o-day.
The natural limit of population is starvation. The more bread the more
mouths, less bread, fewer people. Europe and the Orient reached the
starvation limit before America was settled. A bad crop meant a famine,
and a famine started a plague. This plague and famine would sweep off
a third of the population, and the rest could then raise food enough to
thrive on. England and Wales have had famines, Ireland has had famines,
France has had famines, Russia has a deadly famine after every bad crop
year, while in India and China famine is a chronic condition.

America has never had a famine. But we are not exempt from famine.
In the year 1816, known as the year of
"eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death," the crops failed throughout
America because of freezing weather all summer long. Little or no food
was raised and the Americans would have perished from famine had it not
been for the wild meat in the woods. The people lived on deer and bear
that winter. To-day if our food supply fails we can not live on venison.
No country is by natural law exempt from famine. Our famine will come
when we fill this country as thickly as men can stand; China and India
have so filled themselves. Famine awaits us when we repeat their folly.
That day will come soon unless we bar the unworthy from our gates.

But cold weather and crop failure are not the only things that could
bring a famine in America. Slacking in production has the same effect as
crop failure. A farmers' strike could bring a famine. A railroad strike
could do the same. Many men advocate a combination farmers' strike
and railroad strike to destroy capital (that is, to destroy the food
supply). Don't get impatient, boys. You shall have your famine, if you
will wait long enough. And the less work you do while you are waiting,
the sooner it will come. Nature is never whipped. Nature will take a
crack at you, if you leave an opening. The generation that went before
you worked ten to fourteen hours a day; they battled face to face with a
raw continent in their fight with Nature. And by their muscle they drove
Nature back and she surrendered. She went down like crumpled Germany,
and she signed a treaty. Hard were the treaty terms our fighting fathers
made with Nature. They took an indemnity. She delivered to them more
houses than her cyclones had destroyed, she furnished them millions of
cattle in place of the wild deer and buffalo. She yielded up her
coal regions to warm them in