Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/83

 Rh Even now, grazing lands are rapidly disappearing, with consequent shortage of beef and leather. Soon there will not be an extent of wheat lands sufficient to feed the world, and the inferior substitutes lately endured as a duty will be accepted as a necessity. When the whole world resorts to intensive farming, with no accessory regions of extensive cultivation, and no great wild areas for game and adventure, life for the majority of the people in our country and all others will take on the dull tinge it has in European peasant communities.

To make life profitable, we need vast forest areas, and vast areas which can lie fallow to recuperate. We need space for myriads of cattle and sheep, and for wild game. And we need to reduce our consumption of coal and oil and wood, rather than increase it.

The obvious relief measure is the decrease in births among the classes now unduly multiplying. And all that is needed to bring this about is a dissemination of knowledge concerning hygienic means of preventing conception. The classes from which our best parents are drawn already possess some of this information and are already limiting—too much limiting, probably,—their offspring. The immediate and urgent need is to instruct the other classes, so that the disparity in