Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/638

620 and its repression? If we have no longer highway robberies, how many more cases of fraud exist, most of it not touched by our criminal laws! As to litigation, I am perhaps not an impartial judge, but it seems to me that, if law were as cheap as it is desired, every next-door neighbor would be in litigation. It would seem as if social order had never more than the turn of the scale which is necessary to social existence in its favor when contrasted with the disorganizing forces. Without that there would be perpetual insurrections and anarchy. But though antagonism takes a different form, it is still there. Are wars more regulated by justice than of yore? I venture to doubt it, though probably many may disagree with me. National self-interest or self-aggrandizement is, I think, the predominant factor, and is frequently admittedly so. I also doubt if the old maxim, "If you wish for peace, prepare for war," is of much value. Large armaments and improvements in the means of destruction (whose inventors are more thought of than the discoverers of natural truths) are as frequently the cause of war as of its prevention. Are wars less sanguinary with 100 ton guns than with bows and arrows? I can not enter into statistics on this subject, but a sensible writer who has, viz., Mr. Finlaison, came to the conclusion that wars cease now as anciently, not in the ratio of the improvements in killing implements, but from exhaustion of men or means. Wars undoubtedly occur at more distant intervals, or the human race would become extinct. Probably the largely increased competition supplies their place: we fight commercially more and militarily less. It is a sad reflection that man is almost the only animal that fights, not for food or means of life or of perpetuating its race, but from motives of the merest vanity, ambition, or passion. War is, however, not wholly evil. It develops noble qualities—courage, endurance, self-sacrifice, friendship, etc.—and tends to get rid of the silly incumbrances of fashion and ostentation. But do the much-bepraised inventions of peace bring less antagonism? Consider the enormous labor and waste of time due to competition in the advertising system alone. Paper-making, type-founding, printing, pasting, posting or otherwise circulating, sandwich-men, etc., all at work for purposes which I venture to think are in great part useless; and those who might add to the productiveness of the earth, or to the enriching our knowledge, are helping to extend the limits of the black country, and wasting their time in interested self-laudation. And the consumer pays the costs. "Buy my clothing, which will never wear out." "Become a shareholder in our company, which will pay cent per cent." "Take my pills, which will cure all diseases," etc. These eulogies come from those highly impartial persons the advertisers, all promising golden rewards, but, as with the alchemists, on condition that gold be paid in