COBRESP ONDENCE. 



553 



confusion as mere paltry accidents ? Oh fie, 

 Mr. Grant Alien ! 



One more word, as to the supposed effect 

 of the higher education in deterring girls 

 from marriage. I have been engaged in dis- 

 pensing the higher education to girls for a 

 good many years, and have yet to meet the 

 first one who was the least averse to matri- 

 mony ; on the contrary, to quote from a 

 composition on " Girls," written by a little 

 friend of mine not long ago, " I think it is 

 the nature of girls to have sweethearts, 

 whether they are little or whether they are 

 big." 



The only influence that education can 

 have in " cornering " the matrimonial mar- 

 ket is by making girls more fastidious, and 

 this is not likely to have any practical effect 

 except in the case of a few ugly girls. 

 While I do not doubt that all women are just 

 as willing to look pretty as they are to get 

 married, the " factors of organic evolution," 

 which have taken the place of our old-fash- 

 ioned " providence," have not improved at 

 all upon its methods, but have dealt so un- 

 fairly with a large proportion of the sex 

 that, when told by Mr. Grant Allen that their 

 first business is to look pretty, they feel very 

 much as that philosopher probably does when 

 blandly requested by the photographer to 

 " assume a pleasant expression." 



Now, as marriage means survival of the 

 prettiest, rather than survival of the fittest 

 (unless we take a purely masculine view of 

 the case and assume that the prettiest are the 

 fittest), all the matrimonial plums fall into 

 the laps of the pretty girls, and the ugly 

 ones have no chance at all but to take every- 

 body's leavings. Of course, I know it is 

 very unreasonable for an ugly girl to ask for 

 any of the plums out of life's pudding; but 

 then, women will be unreasonable, to the 

 end of time that is one of the factors of 

 the woman question with which we shall 

 always have to reckon. Moreover, the ugly 

 girl sometimes has the presumption to be 

 exceedingly clever, and feels that she can do 

 much better for herself than marry a scrub- 

 by little clerk on forty dollars a month. 

 Under the old regime, when marriage was 

 the only possible solution for a woman of 

 the problem of life, she had no choice but 

 to take any man she could get; but now 

 she naturally declines to give up a hundred- 

 dollar salary for a fifty-dollar man. I do 

 not pretend to decide the question whether 

 the general good does not demand that 

 she should still be forced to sacrifice her- 

 self in a distasteful marriage, rather than 

 remain single to swell the number of " de- 

 plorable accidents " that so weigh upon 

 Mr. Grant Allen's mind. From a human 

 point of view it is undoubtedly for the gen- 

 eral good that lobsters should be boiled, 

 but we shall hardly get the lobster to look at 

 it in that light. E. F. Andrews. 



Wesleyan College, Macon, Ga., 



December 9, 1SS9. 



DECADENCE OF FAKMING IN ENGLAND. 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



I was very much interested in " The De- 

 cadence of Farming," which you published 

 in November from the pen of Joel Benton. 

 The picture which he draws of the destruc- 

 tion of the farming interest, both East and 

 West, is a vivid one, and deserves the stud- 

 ied consideration of economists. I do not 

 now say that the statements of facts are over- 

 drawn, that the conclusions drawn are illogi- 

 cal and strained, nor that the condition of 

 affairs, as depicted, can be logically and 

 naturally explained in antagonism to Mr. 

 Benton's conclusions ; nor do I stop to point 

 out, now, the facts which his article con- 

 tains, which, if reasonably interpreted, will 

 nullify his conclusions. My purpose in 

 this letter is to present another picture, not 

 so artistically drawn, it may be, but as true 

 to life, I think, as Mr. Benton's picture. 



The daily papers of November 30, 18*78, 

 contained a news-telegram from London, 

 dated the 29th. After noticing the condi- 

 tion of trade, the closing of factories, and 

 the reduction of wages, it continued : 

 " Kentish hop-growers say, ' As the general 

 depression of agriculture and commerce is 

 largely caused by the protective tariffs of 

 other countries, the duties on foreign pro- 

 ductions should be revived.' " 



I do not know the political views of the 

 reporter of that dispatch; but the Associ- 

 ated Press reports are presumed to be non- 

 partisan. 



The New York correspondent of the Cin- 

 cinnati " Enquirer," under date of Decem- 

 ber 12, 1878, sends to his paper the report 

 of an interview with Mr. Armour, the noted 

 dealer and packer of meats, of Chicago, who 

 had just returned from an extended tour 

 in Great Britain. In the reported interview 

 Mr. Armour said : " The manufacturers are 

 running behind, the tenants can not pay 

 their rents, real estate has shrunk in value 

 and can not be sold at any price. . . . The 

 shrinkage is awful. . . . The hard times," he 

 said, " will end in a dreadful depreciation 

 of real estate." 



I do not know the politics of Mr. Ar- 

 mour ; the " Enquirer " represents the theory 

 of " free trade." 



The Chicago " Tribune " of July 8, 1879, 

 reprinted from the New York " Herald " an 

 editorial in regard to English affairs, in 

 which the "Herald" said, "The agricult- 

 ural depression in Great Britain has been 

 felt for a long time very severely by the ten- 

 ant farmers." The " Herald ""then quoted 

 from the " Pall Mall Gazette " that " the 

 prevalent belief as to the severity of the 

 depression existing in English agriculture 

 will be confirmed by figures recently pro- 

 duced before the Devizes Union Assessment 

 Committee." 



The three papers mentioned in this para- 

 graph represent free-trade ideas. 



