by fifty million, and Professor A. B. Hart does not hesitate to go up to three hundred and fifty million. We are by no means disposed to dispute all of these figures, but there are considerations which point in the other direction, as for example that the percentage of increase went down in the decades between 1860 and 1900.
We have also the check of advancing civilization. That voluntary restriction follows a higher scale of needs is shown in France, in lesser degree in Great Britain and probably in all lands of advancing culture. Thus there is color for the view that France with her disturbing birth rate has only arrived first at the condition to which all cultivated peoples are moving. Motives of economy and of opportunity for self and children press more strongly as standards rise, and it has recently been urged that even Ireland, with new land laws and with peasant proprietorship, will become more restrictive of population. It seems to be as true with man as in the general field of natural history, that the higher the type the fewer the progeny.
Perhaps also this tendency will fall in with the natural limit of food production. Indeed, the latter will have a controlling causal effect on the former, following the ever-operative law that higher prices or approaching scarcity is accompanied by restriction of population. That which is temporary in the latter case may well be found permanent in the other.
To the present time immigration has been one of the chief sources of our growth. We are already seeing a check of the inflowing current, and this may well become permanent in future years. The restrictive measures of the government count for something. The narrowing of opportunities, as for free land, is another and more powerful factor, and a further consideration of unknown significance is rising in our view, namely, the improvement of conditions and the triumphs of democratic aspiration in the lands from which the foreigner comes. In proportion as life in the old countries becomes endurable, not to say attractive, the fountains of immigration will begin to go dry.
On the other hand, there is a source of increase upon which we may look with full content, reasons, applicable alike to us, which a European authority has assigned, for the increase of European population during the last half century. These reasons are in relation to the lowering of the death rate by diminution of war, by the elimination of epidemics and by better hygiene. These advances would seem to mean more than a lower death rate. Not only are people kept alive, but they are made more productive workers and reasonably, it would seem, may become more prolific as well as better conditioned. Whatever our views of population or progress, it would hardly be prudent to disagree with Mr. Mackaye's proposition that it is not so important to get nitrogen into the soil and raise more food as to make right use of the food we have. We should, he thinks, avoid undue increase of our population,
