FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 235 



increased population is left to struggle for 

 subsistence, with diminished means. 



The most acute investigators, especially 

 in the great cities, and notably in London, 

 have found no question half so difficult to 

 deal with as this. Penniless boys marry 

 before they can earn a livelihood for them 

 selves, and the most unsavoury and un 

 wholesome dens teem like ant-hills. What 

 is to be done about it ? Well, it is hard to 

 say what can be done about it, farther than 

 to use every effort to destroy this wild the 

 ory of which I have been writing, that a 

 numerous population is a good thing in 

 itself, and to instil into the minds of the 

 struggling poor the importance of self- 

 control and later marriages. 



We have heard a good deal of the efforts 

 of the Anti Poverty Society in New York, 

 a crusade as absurd and as futile in the 

 manner in which it was undertaken as any 

 thing ever devised by Don Quixote. I am 

 not sure that in the present prosperous con 

 dition of the world (Ido riot mean prosper 

 ous condition of &quot; business &quot; ; &quot; business &quot; 

 is not prosperous) there is any necessity for 

 poverty. I am sure that, if the age at 

 marriage could be raised by ten years 

 among the very poor and the people of 



