
 human excrement, or to keep up the virtue of 
 our soils. 
 
 That will be taken for granted. The re- 
 wards will go to those sons of earth who will 
 show how the evil can be cured. 
 
 Perhaps it will be done through the aboli- 
 tion of cities. In villages the task would be 
 easy. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE HAULAGE OF FERTILITY 
 
 THE ability to destroy the earth is in the 
 hands of man. It is a new power, and 
 comes to him through wonderful increases in 
 his might through knowledge. Knowledge is 
 power how trite, and yet how true! We 
 are destroying the earth day by day, as far as 
 concerns human habitation. We are so using 
 the hills and fields that their fertility washes 
 away, never to return. We are so cultivating 
 the soil that its virtue departs year by year in 
 the phosphorus, nitrogen, potash, sulphur and 
 lime we carry from it. The ability to destroy 
 comes along with the pressure of need and 
 greed, both of which urge us to take away and 
 not replace, to exhaust and not replenish. But 
 we are coming to another age. 
 
 Already the phosphates are being mined and 
 ground and used on our farms. The potash of 
 
 306 
 
THE HAULAGE OF FERTILITY 
 
 Germany comes in such tonnage that the con- 
 trol of its shipment by the German govern- 
 ment has become an international question. 
 Nitrates are sold as freely as ever, notwith- 
 standing the discovery that the pod-bearing 
 crops will take nitrogen from the air. And 
 the demand for lime for the soil is far greater 
 than ever. As for sulphur, we once used great 
 amounts of it as ground gypsum, or "land 
 plaster", a use which has been abandoned only 
 to be revived, if the students of the subject 
 are to be believed. 
 
 Except in the case of some few alluvial soils, 
 which are naturally supplied with new plant 
 food by means of the minerals dissolved in the 
 waters which overflow them, all soils which 
 are cultivated will sooner or later need phos- 
 phorus in the form of phosphate rock. This 
 will become one of the great questions in the 
 future and in the not distant future; for the 
 original supply of phosphorus on good soils 
 like those of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wis- 
 consin is a third gone after fifty years of cul- 
 tivation. The phosphate rocks are mostly in 
 
 307 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Florida, the Carolinas, Arkansas, and the 
 Rocky Mountain states of Oregon, Idaho and 
 Montana. 
 
 Imagine the situation when all the depleted 
 acres of the east, the south and the Mississippi 
 Valley, not to mention the rest of the world, 
 begin to call for phosphates. The carrying of 
 this immense tonnage of rock from the de- 
 posits to the farms will be one of the hugest 
 transportation problems which ever con- 
 fronted a people. While the supply in Flor- 
 ida, South Carolina and Arkansas lasts this 
 carrying problem will be hard enough; but 
 when the phosphates must be brought from the 
 northwest to the east, south and middle states 
 and for shipment abroad, if such shipment be 
 allowed as a permanent policy, it will be stu- 
 pendous. The present railway lines to those 
 regions could not carry from the mountains to 
 the farms half the supply of phosphate which 
 it would be desirable to use now, even if they 
 abandoned all other tonnage. But, of course, 
 new railways will be built many of them. 
 Whether or not it will ever be possible for 
 
 308 
 
THE HAULAGE OF FERTILITY 
 
 phosphate rock to be hauled by rail from 
 those regions on such terms as will enable us 
 to keep up the fertility of our lands, is really 
 the thing which is doubtful. 
 
 What is true of phosphorus is equally cer- 
 tain with reference to potash. The present 
 supply comes from the potash beds and is 
 shipped a long, long way. We shall need a 
 hundred tons of potash to one used now, when 
 we begin to go seriously about the drainage 
 and reclamation of our 70,000,000 acres of 
 swamps for swamps are usually so poor in 
 potash that they need it from the very day of 
 reclamation. Our own supplies of potash are 
 found in the kelp growing in the Pacific Ocean 
 off the Californian coast, and some small beds 
 of potash salts in the Great Basin. The carry- 
 ing of this supply from any of these sources is 
 sure to become before very long a huge prob- 
 lem for the nation and as other nations arc 
 no more favorably situated, on the whole, these 
 will be enormous world problems for all us 
 mariners on the good ship Earth. 
 
 Nitrogen can be bought in the market, as 
 
 39 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 yet, though this supply is limited; it may be 
 saved in immense quantities from burning 
 coal and in other commercial ways ; but in the 
 main we must get our nitrogen from the air, 
 in which it is found in unlimited quantities. 
 There are many plants which take nitrogen 
 from the air, and use it in their own growth. 
 When they die, they leave some of it in the 
 soil. But the plants on which we must mainly 
 rely are the pod-bearing plants or legumes, 
 such as beans, peas, alfalfa, clover and the 
 like. They house in their roots the bacteria 
 which are able to fix the free nitrogen of the 
 air in such quantities that the farmer who 
 plows these plants down has more of this most 
 precious of plant foods than he had before. 
 No such operation is possible with any of the 
 other elements of plant food. 
 
 Air transports itself. The haulage of nitro- 
 gen is not, therefore, a problem, as in the case 
 of the phosphorus in the phosphate rocks, or 
 the potash in the sea and its kelp, or the pot- 
 ash beds of Germany. But it presents a prob- 
 lem in transportation for all that. There is 
 
 310 
 
THE HAULAGE OF FERTILITY 
 
 lime enough for the crops in almost any soil 
 but the root-bacteria of the legumes will not 
 live in an acid soil. When a soil is "sour" it 
 must be sweetened with lime before the bac- 
 teria will live in it, and until they do so live, 
 the crops that enrich the soil with nitrogen 
 can not be grown. Millions of acres of our so- 
 called "poor" soils need lime for the bacteria 
 rather than fertility for the crops. Limestone 
 is found in unlimited quantities in almost 
 every country, but the transportation of the 
 ground limestone or the burned lime to the 
 lands is a great task for the nations, and a press- 
 ing duty resting upon the transportation facili- 
 ties of the world, perhaps as great as the haul- 
 age of potash and phosphorus. 
 
 Sulphur has long been supposed to be plen- 
 tiful enough in all soils so that, with the fifteen 
 to twenty pounds per acre which fall in the 
 rains and snows each year, it would never be- 
 come so scarce as to limit the growth of crops. 
 But investigators have recently found that this 
 is not true. Plants use much more sulphur 
 than was supposed. Many soils now need sul- 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 phur. The supply is unlimited, and is found 
 in the gypsum beds. The grinding and hauling 
 of gypsum to the lands is sure to become a 
 greater and greater task as the years go by. 
 
 In addition to these problems in the haulage 
 of fertility, there is that of returning the ma- 
 nure to the land. All the hay and grain used 
 in cities reaches the final condition of manure. 
 So with all these things fed to animals on 
 farms. This manure is the best fertilizer in the 
 world, containing as it does, phosphorus, pot- 
 ash, nitrogen and sulphur, together with the 
 plant fiber which makes humus in the land. 
 The waste of manure in this country is a great 
 national crime nay, it is a world crime, since 
 it decreases permanently the capacity of the 
 world as a whole to maintain population. The 
 burning of manure piles is a crime. The prac- 
 tise of allowing them to rot away unused is a 
 crime. The wasting of these immense stores 
 of fertility in cities, by burning, dumping into 
 the sea and otherwise, should no longer be 
 permitted. What is true with regard to ma- 
 nure off the farm is true of it on the farm. No 
 
 312 
 
THE HAULAGE OF FERTILITY 
 
 landowner should be allowed to waste the fer- 
 tility of the land through waste of manure be- 
 cause the land happens to be "his own farm." 
 The world has an interest in the maintenance 
 of the land's virtue for "the earth He hath 
 given to the children of men" not to some 
 of the children of men. 
 
 Do you see the problem! It is very simple. 
 We are all the time hauling fertility away 
 from the fields in things to eat, drink and wear. 
 The ships and cars and wagons of the world 
 are loaded with this away-going fertility. And 
 the ships, cars and wagons must be loaded with 
 all that is necessary to return it if the world 
 is to last 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE RAILWAYS ACROSS THE DECKS 
 
 THE measure of a civilization is in its 
 highways. A people like the ancient 
 Greeks, whose lands were all islands and 
 peninsulas, or the Phenicians and Cartha- 
 ginians, who dwelt on coasts, to whom the 
 ocean was a universal highway, might climb 
 to great heights of civilization in certain spe- 
 cialties; but when a people is spread over 
 great expanses of land, it must build high- 
 ways, like the canals of China, or roads like 
 jthose of the Romans or like ours or it must 
 remain semi-civilized and nomadic like the 
 hordes of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, or 
 the tribes of Arabia. 
 
 Lord Bacon says: "There be three things 
 which make a nation great and prosperous: a 
 fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy convey- 
 ance for men and commodities from one place 
 
THE RAILWAYS 
 
 to another." This is the dictum of the great- 
 est mind, perhaps, which the world has ever 
 produced, in favor of what the Socialists call 
 "economic determinism". 
 
 We have considered in these letters the mat- 
 ter of soil fertility. Let us now look at the 
 question of u easy conveyance of men and com- 
 modities from one place to another." We speak 
 glibly of the "annihilation of distance", and 
 "the triumph of mind over matter" ; but it is 
 perfectly clear that we passengers and crew of 
 the good ship Earth are dreadfully cramped 
 in our activities by the limitations which mat- 
 ter imposes on mind in the matter of easy con- 
 veyance of men and commodities from one 
 place to another. If by taking thought the 
 goods of Europe and North America could be 
 magically moved to the places where they are 
 needed to feed, shelter and clothe the poor of 
 the world ; if by a magic carpet the products of 
 farms, forests, stock ranges and mines could be 
 transferred to the cities and mills; if by seven- 
 league boots the rotting fruits and woods and 
 precious growths of the tropics could be re- 
 
 315 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 moved to the marts of trade; if by mind force 
 people could really annihilate distance and 
 appear where their needs and desires might 
 dictate; if by occult power the mineral fer- 
 tility of the earth could be redeposited in our 
 depleted soils then there would be no need in 
 the world, in the absence of robbery or theft. 
 
 The spread of the people on this huge plan- 
 etary Zeppelin over those portions of her sur- 
 face which are far from seas and navigable 
 rivers, under conditions of progress and civ- 
 ilization, is a new thing. It has been made 
 possible by the invention of the steam-en- 
 gine and the railway of iron and steel. The 
 camel, the bullock cart, and the horse-drawn 
 vehicle could serve a sparse population and 
 a barbaric development, and when supple- 
 mented by slavery could produce a state of af- 
 fairs which presented many of the outward 
 aspects of civilization but it was civiliza- 
 tion which was monopolized by the few and 
 for which the masses slaved and died in dark- 
 ened agonies. 
 
 The railway changed all that. It carried 
 316 
 
THE RAILWAYS 
 
 commerce across continents, and democratized 
 the civilization of the nineteenth century. For 
 it harnessed to huge cars bigger than the ships 
 of the Greeks and rolling on wheels set on 
 smooth metal tracks, enormous artificial 
 draft-animals swifter than the horse of 
 Phoebus, and more powerful than the Min- 
 otaur. The railway has done more for democ- 
 racy than has any other one material agency. 
 
 It has done enormous labors and it must 
 do more. Most of the civilized nations have 
 seen the error of allowing these highways to 
 be owned by some men, rather than by all men 
 through governments; and nearly all of them 
 have now reduced these roads to public own- 
 ership. Great Britain, Turkey and the United 
 States are the only ones that still adhere to 
 the outworn notion that the ownership of the 
 highways should be left in private hands. 
 
 The needs of the people in the future can 
 not be met by privately owned railways. This 
 must be apparent from almost any view-point; 
 but if for no other reason, the railways must 
 be publicly owned because they must be called 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 upon for public service to be rendered regard- 
 less of profit. Transportation is a huge col- 
 lective job which must be performed with 
 reference to the development of the nation, 
 rather than any sort of profit. Germany, 
 through her government railways, is able to 
 develop any part of the empire at will, through 
 railway service. We have tried to develop our 
 industries by means of protective tariffs and 
 no man knows with reference to these indus- 
 tries how much of their prosperity is due to 
 the tariff, and how much to advantages 
 of soil, people and situation. But a gov- 
 ernment railway can equalize conditions all 
 over a continent, so far as the limitations 
 of a railway transport will admit. Govern- 
 ment railways could carry to a region devoid 
 of stone and timber, for instance, whatever 
 might be needed, and thereby create prosper- 
 ity where poverty might otherwise reign. It 
 could carry these things regardless of profit. 
 All it need determine would be the question, 
 "Is there here a region on which population 
 
 318 
 
THE RAILWAYS 
 
 can be supported, if its natural disadvantages 
 are compensated for by transportation!" 
 
 A government system of railways must be 
 called into service to carry back to the depleted 
 lands of the United States their lost fertility. 
 The privately owned railways can not be just- 
 ly asked to do this except at a profit; but the 
 publicly owned system would assume the work 
 as a clear duty. Highways are necessary to 
 the development of the hinterlands of the 
 world. They are as indispensable as are ele- 
 vators for the utilization of the top stories 
 of high buildings. Symmetrical and uniform 
 development of the good lands of the world 
 is not a private question, but a public one a 
 question of world-wide significance. It can 
 not be left to a solution along lines of profit 
 to the owners of railways. Railways in pri- 
 vate hands fall short of the needs of the occa- 
 sion in modern civilization, just as slavery fell 
 in ancient times. No lands separated from 
 the sea by continental distances, and unpro- 
 vided with waterways, can ever be completely 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 developed by privately owned railways they 
 must always remain in that stage of arrested 
 development in which such states as Iowa and 
 the Dakotas now find themselves, and in which 
 they are mere feeding territory for the fully 
 developed communities of the seaboard. 
 
 After all, why should profit be considered 
 in the matter of transportation? Absolutely 
 free use of railways for both freight and pas- 
 sengers would create such property values 
 in the districts reached that they could easily 
 carry the burden in taxation. To the average 
 mind the suggestion of free highways at once 
 calls up the vision of traffic blocked by both 
 freight and passengers; but no freight would 
 be sent for amusement, or for any other reason 
 than to satisfy human wants, and no one would 
 travel save for some object. So we are brought 
 to the conclusion that humanity will never be 
 free to satisfy its wants until the railways are 
 free, as the elevators are free in great build- 
 ings. Free highways would bring to perfec- 
 tion Bacon's ideal of a nation with "easy con- 
 
 320 
 
THE RAILWAYS 
 
 veyance of men and commodities from one 
 place to another." 
 
 Does the thing look visionary? Well, take 
 the state of Iowa. Give her free railway trans- 
 portation to the lakes and the ocean. Tax the 
 city and rural land values of Iowa to pay the 
 cost of the building and operation of the rail- 
 ways. Can it be doubted that the values cre- 
 ated by the free ways would pay for their op- 
 eration? Would it not pay a corporation own- 
 ing Iowa to build railways for its free accom- 
 modation? Then why would it not pay the 
 people of Iowa? Free transportation may 
 never come, but that it is an economic pos- 
 sibility under a proper system of taxation, I 
 have no doubt. I believe, too, that the most 
 economical way to pay transportation charges 
 would be at the court-house rather than the 
 railway office wicket. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 ROBINSON CRUSOE'S LESSON 
 
 RDBINSON CRUSOE, every one will re- 
 member, found a good log and made 
 himself a fine boat in which he deemed escape 
 from the island perfectly feasible. It was a 
 good boat. It was so light that once in the 
 water, he could have taken it anywhere water 
 ran by oar or sail. 
 
 But he forgot the principle which must 
 control transportation all over the good ship 
 Earth if her passengers are to get out of her 
 management the products called for by the 
 needs of multiplying humanity. He forgot 
 that a weight is a thousand times more easily 
 moved when afloat, than when ashore. He 
 could not put his boat in the water. And 
 though it was a perfectly good boat, he was 
 forced to see it rot away by lapse of years, be- 
 cause he could neither take it to the sea nor 
 bring the sea to it. 
 
 322 
 
ROBINSON CRUSOE'S LESSON 
 
 When a weight is floated in water it is more 
 easily moved than under any other circum- 
 stances of transportation. By this simple truth 
 the big facts of history are explained. It ex- 
 plains why Greece and Rome became great, 
 why the greatest nations of antiquity were 
 grouped about the shores of the Mediterra- 
 nean, why Japan is so wonderful, why the 
 Northmen overspread the western world, why 
 the "meteor flag of England" means so much, 
 why Russia is so undeveloped interiorly, why 
 Holland and Belgium are the marvels of the 
 world, and why Denmark has been able to 
 make the tillers of waste sand-dunes the rich- 
 est people in Europe in per capita wealth. It 
 accounts for the desert steppes of Siberia and 
 Canada and interior Australia. It has deter- 
 mined the status of South America and 
 Africa as the Dark Continents. It holds Iowa 
 back in development as compared with Illi- 
 nois, and tells Iowa to step before South Da- 
 kota. It strings great cities along waterways 
 like pearls. All these things are explained by 
 the simple physical fact that if a thing is to 
 
 323 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 be moved with the greatest possible ease it 
 must be floated in water. The hinterlands of 
 the world may build their dugouts, but unless 
 they are able to place them in the water, their 
 work will be futile. 
 
