" A peasant in Brittany or a forester in
Normandy would be scandalized by the extravagant, profligate use of its
patrimony. That it is likely to have at least the 250,000,000 by the year
2100, and with intensive cultivation will be able to support them, is
allowed by estimates of reliable statisticians. Europe had 175,000,000 at
the beginning of the nineteenth century and North America 5,308,000. The
former has somewhat more than doubled its population in the century since;
America has increased hers about twenty times, and the Mississippi Valley
several thousand times. It is not unreasonable to expect the doubling of
the population of that valley in another century and its quadrupling in
two.
Let De Tocqueville make summary of those prideful items in his description
of the valley, embraced by the equator-sloping half of the continent: "It
is upon the whole," he says, "the most magnificent dwelling-place prepared
by God for man's abode"--a "space of 1,341,649 square miles--about six
times that of France"--watered by a river "which, like a god of antiquity,
dispenses both good and evil.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134