208 THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



to be supplied with inexhaustible riches. There are 

 limits to the harvest. 



Professor East views with concern the persistent 

 increase of the world's population. If the rate of 

 increase actually existent in the United States should 

 continue, within the span of life of the grandchildren 

 of persons now living the States will contain more 

 than a billion inhabitants (meaning a thousand millions). 

 " Long before this eventuality, the struggle for existence 

 in those portions of the world at present more densely 

 populated will be something beyond the imagination 

 of those of us who have lived in a time of plenty." 



The cloud grows denser when it is noticed that the 

 birth-rate of the foreign population of the United States, 

 coming largely now from eastern and southern Europe, 

 is so much greater than that of the Anglo-Saxon stock 

 (to which, it is claimed, most of the superior types 

 belong), that within a century the latter will be but a 

 fraction of the whole. Professor East looks forward 

 with hope to a severe restriction of immigration ; to 

 the spread of education, which seems to be correlated 

 with a lowering of the birth-rate ; to equitable read- 

 justment in many economic customs, for the word 

 * proletariat ' is suggestive enough ; to rational marriage- 

 selection, which will tend to an increase of the birth- 

 rate in families of high civic value ; and, among the 

 rank and file, to a restriction of births commensurate 

 with the family resources and the mother's strength. 



While it is impossible to predict what may yet be 

 done in the way of increasing the harvest which man 



