It 



722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from " the paradise of women," America. A century ago, when 

 scarcely a man could be found who was not occasionally intoxi- 

 cated, and when inability to take one or two bottles of wine 

 brought contempt, no agitation arose against the vice of drunken- 

 ness; but now that, in the course of fifty years, the voluntary 

 efforts of temperance societies, joined with more general causes, 

 have produced comparative sobriety, there are vociferous demands 

 for laws to prevent the ruinous effects of the liquor traffic. Simi- 

 larly again with education. A few generations back, ability to 

 read and write was practically limited to the upper and middle 

 classes, and the suggestion that the rudiments of culture should 

 be given to laborers was never made, or, if made, ridiculed ; but 

 when, in the days of our grandfathers, the Sunday-school system, 

 initiated by a few philanthropists, began to spread and was fol- 

 lowed by the establishment of day schools, with the result that 

 among the masses those who could read and write were no longer 

 the exceptions, and the demand for cheap literature rapidly in- 

 creased, there began the cry that the people were perishing for 

 lack of knowledge, and that the State must not simply educate 

 them but must force education upon them. 



And so it is, too, with the general state of the population in re- 

 spect of food, clothing, shelter, and the appliances of life. Leaving 

 out of the comparison early barbaric states, there has been a con- 

 spicuous progress from the time when most rustics lived on barley 

 bread, rye bread, and oatmeal, down to our own time when the 

 consumption of white wheaten bread is universal from the days 

 when coarse jackets reaching to the knees left the legs bare, down 

 to the present day when laboring people, like their employers, 

 have the whole body covered, by two or more layers of clothing 

 from the old era of single-roomed huts without chimneys, or from 

 the fifteenth century when even an ordinary gentleman's house 

 was commonly without wainscot or plaster on its walls, down to 

 the present century when every cottage has more rooms than one 

 and the houses of artisans usually have several, while all have 

 fireplaces, chimneys, and glazed windows, accompanied mostly by 

 paper-hangings and painted doors; there has been, I say, a con- 

 spicuous progress in the condition of the people. And this prog- 

 ress has been still more marked within our own time. Any one 

 who can look back sixty years, when the amount of pauperism 

 was far greater than now and beggars abundant, is struck by the 

 comparative size and finish of the new houses occupied by oper- 

 ativesby the better dress of workmen, who wear broadcloth on 

 Sundays, and that of servant girls, who vie with their mistresses 

 by the higher standard of living which leads to a great demand 

 for the best qualities of food by working people : all results of the 

 double change to higher wages and cheaper commodities, and a 