 The railway has been invented for the pur- 
 pose of solving Crusoe's problem. But it is 
 still an open question whether the far back- 
 lands can ever be fully developed by land car- 
 riage even the railway is so much more ex- 
 pensive a thing for moving things than the 
 waterway. On a good waterway it is profit- 
 able to carry a ton a thousand miles for a dol- 
 lar; but the railways of the United States are 
 obliged to collect about seven dollars and fifty 
 cents on the average, for the same service. 
 Coal and ore are carried on the Great Lakes 
 more than two thousand miles for a dollar per 
 ton. Coal is shipped by water from Cleve- 
 land to Duluth for less money than it would 
 cost to have it shoveled down cellar if it lay 
 in the alley by the cellar window. 
 
 The world went daft over the railway and 
 has allowed that greatest of all inventions in 
 
 324 
 
ROBINSON CRUSOE'S LESSON 
 
 land carriage, first, to fall into private owner- 
 ship, and second, to destroy the commerce of 
 the inland waterways. Both were vital errors ; 
 and both are being remedied in most civilized 
 countries. Great Britain had a good system 
 of canals when the railway was perfected 
 and allowed them to lapse into slimy disuse. 
 In the United States the Erie Canal had saved 
 the west, and canals were paralleling many 
 of the streams leading over and beyond the 
 Appalachian Mountain system, when the en- 
 ergies and the capital of the nation were di- 
 verted to the new Eldorado of railroading. 
 To a greater or less extent, the same thing took 
 place all over the world save in Holland and 
 China. 
 
 How could the railways destroy the com- 
 merce of the inland waterways if the carriage 
 of goods by rail is so much more expensive? 
 A very pertinent question, but not a difficult 
 one. The railway runs over hills and moun- 
 tains, while the waterway can be constructed 
 only where water runs or can be made to run. 
 The railway ran to the heart of every village, 
 
 325 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 while the waterway stopped at the waterside. 
 The railway had freight houses and passenger 
 stations with agents and attendants, while the 
 waterway was allowed to offer nothing but a 
 bare wharf, or an earth landing. In spite of 
 the superiority of the waterways when their 
 freight was once afloat, many of them were 
 so badly off for equipment that it cost more 
 to get freight up and down the banks and into 
 the towns than the railway freight amounted 
 to, high though that might be. Moreover, 
 the railways had organizations, all more or 
 less predatory and unscrupulous, and made 
 active war on the waterways. The waterways 
 had no fighting power. The railways could 
 carry freight at a loss for a while between 
 points affected by water competition, and 
 make it up on traffic which was at the rail- 
 way's mercy through lack of all competition. 
 So by ways various and devious the rail- 
 ways put most of the canals and rivers out of 
 business. 
 
 The world is coming back to waterways, 
 and the future must see to the utilization for 
 
 326 
 
ROBINSON CRUSOE'S LESSON 
 
 commerce of every stream which can be made 
 to furnish water for locks and dams. When 
 the world is fully developed, the stream which 
 is not also a waterway will be the exception, 
 and not the rule. The railways will be op- 
 erated for the main purpose of getting the 
 heavy freight to the nearest water, and there 
 setting it afloat. The streams will be devel- 
 oped as a national system, with standard 
 depths, and capacity of locks, to accommo- 
 date standardized water craft. Every ripar- 
 ian town and village will have its harbor, 
 equipped with freight-handling machinery 
 which will render cheap the cost of taking on 
 and discharging freight. Railway cars will 
 be made with detachable bodies, built some- 
 times as a whole, and sometimes in sections, so 
 that either in car-loads or smaller lots, freight 
 can be lifted by cranes in a moment from rail 
 to boat or boat to rail. The whole carrying 
 trade of the world will be reorganized on the 
 basis of making the railways the carriers of 
 passengers and of packages and perishable 
 freight, and the connecting links between 
 
 327 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 waterways. The heavy slow work will fall 
 upon the waterways as a matter of course. 
 
 This is not altogether a prophecy; for there 
 is scarcely a civilized nation on earth which 
 is not planning to do in whole or in part ex- 
 actly what is here suggested. Nearly all of 
 them are far in advance of the United States 
 in this field of progress. Everywhere it is rec- 
 ognized that the principles here enunciated 
 are correct. 
 
 The ultimate needs of the earth's children 
 can not be served by railways, except as to the 
 light traffic and the short distances. In the 
 last stages of development the great nations of 
 the present, with their huge cities, must either 
 decay from having been exhausted of their 
 natural capacities for supporting the peoples 
 constituting them or their people must mi- 
 grate, or they must carry over long distances 
 the coal, the ores, the timber, the phosphates, 
 the nitrates and the potash which are the 
 basis of life in civilization. All these are 
 heavy cheap things which must be moved 
 cheaply, even though slowly, if they are moved 
 
 328 
 
ROBINSON CRUSOE'S LESSON 
 
 at all. In those days the phosphates of the 
 world will come down the canalized Missouri, 
 and down the locked Columbia and his head 
 streams, while the railways will be used only 
 as tramways for bringing Crusoe's dugout to 
 the water. Similar developments will take 
 place all over the world. The waters will 
 carry the great bulk of the freight 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE WATER COURSES 
 
 ONE of the most splendid works ever 
 erected by men for making efficient use 
 of the earth, is the great dam at Assouan, 
 Egypt. It is built to hold back the flood 
 waters of the River Nile for purposes of ir- 
 rigation. Our reclamation service has cre- 
 ated nothing finer than this great engineering 
 project, which spreads over whole provinces 
 the waters from the Abyssinian Mountains, 
 giving the crops of the poor Egyptian fellahs 
 or peasants both food and drink. 
 
 But do the fellahs get the benefit? Let us 
 see. The water from the dam is furnished 
 principally to Middle and Lower Egypt and 
 the province of Fayum. In these regions since 
 the water has been available for the crops the 
 land has paid an increased taxation of about 
 
 330 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 $5,000,000 annually. The cost of the works 
 up to the time mentioned was about $52,500,- 
 ooo. It will be seen that the taxation collected 
 because of the values created by the dam 
 amount to about five per cent, interest on the 
 investment. 
 
 And most people will say that the govern- 
 ment has done well in the transaction for it 
 is collecting enough to pay the interest, and 
 perhaps a sinking fund and the cost of opera- 
 tion. But let us look deeper. The land in 
 the provinces affected has increased in value 
 because of the irrigation, from $977,500,000 
 to $2,438,750,000; and the aggregate rent has 
 grown from $81,250,000 annually to $188,- 
 750,000. All these figures are approxima- 
 tions only, but they are correct as proportions, 
 and show clearly that the British management 
 of Egypt has by the building of this dam lib- 
 erated from the desert latent values in the dry 
 deck room of the good ship Earth amount- 
 ing to over a hundred millions a year, for 
 which it gets back in taxation only five mil- 
 lions. As for the fellahs, they are no better 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 off. They must still pay for the use of the 
 deck room on their own old air-ship. They 
 may be glad of the increase in the number of 
 jobs, the general progress of the nation may 
 bring them pleasures unknown before, or 
 moral benefits or it may not; but this is the 
 point I am making: The only people who re- 
 ceive money profit from the Assouan dam are 
 the owners of the lands who may live in Lon- 
 don or New York, or Constantinople or 
 Cairo; may use these huge profits to add new 
 attractions to harems, or buy titled husbands 
 for eligible daughters, or repair ancestral cas- 
 tles, or indulge in motor-cars or yachts. The 
 fellahs are no better off while working on the 
 new irrigation blocks than they were when 
 laboring on the old Nile flood-plain. All the 
 fellahs get, anyhow, is a mere living. 
 
 The water of the Nile was drawn up from 
 the ocean by the ownerless sun, blown by the 
 free winds over the lands, and lowered to the 
 valley by the everlasting hills. The water did 
 not belong to the landlords of Egypt. The 
 dam was built by the government (which in 
 
 332 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 morals belongs to the fellahs as much as to 
 an equal number of pashas) by the expend- 
 iture of money raised on the credit of the la- 
 bor-power of the fellahs. The dam, then, can 
 not belong to the landlords of Egypt. And 
 when, by the use of the people's money, God's 
 sun and wind and the hills whence cometh 
 the help, not of landlords, but of men, a hun- 
 dred millions annually are created by a gov- 
 ernment is it not theft of the most iniquitous 
 sort if the landlords of Egypt are allowed to 
 collect and keep the hundred millions? Think 
 what that sum would do for the fellaheen, 
 if it were turned into the public treasury, as 
 in good morals it should be! It would lift 
 them out of their ignorance by means of 
 schools. It would construct public baths and 
 theaters. It would install easy and cheap 
 transportation facilities. It would finance 
 their agriculture through rural peasants' 
 banks. It would hire agricultural instruct- 
 ors, and serve cooperative marketing plans. It 
 would send colleges to the Egyptians and the 
 Egyptians to college. 
 
 333 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 It would do all these things, not by taking 
 aught from the landlords which belongs to 
 them, but by stopping the robbery of the fel- 
 laheen by the landlords for every penny of 
 the hundred millions belongs in the high 
 court of ethics to the people, and not one 
 penny of it to the landlords. 
 
 Better than all these benefits that would 
 come to the people by forbidding the land- 
 lords to take what belongs to all, the policy of 
 justice would take from the landlords the 
 profits which are the incentive to their monop- 
 oly of lands. The profits of landlordism being 
 abolished, that ancient institution would itself 
 fall, and the irrigated lands under the Assouan 
 dam would be free to the fellahs whose pov- 
 erty would, on the day they became free, come 
 to an end. 
 
 The Assouan dam is the type of every great 
 public work which invites the collective en- 
 ergy of the people on the good ship Earth. 
 We passengers have so arranged things that 
 the better we manage, the more it costs us for 
 room on the decks from which all mankind 
 
 334 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 were evolved, and to which they must return. 
 Our own reclamation works have created huge 
 values which are lapsing into private hands by 
 payment of the mere cost of construction 
 though that cost ordinarily as in the case of 
 Assouan represents but a fraction of the 
 values created. Let Washington and Oregon, 
 for instance, clear and reclaim their stump 
 lands by the only agencies which seem ade- 
 quate the power of the government and the 
 people's money becomes at once the creator of 
 values which oppress, rather than liberate, the 
 workers. 
 
 So it is all over the world. We may bring 
 the sea to the farms by canals, and make of 
 the interior city a port, and the landowners 
 reap the profits. We might build and operate 
 free railways for the development of the 
 Earth as a dwelling for her passengers, and 
 those passengers who own the soil, under the 
 laws in force over most of the world, would 
 be able to capitalize every cent of the benefits 
 in the values of their lands. Tom L. Johnson, 
 of Cleveland, paved the way for three-cent 
 
 335 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 fares on the Cleveland street railways in the 
 place of five-cent fares but the people who 
 lease houses along the street railway lines are 
 not a cent better off for the reduction the 
 landlords have taken all the reduction in rents. 
 Let the floods be prevented by headwaters' 
 control of streams, and the benefits to the 
 swamp and overflow lands would more than 
 equal the cost but under our governmental 
 systems in vogue all over the world they would 
 not pay it. Let any improvement mentioned 
 in these chapters be instituted, and the money 
 of the people spent in public benefits will au- 
 tomatically find its way into the values of 
 lands to be paid over and over again to 
 landlords who do nothing to help production, 
 but much to halt it by their powers of appro- 
 priation. Is it not plain that before the world 
 can go on with all the tremendous and needed 
 works demanded by the welfare of all, some 
 method must be adopted by which the values 
 created by the expenditure of the people's 
 moneys and energies may be secured to public 
 and beneficent ends, rather than diverted to 
 
 336 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 private and in most cases noxious ones? Prog- 
 ress waits the new system's birth. 
 
 There is a Hindu proverb quoted by Henry 
 George which runs: "White parasols and 
 elephants mad with pride are the flowers of 
 a grant of land." The parasols become whiter 
 and the elephants still madder with the pride 
 of wealth when such a grant becomes the re- 
 cipient of government favors. 
 
 And now we have come, by fifty ways, to 
 the greatest question of all. 
 
 This great globular air-ship on which we 
 are embarked on our voyage from birth to 
 death, but to no possible shore leave or dis- 
 embarkation, has been considered in these dis- 
 solving views of our relations to it and to each 
 other, as the one thing of prime importance 
 to the race. We are passengers on the good 
 ship Earth, but we are also portions of the 
 ship. Nothing is so important to us as our re- 
 lations to it. The woman yet to become a 
 mother is no more essential to the unborn than 
 is the earth to human kind. How we shall live 
 
 337 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 with reference to it is almost all there is to 
 the material side of human life, individual 
 and collective, present and prospective. The 
 wick or dynamo is no more vital to the light 
 than is the earth to us and to every other ani- 
 mal and plant. 
 
 Just now we spoke of the Assouan dam, 
 and the way its benefits have been seized upon 
 by landlords. Sir Charles W. Macara, re- 
 turning from a congress devoted to the ques- 
 tion of the promotion of the growing of cot- 
 ton was recently interviewed in the Man- 
 chester Guardian, and said of this same irri- 
 gation project: "It is of little benefit to the 
 general community if most of the profits are 
 swept, in the shape of rent, into the pockets 
 of land speculators." 
 
 I wonder if Sir Charles Macara would have 
 recognized in the every-day life of Great 
 Britain, or if the reader will detect in that of 
 his city, town, village or rural township the 
 same universal presence, the same great evil 
 which appears so strikingly in the case of the 
 Assouan dam? It is more difficult to see the 
 
 338 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 thing close to our own eyes, but once seen, this 
 thing can never be forgotten. The man who 
 is able to collect pay for the use of land al- 
 ways reaps where he has not sown, and eats 
 his bread in the sweat of other men's brows. 
 It makes no difference how honestly he may 
 have come by the land, or by how much hard 
 work, the case is the same. Land values are 
 always derived from the labors and the pres- 
 ence of the community, and never from the 
 efforts of the owner. I am not speaking of his 
 improvements, his fences, his plowings, ma- 
 nurings, drainings or plantings I mean the 
 charge he is able to make for the use of the 
 land as God made it. 
 
 Rent has always been the only permanent 
 basis for a hereditary aristocracy or a leisure 
 class. When the first man encloses the best 
 bit of land, and says, "This is mine!" it begins 
 to turn unearned wealth into the hands of non- 
 workers and take the earned wealth out of the 
 hands of workers. Through all history it has 
 steadily worked to heave high the House of 
 Have and to press low the House of Want. 
 
 339 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 Its power to oppress the masses is now ob- 
 scured by corporate organization of wealth, 
 and befogged by the increase of tools and fac- 
 tories; but such things as railways, shipping 
 trusts, manufacturing trusts and mining and 
 lumbering trusts will be found based on land 
 ownership so far, I believe, as they have much 
 power to oppress. 
 
 When land falls into that absolute form of 
 private ownership of which I speak, a wedge 
 is at once inserted between the landowning 
 and the landless classes, which every day's 
 progress drives in farther, lifting the land- 
 owning classes higher and higher, and tending 
 to press the landless lower and lower. It is 
 an economic truth which is self-evident and 
 undeniable, that as society is developed, and 
 the use of land pushed nearer to the limit of 
 the absolutely useless, that which is available 
 for use, in city and country, becomes higher 
 in price if bought and sold, and higher in rent 
 if leased. 
 
 Farm land in the middle west of the United 
 340 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 States may rent now for ten dollars per acre 
 annually some of it does. I remember when 
 that same land rented for one-tenth of that 
 sum. I have seen it leased for a quarter of 
 the crop now it can not be obtained for the 
 half. Yet the land will not produce more 
 now than then ; the tenant has found out how 
 to live upon a less proportion of the yield, and 
 is forced to do the best he can on that. 
 
 Is a schoolhouse built? Is a church dedi- 
 cated? Is a railway constructed? Is oil 
 struck? Is coal found? Is a new crop de- 
 veloped? Do the people become less rude and 
 more civilized in some remote region? In 
 each and every case, in the case of any imag- 
 inable step in progress, it is the landlord who 
 gets the money benefit. The case of the As- 
 souan dam, instead of being a local condition, 
 is universal, world-wide. It is time that the 
 nations of the world gave attention to the de- 
 velopment of some plan by which the deck 
 room on the good ship Earth may be par- 
 celed out to those who must make local and 
 exclusive use of it; without prejudicing or 
 
 341 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 doing injustice either to those who may now be 
 willing to be excluded, or to the unborn gen- 
 erations who can not be consulted, but who 
 are born into the world with as good a right 
 to its use as that possessed by the children of 
 landowners. 
 
 The thing is not simple in application, but 
 the principle is. This great Zeppelin belongs 
 to all of us passengers alike. Let us think of 
 it for a moment as a great floating hotel, in 
 which some of us have the best and most spa- 
 cious of rooms, some are stowaways in the 
 hold, some have hammocks in the forecastle, 
 some first cabins, some second cabins, some 
 saloon staterooms. We all have equal natural 
 rights in her how shall our unequal occu- 
 pancies be equalized? The answer would be 
 given in five minutes by any good high-school 
 student. He would say, "Let everybody pay 
 rent for the room he uses, and divide the 
 fund!" 
 
