our fingers into the international pie, though we may "take a hand" in world affairs, or "lend a hand" in the League of Nations. The "maw" is a thing we must not get into and we must not hand out money into the "maw" of a political party. "Maw" is something like "pockets." The money goes into the "pockets of politicians" and comes out of the "pockets of the people."

The "fist" has somewhat the same moral value as the "maw." A good man may have something in his hands (or on his hands) but if we say he has it in his fist (equally true) it does not give us the same picture. The wicked uncle always has in his fist the stolen will. Hands may be used effectively in the phrase, "I wash my hands of the whole affair," suggesting dirt, but not stating it.

Thus the movements of the hands: to put, to place, to push, to force, can be craftily used in the craftsmanship of style and as the hand is quicker than the eye (as every prestidigitator knows), so this effect on the reader is produced in some thing the same manner and before he knows it the picture has been formed and the trick has passed by undiscovered. It is easy to say that a bill was "forced" through Congress and very difficult to prove that it was not "forced" through Congress. Certainly there was force of some kind. Movements cannot take place without propulsion. "The bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of the chosen representatives of the people "equally true and equally difficult to disprove.

In closing this brief article which

only "scratches the surface" (oily phrase that suggests much treasure deeper down), I shall quote one example already a classic.

Gladstone, long known as the "Grand Old Man," a phrase which sounded well and was literally true, but did not necessarily mean much since it is no great distinction to be old and since he was grand perhaps chiefly in size and in memory faculty and stubbornness of one-sided purpose, was like all political orators-a master of the oily word. Gladstone's lack of pure intellectual grasp was clearly shown in his incapacity to understand and accept the inevitable advance of science, particularly the doctrine of organic evolution. Yet he was grand in many ways and devoted to what he considered his duty. His moral purpose was always emphasized, but by a slight shifting of words it was possible for his arch opponent Disraeli to smear out the picture. Some one on the Liberal side had risen in Parliament to ask if there was a question in any one's mind concerning the conscience of Mr. Gladstone. Disraeli replied, "There can be no . question about the weight of Mr. Gladstone's conscience, but too often his conscience is not his guide but his accomplice."

Only a small percentage of all the oily words contained in the English language has been given here. A complete collection would make a small book which might be called, "The Handy Book for Lawyers, Orators, Historians, Diplomatsand Others Who Wish to Pervert the Truth."

I

1696 Gregory King, an English pioneer in vital statistics, calculated that England could not support more than twenty-two million people, which number should be reached about the thirty-fifth century "in case the world should last so long." He thought it would take England eighteen centuries to attain this population whereas it needed but a little more than a century and a half. He computed that by 1900 the English should number seven and one third millions; actually there were thirty-two and one half millions by then.

Was King a poor calculator? Not at all; unexpected things had happened. One was the economic revolution of the last 150 years which brought about the quickening of wealth production because of the triumph of the machine, the application of scientific knowledge to agriculture and industry, the development of water-power, steam and electricity in manufacturing and transportation, the expansion of world trade, vast overseas migration leading to the rapid settlement and subdual of great fertile areas in the temperate zone, the diffusion of knowledge, the improvement of government, and the bringing of the tropics with their natural resources under the control of advanced peo

ples. These have not only helped to do away with famines and the lifedestroying wretchedness which often prevailed among the masses, but have opened such vistas of hope that postponement of marriage, religious celibacy, abortion and infanticide are no longer popular means of keeping numbers down.

Until the nineteenth century the vast inherent wealth of the earth had scarcely been touched. Within the last century and a quarter, however, nature has been forced to do more than yield a mere annuity; she has been made to surrender principal as well. The present age is witnessing a whirlwind attack all over the world, upon the slowlyaccumulated resources of forest, field and mine, and, in consequence, an unprecedented increase of human beings. Imagine our plight to-day if such an attack as we are now making upon nature's resources had been launched in the first century instead of the nineteenth and had been continued during the intervening centuries! Rossiter, who has called attention to this process, speaks of "the assault by fast increasing millions upon the stored-up resources of the earth at a rate insuring exhaustion at no very distant date if the drain continues unchecked."

The other great cause of growth in population is our dazzling success in conquering disease since the triumph of the germ theory about fifty years ago. As explained in my last month's article, "Dulling the Scythes of Azrael," the peoples that have gone furthest in public health promotion have cut their mortality to a half. There is so much controversial exaggeration of the extent of birthcontrol that few but vital statisticians and life insurance actuaries realize that in our time the death-rate has been falling faster than the birth-rate, so that most civilized peoples have been increasing as never before. Take the fourteen European countries with trustworthy vital statistics and compare their records for the period 1881-85 with those of the last half decade before the war, 1906-10. In nine of them the mortality fell further than the fertility, so that in 1910 the margin of increase was broader than it had been a quarter of a century earlier, when prudence in the matter of the size of families had given little indication of its presence among the masses.

Thanks to these two revolutions— one economic, the other sanitarythe population of England and Wales doubled in the first half of the nineteenth century and doubled again by 1911. J. O. P. Bland observes that: "Had our forefathers, since the days of William the Conqueror, been in a position to achieve a birth-rate and a death-rate similar to those of England and Wales in the nineteenth century, the present population of this tight little island-without allowing for any contribution from Scotland-would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 millions."

As for the British they have waxed prodigiously. The population of Great Britain in 1712 has been estimated at nine millions. During the eighteenth century, says Rossiter, "Great Britain contributed from this small population the stock which formed the larger part of the white population of the United States in 1790, and which increased by 1900 to approximately thirty-five million souls. In 1801 the population of the United Kingdom was 16,200,000; by 1900 it had increased to forty-one millions besides contributing to the population of the United States and to that of a score of younger colonies. In magni

...

tude there appears to be no parallel in history for this population achievement of the British from 1700 to 1900."

