mortality tables have not yet been studied in their relations to this
subject, but in time they will be. In Australia, mostly unsettled, the
eight hour day is easy. If enforced in China the mortality would be
awful. But then China has great but untouched natural resources to be
developed by machinery devised elsewhere, and whose development will
decrease mortality, while at the same time, at least for a long period,
permitting more leisure. These conditions tend to equalize themselves
throughout the world and in time the contest between humanitarian
instincts and economic pressure will reach a world-wide equilibrium
through the operation of natural law. What will happen then I do not
know. Neither can any of us know.

What we do know is that in each generation the aggregate of human
happiness will be in a direct ratio with production per capita, up to
the limit of the ability of the earth to produce food. We also know that
the rate of production per capita will increase or decrease in a direct
ratio with the amount of human energy devoted to production and not
wasted in confiict, whether individual, class or international.

Each generation must work out its own problems in its own way. As
population grows denser, individual freedom must more and more give way
to collective restraint and direction. We in the cities have less
freedom than those of the country, and the greater the city the more the
individual impulse must be subordinated to collective control.

But we must never attempt to supplant individual selfishness, inspiring
individual initiative and energy by any form of community ownership or
direction which destroys or lessens opportunity for the more competent
and especially the economically exceptional man. You would create
thereby a machine operated by machinists for the accomplishment of