interferes more and more in affairs that hitherto have been considered
sacredly private. And socialism, when the last word is said, is merely a
new economic and political system whereby more men can get food to eat.
In short, socialism is an improved food-getting efficiency.

Furthermore, not only will socialism get food more easily and in greater
quantity, but it will achieve a more equitable distribution of that food.
Socialism promises, for a time, to give all men, women, and children all
they want to eat, and to enable them to eat all they want as often as
they want. Subsistence will be pushed back, temporarily, an exceedingly
long way. In consequence, the flood of life will rise like a tidal wave.
There will be more marriages and more children born. The enforced
sterility that obtains to-day for many millions, will no longer obtain.
Nor will the fecund millions in the slums and labour-ghettos, who to-day
die of all the ills due to chronic underfeeding and overcrowding, and who
die with their fecundity largely unrealised, die in that future day when
the increased food-getting efficiency of socialism will give them all
they want to eat.

It is undeniable that population will increase prodigiously-just as it
has increased prodigiously during the last few centuries, following upon
the increase in food-getting efficiency. The magnitude of population in
that future day is well nigh unthinkable. But there is only so much land
and water on the surface of the earth. Man, despite his marvellous
accomplishments, will never be able to increase the diameter of the
planet. The old days of virgin continents will be gone. The habitable
planet, from ice-cap to ice-cap, will be inhabited. And in the matter of
food-getting, as in everything else, man is only finite. Undreamed-of
efficiencies in food-getting may be achieved, but, soon or late, man will
find himself face to face with Malthus' grim law. Not only will