 Suppose it to be an office building, owned 
 in common by its tenants. The drug-store in 
 the corner on the street would pay a high rent 
 
 342 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 to the common fund. The bank on the second 
 floor would also pay at a high rate, as would 
 the dry-goods store. The lawyers and doctors 
 in the upper stories would pay upon the value 
 of their offices, and the cubby-hole occupied by 
 the struggling dentist near the roof would pay 
 much less. Each would pay to all the value 
 of the room from which he excluded all. Out 
 of the fund would be paid insurance, up-keep, 
 watchman, elevator boys, janitors, scrub- 
 women, and all the taxes and expenses of the 
 building, and the balance would be returned 
 in equal dividends. No one would have any 
 advantage over any other; the plan would be 
 absolutely equitable, and so plainly so that it 
 could not fail to be suggested by any intelli- 
 gent business man to whom the problem of 
 such common ownership with diverse and ex- 
 clusive possession were propounded. 
 
 Now, in spite of all the complexities of so- 
 ciety, and the hoary institutions hallowed by 
 legend and ossified in the course of history 
 in spite of everything which can be urged 
 against the statement, the earth is a great 
 
 343 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 dwelling-place, owned in common, and occu- 
 pied in diversity. The evils of the situation 
 are plain, and the greatest step which can be 
 taken to end them seems to me equally plain. 
 The owners of land everywhere should pay 
 to their co-owners who are excluded the an- 
 nual rental value of the privilege enjoyed. 
 Such a plan would furnish a fund in case of 
 the Earth, as in the case of the ship or office 
 building, which would pay all community 
 charges, and the tenancies of all would be 
 equalized. He who had most of the thing be- 
 longing to all would pay most. He who had 
 little would pay little. He who had none 
 would pay nothing. All would be equally 
 benefited by the expenditure of the tax col- 
 lected, all other taxes would be abolished, and 
 absolute justice would be realized in the use 
 of the earth. No one would, or could, afford 
 to pay thus for the use of land unless he used 
 it and so monopoly of land would be de- 
 stroyed. This is the political economy of the 
 future. In no other way can the consciences 
 
 344 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 of men be long satisfied in their tenancy of 
 the decks of the good ship Earth. 
 
 Rent is the value which inheres in the ex- 
 clusive possession of land. It is a natural and 
 inevitable thing. It becomes oppressive only 
 when it is retained in the wrong hands. It 
 belongs in morals to all men because it is the 
 expression in terms of value of the benefits the 
 landowner receives through his exclusion of 
 all men from a site which ethically belongs 
 to all men. If he retains it as private prop- 
 erty, he is given an unjust advantage over his 
 fellows. Landowning, constituting as it does 
 the royal road to wealth without work, attracts 
 the seekers after privilege. Land becomes a 
 commodity sought more for its unearned in- 
 crement of value than for use. It grows in 
 value through every element of progress in- 
 crease of population, increased efficiency of 
 workers, improvement in government, prog- 
 ress in the arts and sciences, demand for land 
 for purposes of speculation. Every extension 
 of use to poorer and poorer land, adds to the 
 
 345 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 value of the lands already in use for the rent 
 line is zero, and the land on which the Wool- 
 worth Building stands bears its incredible 
 price because it is so many degrees above zero 
 which is land for which nobody will pay 
 rent. As this zero falls, the values above zero 
 are thereby lifted. 
 
 The transfer of this enormous and ever- 
 increasing body of values to the possession of 
 its real producers and owners, the collectivity, 
 will produce the most revolutionary results. 
 It is quite a different thing from the so-called 
 "single-tax" of such dabblers in land-value 
 taxation as Vancouver and many German and 
 Australasian towns. In Vancouver the fiscal 
 scheme of putting on land values the burden 
 of present taxation only, seems to have pro- 
 duced a condition of prosperity. I have no 
 doubt that it has; but I am equally certain that 
 this prosperity will be short-lived, unless a 
 social program is adopted that will absorb all 
 the ground rents of the city. As long as land- 
 value taxation is adopted as a mere fiscal 
 scheme, with an economical administration 
 
 346 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 exerting every effort to keep taxes down, it 
 will always induce an era of prosperity which 
 will finally prove self-limiting. The limit will 
 be reached when land speculation springs 
 up as it has apparently done in Vancouver, 
 through the growth of rent above and beyond 
 the limited tax. 
 
 But when the full-length principle is adopt- 
 ed, a social program must always be followed 
 capable of absorbing all the ground rents. Un- 
 der such a state of affairs, Vancouver will 
 leave very little value in the hands of land- 
 owners under ideal conditions, none. Every 
 one owning lands will pay the full rental value 
 of them to Vancouver every year. It may be 
 asked, Why, then, will any one desire to own 
 lands? For the same reason that men now de- 
 sire to pay ground rents to individuals for 
 the purpose of using them, and for no other 
 reason whatsoever. All hope of profit from 
 mere ownership will by that time have van- 
 ished, and land-speculation will be at an end. 
 
 The first effect of such a system will be the 
 elimination of all speculative value from 
 
 347 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 lands, and a fall in values to what lands are 
 actually worth, for use. 
 
 Something like what has taken place in 
 Vancouver will occur everywhere. Lands for 
 use, being easily acquired, will be improved 
 at a tremendous rate. The manner in which 
 Vancouver swept past Seattle, Victoria, Ta- 
 coma and her other rivals in matter of build- 
 ing, as soon as she adopted land-value taxa- 
 tion, will be duplicated everywhere, as the 
 human energies now repressed by land mon- 
 opoly are liberated. And this condition will 
 be permanent, if the governments adopt budg- 
 ets which will absorb all ground rent, and thus 
 forever inhibit speculation in sites. 
 
 Land will grow in value, with increase in 
 population it will grow in value over much 
 of the earth's surface with great rapidity. 
 Every increase in human efficiency will make 
 more valuable the sites on which this efficiency 
 may be exercised. But this advance in land 
 values will not result in land-booms as in the 
 past, nor will it enrich individuals. It will 
 express itself in the payment of more and 
 
 348 
 
THE WATER COURSES 
 
 more of the wealth produced into the coffers 
 of the government. 
 
 As the years pass, and the rise in rents con- 
 tinues, our government will therefore become 
 more and more socialistic. That is, the line 
 properly dividing individual property and, 
 hence, individual action from collective prop- 
 erty and action will be constantly advanced 
 toward collectivism. Even to-day, if such 
 communities as England, Holland or New 
 York were to transfer bodily to the public 
 coffers all their enormous ground rents, such 
 a proportion of the produced wealth would 
 go to the common fund that the proper ad- 
 ministration and use of it would socialize the 
 state to an extent realized by very few either 
 of the advocates of land-value taxation who 
 call themselves individualists, or of those so- 
 cialists who regard it as likely to produce only 
 unimportant results in the evolution of a new 
 social order. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 POVERTY VS. MONOPOLY 
 
 IN these writings concerning the fate of 
 those on board the good ship Earth we 
 first sought the basis of life and found it in 
 the soil and the water under certain condi- 
 tions of climate. 
 
 We then weighed the elements of food and 
 found the old planet provided with all that the 
 passengers are likely to need if the terrestrial 
 stock of the goods of life is properly con- 
 served and used. We looked into the question 
 of the use and the abuse of the treasures of 
 our ship's hold and decided that the self-evi- 
 dent truth that they belong to us in common 
 must be recognized and made effective to 
 every man through institutions if the gross 
 evils from which we have always suffered are 
 to be remedied. These institutions can come 
 through the activities of one form of govern- 
 
 350 
 
POVERTY VS. MONOPOLY 
 
 ment only, and that is democracy; because it 
 is only in a democracy that the ruling class as 
 a whole is selfishly interested in the reign of 
 the principle of equality of rights and oppor- 
 tunities. 
 
 In other words, the welfare of all men must 
 be attained, if at all, by the rule of all men. 
 
 Universal welfare means, first of all, the ex- 
 tirpation of poverty. Many things must be 
 added to that, but that comes first in any ra- 
 tional scheme of social redemption. Souls 
 are, no doubt, more important than bodies; 
 but the bodies which are not fed, all over the 
 world, are those in which the souls are dark- 
 ened and the spirits dead. Millenniums, like 
 armies, march upon their stomachs. 
 
 I have looked upon monopoly as the cause 
 of poverty. It seems to me that the poverty 
 with which most of us are familiar is clearly 
 due to monopoly, and to that alone. The 
 monopoly of land turns into private hands all 
 those stupendous rivers of wealth which would 
 be distributed to all men if we as a people 
 received each year from those who exclude us 
 
 351 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the value of the privilege in such monopoly. 
 This seems to me to account for all the poverty 
 we have, at least we of the western world. 
 In other words, it seems perfectly clear to 
 me that we could carry all other parasites, 
 though of course we ought not to do so, if we 
 were rid of the exactions of those who own 
 our city lots, our water-fronts and terminals, 
 our forest lands, our mineral lands, our power 
 sites, our factory sites and our agricultural 
 lands. 
 
 Moreover, if all the other parasites were ex- 
 terminated, the land monopoly would at once 
 swallow up the benefits of the riddance, and 
 we should be no better off than now, save for 
 the simplicity of the situation. 
 
 But in addition to the basic monopoly of 
 the decks of the good ship Earth, there are a 
 thousand other monopolies. There is the great 
 semi-land-monopoly of the railways. There 
 are tariff-bred monopolies. There are the lit- 
 tle fly-bite monopolies of the patent office. 
 There are money trusts and shipping trusts. 
 There are huge aggregations of tools like those 
 
 352 
 
POVERTY VS. MONOPOLY 
 
 of the steel trust. Some say that the owner- 
 ship of tools would alone enslave the work- 
 ers. This may be so but common ownership 
 of tools would do the workers no good at all 
 so long as land is monopolized. Until that un- 
 derlying monopoly is abolished and a just sys- 
 tem of land tenure put into effect the success 
 of those who seek better things for the masses 
 will serve no good purpose except to strip the 
 disguises from the great robber "who takes 
 all that is left," no matter how much it may 
 be. A just land system may open the way for 
 the cooperative commonwealth which, if 
 erected upon our present land system, so far 
 as it succeeded, would only enrich landlords. 
 The workers of Ghent have established the 
 cooperative commonwealth in almost every- 
 thing save land; and have made their land- 
 lords richer than ever. 
 
 Cooperation is an improvement in produc- 
 tion. By it the middlemen are eliminated, 
 duplication of labor is lessened, division of 
 labor is increased, production is systema- 
 tized; but no possible perfection of cooper- 
 
 353 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 ation can hope to do as much in the line of 
 cheapening the things needed by the people 
 as has been done by the progress and inven- 
 tion of the past two hundred years, in science, 
 the arts, in transportation, in finance, in the 
 opening up of new lands, in labor saving ma- 
 chinery. In the absence of a just system of 
 land tenure these wonderful advances have 
 failed to help the masses to a free and unfear- 
 ing life but rents have gone up enormously, 
 and the purchase-price of lands has soared. 
 So with the cooperative commonwealth it 
 will be an improvement in production ; but we 
 have had a hundred improvements in that 
 which have done the workers no good; it will 
 simplify distribution; but no more than the 
 railway and the steamship and the dynamo, 
 none of which has lightened the burdens of 
 poverty; it will prevent duplication of effort, 
 but so do the trusts. With a just system of 
 land tenure the progress of science and the 
 arts would have abolished poverty; and with 
 such a just basis for life, the cooperative com- 
 
 354 
 
POVERTY VS. MONOPOLY 
 
 monwealth will carry us to heights we can not 
 otherwise attain. 
 
 With monopoly abolished, and with society 
 organized on the basis of a fraternal democ- 
 racy, will poverty be at an end? 
 
 Unless it is at an end, our social travail will 
 have been in vain. We shall have opened the 
 natural opportunities which the earth offers 
 freely to all. We shall have so organized ex- 
 change and distribution as to eliminate all pos- 
 sible wastes. We shall have ended the sys- 
 tem by which one man makes a profit on 
 the labor of another. We shall have secured 
 to every worker the full product of his labor. 
 And we shall have made labor universal. 
 
 Poverty could not persist under such con- 
 ditions, except as the result of the multiplica- 
 tion of population to the point beyond which 
 the earth is unable to support the people. Uni- 
 versal comfort, universal education, universal 
 enlightenment, the complexity of life which 
 so highly developed a society would necessi- 
 tate, would tend to cut down the birth-rate 
 
 355 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 just as it is now cut down in the most "com- 
 fortably-fixed" portions of society. 
 
 But the extirpation of monopoly must go 
 along with general enlightenment, not only in 
 the nation, but in the whole world, or there 
 will always remain those wo rid slums in which 
 the unfit breed and spawn in poverty and ig- 
 norance. I do not believe that there is much 
 danger that we of the United States, of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, of France, Germany, 
 Italy, Austria of all the most advanced na- 
 tions of this age will fail to redeem our- 
 selves from monopoly and its consequent pov- 
 erty, and to attain a balance of births and 
 deaths, long before we have out-multiplied 
 our means of sustenance; but I do think that 
 in Asia, in Africa, and in some parts of Eu- 
 rope there are great peoples who are already 
 near the limits of subsistence, or even pressing 
 against it, or so low in development as appar- 
 ently to require ages to reach the point of de- 
 creasing fecundity. Some of these have be- 
 liefs concerning the desirability of large fam- 
 ilies of children which are recognized by 
 
 356 
 
POVERTY VS. MONOPOLY 
 
 such statesmen as Yuan Shi Kai as barriers to 
 improvement in circumstances. It seems to 
 me that along with our own problems, we 
 more fortunate passengers on the good ship 
 Earth must assume the burden of lifting these 
 nations up. Otherwise our very millennium 
 will be their opportunity to overrun the world 
 in sheer weight of numbers and plunge it 
 lower than ever in hopeless poverty. Or we 
 may be presented with the awful alternative 
 of racial submergence, or the segregation of 
 these unfortunate races from the rest of the 
 earth's peoples forever, by force of arms. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE NIGHTMARE OF MILITARISM 
 
 THERE is a widespread feeling that the 
 nations of the world are about to aban- 
 don the policy of maintaining armies and 
 navies. The conscience of the enlightened 
 people of the world is in revolt against wars. 
 The common sense of the masses who furnish 
 the food for powder is now directed to the 
 question of motives. "What is there in this 
 fight for me?" is in the minds of more and 
 more men of military age every year. 
 
 The competition between the British Em- 
 pire and the German Empire in military arm- 
 ament is a heart-breaking struggle, like that of 
 two athletes breathing hard on some bitterly 
 contested field. These great peoples are mak- 
 ing the pace; but there is no great nation 
 which is not enrolled in the tremendous event. 
 Russia's army and France's army and navy 
 
 358 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 are the right and left wing of the forces of the 
 Triple Entente, with Japan's in reserve. Italy 
 is grinding her people into the very dust of 
 poverty with taxes for the support of Ger- 
 many's left wing, and Austria-Hungary is 
 straining every nerve on the kaiser's right as 
 the forces of the Triple Alliance pass in re- 
 view. The Balkan States have been armed 
 camps for years in preparation for their as- 
 sault on Turkey, and will be for years to come. 
 Even decadent Spain, the strictly commercial 
 Low Countries, little Portugal, and neutral 
 Denmark, Switzerland and the Norse coun- 
 tries are carrying their loads of militarism. 
 1 A statement recently cabled to this country 
 from Germany shows something of the ter- 
 rible burdens of "military preparedness". 
 Privy Councilor Schwartz, feeling called 
 upon to repudiate the assertion that Germany 
 is forcing other nations into this competition, 
 shows that his empire is paying out less in 
 proportion to her population than Great Brit- 
 ain and France. The casuistry in this is per- 
 fectly plain, since the weaker nation in popu- 
 
 359 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 lation might feel obliged to make up for lack 
 of numbers by excess of ships and guns. Cer- 
 tainly, military preparedness is not a game in 
 which weakness in one respect can be urged 
 as a reason for weakness in any other. But 
 the fact that since 1881 France has spent 
 $500,000,000 more than Germany is a startling 
 preparation for the assertion that in the last 
 thirty years the Triple Entente Great Brit- 
 ain, Russia and France has spent more than 
 eighteen thousand millions of dollars, while 
 the Triple Alliance Germany, Austria and 
 Italy has expended more than eleven thou- 
 sand five hundred millions in militarism. 
 
 The people of Germany, according to this 
 statement, will be called upon to pay five dol- 
 lars and ninety cents per capita for militarism 
 in the present year, while every man, woman 
 and child in France will contribute seven dol- 
 lars and fifty cents. This seems to be ex- 
 clusive of the milliards of bonds which bear 
 interest now, and at some time in the future 
 will necessarily have to be taken care of as to 
 principal, unless the masses bow under the 
 
 360 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 permanent yoke of an interest-eating leisure 
 class. 
 
