Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/573

Rh The growth of the department is indicated in a general way by the amounts authorized for the rent of office and laboratory buildings. Starting some twelve years ago with an item of $900, the amount authorized for rent of buildings has steadily increased year by year until in the present bill it amounts to $27,500. This shows conclusively the inadequacy of the present buildings, which led the last session of congress to appropriate $1,500,000 for a new agricultural building, plans for which are now in course of preparation.

The agricultural appropriation act does not carry the appropriation for printing the publications of the department, except in the case of the popular series known as 'Farmers' Bulletins.' The department's allotment out of the general printing fund is $185,000, an increase of $10,000, and $300,000 is provided for printing and binding a half million copies of the 'Year-book.' Adding to this the cost of the regular and special reports, which are printed by order of congress, brings the amount for printing the department publications up to approximately three quarters of a million dollars. In the last fiscal year 757 separate publications were issued in an aggregate edition of over ten million copies, some six million of which were 'Farmers' Bulletins.' This is a larger number of separate publications and of total copies than are issued by any other department of the government, and stamps the Department of Agriculture as the greatest agency in the world for the dissemination of popular and technical information on agriculture and agricultural science.

one hundred years ago, in 1803, was published the edition of Malthus's 'Essay on Population' which has had a considerable influence on economic theory and aided Darwin in thinking out his principle of the origin of species by natural selection. Malthusianism has become a current word with somewhat sinister implications, quite foreign to the spirit of the kindly clergyman, who announced the theory that population tends to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence. If this were true population must be limited by moral restraint, vice or misery, and Malthus urged people not to marry until they had a fair prospect of supporting a family. Owing to the applications of science during the past century the means of subsistence in civilized nations have increased far more rapidly than the population. Malthus's proposition has become inverted; the production of goods increases in geometrical ratio, whereas the production of people occurs with an ever decreasing increment. It is no longer an economic question of starvation, but a sociological question of race suicide.

The subject has during the past month become prominent in newspaper discussions owing to statements made by the president of the United States and by the president of Harvard University. President Eliot has shown that graduates of Harvard do not reproduce themselves. Statistics from the colleges for women have also been compiled which prove that the graduates are not self-perpetuating. From the point of view of social evolution there would be certain advantages in the need of recruiting the ruling classes from a larger group, as this would give room for natural selection. As a matter of fact President Eliot's conclusions are contradicted by the only large study of the subject at hand, that by Rubin and Westergaard of Copenhagen marriages. It appears from some thousands of cases that while the birth rate is slightly smaller for the professional and upper classes than for artisans, the average number of surviving