CHAPTER II. The Conquest of Nature. 1. THE good book tells us that man was put into the world with orders to "replenish (or fill up) the earth, and subdue it." Our well-being depends on our subduing its forces to our service. Some things nature gives us without an effort; but these are very few, and not enough to keep us alive. She is more exacting of men than of the lower animals, who generally find their food at hand, and have at most to catch it as it moves or flies, or gather it as And as more is demanded of man, greater power of intelligence has been developed in him, or given to him, that he may meet the demand. it grows. 2. Savage man lives a good deal as do the lower animals, on what nature offers him without his foresight being brought into play. He kills wild beasts and birds, catches fish, gathers fruits and nuts, collects nutritious roots and seeds. The quantity of these to be found in a given area is generally so small that a single family needs square miles of earth's surface for its support, and often suffers greatly from want at that. The savage's condition is one of almost constant hunger, broken by surfeits of food when a supply is obtained. He starves over an area which would supply an abundance of food to a thousand times as many people, if it were brought under cultivation. Thus at the discovery of America the present area of the United States was occupied by about a quarter of a million of Indians, and these except where the supply of fish was abundant suffered from frequent famines. 3. The barbarous tribes rank a grade higher than the savage. They generally begin their advance from the savage condition by bringing some of the useful animals, the sheep or the ox for instance, under control, and thus creating flocks and herds, upon which they depend for food and clothing. As these animals find nourishment in plants on which man cannot feed, the shepherd and cow-tending races derive far more sustenance from a given area than can the savage. Their food supply is far less uncertain; and the habit of caring for animals, instead of simply killing them at sight, develops in them gentler and more humane ways of dealing with each other. As they are more confined to the places on which they find pasture, they have better opportunity of studying its vegetation as a source of supply for food and clothing; and they begin to cultivate some plants in preference to others, gathering seeds in the fall and planting them in the spring. Under this tillage these plants naturally improve as foodproducers. 4. Our own continent was retarded in the development of its people, by the want of animals like the sheep and ox. It was the greater density of the population in the warmer countries, to which the Indian tribes thronged to escape the northern winter, that drove them to till the soil and cease depending on what nature offered without labor. Out of a species of wild grass, which still grows in southern Mexico, they developed the maize plant by artificial selection. They also cultivated the cassia root, and the cocoa, and various species of grains. To secure a water-supply in many places they had to construct stone aqueducts; and to know when the time had come for planting they had to study the calendar of the year. Thus a rude architecture and a ruder science were forced upon them by their necessities; and the denser population made it both necessary and possible for them to undertake works which the weaker tribes of the north never attempted. 5. Civilized man does not depend upon what nature offers him, but obtains intelligence of nature's forces, and uses this to subdue them. He finds abundant resources where the savage and even the barbarian can get but little, and is thus enabled to support a large population on an area where a handful of savages or a barbarous tribe would starve. He exercises a careful selection in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, exterminating those species which are unfitted to his use, and developing the others into greater usefulness. He adds to the wealth of the soil by manuring, and widens the area of tillage by draining wet lands. He brings the forces of nature wind, water, steam and electricity into his service, and adds their power to his own. Thus with every year he becomes more fully master over nature, and better able to supply his wants out of her stores. 6. As in the warmer parts of America, so probably in Asia and Europe also, it was the growth of population which drove men to give up the old savage way of living, and then that of the barbarian, and to adopt methods which would increase the food supply. It was the same increase of population which made the adoption of better methods possible. A single man, or a mere handful of men, is unable to achieve the conquest of nature we call civilization. When a handful of settlers, who have been brought up in civilized ways, find themselves alone in a new country, they have to go back to barbarous ways of providing for their wants. They are too weak to do better, and they run the risk of dying for want of food in the midst of natural resources capable of supporting a dense population. Hence the failure of so many small colonies and settlements in our own history. They were destroyed or beaten back by abso lute want; and those which succeeded did so at the cost of undergoing severe hardships of cold and hunger, and consequent sickness. 7. Single men and small bodies of men are weak in the presence of nature. She is their mistress, not they her masters. They must take what she chooses to give, and retreat or perish if her gifts are not sufficient for their needs. Large bodies of men, united by industrial association for the mastery of nature, are strong in her presence. They can wrest from her what they need. They can clear away her forests, drain her swamps, bring the soil under tillage, and secure a larger share of necessary things for each, than when a small number seemed to possess everything. 8. Association with his fellowmen is man's first need, if he is to attain a comfortable existence. By this term "association" is meant not only a conscious and understood agreement between several men for the pursuit of a common object; it means the interlacing of men's lives in mutual service, even though they never have seen each other's faces. Thus when I buy a barrel of flour, I am acting in association with the farmer who grew the wheat; the trader who bought it of him; the miller who ground it; the barrel-maker who prepared the packing which holds it; the railroad men who brought it from the mill; the dealer from whom I bought it; and many others besides these. Of the whole series I know only the last, yet each of them has been serving me; and I in turn, by my payment for the flour, have been serving each of them. It is this association which is the mark of a civilized life, and which makes it possible for millions to have each the use of more food and clothing than hundreds did before. 9. The power over nature which we attain through this association, we call wealth. As it is not a single man, but the whole body of men in the country, who acquire this power, wealth is first of all a social possession. When we speak of individual men as wealthy, we mean that in the distribution of this power a larger share has fallen to some than to others. This is just when it is the result of greater personal intelligence or capacity, which has enabled these to render greater services to society than others have. It is unjust when it has been obtained by force, as in the conquest of a weaker people by a stronger, or by fraud of any kind. So long as men differ in ability, some will command a greater share of the results from subduing the world to our use than others do. We have a right to complain of this only when they have got their larger share by wrong ways. 10. While wealth is the same as power over nature, value is the measure or indication of nature's resistance to our obtaining the things we need. It is not the same as utility: air and water are the most useful substances we know of, but air has no value and water very little, because they are so plentiful. Value does not depend on mere scarcity, for there are some very scarce things for which there is very little demand, as they have no use that we know of. To be valuable a thing must be wanted for use, or for ornament, or as a curiosity, and also must be something we cannot get without an effort. If we can reduce the amount of effort needed to obtain it, then the value falls. If there be a great decrease of the supply, then the value rises. The value of diamonds has fallen since the discovery of the diamond-mines in southern Africa, while rubies and emeralds are as valuable as before. The value of petroleum has risen since the Pennsylvania oil-wells began to give out. 11. It is not always true that value falls proportionally to an increase of the supply. If new uses are found for the |