 This present-day militarism is a mixed ques- 
 tion of pseudo-patriotism, actual national ne- 
 cessities and high finance. There is no ques- 
 tion that in some cases the nations are now, 
 and for centuries have been, in the position 
 of making choice between national extinction 
 and preparedness for war. What would have 
 happened, for instance, to France, two hun- 
 dred years ago, had she failed to maintain 
 military readiness against the aggressions of 
 England? Or of Holland as against Spain? 
 The state of the smaller nations of Europe 
 to-day would be no less perilous, were it not 
 for the mutual jealousies of the government 
 trusts, and the spread of internationalism in 
 sentiment in such ways as peace societies and 
 socialism. Sweden and Norway are coveted 
 by Russia in her age-long desire for a seaport 
 free from ice. Denmark and the Low Coun- 
 tries seem to the Germans logically parts of 
 their great empire. Panslavism looks in the 
 direction of a union of all the Slavic peoples 
 
 361 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 probably under the czar. Alsace-Lorraine 
 has scarcely become completely Germanized. 
 The Poles aspire to a restoration of the king- 
 dom of John Sobieski. In fact the whole Eu- 
 ropean situation is held in statu quo by the 
 force of standing armies and huge navies. 
 
 All this is the effect of perverted patriotism 
 that patriotism which is more vice than vir- 
 tue. No inhabitant of the German Empire 
 would be better off were the Low Countries 
 and Denmark absorbed. The desire of Rus- 
 sia for an ice-free port is a legitimate one, and 
 should be fulfilled by the opening of the nar- 
 row seas past Constantinople, and by free 
 trade to and through the seaports of other 
 lands. The people of Alsace-Lorraine are as 
 well off under one flag as another, given just 
 government, and under industrial and trade 
 freedom would feel as contented. Poland is 
 entitled to freedom as a matter of justice, but 
 would soon forget her aspirations if given 
 just institutions under the flags now floating 
 over her. The desires of subject peoples for 
 
 362 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 governments of their own are based upon very 
 deep and powerful instincts, and where it is 
 territorially possible, might be granted with- 
 out loss to their present yoke-fellows; but 
 where industrial exploitation is absent, sub- 
 jection is neither profitable to the governing 
 class of the ruling nation, nor permanently 
 offensive to the people absorbed. And in such 
 cases as the Greek, Bulgar, Serb and Ruma- 
 nian populations of the Balkans separate gov- 
 ernments are impossible owing to the scatter- 
 ing of the original stocks and their mingling 
 with one another. It is a perverted patriotism 
 which would arm one against the other in the 
 name of nationality. Just governments inter 
 se are the only solution. It is perverted pa- 
 triotism which arms the English against the 
 Germans or vice versa, because neither has 
 anything which the other needs, and neither 
 is possessed of a legitimate ambition in the 
 way of which the other legitimately stands. 
 It is a case of the ruling classes working on 
 false patriotism for selfish ends. The common 
 
 363 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 man has no interest in these objects, and the 
 national welfare is not truly concerned there- 
 with. 
 
 This pseudo-patriotism is dear to the hearts 
 of millions who merely know no better. Mon- 
 eyed interests of the most enormous extent are 
 built up on militarism and the objects of mili- 
 tary aggression. There is no good to the Ger- 
 man people in African or Asiatic expansion; 
 but there is money in it for German capital- 
 ists. There was no benefit to the people of 
 Belgium in the Congo, but King Leopold be- 
 came a millionaire out of it. There are rubber 
 and ivory, and sugar lands, and inoffensive and 
 feeble peoples to be enslaved for the ruling 
 classes of the aggressive nations, and loss for 
 the nation at large: loss of life, loss of honor, 
 loss of humanity, loss of every sort. When 
 these things are thoroughly worked out by 
 the masses, the average man will ask himself, 
 "What is there in this for me?" and this phase 
 of false patriotism will be ended. 
 
 The moneyed classes are interested to an 
 enormous extent in the loans of funds for the 
 
 364 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 up-keep of militarism. The names of Roth- 
 schild and Morgan are synonymous with gov- 
 ernment loans. These gentry verily do not burn 
 incense on the altars of patriotism for naught. 
 And while lending money for armaments, they 
 are making money out of the building of arma- 
 ment. The money the house of Morgan loans 
 to a government for war-ships is paid back, 
 less commissions, interests and profits, for the 
 ships built by the steel companies owned by 
 the house of Morgan. Krupp is the typical 
 German millionaire, and the Krupp millions 
 come from cannon and war-ships. These are 
 the merest hints as to the manifold moneyed 
 interests that feed and fatten on the policy of 
 militarism. When the masses acquire the 
 habit of asking themselves, "What is there in 
 this for us?" the incitements of this class and 
 their fuglemen to war and preparedness for 
 war will no longer thrill our young men into 
 khaki. 
 
 And yet, I do not see the end of militarism. 
 I believe that the militarism of the present 
 day is ninety per cent, without logical excuse ; 
 
 365 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 but I see also a possibility for a readjustment 
 of militarism to conditions under which it will 
 be justified in the minds of the masses who ask 
 themselves, "What is there in it for me?" I 
 wish I could see the way to universal disarma- 
 ment in the near future, but even should inter- 
 nationalism obtain control of the military na- 
 tions of the world, I am unable to see more 
 than a lull in the storm and a readjustment of 
 factors. 
 
 The Balkan States were justified in main- 
 taining a state of preparedness against the 
 Turks, unless we adopt the theory of non- 
 resistance. There may have been high finance 
 and false patriotism commingled with the real 
 justification ; but the presence of the Turk en- 
 camped in military tyranny over the Balkan 
 peoples constituted an intolerable status. It 
 was a case of forcible commingling of irrecon- 
 cilable human elements.' 
 
 The world as a whole is in an unstable con- 
 dition as to the distribution of the races over 
 it. Some European nations are said to be over- 
 populated. Probably in most if not all of 
 
 366 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 these cases the disease is land-monopoly, 
 rather than over-population. But land-mon- 
 opoly and social maladjustments produce pre- 
 maturely all the phenomena of pressure of 
 population, and make the peoples equally rest- 
 ive for new lands. It matters little whether 
 the pressure on the people of Russia, Poland, 
 Hungary and Italy is factitious or natural, as 
 long as it drives them to foreign lands. If 
 factitious, it could be cured by reforms at 
 home, as the tendency to emigrate from Ger- 
 many, Scandinavia and the British Isles has 
 largely been cured; but as long as it lasts, it 
 sets up immigration problems in such nations 
 as Argentina and the United States, to which 
 the emigrants are flocking. 
 
 Such commingling of populations, without 
 any racial affinity, and bringing into conflict 
 possible racial antipathies, are of less conse- 
 quence under autocratic governments than in 
 democracies. In view of the fact that democ- 
 racy seems to be not only the natural form of 
 government, but the form which is conquering 
 the world, racial admixtures are sure to be- 
 
 367 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 come more and more fruitful of governmental 
 problems. The fact that the countries now 
 most clearly over-populated are peopled by 
 races possessed of weak affinities, or none, for 
 the democracies occupying the largest areas 
 of sparsely-settled land and offering the most 
 attractive industrial prospects, and moreover, 
 feel certain strong antipathies for them, is 
 ominous. The democracies of the New 
 World and of Australasia will be forced by 
 the law of national self-preservation to keep 
 out the millions of folk of other colors and 
 alien ideals who are ready to be shot into 
 their respective bodies politic by the force of 
 economic stress, like a drug into a vein by a 
 hypodermic needle. They must do this. 
 Their precious experiment in democracy re- 
 quires it. They have good reason to believe 
 that in fighting against national dilution and 
 contamination they are battling for a principle 
 as important to the colored races as to the 
 white a world principle. 
 
 Can universal disarmament be brought 
 about while this condition persists? It seems 
 
 368 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 to me very doubtful. It seems to me that the 
 time is rather far off when the masses of the 
 people will be able to disclaim interest in a 
 certain sort of military preparedness. 
 
 I should not be willing to disband our 
 armies and stigmatize military training as the 
 silly thing it would be if there were no better 
 excuse for it than the European balance of 
 power, or the extension of trade. I should be 
 afraid. Until this enormous matter of the dis- 
 tribution of the races is settled, we shall keep 
 up a certain sort of militarism, be sure of that. 
 
 The question is likely to be : What sort of 
 militarism? All institutions must sooner or 
 later be transformed so as to accord with the 
 principles of democracy or they must be 
 abolished. The great objection to standing 
 armies is their conflict with democracy. They 
 are essentially aristocratic in their traditions. 
 The officers must always be "gentlemen" and 
 the privates merely men. The social supe- 
 riority of officer over man is something enor- 
 mous. Every day's service tends to make the 
 man in the ranks a servile creature, and the 
 
 369 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 man with epaulettes a snob and a tyrant. 
 Moreover, armies are used by the capitalistic 
 governments of the world for the purpose 
 of overawing the masses of the people the 
 voters. The republics of the world are found- 
 ed on what has been called the sacred right of 
 rebellion; but they have set up in their midst 
 standing armies to take away that right from 
 the present generation. When one considers 
 that rebellion is always a demand for rights, 
 this situation is anomalous. 
 
 But the army need not be undemocratic, nor 
 out of touch with the sentiments of the masses. 
 It may well be the masses. Some of the most 
 efficient armies the world ever saw have been 
 democratic armies Cromwell's, for instance. 
 Obedience on the part of the rank and file to 
 the officers need not imply any social chasm 
 between the two. 
 
 Democracy requires that the army be de- 
 mocratized. This implies no slackening of 
 discipline, but calls for a revolution in ideals. 
 The army of a democracy should offer a serv- 
 
 370 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 ice in which the best young men should be glad 
 to enter. There are certain military organiza- 
 tions membership in which, owing to certain 
 flubdubbery, is a social honor. Membership 
 in the army of a democracy should be made so 
 useful to the soldier, and so beneficial to so- 
 ciety as a whole, as to be looked upon as a 
 thing to be desired by all young men. Rank 
 should separate men only while on duty. The 
 whole organization should be based on the 
 idea of educating the soldier in citizenship and 
 developing him as a producer and a man. 
 
 This change might easily be effectuated. 
 The life of the soldier under most military 
 rules is of all lives the most dreary and dead- 
 ening. The time which he can profitably use 
 in the practise of soldiership is only a small 
 portion of the day. The regulations have 
 therefore imposed upon him a great many 
 arbitrary duties which have no real relation 
 to mastery of the soldier's trade, but are meant 
 to keep them busy and out of mischief. They 
 are about as useful as the old task of pounding 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the rust off the anchor chains which strict sea- 
 captains imposed on their sailors during fine 
 weather. 
 
 The armies of democracies should be the 
 greatest educational institutions of the nations. 
 Instead of wasting their youthful years in 
 time-killing, soul-killing routine, the soldiers 
 should be also students. Every course of study 
 now given by universities might be mastered 
 by the citizen soldiery. There is no branch 
 of learning that should not be successfully 
 taught in the army posts of the future. The 
 culture thus given might be evidenced by de- 
 grees as honorable and valuable to their pos- 
 sessors as those conferred by any educational 
 institution in the world. 
 
 In the main, the training in the armies will 
 be vocational and technical, however. There 
 is no reason why armies should not grow their 
 own subsistence, and manufacture their own 
 equipment as a part of the vocational training 
 of the citizens of the republic. There is no 
 reason why scientific agriculture should not 
 be taught to every farmer's son fortunate 
 
 372 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 enough to get into the army and to every 
 city boy desirous of getting back to the land. 
 There is no reason why every handicraft, every 
 profession, every art, should not be taught to 
 men earning their educations by service as 
 soldiers. There is no reason why graduation 
 from the army should not be proof of fitness 
 for productive citizenship, and the best pos- 
 sible recommendation to prospective em- 
 ployers. 
 
 Such an army would be only a little more 
 military than are some of our corps of college 
 cadets. Such soldiers would not require pay. 
 They would be willing to pay for the training, 
 rather than be deprived of it. 
 
 England might keep a million men in camp 
 all the time by such a system. And they would 
 melt back into the industrial system of the 
 land at the rate of a quarter of a million a 
 year, and repay to the last penny the expense 
 of their education in their greater industrial 
 efficiency. The United States could keep two 
 million young men under arms all the time, 
 and the burden would really be only a part of 
 
 373 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the universal duty of education. Gradually 
 in both these nations, and in all others adopt- 
 ing the system, the thing which Frederick the 
 Great accomplished in Prussia would be man- 
 ifest the citizenship of the nation, as a whole, 
 would be transformed into a body of trained 
 soldiers. Thus, and in some such way only 
 can democracy and military preparedness be 
 reconciled. 
 
 The problem is one, not of offense, but of 
 (defense. This sort of militarism is merely a 
 matter of preparedness against the aggressions 
 of other peoples. Those aggressions are likely 
 to take the form at first of protests against the 
 exclusion of emigrants. Such exclusions must 
 be reasonable, but when determined upon, they 
 must be firmly adhered to. Adhesion to them 
 requires no aggression, no expeditions to for- 
 eign shores, nothing except the ability to de- 
 fend ourselves. 
 
 Such militarism will be a matter of forti- 
 fications and artillery, with a mighty army 
 backing them. Naval disarmament seems 
 quite out of the question for some nations, but 
 
 374 
 
MILITARISM 
 
 is not irreconcilable with the principles here 
 laid down, save for widely disseminated peo- 
 ples like the English. For them the matter 
 is exceedingly difficult. Under present condi- 
 tions pseudo-patriotism, high finance and a 
 scattered Englishry render naval disarmament 
 impossible. 
 
 But at bottom navies are instruments of ag- 
 gression, and will not be needed on any such 
 scale as that on which they are now main- 
 tained, when military power is used for the 
 one purpose of self-defense. 
 
 The kings of finance may not always care to 
 furnish funds for great navies. They now pre- 
 fer a situation in which there shall be constant 
 preparation for war for they make profits on 
 that but no actual war. For in actual war 
 the money power, furnishing funds for both 
 sides, is in the position of placing bets on two 
 contestants and taking a commission for the 
 work, with the possibility of becoming so 
 deeply involved that if one side becomes bank- 
 rupt the money power will lose enormously. 
 The whole matter of moral obligations as to 
 
 375 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the payment of bonds issued under the circum- 
 stances now prevailing must sooner or later be 
 reexamined. One of these days public credit 
 will not be so high. Navies are shockingly 
 costly things. The development of aerial navi- 
 gation is about to revolutionize war, and seems 
 to promise a permanent transfer of headship 
 in war from the nation leading in sea power to 
 the one with the most powerful air navy. 
 When the air-ship renders the man-of-war ob- 
 solete, military operations will shift from sea 
 to land, and navies will sink in importance. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 SOCIAL OLD AGE AND DEATH 
 
 NO belief is more generally accepted 
 than that which assigns to nations pe- 
 riods of birth, youth, maturity, decline and 
 death. We speak of the Americans as being 
 a "young people", and the Chinese and Jap- 
 anese as being "old peoples". We seem to 
 carry in our minds a thought with regard to 
 the United States, or Germany, or England, 
 that each must in the nature of things pass 
 away in a sort of social death, just as Hiram 
 Perkins, Hans Schmidt and Thomas Atkins 
 must pass away. 
 
 This is a most important belief important 
 if it be true, and equally important if it be 
 false. For the decline of a people, like the 
 senility of a man, absolves it from the obliga- 
 tion to be strong and prosperous. If bad gov- 
 ernment, pauperism, prostitution, evil man- 
 
 377 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 ners and morals, poverty, plutocracy, oppres- 
 sion and industrial slavery come with the old 
 age of a nation, just as baldness, weak knees, 
 bad teeth, asthma, defective vision, palsy and 
 accumulated capital come with the old age of 
 a man, then what is the use of resisting these 
 things? 
 
 Enormous inequalities in the distribution of 
 wealth and power have arisen in the United 
 States in a century. I believe that we should 
 not have been so submissive to those things, 
 had it not been for the deep-seated belief that 
 they come "as the country gets older" as a 
 matter of course. To be sure, our whole 
 theory of government as accepted by the 
 masses was opposed to the idea of plutoc- 
 racy on the one hand and industrial slavery 
 on the other; but a governmental theory is 
 no match for an ancient notion, so deep- 
 seated that it almost loses the character of 
 belief, and approaches instinct in its nature 
 and so, we have gradually been abandoning 
 our governmental theory of democracy as a 
 recipe for universal prosperity. It is only 
 
 378 
 
SOCIAL OLD AGE AND DEATH 
 
 with the rise of the spirit of "insurgency" in 
 the last few years that the onward march of 
 submission to privilege has been checked and 
 turned back by the old ideas embodied in the 
 Declaration of Independence. Again the faith 
 in equality is spreading and strengthening 
 not in America only, but all over the world. 
 Is it a rising tide which will ebb as the moon 
 goes down, or one "which yearly gains upon 
 the shore", and merely has "ebb and flow con- 
 ditioning its march"? 
 
 If nations are born but to die, then it will 
 ebb, and ebb, and finally go out in the dead 
 neap tide of decay. 
 
 We are a young nation, but are we really a 
 younger people than the Japanese? Not at all. 
 When the forefathers of the Japanese were 
 savages, so were ours. They made a half- 
 emergence from barbarism while we still 
 roamed woods with bulls' horns on our heads, 
 and won manhood by killing in battle. But 
 they halted while we went on; and when 
 Perry broke the seals of the Island Empire, 
 we had already passed them in most of the 
 
 379 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 qualities which make up real civilization. 
 Once "older" than we, they had become 
 "younger". As a matter of real truth, so far 
 as we know, all men are of equal racial age 
 that is while we are not bound to accept 
 the theory of any account of the creation in 
 literal form, perhaps, we have no reason to 
 believe that one people has any more advan- 
 tage or disadvantage over another in years 
 than if we are actually descended from Adam. 
 No matter where we live or how, as a matter 
 of hereditary descent one human being has as 
 long a pedigree as another. 
 
