Albert Perry Brigham

“ Perhaps, in view of our general influence in the world, we might be glad to have several hundred millions of people, but only if we are so conditioned that our influence would be a boon to other lands. This indeed in itself implies a limit, for we must not be too many to live with freedom and with worthy standards.
We may take ourselves out of the ranks of the enthusiast with a second preliminary question—is a great population probable? ”

“ In Cincinnati, as in Pittsburg, men do business on the low grounds by the river, where offices and mills and shops crowd one another, and the smoke of soft coal hangs as a cloud above. Business hours over, the well-to-do merchants climb out of the grimy town to the top of the bluffs, and there find, in a clearer air and along open and beautiful avenues, their comfortable homes. ”

“ If one rides into Pittsburg by night, he will see something finer than fireworks. The train is likely to whirl him past long rows of fiery ovens in which coal is being made into coke. And in many towns near by, as well as along the rivers by the city itself, the jets of flame will show iron furnaces and steel mills, with grimy workmen moving about in the strange light. ”

“ Let any man traverse the country regions in the eastern states and he will pass innumerable poor and hungry farms, and the greater the natural leanness of the soil, the more sure is he to see the manure-heap leaching, often for the second year, in the farm yard.
In like degree are our resources now wasted through the prevalent methods of sewage disposal. No treachery to the land can be so great as that which sends out into the sea the highly concentrated nitrogenous products which have with toil been wrung from a soil which is becoming poor in capacity for crops. ”

“ At Rochester our traveler crosses the Genesee, and remembers the hardy pioneer who left comfortable old Hagerstown to build a city in the swamp and forest. Colonel Rochester could have had no idea of the fine city he was starting, or of the orchards, nurseries, and wheat fields that would be around it, but he lived long enough to see the flour mills at the falls doing a thriving business. Thus wheat and flour made Rochester as salt made Syracuse, and first the canal and then the great railway took these useful things to market. ”

“ It is not easy to see how Italy maintains her people. Certain reliefs suggest themselves. It is admitted that many Italians exist rather than live; but this must not be said of Rome or Tuscany or the valley of the Po. We allow something for a genial climate which at once gives quick returns from the soil and reduces the need of clothing and fuel. And we may not forget the great sums brought into Italy by travelers and foreign residents, for the winning of whose money Italian arrangements sometimes seem peculiarly effective. ”

“ If the traveler wishes to see the land and learn what men have done in a hundred years, he will leave the train at Knoxville. A carriage or an electric car will carry him between blocks of fine buildings to a modern hotel, where he will find food and bed and places to read, write, rest, or do business, as he likes. Around him is a busy city stretching up and down its many hills. Before long he will wander down to the banks of the Tennessee river and see the boats tied at the wharf, or he will cross the great bridge to the hills beyond and look back over the city. ”

“ 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, raise our wealth per capita, and not "cause two unhappy human beings to live where one lived before." ”

“ Pittsburg is proud of the fact that she handles more tons of freight in a year than any other city in the world. Indeed, the tonnage is greater than that of New York and Chicago taken together.
The old “point” between the rivers is filled with tall buildings. Inclined railways run up the steep bluffs on the further side of each river and lead to the beautiful streets and the homes where many of the people live. For Pittsburg is not all coal and furnaces and smoke, but has fine churches, the great Carnegie Library and Museum, and many schools. ”

“ A further gain can be had on soils already in use by expert management in the direction of proper succession of crops and a thoroughness of occupation and tillage often seen in Italy, France or Belgium, but only exceptionally found as yet in our own land. We need not only better directed labor, but more labor on the same soil. In the regions of sufficient rainfall, which comprise nearly the eastern half of the United States, we shall find, or did find in 1900, seven men per average square mile, tilling the soil, or one to each lot of 91.4 acres. ”

“ We might wonder whether a town with a name like that would ever grow into a great city. It did not have to try, for it was not long before General St. Clair, who had come there, made fun of the name and insisted upon a new one. He and other officers of the American army had formed a society commemorating their experience in the Revolution, and in honor of the Roman patriot Cincinnatus had called themselves the Order of Cincinnati. St. Clair thought this a good name for the town, and Cincinnati it has been since that time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With such an enormous population, we, like England, could not feed half our mouths, and should have to exchange other products for food. But other lands might not have the surplus in those days, to send to us. And our underground resources might be seriously reduced, if not exhausted, and we could not produce the exchange values. We thus see how fascinating and how futile is the hundred million tendency. Let us divide our total by three, and arrive at a population which we might hope to feed from our own soil, a little under 250,000,000. ”

“ To-day you may, if you choose, pass the mountains without climbing through the gap, for trains go roaring through a tunnel a mile long, while the echo of the screaming whistles rolls along the mountain sides. ”

“ Probably the safest approach is by comparison, for thus we avail ourselves of such experience as has come to our race in different parts of the world. But let us avoid China and Java, even though they seem such available examples of a great population, of high density, with small percentage of exchange and hence almost self-sufficient. But their standards of living—could we, even with our superior skill and progressiveness, take the same resources and support an equal number of people up to American standards of comfort and efficiency? ”

“ We must not forget that off to the west James Robertson had founded a city that is even older than Knoxville. In the great bend of the Cumberland, on its south bank, in northern Tennessee, stands Nashville, as we have already seen.
If we visit a large city in one of the countries of Europe, we are quite likely to be told, or to read in our guidebook, that its history goes back hundreds of years, and any town that was started only a hundred172 years ago would there seem young. But we measure age differently in America, and a town like Nashville, founded in 1780, we think is old indeed. ”