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London, Jack, 1876-1916

"Revolution, and Other Essays"

We of to-day cannot realize the barbarously filthy and
slavish lives of those that lived prior to 1925.
The international government of the world was another idea that
sprang simultaneously into the minds of thousands. The successful
realization of this idea was a surprise to many, but as a surprise it
was nothing to that received by the mildly protestant sociologists
and biologists when irrefutable facts exploded the doctrine of
Malthus. With leisure and joy in the world; with an immensely higher
standard of living; and with the enormous spaciousness of opportunity
for recreation, development, and pursuit of beauty and nobility and
all the higher attributes, the birth-rate fell, and fell
astoundingly. People ceased breeding like cattle. And better than
that, it was immediately noticeable that a higher average of children
was being born. The doctrine of Malthus was knocked into a cocked
hat--or flung to the scrap-heap, as Goliah would have put it.
All that Goliah had predicted that the intelligence of mankind could
accomplish with the mechanical energy at its disposal, came to pass.


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