 We are the cells that make up the body of 
 the social organism. We are as short-lived 
 and as long-lived in the "young" nation as in 
 the "old" one. Human beings are alike in all 
 phases of human history or if different, the 
 differences are too slight for the historian's 
 measuring instruments. When the Roman 
 Empire staggered down to its fall like a great, 
 magnificent, dying beast, it was composed of 
 the same sort of men who lived under Numa 
 Pompilius. No change takes place in the in- 
 
 380 
 
SOCIAL OLD AGE AND DEATH 
 
 dividuals composing a society which prevents 
 the organization from achieving a life as long 
 as the endurance of the earth itself. 
 
 There is no analogy in nature, either, which 
 would lead us to expect a beginning, a cul- 
 mination and an end of a people. The bird 
 societies of the islands of the sea last forever. 
 The community of muskrats in a Minnesota 
 swamp has lived just as it lives now since be- 
 fore the building of the pyramids. The prai- 
 rie-dog town which persists in spite of gun, 
 trap and poison on the arid plains of the 
 United States was a flourishing community 
 when Columbus landed at Cat Island. If the 
 earth continues to yield its food, the animal 
 community, while its individual membership 
 changes constantly by births and deaths, lives 
 like the cataract, which, changing momently, 
 is always the same. 
 
 Indeed, the human society in its simpler 
 and more animal forms is almost as stable 
 as the empires of animals. There is no in- 
 fancy, growth, maturity and decline of the 
 savage tribe. It goes on and on like a wolf 
 
 381 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 pack or hive of bees. It is only the civilized 
 society which waxes, wanes and dies. 
 
 Doctor Alexis Carrel has learned how to 
 keep alive the cells of which our bodies are 
 composed, outside the body. Bits of lung, 
 liver, kidney or muscle, live and grow under 
 his microscope. But not forever for the cells 
 rid themselves of substances which finally 
 poison them and bring their lives to an end. 
 It is the old biological story no living thing 
 can exist in the waste products of its own 
 body. 
 
 So it is with nations, empires and communi- 
 ties in some way, under civilized conditions, 
 they secrete toxins which destroy the organ- 
 ism. These poisons are slavery, plutocracy, 
 monopoly, inequality, exploitation, poverty, 
 luxury, discontent, degeneration and finally 
 national death. Doctor Carrel takes the grow- 
 ing tissue from under his microscope's cover- 
 glass and cleanses it of its poisoned surround- 
 ings. Then he gives it new "tissue juice" in 
 which to grow and it becomes "young" 
 again it grows faster than ever. 
 
 382 
 
SOCIAL OLD AGE AND DEATH 
 
 The problem which civilization has never 
 solved is that of cleansing our body politic of 
 its toxins, and thus keeping it forever young. 
 That it can be done there is no reason to doubt. 
 Civilization is natural or it would not be for- 
 ever repeating itself in human history. We 
 have not found the way to make it perpetual, 
 that is all. The empire, according to universal 
 laws of evolution, is beset by greater dangers 
 than is the tribe being more complex it tends 
 more strongly to disintegrate. But, as man is 
 imperiously bidden by instinct to form na- 
 tions and states, he must, by the exercise of 
 his reason, find out the way to build them on 
 bases of everlasting prosperity. 
 
 The evils which wreck civilization are 
 pretty well understood now. They lie mainly 
 in the tendencies of men in communities to 
 gain advantages over one another, and to use 
 them to ends of oppression and exploitation. 
 Society splits into two antagonistic wings- 
 one composed of rich and powerful degen- 
 erates, the other of poor and destitute degen- 
 erates. 
 
 383 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 A new era has dawned. We have still these 
 two degenerate wings, but we have an immense 
 middle class, and permeating all classes, we 
 have a new science, a new love of truth, a new 
 altruism, a new social conscience and a fund 
 of arranged knowledge greater than that pos- 
 sessed by all other ages combined. We shall 
 find the right way of collective life, this time, 
 and a blessed immunity from the death that 
 overtook the civilizations of the past. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 NOTHING is more peaceful than the 
 status of the passengers on a great liner 
 after all the space has been assigned to those 
 having the right to it, all conflicting claims ad- 
 justed, and the floating community has settled 
 down into stable conditions of the voyage. The 
 little planet goes smoothly on bearing its load 
 of humanity and comes prosperously to its 
 slip in the harbor, with not a breach of the 
 peace, nor a jar in the personal relations of 
 the thousands aboard. 
 
 Up to this time in the world's history, the 
 human race, as passengers on the good ship 
 Earthy have been working out in blood and 
 flame and tears the questions of the allotment 
 of space. The mystery of creation seems dark- 
 est in the fact that there was no booking office 
 through which the matter of accommodations 
 
 385 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 could be amicably settled. We came aboard 
 by the fiat of development, only half human, 
 altogether ignorant, knowing naught of the 
 shape or extent of the huge boat on which we 
 sailed; and ever since this emergence into 
 manhood we have been stampeding back and 
 forth, slaying, burning, trampling precious 
 things into the decks in migrations to new 
 and better lands, and flights to new and 
 worse ones. Tartar and Mongol, Hun and 
 Vandal, Goth and Saracen, Angles, North- 
 men, Normans, Danes, Persians, Romans 
 a hundred names of dread and terror and 
 romance and high emprise might be men- 
 tioned, which have sounded over the earth 
 during the ages which have elapsed from the 
 time when the Children of Israel spied out 
 the land of Canaan, found it good and took 
 it in God-bidden carnage, down to the times 
 when Cortez and Pizarro did impossible 
 things in Mexico and Peru; and on to to-day's 
 onslaught of the Balkan States on Turkey in 
 an incredibly brilliant effort to drive from 
 the soil on which they believe themselves to 
 
 386 
 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 have a just claim the unspeakable Turk who 
 has harried and murdered and corrupted them 
 for five hundred years. All these things are 
 the little bustlings of the passengers on the 
 good ship Earth in efforts to find their state- 
 rooms, their berths and their nooks in the 
 steerage. 
 
 These disturbances are not over. We are 
 not half through, perhaps. We must decide 
 all the problems which have been so hurriedly 
 sketched in these chapters and many more. 
 The issues of the Seven Perils of Humanity 
 must be solved, by peace or war and no one 
 can tell how much of the one will suffice or of 
 the other be required. But it seems certain 
 that it will not be all peace. 
 
 But the hustle, the bustle and the quarrel- 
 ing are quieting down. We are getting or- 
 ganized. We know the ship better, now 
 in fact we have a diagram of the accommoda- 
 tions, and some facts as to the passenger list. 
 There is abroad the spirit of citizenship of 
 the world as against the narrow membership 
 in the tribe, the city, the state, the kingdom, 
 
 387 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 or the empire. We have passed in large 
 measure from the family as the largest unit of 
 society, through the tribal state, and on by all 
 intermediate stages into the "trust" phase of 
 government and the names of the govern- 
 ment trusts are the British Empire, the United 
 States of America, Russia, Austria-Hungary, 
 Germany, France and the like. There seems 
 to be good reason to believe that we shall at 
 some time attain the status of the universal 
 trust in government the parliament of man, 
 the federation of the world which may or 
 may not be well for us. 
 
 Such a federation will be charged with the 
 business of assigning space, conserving re- 
 sources, eliminating world dangers, and put- 
 ting an end to those awful tumults and op- 
 pressions which have marked the settlement 
 of claims to space heretofore. 
 
 Will there ever be a real rest? Will the na- 
 tions ever be able to accept their quarters as 
 things settled "for all time"? 
 
 The conditions can never be permanently 
 settled, because the earth itself is, and always 
 
 388 
 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 must be, in a state of change. These changes 
 will in the future force upon the human race 
 the greatest migrations in its history. 
 
 There is good reason to expect that within a 
 thousand years the climate of the whole world 
 will be enormously warmed by the alteration 
 in the air which we are bringing about every 
 day by the burning of coal. There is some 
 reason to believe that this change has already 
 become perceptible. MacDowell, a British 
 investigator, has determined that the last fifty 
 winters have brought fewer frost days in Eng- 
 land than any other fifty-year period since 
 1841 and the discharge of carbonic acid gas 
 into the air from our furnaces which is bring- 
 ing this change about has scarcely begun. 
 The first great migration, therefore, will be 
 into the now frozen north Siberia, Finland, 
 Lapland, Canada and Alaska. These will be- 
 come great agricultural regions if the ex- 
 pected change comes. 
 
 But this will be but an eddy in the stream of 
 change, and will run against the secular 
 change by which the world is cooling off and 
 
 389 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 drying up. Sometime the warming process 
 will stop. The cooling process which has 
 been going on with certain alterations and dis- 
 turbances since the earth was a molten mass 
 and long before will reassert itself. Thou- 
 sands of years hence, the frozen area about 
 the poles will again begin to broaden. The 
 timber line will begin to creep down the 
 mountainsides. The great migration will 
 'bout-face and turn again from the poles to- 
 ward the equator. The nations of the earth 
 will perforce move southward from the north, 
 and northward from the south, until at last, 
 the peoples of the world will make their last 
 stand against advancing cold and drought in 
 a narrowing zone which will include Central 
 Africa, Southern Asia, Northern Australasia 
 and the South Sea Islands ; and the great rich 
 Amazon, Arinoco and La Plata Valleys in 
 South America together with the West In- 
 dia Islands. 
 
 Along with this secular cooling will be a 
 secular drying up of the earth by the fixing 
 of water in chemical combinations, and its ab- 
 
 390 
 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 sorption into the body of the globe. The 
 deserts which will then overspread the re- 
 gions now occupied by the United States, and 
 Europe will be not only cold, but dry. The 
 men of that day will again find themselves in 
 a world over vast areas of which no explorer 
 will be able to force his way; and poetry and 
 literature will again be filled with the mys- 
 tery of the unknown, as it was when Othello 
 told Desdemona's father of the Hyperboreans 
 and men whose heads grow beneath their 
 shoulders. 
 
 These migrations are sure to come. They 
 will be very slow so slow that the movement 
 will be imperceptible. And they will prob- 
 ably take place through ages of world regula- 
 tion which will eliminate war, and of a de- 
 creasing birth-rate which will make poverty 
 unknown, until the last men vanish in a sur- 
 viving few pinched between the two advancing 
 frontiers of the frost men who will be great 
 and wise enough to triumph over their fates, 
 even while yielding to them. 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 "Extremes meet!" 
 
 In this old saying lies one of the deep- 
 est of truths. There is a degree of "down" 
 which becomes "up." Farthest east is the 
 same thing as nearest west. Frost burns the 
 flesh like fire. Great riches develop into a spe- 
 cies of poverty. Learning, after long, long 
 climbings, reaches the highest attainments and 
 steps out on the same plane of humility with 
 ignorance. 
 
 Emerson confesses to the fact that for years 
 he brooded over the idea of his essay on Com- 
 position, and longed to write it. I wish an 
 Emerson would master the deeper meanings 
 of the expression "Extremes meet", and give 
 us an Emersonian treatment of it. 
 
 I am now seeking the secret of a perfect or- 
 ganization of the relations of the passengers 
 on the good ship Earth in other words, I 
 am feebly questioning the heart of things as 
 to the possibility of a millennium not a mil- 
 lennium in which the lion and the lamb shall 
 lie down together, save in metaphor, but mere- 
 ly a reign of justice and love in which there 
 
 392 
 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 shall be no want, and no greed, no plutocracy, 
 no labor question and no idleness. 
 
 The millennial principle is found in the per- 
 fection of human selfishness. The universal 
 law of human conduct is that all human be- 
 ings seek to satisfy their desires along the lines 
 of least resistance. In other words, every per- 
 son tries to get what he wants in the easiest 
 possible way. This was true when the wisest 
 man was the one who knocked fruit from the 
 tree with a club rather than to climb for it or 
 wait for it to fall, or speared fish with a sharp 
 stick, rather than to seize them with his hands. 
 These sought to satisfy their desires in the 
 easiest possible way. It is equally true of the 
 missionary who dares disease and death for 
 the heathen, or the millionaire who builds li- 
 braries, or that other one who donates his 
 wealth to the spread of single-tax. It is equally 
 true of the mother who drudges that her 
 daughter may have lessons in piano or singing. 
 It is true of the friend who takes obloquy and 
 assumes undeserved guilt to shield his friend. 
 It was true of Bishop Myriel-Bienvenu when 
 
 393 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 he gave the candlesticks to Jean Valjean. It 
 was true of Jean Valjean when he ceased to 
 be a beast of prey, and because he had been 
 so much lower than the bishop, had to rise 
 so much higher. Each sought to satisfy his 
 desires in the easiest possible way. Each man 
 who does an act of unselfishness chooses it be- 
 cause he could not otherwise or so it seems 
 to him find so close an approach to happi- 
 ness. 
 
 The whole matter of popularization of jus- 
 tice lies not in a less avid struggle of men to 
 attain their desires but in the changing char- 
 acter of those desires. When Jean Valjean 
 set his foot on the little boy's coin, after having 
 been given life and freedom by the bishop, he 
 wanted that money; but when he felt the tor- 
 ture of the memory of what had been done 
 to him and what he had done to others, and 
 went running up and down the highways seek- 
 ing the little boy that he might restore the 
 thing stolen, calling, "Petit Gervais! Petit 
 Gervais! Petit Gervais!" and finally breaking 
 down in the awful cry, "What a wretch I am!" 
 
 394 
 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 he wanted something else than money some- 
 thing quite as necessary to human happiness 
 as any material satisfaction. In both cases he 
 sought to satisfy his desires in the easiest way 
 open to him. 
 
 Unselfishness in the ordinary sense of the 
 term, is as common as selfishness. Altruism 
 is a quality of beasts as well as of men. The 
 wolf who devours even his wounded fellow 
 must practise a wolfish altruism when he 
 hunts in the pack, and drags down the deer 
 he must not eat individually what has been 
 hunted collectively. The cock calls his hens to 
 the food he has scratched out, and does not eat 
 until they come. The partridge flutters on 
 pretending to be wounded, daring danger to 
 save her chicks. And when one comes to the 
 socialized animals, he discovers that the ruling 
 passion of the individual is the service of 
 others. If the word happiness may be prop- 
 erly applied to these little brothers and sis- 
 ters of ours, who shall say that the highest 
 happiness of the ant is hot found in the public 
 service? If so, the ant would be miserably 
 
 395 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 unhappy if it served itself first. It also seeks 
 to satisfy its desires in the easiest way open 
 to it. 
 
 Human unselfishness rose to a higher plane 
 and took on a steadier character than it seems 
 to reach in the animal world, because of the 
 long infancy of the young human being. Par- 
 enthood made altruism a habit with men, 
 while it remained only an occasional passion 
 with most animals. Thus the family was 
 founded, and out of the family grew the tribe. 
 The helpless baby has been the great civilizer 
 of the world. It extended the passion for serv- 
 ice beyond the limits of sex devotion. It made 
 brotherhood and sisterhood a fixed relation. 
 It opened to the human soul the unimaginable 
 possibilities for happiness found in the service 
 of others. Still men sought always to satisfy 
 their wants in the easiest possible way but as 
 altruism developed, a new sort of want arose 
 nothing less than the desire for the welfare 
 of others. 
 
 Unselfishness, therefore, is nothing but the 
 satisfaction of a higher sort of selfishness. The 
 
 396 
 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 instinct for it is deeply rooted and fully de- 
 veloped in all men. No long period of race- 
 development is necessary for its flowering as 
 the ruling passion of the race. Tyrants, crim- 
 inals, monopolists, aristocrats and all who live 
 on the labor of others appeal to the general 
 good as their own reason for existence ; and in 
 doing so, they not only address themselves to 
 a universal instinct, but they account for them- 
 selves to themselves in the only way that makes 
 life tolerable to the normal mind. 
 
 There are many who take as their guiding 
 political philosophy the creed that every man 
 will serve his own interest when he knows 
 what it is. They are right he will; but his 
 own interest lies in being happy. And his 
 happiness is every day less and less capable of 
 being satisfied with his personal prosperity, or 
 the welfare of his family, or of the achieve- 
 ment of justice for his class. Class-conscious- 
 ness is a good thing; for it spreads over a 
 wider field than did self-consciousness, or sex- 
 consciousness, or family-consciousness, or 
 tribe-consciousness, or nation-consciousness, of 
 
 397 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 empire-consciousness. But it is still too nar- 
 row to satisfy the human soul ; and it does not 
 satisfy even those who preach it. Most of 
 them in preaching class-consciousness to the 
 working people, step over the lines of their 
 own class that they may find greater happiness 
 in serving the largest class. 
 
