ociety who were descendants of one
depraved pair, will not believe that such a propagation of crime
should be permitted. The worthless class should not be allowed to
marry, and the criminals whom the state finds it necessary to confine
in the penitentiary should be permanently deprived of the power of
parentage.

Few ever reflect upon the necessary consequences of the growth of
population. The great wars, famines, and pestilences as in the past
will not be able to keep down population, and where it has free course
under favorable circumstances it doubles in twenty-five or thirty
years. In two centuries more we shall begin to feel a terrible
pressure, and that pressure will be aggravated by the exhaustion of
coal mines, of petroleum, of gas, and of forests. In Great Britain
alone 120,000,000 tons of coal are annually mined.

It may be safely assumed that one thousand to the square mile is about
the limit of population of the world, a limit at which population must
be arrested. Massachusetts is already within less than a century of
its utmost possible limit. It has at this time about 250 to the square
mile, and at the American rate of growth it would reach its utmost
limit by the year 1950, and begin to realize the crush and crisis of a
crowded population, which must either cease to grow or encounter the
horrors of famine and social convulsions arising from the struggle for
life, or the calamities arising from unfortunate seasons which in
China and India have in our own time hurried millions into their
graves.

If Massachusetts is within sixty years of this collision with destiny,
other countries are still nearer the dead line of the coming century.
Italy is parallel with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but Great
Britain and Ireland are considerably further advanced. British India
and the Netherlands are still further advanced, and half a century, if
they had the American ratio of growth, would bring them to their
limit, while Belgium's progress would be arrested in thirty years.

A wise statesmanship would not seek to hurry mankind on to this great
crisis, the results of which have never been foreseen or provided for,
but would realize that the greater the amount of inferior and
demoralized population the more terrible must that crisis be when it
comes--a crisis which can be safely borne only by elevating the entire
population to a higher condition than any nation has ever heretofore
attained.

Calculate as we may