worm, the potato beetle,
unduly multiply and devastate fields and forests and the farmer's
crops, what do we witness but Nature's sheer excess and intemperance?
Life as we usually see it is the result of a complex system of checks
and counter-checks. The carnivorous animals are a check on the
herbivorous; the hawks and owls are a check on the birds and fowls;
the cats and weasels are a check on the small rodents, which are very
prolific. The different species of plants and trees are a check upon
one another.

* * * * *

I think the main reason of the abundance of wealth in the country is
that every man, equipped as he is with so many modern scientific
appliances and tools, is multiplied four or five times. He is equal to
that number of men in his capacity to do things as compared with the
men of fifty or seventy years ago. The farmer, with his
mowing-machine, his horse-rake, his automobile, his tractor engine and
gang ploughs or his sulky ploughs, his hay-loader, his corn-planter,
and so on, does the work of many men. Machinery takes the place of
men. Gasolene and kerosene oil give man a great advantage. Dynamite,
too,--what a giant that is in his service! The higher cost of living
does not offset this advantage.

The condition in Europe at this time is quite different: there the
energies of men have been directed not to the accumulation of wealth,
but to the destruction of wealth. Hence, while the war has enriched
us, it has impoverished Europe.

* * * * *

Why are women given so much more to ornaments and superfluities in
dress and finery than men? In the animal kingdom below man, save in a
few instances, it is the male that wears the showy decorations. The
male birds have the bright plumes; the male sheep have the big horns;
the stag has the antlers; the male lion has the heavy mane; the male
firefly has wings and carries the lamp. With the barnyard fowl the
male has the long spurs and the showy comb and wattles. In the crow
tribe, the male cannot be distinguished from the female, nor among the
fly-catchers, nor among the snipes and plovers. But when we come to
the human species, and especially among the white races, the female
fairly runs riot in ornamentation. If it is not to attract the male,
what is it for? It has been pretty clearly shown that what Darwin
calls "sexual selection" plays no part. Woman wishes to excite the
passion of love. She ha