 Selfishness is the universal rule of human 
 conduct; and it attains its perfection in that 
 wonderful flowering-out which denies happi- 
 ness to enlightened man save in the happiness 
 of all men. The type of narrow selfishness i9 
 found in the Hindu rajah who rides on his 
 elephant "mad with pride" through streets 
 filled with famishing people, and does not 
 care. He keeps his wealth for himself, and 
 carries "collops of fat upon his flanks" while 
 their bones prick through the flesh. The 
 higher type is the man who would feel such 
 torture in the sufferings of others that he 
 would die if he did not "sell all he had and 
 give to the poor". Our millionaires are now 
 writhing in agony many of them at the 
 poverty which they see, and which many of 
 
 398 
 
THE GREAT MIGRATION 
 
 them are beginning to admit, they cause. They 
 begin to desire deliverance from the body of 
 this death. The highest selfishness impels 
 them to work for, or at least plan for, social 
 justice. They are beginning to see the pro- 
 found wisdom in that other old saying, "Right 
 wrongs no man." They are beginning to see 
 that when Jesus went to the cross He did the 
 only thing possible from the standpoint of 
 even the highest selfishness as any one may 
 see if he will try to imagine the Nazarene's 
 acceptance of life at the sacrifice of his mes- 
 sage to the world. 
 
 Society moves irresistibly on to its own per- 
 fection through selfishness raised to the plane 
 of altruism. Through a perfected society, we 
 shall achieve eternal social life. Out of the 
 mud of selfishness grows through perfectly 
 natural causes the redemptive lily of altruism. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 WHEN the net result and ultimate 
 meaning of the social unrest of these 
 modern times is discovered and laid bare by 
 posterity, it will be identified in some new 
 height climbed and held by the human mind. 
 Our fixed and dominant idea is progress: but 
 it is well to ask, progress toward what? We 
 are reluctant to believe that the conscious aims 
 which now seem to direct human affairs will 
 be found to be those leading to our real 
 achievement. This is an age of hammers and 
 anvils, of molten, rolled, spun and cast metals, 
 of grinding and mixing, of chaotic building 
 and tearing down, of enormous battling forces. 
 Our material progress seems like the rearing 
 of a Babel tower, ambitious to reach the heav- 
 ens, but going awry in multitudinous frustra- 
 tions and futilities because of a confusion of 
 
 400 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 tongues in our ideals and purposes. This 
 must be because we see only the scaffolding, 
 hear little but the noise and uproar of en- 
 deavor. The future will see the temple 
 some fair new fane of the spirit, some simple 
 Parthenon in which a larger philosophy shall 
 dwell. 
 
 Already the lines of thought seem converg- 
 ing toward a new focus. Listen to the parley 
 of the systems of thought, as they clear the 
 docket of reason's chancery of the old causes 
 of bickering. 
 
 "God is omnipresent," says the theologian. 
 
 "The universe is God," says the pantheist. 
 
 "He is a spirit," replies the theologian. 
 
 "There is nothing," interposes the material- 
 ist, "but force and matter." 
 
 "What is spirit," asks the transcendentalist, 
 "but pure free activity; force; energy di- 
 vorced from its carnal bondage to matter; 
 'thought thinking itself?" 
 
 "God is the one being infinite and eternal," 
 rejoins the theologian, as if to close the case. 
 
 "Not so," responds the physicist, "both 
 401 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 atoms and force are indestructible and eternal, 
 and pervade the universe." 
 
 "Do you know what the universe is?" asks 
 the astronomer. "We are beginning to per- 
 ceive a little of its harmonies. It spins about 
 us in a great whirl and vortex not a formless 
 chaos of worlds and suns, separated by un- 
 imaginable abysses, but bound into a whole by 
 lines of force acting upon matter. So much 
 we know." 
 
 "And this immensity," says the physicist, 
 looking up from his calculations, "has its 
 micro-reflection in the dust-grain under our 
 feet. If a drop of water were magnified to the 
 size of the earth, its atoms would be dispersed 
 through its space as bodies larger than bird- 
 shot, perhaps, but smaller than tennis-balls. 
 On knowing this, we at once conceive of the 
 drop as a universe, with stars and planets, 
 orbits and periods of revolution. And, more- 
 over, see the parallel between the atom and 
 the universe! Atoms themselves seem to be 
 nothing but inconceivably complex systems 
 of electrons, each of which is made up of an 
 
 402 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 electric charge no more material than the light 
 or heat into which it might be transformed. 
 Thus we explain the solid matter of the globe 
 itself, by explaining it away!" 
 
 "I said in Plato's time," speaks up the ideal- 
 ist, "that matter is non-existent; that there is 
 nothing but force. Has the physicist, of all 
 men, come to agree with me?" 
 
 "It does seem true," admit all the scientists, 
 "that heat, light, every form of radiant energy, 
 gravitation, chemism, electricity, magnetism, 
 all are but modes of motion, and the universe 
 itself a vast congeries of motions, and nothing 
 else, acting by attractions, repulsions and 
 stresses, under the rule of law." 
 
 "But," cries the searcher after truth, "I still 
 find the old mystery! How began these mo- 
 tions? How was enacted this law?" 
 
 "Both law and motions," answers science, 
 "come from the unknowable." 
 
 "Canst thou by searching," adds religion, 
 "find out God?" 
 
 Both have come to the same point the one 
 through hunger for knowledge, the other 
 
 43 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 through thirst after righteousness; and both 
 are baffled by the same mystery. 
 
 What then, it is asked, have all these clash- 
 ing systems gained by their eonian quest? 
 Much, indeed. For one most vital thing, they 
 have found out the identity of the object all 
 have sought, and of the mystery before which 
 all have bowed. 
 
 They know how causeless were all their 
 quarrels; and this, we may believe, is to be 
 the great gift of these times of ours to the race 
 the idea of universality of law and the one- 
 ness of things. All things will have been 
 brought within the sweep of the law, and the 
 law of nature identified with the law of God. 
 So man will have but one duty: to discover 
 the application of this law to any given case, 
 and apply it. All codes and decalogues will 
 be valid only as declaratory of this primal and 
 universal law. 
 
 A farmer's boy once stood in a gentle fall of 
 snow, watching the descending flakes as they 
 
 404 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 turned the somber fields first to gray and then 
 to white, and transformed trees and dwellings 
 into ghosts. The mystery and charm of the 
 first snow-fall filled his being with unaccount- 
 able happiness. At last he turned his eyes 
 from the blurred landscape, and fixed them 
 upon the white flakes resting in crystal per- 
 fection on the sleeve of his rough coat. Sud- 
 denly the dreamy eyes brightened into the 
 fixed and definite stare of keen observation. 
 He felt as does the explorer of some lonely 
 island, when, in petroglyph, or in charred and 
 etched bone or shard, or in half-obliterated 
 track, he sees the evidence of human occupa- 
 tion. On the hairy sleeve lay things never ob- 
 served by him before, things of symmetry and 
 order, objects which seemed to bear the im- 
 print of design. How came these starry and 
 flower-like forms into existence? From what 
 academy of design had they fallen, so softly 
 fluttering to him from the abysses of space? 
 The question filled and engrossed his mind, 
 and lifted him to that plane where child and 
 
 405 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 philosopher stand upon the same level in the 
 contemplation of that order which is the soul 
 of nature, or whose other name is law. 
 
 The snowflake in its manifestation of the 
 tendency of inorganic matter to take on forms 
 of order and perfection one might almost 
 say, to take on organism starts a train of 
 thought which leads inward to the atom, and 
 to its newly-discovered unit of structure, the 
 electron or sub-atomic corpuscle, with all the 
 pregnant problems of their natures, and out- 
 ward to the vast fields of life, and on to the 
 circling stars. Inward to the atom itself a 
 galaxy, a stellar universe of orbs identical in 
 all atoms: outward to the heavenly galaxy 
 itself (perhaps an atom in some higher mat- 
 ter) from the unthinkably small to the un- 
 imaginably great; everywhere we find the 
 stresses and compulsions of law ranging all 
 things in shapes and forms of beauty. 
 
 Our new conception of the atom as a system 
 or plexus of systems of electric charges, and of 
 nothing else, and of matter as merely a mode of 
 
 406 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 motion, is not a figure of speech, or a poetic 
 trope, but a cold and worked-out mechanical 
 conception. This explaining away of matter, 
 this resolution of all things to one, comes, not 
 by way of the idealist or the mystic, but by the 
 mechanician. It would not seem a strange 
 thing to either of them, perhaps, could it be 
 presented to a Plato, or a Berkeley; but to the 
 modern scientific mind, and to our unin- 
 structed senses, it seems, at first, unthinkable. 
 For this reason, it may be, this most revolu- 
 tionary of scientific conceptions has not as 
 yet touched effectually the common thought. 
 Its reactions are found, not in the whirl- 
 wind of trumpeted discovery, nor in the 
 earthquake of controversy, but in the still 
 small voice of cloistered research. Yet to 
 this conception of the character of the unit 
 of matter will run, I believe, all the roads of 
 future thought; from it will radiate knowl- 
 edge of all things knowable ; and about it will 
 form the simple and symmetrical unity of an 
 all-embracing cosmic philosophy. Somewhere 
 in the infinite deeps of matter is the indivisible 
 
 407 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 something which' bridges the gap between the 
 two great categories of matter and force. In 
 the qualities of this unit will be found the 
 digits in which the quantities of things uni- 
 versal may be expressed. In units' place, we 
 may for the present assume the electron ; next 
 the atom; then the molecule; above that the 
 crystal ; and somewhere here our scale begins 
 to branch. Still in obedience to laws op- 
 erative upon the lowest order, the line of the 
 inorganic runs on through amorphous frus- 
 trations to the crystal, to those great masses 
 which we know as the satellite, the planet, the 
 sun, and finally to the great symmetrical whole 
 of the stellar universe, that unutterable circle 
 which comprises all of which we know, which 
 sweeps about us in the misty remoteness of 
 the milky way, and which in all human lan- 
 guage seems least remotely hinted at in that 
 old oath "by the splendor of God!" Here our 
 scale ends, for very lack of human faculties 
 for comprehending more, just as it terminated 
 at the bottom because of a similar want of 
 means for apprehending less, and perhaps, in 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 either direction, for no other reason whatso- 
 ever. Grafted upon the inorganic, like a 
 branch upon a tree, runs the parallel scale of 
 life in protoplasm, in cell, in individual. The 
 great biological trunk divides into botany and 
 zoology, and the latter climbs from protozoon 
 to mollusk, to articulate, to vertebrate, to 
 mammal, to man that single blossom of the 
 tree of life, the birth for which all things from 
 the beginning have been in labor, the crown 
 and glory of the cosmic plan. 
 
 In the light of such a philosophy, the won- 
 derful analogies and parallelisms running 
 through the whole universe may turn out to 
 be more than accidental resemblances; and 
 experiences which have been vouchsafed to 
 the poet, the seer or the prophet, and regarded 
 by the scientist as without the pale of real 
 knowledge may attain recognition as glimpses 
 of rarely-seen portions of the seamless web of 
 truth. If all the protean forms of matter are 
 merely variants of a universal form; if all 
 forces are capable of identification with some 
 universal force; if matter itself is but a form 
 
 409 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 of force; if all motions are but the resultants 
 of attractions and repulsions among similar 
 units; if all states of being are mere evi- 
 dences of equilibrium of stresses running 
 through a universal medium; then we may, 
 and it seems we should, expect, with increas- 
 ing knowledge, multiplying evidences of this 
 all-pervading kinship in things animate and 
 inanimate. Spencer says that evolution is the 
 integration of matter and the dissipation of 
 motion, in a change from an indefinite, in- 
 coherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
 heterogeneity and the world smiles, and 
 mostly fails to understand. Emerson says in 
 his "Brahma": 
 
 "If the red slayer think he slays, 
 
 Or if the slain think he is slain, 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 I keep, and pass, and turn again." 
 
 And the world smiles and mostly fails to 
 comprehend. But when we once reach the cen- 
 ter to which all ways converge, so that we 
 may look at once down all the avenues of 
 thought, we may see that the words of the 
 
 410 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 transcendentalist are at least as exact and true 
 as those of the synthetic philosopher. We 
 may be able to see that the atoms in the crys- 
 tals on the boy's sleeve, ranging themselves in 
 lines of perfection, are acting in obedience to 
 the same laws that seek to express themselves 
 in human institutions, just as, 
 
 "The very law that moulds a tear, 
 
 And bids it trickle from its source, 
 That law preserves the world a sphere, 
 And guides the planets in their course." 
 
 However far short of comprehension of 
 these basic relationships we may fall, how- 
 ever lacking may be pronounced even the evi- 
 dence of their existence, there seems to me to 
 be deep social significance in the fact that all 
 through the universe runs the law that beauty 
 and perfection, which are other names for or- 
 der, are found in the forms to which all mat- 
 ter and force, by the very nature of things, 
 strongly tend. We see this so plainly in the 
 bodily organs and constitution of animals and 
 plants that the mention of it is a truism. It 
 appears still more beautifully, if possible, in 
 
 411 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 those congeries of the social animals in which 
 mutual help and cooperation have been 
 evolved as the basic rule of successful collect- 
 ive life. And when we descend again to the 
 snowflake on the sleeve we find the same law 
 decreeing order and beauty in the relations to 
 one another of atoms, proof of the very exist- 
 ence of which, while revealed to the intellect 
 is denied as evidence to the senses. How then 
 can there be any who, while admiring the pol- 
 ity of the ant-heap and praising the economy 
 of the bee-hive, while noting with pleasure 
 the fact that the atoms of lead and carbon and 
 iron, if free to do so, will unerringly assume 
 relations with one another full of order and 
 beauty, yet deny that there can be any natural 
 condition of human society in which every 
 member would be in right relationship to 
 every other member, and to the whole, and in 
 which the total effect might be a state of jus- 
 tice, of happiness, of order and of beauty? 
 
 I have spoken of the futilities and frustra- 
 tions of human endeavor and of collective hu- 
 man life, and of the conflicts and confusions 
 
 412 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 which mar the social plan. While there is 
 authority for rating man a little lower than 
 the angels, there is woeful reason for confess- 
 ing that whole races seem but little higher 
 than the brute. In such, the compulsion of 
 law toward more perfect order, toward the 
 social crystal, is felt, but it is weak, and its 
 results pitifully imperfect. True, the tribe is 
 formed an aggregation of social atoms, mu- 
 tually aidful on certain sordid and circum- 
 scribed lines, but destructive of other tribes, 
 and inwardly full of "flint and flaw." Other 
 races of us there are bound by tradition and 
 superstition, prone beneath the 'rule of men 
 like themselves, the atoms crowded and jum- 
 bled together, their free path restricted, the 
 vibrations of individual initiative so feeble 
 that we despair of their state for its very lack 
 of life. 
 
 In other races, like our own, we note with 
 hopefulness the vibrant life of the individ- 
 ual, the enormous energy of the mass. The 
 atom has a greater free-path range, and one 
 might almost expect the formation of the so- 
 
 413 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 cial crystal. But we see at work also the same 
 influences which mar the impulse toward per- 
 fection in the lower races. Here, too, is super- 
 stition, and the despotic rule of man over man. 
 The same quality which made tribe destruc- 
 tive of tribe, here makes the great nation de- 
 structive of the small, and fills society with the 
 anti-social element of militarism. In order 
 that these complex units, men and women, may 
 continue to exist, they must separate from the 
 rest of the material universe those things which 
 preserve the individual food, clothing and 
 shelter. In this highest society, some produce 
 more than they need and others produce noth- 
 ing at all. Some of these latter are idlers be- 
 cause they are denied access to the material 
 universe from which produce comes, and 
 therefore can not be producers ; others, because 
 by certain strange conventions they are given 
 control of the face of nature, and can force 
 their fellows to produce for them. These 
 things make for disorders, imperfections and 
 frustrations, and the social crystal fails to 
 form. 
 
 414 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 Shall we, therefore, despair of perfection 
 coming out of the Nazareth of human insti- 
 tutions? By all means no. Here is a green 
 and stagnant pool, its waters full of the 
 poached filth of the herd and the sty. Yet, we 
 do not despair of the water; for we know that 
 under right conditions its molecules will yield 
 to law, and in snow or frost we see it purified 
 and perfected. Here is a street of clay, a bed 
 of horrible mire, repulsive to the eye and 
 treacherous to the foot. But yonder in that 
 piece of jewelry is the same clay in the form 
 in which emancipated clay chooses to exist, 
 shining in all the hues of the rainbow, an opal. 
 In the soot which fills the air, we recognize 
 some kinship with the snowflakes with which 
 it sometimes mingles only the soot is contam- 
 inative, smutchy, befouling. Yet, but give 
 the soot opportunity, too, and see what it does : 
 that monarch of jewels, the diamond, that thing 
 of fire and radiance, the gem for which wars 
 have been fought and crowns lost, so precious 
 that such words as "Kohinoor" and "moon- 
 stone" thrill us like poems the diamond is 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 only soot behaving naturally. The slum is the 
 rotting pool of society* the sordid life of farm 
 and shop and church, its bed of miry clay the 
 realm of counting-room and syndicate and 
 parliament and congress its contaminative 
 soot, but unless the reign of law and order and 
 perfection ceases in human society, we should 
 believe in its capacity to purge itself of evil 
 and realine its units in those institutions which 
 shall be the snowflakes, the opals, the diamonds 
 of racial life. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that crystals 
 are formed by reason of very simple atomic 
 facts. Their shapes are manifold and won- 
 derful, but it seems certain that lead sulphide 
 crystallizes into a cube, water into a star or 
 cross, and other substances into other forms 
 (which may almost be termed designs) be- 
 cause of inherent necessities, just as the bee 
 constructs its wonderful hexagonal cells be- 
 cause the insect's very nature and form for- 
 bid its making any other. So the social crys- 
 tal must grow out of the simplest and most ob- 
 vious relationships, tendencies and needs of 
 
 416 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 life. These are such things as the union of 
 men and women in race preservation and in 
 the making of a living family relations and 
 industrial relations. 
 
