A CENTURY HENCE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3050, 12 August 1893, Page 2

A CENTURY HENCE.

An article appeared in a recent number of the "North American RevieM-', which has attracted a good deal of attention- The author draws a picture of America as he expects it to be a hundred years hence. He expresses the opinion that agricultural and pastoral pursuits will take precedence of all others in public estimation. He considers that the population of the country will have increased to about 300,000,000, and that although the cities will accommodate vast numbers of the people—every acre of land available for tillage will be utilised. Even then there will -be no surplus food for exportation, owing to the great demand for Home consumption. The writer contends that, in view of the efforts being made—more especially in America —to improve the position or all agricultural industries, the conditions and prospects thereof will become more and more attractive, and &« number of people engaging in pursuits .connected with them will be continually increasing. Among the results of scientific farming, the facilities ior carrying on the dairy industry will be multiplied and extended, and the article in the " Review" predicts most wonderful results. For instance the systematic fertilisation of land by artificial means i* expected to enable one acre to support four eowg, where now only one can find sustenance. Waste products will be utilised in ways hitherto unknown, and the diseases of stock and insects and other pests will no longer trouble the farmer. In the vicinity of the cities, glass houses will enable summer fruits and vegetables to flourish all the year round, In short, it would be almost impossible to enumerate the many ways in which the progress of science and the ingenuity of man would improve the position of the fanner. The writer contended that all the large farms would be in the hand* of men of high culture and scientific attainments, while the bulk of the population outside the cities would be small landholders depending partly for support upon work done for others. In such a condition of things., when rural life will possess all the pleasures and refinement* now generally supposed to be confined to dwellers in citien—as well as those properly belonging to the country—it may naturally be supposed that professional men and those whose callings keep in the centres oi population will regard the acquisition of wealth as a means of securing a home in the country, an. Arcadia where everybody could .end his days in peace tmd plenty. "Without going so far a$

the writer in the " North American Review," we find no difficulty in pic turing a brilliant future for a country blessed with a salubrious climate, a fertile soil, and an industrious population, if unscrupulous politicians could be kept in check and the social relations maintained on an equitable basis. Ihe writer we have been quoting does not seem to have made any allowance for the operations of these difficulties, although the history of the past furnishes ample evidence of their disastrous influence. The path of time is strewed with the wrecks of nations caused by the malign influences of political intrigue, personal ambition, and private greed. Their lands were as fertile, their climate as genial, and and their people as industrious as the bulk of those who are following pretty closely in their footsteps. Their ruin can be traced to the selfsame influences that are at woik in the front ranks of the nineteenth century civilisation, and which, if we mistake not, will prevent the accomplishment of the beautiful dream of the writer in the "North American Review." These are the cankers at the root of the social and political systems of the age. The land may be fertile, the air balmy, , and the people industrious ; but none of these things can ensure permanent prosperity in the face of political jobbery, and an ever increasing social inequality. It is probably only due to the operation of a natural law that the rich become richer, and the poor poorer, as civilization—as it is now understood —becomes developed in a nation. But we believe the signs of the times in all those countries that claim to be in the van of civilisation should serve as a warning not to be neglected. When the ties which should bind the various classes of the people together begin to be strained and weakened —when the extremes get further and further apart—the point of rupture is being approached, and rupture means at the least revoluj tion. The people of the Uniced States, claiming to be in the very foremost rank of human progress, are yet a long way from that elevated position from which they can decry even the entrance to that Arcadia—that land flowing with milk and honey painted in such attractive colours by the writer in the "North American Review."