The British on this side of the water-and at the birth of our republic they appear to have been about 91 per cent of all whites here— have not been family slackers. The 4,400,000 whites in the United States in 1800 had multiplied by 1900 to 37,290,000-an eightfold increase in a century. During the last sixteen years we have registered in this country about forty-one million births and twenty-two million deaths. We can rapidly grow without immigration, for we fill each year nearly twice as many cradles as coffins!

Owing partly to their settling such vast lands as North America and Australia, and partly to their early and shrewd use of economic and sanitary discoveries, the Englishspeaking whites of the world have increased nearly eightfold since 1800. At that time they were less than

one eighth of all persons of European descent, now they form more than a fourth.

2

At the peak of the classic GrecoRoman civilization, famines and epidemics, warfare and political massacres, reinforced by a ubiquitous slavery which denied mating and parenthood to countless slaves, discouraged the growth of numbers. At the death of the Emperor Augustus, the whole Roman Empire probably contained not more than fiftyfour million human beings-a tenth fewer than the Japanese to-day. Italy, when she was mistress of the world, had but a sixth of the population she has under Mussolini who asks, "How can Italy with her meager forty millions, count in the face of Germany and Russia?" and urges the addition of twenty millions within the next half-century!

Europe is supposed to have had thirty millions of people at the beginning of the Christian era. In 1700, when it was yet in the handpower stage, it had about eighty millions. In 1757 Voltaire could still say, "It requires very favorable circumstances for a population to grow five per cent in a century.' Then came machinery followed by steam, expansion overseas and empire. By 1800 Europe had 180 million inhabitants, and in the last fifty years its rate of increase has been unexampled; it grew a quarter in the twenty years before the World War. When the Battle of Waterloo was fought, the European blood in the world was represented by 210 million persons. A hundred years later, by 645 million-better than three to one! Keep this rate

of increase up another hundred years and the people of European blood on our planet would approximate two billions!

For at least a century and a half the population of Japan hung around twenty-six to twenty-seven millions. No more could be fed and infanticide was general among the peasants. Then, with Japan's deliberate appropriation of certain coveted elements of Western culture half a century ago, an economic progress began which made it possible for the population to grow without lowering its standard of living. At the same time abortion and infanticide were severely condemned. So So Japan touched last year the sixty million mark and knows not which way to turn to find living room for an additional 800,000 a year.

In tropic lands imperialism has resulted in a herring-like increase. During the last sixty years the people in the tropic colonies and dependencies of the Great Powers added 105 millions—a twelfth of the human family at the beginning of that period. The British went to Egypt in 1882, and now there are seven million more fellāhin than if the cork helmets had never made their appearance along the Nile. In fifty years of French rule the inhabitants of Algeria have doubled. In forty years, thanks to the railways, irrigation works, teagardens, cotton and steel mills and other alien factors injected into Indian economy by the "sun-baked" British, the population of India has grown fifty millions-a fifth. Americans took over the Philippines and in a quarter-century there are five million more humans than if the Filipinos had been left to themselves.

The world's insatiable demand for rubber and tin has caused the inhabitants of the federated Malay states to double their number in twenty years. In half a century of British administration the people of the Straits Settlements have done the same and Jamaica has matched the performance. In sixty years British Guiana has doubled, while Trinidad has quadrupled. But it is the Javanese who hold the record for the mass production of human beings. The five millions there in 1800 have expanded under Dutch control to thirty-seven millions, although Java is only about as large as the State of New York.

Do our imperialists realize that by summoning into existence myriads of blacks and browns as an incident to their making a commercial profit, they are increasing the future pressure upon the white race? British control of the Upper Nile does give Manchester spindles cheap cotton. But in spreading the Nile waters over the desert they are adding millions of Mohammedan "fuzziwuzzies" to the world balance against their own breed. In 1898 we took over Porto Rico when births and deaths there were in equilibrium. Being the world's crack sanitarians we presently cut mortality two fifths, while births rose until they doubled the number of deaths. Population leaped ahead until the island now is, next to Java, the most densely populated agricultural region in the world-nearly 400 to the square mile! Life is getting harder there because they will not limit their families, while disease is no longer allowed to decrease their numbers. There are not jobs enough to go

around, so that local sentiment against the profits reaped by nonresident American capitalists, is rapidly rising.

22

About half of mankind are censusenumerated, so we are probably not far astray in accepting the estimate of 1850 millions as the number of the inhabitants of our globe. Sir George Knibbs, statistician of the Australian Commonwealth, estimates that if during the past, mankind had been increasing at the rate it has increased during the last hundred years, then an Adam and Eve set upon an unpopulated globe about the time of the Battle of Marathon could have been the progenitors of the present population of the world. But if, adown the past, the typical increase had been at the rate of the last five years before the World War

one and one sixth per cent a year then an Adam and Eve as recent as the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, could have populated the world as it is to-day.

In the pre-war period mankind increased at a rate which would double it in sixty years. In other words, as many members may be added to the human family from 1910 to 1970 as in all the 1500 to 2000 generations during which our race has been spreading over this planet! Each day about 100,000 die and 150,000 are born. Each sun sets on 50,000 more. Certainly never before in the life of our race were births fifty per cent above deaths. For this we have to thank the recent developments which have beaten off famine and pestilence.

Doubling in sixty years means that the population will have increased