 It must be when carbon undertakes to or- 
 ganize itself into a diamond that the birth of 
 the gem takes place in the coming together of 
 the smallest possible number of free atoms 
 which can assume harmonious relations with 
 each other. Its subsequent history is but 
 growth. So it must be that the true marriage 
 of a free man and a free woman ought, under 
 proper conditions, to have a similar signifi- 
 cance in the formation of social groups. Let 
 all human relations be conceived as dissolved 
 and the human race disseminated through 
 some medium in which it could exist and 
 freely move as the molecules and ions of a salt 
 float in a solution, and the tendency toward 
 organization would first manifest itself in 
 marriage and the founding of families. The 
 first family may not be a crystal, but the first 
 social crystal seems certain to be a family. As 
 families are ordinarily formed, by chance- 
 
 417 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 made and conventional marriages, there is no 
 doubt much in them of the mud and soot of 
 imperfection; but so much of the crystalline 
 as society displays is to be found in the family 
 group or traceable to its influence. 
 
 Second only to this in determinative force 
 upon social groups, and perhaps of primary 
 importance after the first stages of social de- 
 velopment, are economic and industrial fac- 
 tors. The first necessity of man is to make a 
 living. In the beginning, the family group is 
 also an economic one; but when tasks of mag- 
 nitude are undertaken, when commerce and 
 division of labor arise, and especially when 
 the machine enters into the problem of pro- 
 duction as an important factor, the family 
 ceases jto dominate the industrial field, the 
 union of people in industrial groups rises to 
 first place. 
 
 Is the gathering together of human atoms in 
 the factories and shops of to-day social dia- 
 monds or social soot? One answ r er only can be 
 given to this question. The social crystal is 
 absent from our industrial life, and the trod- 
 
 418 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 den clay of the pit of the labor market, foul 
 with tyranny, oppression and vice is in its 
 place. The units of which the masses are 
 made up are crowded together without refer- 
 ence to their inward fitness or their real qual- 
 ities of manhood or womanhood. Therefore 
 there is no harmony or order, except an en- 
 forced order like that in welded iron. The 
 atoms are thrust into place by the hammer of 
 necessity, and the gracious compulsion of in- 
 ner tendencies, or spiritual and moral forces 
 has small opportunity to do its beneficent work. 
 The atom of which the physicist speaks 
 must be regarded, in the light of the new 
 knowledge, as very complex, and made up of 
 myriads of electrons ; yet in its outward rela- 
 tions it seems a very simple thing, so much so 
 that many have supposed it to be a vortex like 
 the ring of smoke from the smoke-stack of an 
 engine, which, we know, has certain attrac- 
 tions toward, and repulsions from, other like 
 and similar rings, and which, once set up in the 
 frictionless ether, would be eternal in dura- 
 tion. 
 
 419 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 But the social atom is that most complex of 
 all known things, the human being. The at- 
 tractions, repulsions and stresses which act and 
 react among the units of society are so mul- 
 titudinous that we fail to understand them, 
 even when they are laid before us in all the 
 glare of the light of the most recent history 
 as in the present political campaign or the last 
 war. The simplest social phenomenon is com- 
 plex; and as society moves on this complexity 
 increases; for in human progress there is a 
 change to a state in which each social unit is 
 more varied in attributes and functions, and 
 in which there are more sorts of units than in 
 former states a change toward a definite, co- 
 herent heterogeneity. It is not to be presumed 
 that the human intellect will ever be able to 
 formulate any set scheme by which social 
 groups may be arranged, without violation of 
 that complex nature which is beyond compre- 
 hension; yet the difference between man and 
 other social beings is found in his intellect 
 bees and ants and marmots, by the compulsion 
 of unreasoning instinct, live collective lives 
 
 420 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 which command our admiration; but human 
 society depends for its success or failure upon 
 the moral and intellectual strength and prog- 
 ress of the social units. Man must work out 
 his own salvation, individual and collective, 
 using his intellect as the means and guide in 
 so doing. The world is full of problems for 
 him the greatest of them himself; and that 
 branch of the inquiry which has for its object 
 the finding of the right way of collective life 
 has been the one from which he has ever fallen 
 back most baffled. History is a record of hu- 
 man endeavor like that which the sphygmo- 
 graph makes of the pulse the picture of a 
 weltering rise and fall. Out of the unmapped 
 gloom comes a tribe of barbarians strong in 
 individual vigor and righteousness. The 
 tribe becomes a nation. Arts and sciences 
 spring up; and then comes decay resulting 
 from failure to find the right way of collec- 
 tive life. Babylon, Assyria, Medo-Persia, 
 Egypt, Greece, Rome they all went the same 
 way; and along the same worn path we may 
 hear the footsteps of the Caucasian civiliza- 
 
 421 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tion of Europe and America of to-day. Man 
 has not yet learned how men may live together 
 on terms of justice the terms which will be 
 found in accordance with nature when her 
 full law is read. 
 
 Just now it was said that it is not to be pre- 
 sumed that the human intellect will ever be 
 able to formulate any set scheme by which 
 social groups may be arranged without viola- 
 tion of that complex nature which is beyond 
 comprehension. It is not to be inferred from 
 this that the case is to be regarded as hopeless, 
 or that the remedy is not to be found by and 
 through man's intellect. It must be true that 
 social salvation must come through the work- 
 ing of human intelligence; but not by any 
 such "formulated scheme". Intellect may sup- 
 ply conditions for a rose garden ; but the rose 
 must bloom by the action of forces too subtle 
 for the mind. In all man's mastery of nature, 
 he studies principles and supplies conditions; 
 but into the arcana of nature, he can not pene- 
 trate, and in her labors, her hand he can not 
 force. He must not forget that he himself is 
 
 422 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 but a bit of nature, and that the formation of 
 a perfect human society, like the making of 
 a perfect flower, must be nature's work, not 
 man's. He must study principles and supply 
 conditions in the one case as in the other, and 
 faith and confidence are justified that when 
 this has been done, universal and immutable 
 law will do the rest. 
 
 He must study principles and supply condi- 
 tions in the human garden as in the rose gar- 
 den; and first among principles he must know 
 that nature's operations must be along her own 
 lines, and that her hand must not be forced. 
 Once there was a man, the beating of whose 
 heart was under the control of his will ; but he 
 controlled it to his own undoing, and died. 
 Man is not wise enough to direct the diges- 
 tion of his own food, were it confided to his 
 wisdom, or the supply of air to his lungs, or 
 to manage any other of his bodily functions. 
 Neither is society wise enough to direct mil- 
 lions of things relating to the manner of 
 living or working or thinking or speaking 
 of its members. There are involuntary 
 
 423 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 muscles, and nervous reflexes, and mysteri- 
 ous flows of force to which the vital opera- 
 tions of the body politic must be confided, as 
 well as similar things in the physical body, and 
 for the same reason there is no collective in- 
 telligence capable of controlling or even com- 
 prehending these operations. Therefore, we 
 see all civilizations breaking down in the abuse 
 of the collective will, exercised in the direction 
 of the taking away of the liberty of the indi- 
 vidual. The crystal on the boy's sleeve could 
 form only by the free action of free molecules. 
 The diamond was formed ages ago when the 
 conditions were such as to set the carbon atoms 
 free; deprived of liberty, they form soot or 
 coal. Sociologically, we are nearing to or de- 
 parting from conditions making possible the 
 formation of perfect social groups, just in pro- 
 portion as we approximate to the state when 
 every human atom shall possess perfect lib- 
 erty. 
 
 And what is liberty? Here, I think, we need 
 suffer from no lack of knowledge ; for liberty 
 has ever been the star by which great souls 
 
 424 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 have steered their courses, and to its compre- 
 hension the greatest minds have striven. 
 
 "Ye shall know the truth," said Jesus, "and 
 the truth shall make you free." 
 
 "By the law of equal freedom," says Spen- 
 cer, "every man has the right to do whatever 
 he wills, provided that he does not thereby in- 
 fringe the equal liberty of another." 
 
 "Do not unto another," says Confucius, 
 "that which you would not have another do to 
 you." 
 
 "Whatsoever ye would that men should do 
 to you," says Jesus, "do ye even so to them." 
 
 All these utterances are different statements 
 of the same truth, the essential righteousness, 
 beneficence, naturalness and necessity of lib- 
 erty. 
 
 There is a widespread belief or notion that 
 liberty was enjoyed by primitive man, and has 
 been lost. This is an error founded upon an 
 inadequate conception of the nature of liberty. 
 Solitude is not liberty: it is deprivation. The 
 first man, if such a creature can be imagined, 
 never, therefore, possessed liberty. Liberty 
 
 425 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 connotes, not only internal relations, but ex- 
 ternal ones. Association is as essential to hu- 
 man liberty as individuation; and man can 
 never enjoy liberty except through society. 
 The human atom has right relations liberty 
 only when its path is bounded by harmoni- 
 ous influences emanating from its fellows. 
 These influences being natural that is, just 
 and righteous the social atoms will, under 
 their guidance, of their own accord and by 
 virtue of their natural desires, form the or- 
 derly groups which will tend to a perfect 
 society. 
 
 Such liberty is not to be attained in the ab- 
 sence of such intellectual development as to 
 make possible the placing of society under the 
 control of factors capable of recognizing the 
 need and essential importance of it. There is 
 good reason to hope that the races most highly 
 developed have now reached this stage. Such 
 being the case, the question arises as to whether 
 any part of the race has yet realized such lib- 
 erty in its institutions. This question must be 
 answered in the negative. The most that can 
 
 426 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 be affirmed is, that the struggle for liberty has 
 begun, and that an adequate conception and 
 definition of it has been worked out and is 
 slowly impressing itself upon the more intel- 
 lectual portions of the more intellectual races. 
 In people of the European type, religious free- 
 dom was at one time regarded as a sufficient 
 realization of liberty ; but when and where that 
 was secured, much yet remained to do. Then 
 civil liberty seemed the one thing needful ; but 
 in many countries an almost perfect condition 
 of civil liberty exists, bringing only slight 
 amelioration, if any. Government by popular 
 vote is essential to liberty; but in nations like 
 ours almost half the adult population, and in 
 some nearly all of it, have their rights in this 
 regard, and still the right condition of society 
 as to social adjustments is unattained. Some 
 further step is demanded for the conquest of 
 freedom. 
 
 One further step and then freedom! Not 
 alone freedom from king, from inquisitor, 
 from suppression of thought, from civil dis- 
 franchisement; but freedom from the burden 
 
 427 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 of labor without land, of travel and commerce 
 without highways, from the hard necessity of 
 asking for employment of other men or going 
 workless. This will be liberty indeed, liberty 
 hitherto unknown in civilization. This is the 
 one step further which democracy must take, 
 the impulse and power to take which is the 
 prize of this last great battle of civilization, 
 the fight which all past civilizations have lost. 
 To him who, believing in liberty as society's 
 only salvation, sees with what meager measure 
 it has been meted to man by even the best of 
 human institutions, the thought that we are so 
 near to the crisis of this struggle, and that the 
 day is so full of promise, comes charged with 
 mystery, with sublimity and with hope. 
 
 Go to that desert which has been an arid 
 waste since before the first clod of the Nile Val- 
 ley was stirred by plow or shell or sharpened 
 wood, and know that the dust simoom-driven 
 over its immemorial solitudes once was man. 
 Delve below Troy, and Ilion under Ilion is 
 found, since the burying of which a hundred 
 Homers may have sung and been forgotten. 
 
 428 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 We may look out through the spaces between 
 the constellations and find velvet deeps be- 
 yond in which no star appears; for we peer 
 out past the bounds of the stellar universe it- 
 self. But to the deeps of time comprised in 
 our racial life we seem to find no limits. Frag- 
 ments of forgotten peoples haunt remote re- 
 gions; beneath the black mold of newly-dis- 
 covered tropical forests crumble the walls of 
 fabrics builded by races whom the ancient 
 muse of history never dreamed. Dimmer and 
 dimmer grow the traces, but year by year we 
 find instrumentalities for reading them, until 
 those civilizations which we once thought old- 
 est now seem young compared with those 
 whose vanishing shadows throng the perspec- 
 tive drawn for us by the newer knowledge, 
 faint ghosts of peoples forgotten before the 
 oldest traditions of eld were known. 
 
 The centuries lengthen into millenniums 
 filled with racial struggle and endeavor and 
 throe, with progress and achievement, and 
 with universal failure at last. The right way 
 of collective life was never found, and still re- 
 
 429 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 mains to be traced out. It is only yesterday 
 that men began consciously to search for it in 
 their Platos' Republics, their Marxs' Das 
 Kapitah; Their Mores' Utopias; their Bel- 
 lamys' Looking Backwards, their Georges' 
 Progress and Poverties, tentative designs of 
 the ultimate social order, profiles of the first 
 surveys of the right way. 
 
 The fact that this new upward step in prog- 
 ress, to which our efforts to democratize our 
 institutions are only the prelude and prepara- 
 tion, is a step so transcendently vital in 5m- 
 porance, and has for so long proven beyond 
 the intellectual reach of the race, invests it 
 with mystery and awe and inspires the thought 
 that our search for it must be among the com- 
 plexities and subtleties of some realm of 
 thought now beyond our ken. It is thus that 
 the helpless conviction comes so widely to pre- 
 vail that ages of race development must pre- 
 cede its accomplishment. The hopeless con- 
 viction, I say, because history shows that prog- 
 ress stops, and civilization dies of failure to 
 
 430 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 find this way, before any such race develop- 
 ment can take place. 
 
 How much higher is the race now, in the 
 power to master such subtleties and complexi- 
 ties, than in the days of Job or Moses or Zo- 
 roaster I If any higher at all, the progress is so 
 small as to be imperceptible. The only thing 
 to be said in favor of our age is, perhaps, that 
 it has a larger proportion of persons in whom 
 latent power is developed; and that we have 
 accumulated a great fund of knowledge, 
 handed down from generation to generation, 
 and increasing in our hands by the compound 
 interest of its own advantages, but the posses- 
 sion of which proves nothing as to inherent 
 racial capacity. The Greeks of Plato's time 
 were entirely capable as far as can be seen, 
 of comprehending all our modern knowledge, 
 if it could have been given them as it has been 
 given, for instance, to the Japanese, ready- 
 prepared and predigested. If the solving of 
 the crucial problem of progress calls for a 
 race development much higher than that of 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 the civilizations which have failed, then is our 
 condition hopeless? 
 
 Nothing remains to be tried except the free- 
 dom of the social atoms to form the social crys- 
 tal, through real democracy. We have reached 
 this knowledge by a process of elimination 
 which has strewn the road of history with dead 
 civilizations. The fateful forward and up- 
 ward step must be a thing so simple that it may 
 be taken by the intelligent decision of the com- 
 mon man through such democratic institutions 
 as he now has, by means of such intellectual 
 capacity as he now possesses, and such racial 
 instincts and spiritual gifts as he has now at- 
 tained, aided by his heritage of a great and 
 growing fund of knowledge. The great minds 
 may lead, but, in racial movements, only when 
 and where the common minds have wisdom to 
 give the commission of leadership. The march 
 must be made in accordance with the enlight- 
 ened choice, not of Platos and Bacons, but of 
 the masses both men and women. Therefore, 
 he who looks for a solution of this unguessed 
 riddle, should expect to find it, not in the in- 
 
 432 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 tricacies of some labyrinthine and factitious 
 social system, but in the relations with social 
 organization of some simple and obvious truth, 
 and clothed in that simplicity which all may 
 comprehend. 
 
 Unless it comes thus it can never come at 
 all; for no collectivity is ever wiser than the 
 thoughts and instincts average of its members. 
 Unless it comes thus, there can never be a 
 reign of justice and of brotherhood, or a civil- 
 ization not foredoomed to failure. 
 
 When the achievement comes, it may seem 
 to many prosaic and even trivial. It probably 
 will so come. Watching the movement of the 
 kettle's lid is a prosaic and trivial thing, but 
 when a Watt did it, it led to steam and elec- 
 tricity and transformed the habits and modes 
 of living of a world. It was a thing of more 
 real sublimity than the winning of Austerlitz 
 or the losing of Waterloo. To some it may 
 seem an anticlimax when it is said that this 
 one upward step necessary to the complete ul- 
 timate triumph of justice, and the entrance of 
 the race upon the long-sought right way of 
 
 433 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 collective life, will have been taken when we 
 shall have advanced to a state of industrial 
 liberty. Yet the statement is only another way 
 of saying that the body's demands are impera- 
 tive, while the soul's can wait; or that before 
 man can fix his eyes upon the heavens he must 
 be freed from the compulsion which rivets his 
 gaze upon the muck-rake of unrequited toil. 
 
