thread. I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a
silver dime. He looked at me dumbly from a face that might have
belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn, and full of
pain it was. He did not reach for the money--he did not know what it
was. There were dozens of such children in this particular mill. A
physician who was with me said that they would all be dead probably
in two years, and their places filled by others--there were plenty
more. Pneumonia carries off most of them. Their systems are ripe
for disease, and when it comes there is no rebound--no response.
Medicine simply does not act--nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged,
and the child sinks into a stupor and dies."

So fares modern man and the child of modern man in the United States,
most prosperous and enlightened of all countries on earth. It must
be remembered that the instances given are instances only, but they
can be multiplied myriads of times. It must also be remembered that
what is true of the United States is true of all the civilized world.
Such misery was not true of the caveman. Then what has happened?
Has the hostile environment of the caveman grown more hostile for his
descendants? Has the caveman's natural efficiency of 1 for food-
getting and shelter-getting diminished in modern man to one-half or
one-quarter?

On the contrary, the hostile environment of the caveman has been
destroyed. For modern man it no longer exists. All carnivorous
enemies, the daily menace of the younger world, have been killed off.
Many of the species of prey have become extinct. Here and there, in
secluded portions of the world, still linger a few of man's fiercer
enemies. But they are far from being a menace to mankind. Modern
man, when he wants recreation and change, goes to the secluded