rd'--and learn something," he said
triumphantly. "Don't they cooperate pretty well? You can't beat it. This
place is just like an enormous anthill--you know an anthill is nothing
but a nursery. And how about bees? Don't they manage to cooperate and
love one another? as that precious Constable had it. Just show me a
combination of male creatures, bird, bug, or beast, that works as well,
will you? Or one of our masculine countries where the people work
together as well as they do here! I tell you, women are the natural
cooperators, not men!"

Terry had to learn a good many things he did not want to. To go back to
my little analysis of what happened:

They developed all this close inter-service in the interests of their
children. To do the best work they had to specialize, of course; the
children needed spinners and weavers, farmers and gardeners, carpenters
and masons, as well as mothers.

Then came the filling up of the place. When a population multiplies
by five every thirty years it soon reaches the limits of a country,
especially a small one like this. They very soon eliminated all the
grazing cattle--sheep were the last to go, I believe. Also, they worked
out a system of intensive agriculture surpassing anything I ever heard
of, with the very forests all reset with fruit- or nut-bearing trees.

Do what they would, however, there soon came a time when they were
confronted with the problem of "the pressure of population" in an acute
form. There was really crowding, and with it, unavoidably, a decline in
standards.

And how did those women meet it?

Not by a "struggle for existence" which would result in an everlasting
writhing mass of underbred people trying to get ahead of one
another--some few on top, temporarily, many constantly crushed out
underneath, a hopeless substratum of paupers and degenerates, and no
serenity or peace for anyone, no possibility for really noble qualities
among the people at large.

Neither did they start off on predatory excursions to get more land from
somebody else, or to get more food from somebody else, to maintain their
struggling mass.

Not at all. They sat down in council together and thought it out. Very
clear, strong thinkers they were. They said: "With our best endeavors
this country will support about so many people, with the standard of
peace, comfort, health, beauty, and progress we demand. Very well. That
is all the people we will make."

There you have it. You se