 No one who has thought much upon the 
 condition of the people of the world here or 
 abroad can be startled by the implication that 
 industrial liberty is still unattained. The 
 crude device of chattel slavery is now almost 
 everywhere abolished; but that servitude 
 much more universal than it ever was has 
 taken its place, can not be successfully denied. 
 Labor is enormously increased in efficiency as 
 compared with the past; but this increase re- 
 sults mainly io augmented power and wealth 
 to certain privileged classes, mostly non-pro- 
 ductive, rather than in better conditions among 
 the people as a whole. The one conspicuous 
 shortcoming in our progress is our failure to 
 find a way of relieving the few of the blight of 
 
 434 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 being forced by social maladjustments to rob 
 the many, and the many of the blight of being 
 robbed. 
 
 No man being robbed can be free; and no 
 man being free can be robbed. Industrial rob- 
 bery must cease with the incoming of indus- 
 trial liberty. No worker can be industrially 
 free who must buy access to the earth's surface 
 of some other man. This is in the nature of the 
 case the basis of servitude. Some change in in- 
 stitutions must be effected by which the right 
 of every person to the use of the earth shall be 
 recognized and harmonized with that assur- 
 ance of permanent and exclusive private pos- 
 session of lands which is necessary to industry 
 and improvement. When man once sets him- 
 self to the accomplishment of this change, he 
 will, happily, find the way laid out in every de- 
 tail by the pioneers of thought There is no 
 need of discovery here, nothing but the accept- 
 ance of discovered truth. 
 
 This upward step will free production from 
 the fetters of landlordism and no one who 
 has studied human history ought to be igno- 
 
 435 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 rant of the fact that upon landlordism has been 
 based every aristocracy in history, which had 
 enough of vitality to become hereditary, or to 
 plunder the masses in any broad and effective 
 way. 
 
 As production is in large part made up of 
 transportation, the reduction of the great high- 
 ways of the present and future to the posses- 
 sion of the people, and the recognition of the 
 equal right of every man to their use for travel 
 and shipment of goods, are surely essential. 
 There seems to me to be good reason to believe 
 that when we shall have found the way of jus- 
 tice in dealing with land and highways, we 
 shall have solved the question of industrial 
 liberty. This much, at least, is certain: the lib- 
 erty of the social unit, which is essential to the 
 formation of the ideal social group, can not 
 subsist in the absence of justice in land and 
 transportation. 
 
 With the striking off of these two fetters, 
 there seems to be every reason to believe that 
 the body of man would be at last emancipated, 
 and that industrial slavery would pass away; 
 
 436 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 and that if there be any other cords binding it, 
 they would be burst asunder inevitably by the 
 impulse to get rid of these two. No one can be 
 unaware of the deep import of this statement, 
 if it be true. It means that we are actually in 
 sight of the abolition of poverty not only as 
 a possibility, but as a condition which practi- 
 cal statesmen may hopefully strive to attain for 
 this generation, by practical methods. It 
 means that society, being freed from the fear 
 of want, will rapidly lose that all-pervading 
 greed which is another phase of that fear; for 
 neither men nor animals ever hoard except 
 under the compulsion of tendencies, either in- 
 stinctive or mental, imparted by racial or in- 
 dividual experience of deprivation and need. 
 It denies the often-repeated assertion of the 
 necessity of a precedent change in human na- 
 ture in order that these things may come 
 about; for such a revolution requires changes 
 in institutions only. And, unless the freedom 
 and prosperity thus attained are to be self- 
 limited by their own consequences, it implies, 
 that with the advent of universal plenty will 
 
 437 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 come a development of the individual and a 
 state of general culture, such as we now see in 
 the affluent and intellectual classes, in which 
 that equilibrium of births and deaths will be 
 brought about which Spencer describes as the 
 ultimate result of race development. It would 
 seem in the light of our own national experi- 
 ence in the formation, in the course of two or 
 three generations, of just such affluent and in- 
 tellectual classes from a poverty-stricken 
 peasantry under the influence of a certain de- 
 gree of industrial freedom, that, in the long 
 ages which must elapse before over-popula- 
 tion can possibly arise, except, perhaps, in the 
 teeming Orient, we may confidently expect 
 that the state of individual development and 
 general culture necessary to such an equilibri- 
 um, will inevitably take place. It is the nat- 
 ural, the inevitable result of mental develop- 
 ment. It is the manifestation in the field of 
 humanity and intellect, of the universal bio- 
 logical truth, that the complete and unchecked 
 development of the individual is accompanied 
 by a decrease in fecundity. 
 
 438 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 Nothing, therefore, beyond steps the neces- 
 sity for which is already recognized in the 
 racial consciousness, and for the taking of 
 which the human mind has already made 
 plans, seems essential, in order that the social 
 atom may be set free, and that the formation 
 of the perfect social crystal may begin. Does 
 this mean that we are on the verge of the fa- 
 bled millennium! Not unless man's conquest 
 for every man of the mere brute needs of food, 
 shelter and clothing constitutes such a mil- 
 lennium: and in the light of the progress 
 toward the subjugation of nature already 
 made, and the vast and accelerating increase 
 of the efficiency of labor in the production of 
 wealth, the thought that there is anything vi- 
 sionary or unattainable in this conquest seems 
 absolutely inadmissible. But if, as the history 
 of civilization proclaims it, the satisfaction of 
 man's bodily wants marks only a point of de- 
 parture for real progress along spiritual and 
 intellectual lines, then the solution of the la- 
 bor question, the abolition of poverty, the uni- 
 versal attainment to a "free and unfearing" 
 
 439 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 life, must be regarded as nothing but the clear- 
 ing of the ground and the opening of the way. 
 We shall have free man, but man with all the 
 vices, all the follies, all the limitations which 
 have ever beset him ; but he will be upon the 
 high road leading in the right direction. The 
 way will open freely before him, a magnificent 
 and enchanting way, the way which seers and 
 prophets and poets have seen and trod in the 
 spirit, and which, at last, will be his to tread; 
 but it will be a long way. For the formation 
 of the social crystal like the making of that 
 in the inorganic world, the element of time is 
 an essential factor. 
 
 And here again our parallel seems in large 
 measure to hold good. Yet one need not look 
 for the illustration to the many-faceted geode 
 only, with its eonian age, and its symmetrical 
 jewels formed with geologic slowness by 
 molecule upon molecule deposited one by one 
 as the centuries rolled by. The field of crys- 
 tallization furnishes more optimistic analo- 
 gies. Sometimes a chemical solution will stand 
 in its containing vessel with every condition 
 
 440 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 apparently favorable to the formation of the 
 crystal, which, for some reason, fails to take 
 place. But drop into it the smallest crystal of 
 the same substance, and the good example is 
 followed almost instantly by the suspended 
 molecules, and at once the atomic society is 
 reorganized. Sometimes a similar effect may 
 be produced by a sudden jar or shock, as when 
 the spicules of ice dart across a tub of freezing 
 water, as the result of a blow upon the tub. 
 Perhaps the visit of Perry to Japan was a blow 
 upon the tub, in a way. It may be that in most 
 civilized nations a shock of some sort to exist- 
 ing institutions may be required to set the 
 molecular forces in motion. But one is led to 
 think that the long-delayed reorganization 
 will be more apt to evolve by the benign con- 
 tagion of some successful sociological or gov- 
 ernmental experiment, the knowledge of 
 which will be spread abroad by the press the 
 precipitating crystal dropped into the satu- 
 rated solution of society. 
 
 To the question which asks just what will 
 take place when such a social evolution results 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 in social revolution, no definite answer need 
 be attempted. In a state of obedience to the 
 law of equal freedom, that which maintains it- 
 self must inevitably be in harmony with uni- 
 versal law, and therefore just, right and salu- 
 tary; and all else will pass away of its own im- 
 perfection. The diseases of the body politic, 
 like those of the physical body may most hope- 
 fully be treated by supplying the conditions 
 which will allow nature to take its course. We 
 may in both cases, however, anticipate some of 
 the directions in which changes will take 
 place. 
 
 Inasmuch as the most obvious maladjust- 
 ments in society are found in the field of eco- 
 nomics, it is here that we may expect the most 
 marked and immediate innovations when the 
 truer alinements of social atoms begin to mani- 
 fest themselves. Public issues leading up to 
 them will be joined on questions of the proper 
 functions of government between collectiv- 
 ism and individualism, as applied to specific 
 matters. Under such conditions, the present 
 tendency toward militarism and the building 
 
 442 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 up of empires must surely be checked and 
 turned back by the fact of political activities 
 expending themselves upon internal affairs. 
 Foreign relations, based as they are upon in- 
 ternational hostilities and jealousies, must be 
 transformed, if not greatly reduced in impor- 
 tance, by the growth of political parties of in- 
 ternational scope, some of which are already 
 in existence. Wars will be impossible between 
 democracies in which economic issues of the 
 basic sort are being fought out as witness the 
 attitude of the socialists in Japan and Russia 
 toward each other while their nations were at 
 war, and the anti-war demonstrations in the 
 present Balkan crisis. The equalization of 
 rights to the land can be accomplished in but 
 one of two ways : land nationalization with a 
 universal leasehold tenure, or the reduction of 
 all ground rents to public ownership through 
 an annual tax on the value of all valuable 
 lands, equal to the annual rental value of the 
 land, exclusive of improvements. 
 
 Under either mode, the revenues of the gov- 
 ernment being derived from ground rents, all 
 
 443 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 reason for tariffs (even tariffs for revenue), 
 for internal revenue imposts, for octroi duties, 
 poll taxes, for licenses, and for personal prop- 
 erty taxes and taxes on improvements would 
 disappear, and with them, the taxes them- 
 selves, and all the complicated governmental 
 machinery for collecting them and for pun- 
 ishing violators of revenue laws. In these 
 ways, governments, local, state and national, 
 would in certain respects be enormously sim- 
 plified. On the other hand the business of 
 the government along the lines of transporta- 
 tion and the transmission of intelligence would 
 be greatly extended. Government would be 
 closely confined to the administration of the 
 collective property to the handling of those 
 things which the law of equal freedom will 
 not leave in the hands of private individuals. 
 
 Transportation would, no doubt, proceed 
 along present lines, but with an emphasis on 
 waterways at least equal to that on railways, 
 through an era of great development. But 
 with a realization of the fact that wise road- 
 building would, by adding to land values, pay 
 
 444 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 for itself in an immediate influx of revenues, 
 the anticipation of a great demand for paved 
 and macadamized roads would result in the 
 increased use of motor-cars for both freight 
 and passenger carriage, and, thus, perhaps, an 
 eventual tendency of transportation back into 
 private hands, and the use of railways and 
 waterways for the heavy and through business 
 only. Under such conditions, cities would 
 spread over greater and greater areas, the 
 slum would cease with the poverty and the 
 pressure of rents which cause it, the flat and 
 apartment-house would become a historic puz- 
 zle, every person desiring them would have his 
 field and garden, and the country road would 
 again become a great artery of traffic. 
 
 The restoration of the land to the people by 
 institutions rendering it unprofitable for any 
 person to hold a site except for the purpose of 
 putting it to its highest use, would make it pos- 
 sible for people to try many experiments 
 which they can not now attempt on account of 
 the price of sites. Cooperative housekeeping, 
 that greatest need of so many women, is one 
 
 445 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 of the most obvious of these. The industrial 
 crystal, its formation rendered possible by free 
 land for factory sites and homes, would take 
 the form of cooperative factories, probably 
 incorporated, in which the shareholders would 
 be the workmen. It seems probable that the 
 corporation, now the oppressor of the com- 
 mon man, will become the favorite form of co- 
 operative organization, permitting as it does, 
 the easy transfer of memberships from hand to 
 hand, and the additional advantage of well- 
 understood duties and liabilities. 
 
 In no field, perhaps, would more radical 
 changes take place than in agriculture. Ten- 
 ant farming would cease absolutely. The 
 tendency would no doubt be to production 
 upon a large scale by voluntarily formed co- 
 operative groups, the members living in vil- 
 lages and thus enjoying the intellectual life of 
 jthe city. It is coming to be known that farm- 
 ing is a business founded upon one of the most 
 abstruse of sciences a whole system of sci- 
 ences, in fact. The cooperative farming com- 
 munity would have its work divided into 
 
 446 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 departments under skilled specialists in agron- 
 omy, animal husbandry and horticulture. One 
 can get a glimpse of this sort of life at any of 
 our great agricultural colleges. Under it pro- 
 duction would be enormously increased, and 
 the cooperative farm would vie with the co- 
 operative factory in ushering in an era of 
 plenty. 
 
 These suggestions are based upon the fact 
 that man is a gregarious animal, and that the 
 solitary life and the solitary mode of produc- 
 tion is unnatural and forced, as well as upon 
 the consideration that it is only by combina- 
 tion of laborers and division of labor that hu- 
 man effort is most productive. That things will 
 turn out in large measure as sketched above 
 can not, it seems to me, be doubted. But how- 
 ever that may be, under freedom attained as it 
 must be by the exercise of the intellect, instinc- 
 tive tendencies, intuitions resting upon bases 
 deeper than reason can comprehend, must 
 bring man at last to the status which is best for 
 him, to the natural status of the cooperative 
 animal, the right way of collective life. Jus- 
 
 447 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 tice in the last' analysis harms no one, and can 
 be opposed to the true interests of no one. 
 Even selfishness, enlightened selfishness, 
 should impel every one to strive for universal 
 justice, which is truth applied to human re- 
 lations. 
 
 We need not discuss, therefore, or much 
 care, whether institutions like the public bath, 
 the government store, or the government fac- 
 tory or free transportation for persons and 
 commodities will continue or come into be- 
 ing, in the better days to come. If democ- 
 racy be a necessary part of the cosmic plan, 
 then every man must become his own king; 
 but we need not discuss the question as to 
 whether this implies his becoming his own 
 priest also. That liberty of every man which 
 leaves every other man equally free, that free- 
 dom which Jesus says comes from knowing the 
 truth, may be trusted as implicitly as we trust 
 the truth of nature which appears in the in- 
 stinct of the cooperating animals, in the 
 wheeling into orderly ranks of the atoms 
 which make the flaming jewel, in the harmony 
 
 448 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 of the spinning spheres which encircle the sun, 
 in the immeasurable sublimities of the revolv- 
 ing world of the stellar universe. All filth is 
 but matter out of place. All evil is but per- 
 verted good. There is no vice which is not 
 virtue turned awry. Once set free the units 
 which make up this muddy world of ours, and 
 when they have floated from their wallow of 
 want and greed and mutual murder, all things 
 must tend more and more to "move to the 
 spheral rhythm of love." 
 
 If mankind could be made to believe these 
 things, the very fact of such belief would make 
 their attainment possible. Never before did 
 the world face such perils as now, since Rome 
 went staggering back from civilization into 
 barbarism. The history of man shows him 
 ever rising to surmount the obstacles of his 
 own ignorance of collective life, and ever fall- 
 ing short in the attempt. He now stands be- 
 fore the old barrier, with the discouragements 
 of many defeats weighing him down. He 
 finds it hard to believe in his own destiny as 
 containing aught of promise. The wise men 
 
 449 
 
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH 
 
 have told him that vice, crime, war, pesti- 
 lence, poverty and famine exist in the nature 
 of things, that they are but human manifesta- 
 tions of the struggle for existence; and have 
 found buttresses for this gospel of gloom in 
 wage-fund theories, Malthusian theories, laws 
 of diminishing returns and false readings of 
 gospels. The dry exhorters of pseudo-religion 
 have listened for the golden clink of coin fall- 
 ing into sacerdotal coffers from the mints 
 wherein men's souls and women's souls and 
 bodies are crushed into profits, and have si- 
 lenced the questionings of their flocks and 
 their own consciences by the blasphemous rep- 
 etition of the text, "The poor ye have always 
 with you," falling as it did from the lips of 
 Him whose gospel was glad tidings, not to the 
 rich, but the poor. 
 
 But now there seems to be a growing change 
 in man's attitude. He comes to the old prob- 
 lem with new knowledge. To those who ask 
 him to bear all burdens here that he may be 
 blest in the next world, he answers, "One 
 world at a time! I live in this world." To him 
 
 450 
 
THE SOCIAL CRYSTAL 
 
 who says that poverty comes from God's laws 
 he answers that a demon might have created a 
 world without provisions for its inhabitants, 
 but a just God, never. To every argument ad- 
 duced from nineteenth century science to 
 prove the inevitableness of these injustices, he 
 brings arguments more scientific for universal 
 peace and plenty. And back of all glimpse the 
 fair vistas of a society which has passed all its 
 dangers by,, in which, man's struggles with 
 man being over, he addresses all his efforts to 
 the struggle with nature, an ennobling contest 
 in which all things, the attractions and repul- 
 sions of atoms, the turning of the sphere, the 
 stars in their courses, shall be in harmony with 
 him and he with them. 
 
 THE END 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, 
 or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: 
 
 Tel. No. 642-3405 
 
 Renewals may be made 4 days prior to date due. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 REC'DLD JIHH671-1PMS t 
 
 PUB end of SUMMER Period jy L g*f 
 
 subject to recall after 
 
 REC'DLD SEP 20^. 4PM 4 ft 
 
 MAP :C| SO 
 
 INTER-LIBRARY 
 LOAN 
 
 LD21A-50m-2,'71 
 (P2001slO)476 A-32 
 
 fr.'f. '. > ' . 
 
 . 
 
 13 f f X V 
 
 LD 21-100jn-8,'34 
 
 

 388701 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY