It is part of my business
to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before
Holsten was just a hundred years' crescendo of waste. Only the extreme
individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective
understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up
material--insanely. They had got through three-quarters of all the coal
in the planet, they had used up most of the oil, they had swept away
their forests, and they were running short of tin and copper. Their
wheat areas were getting weary and populous, and many of the big towns
had so lowered the water level of their available hills that they
suffered a drought every summer. The whole system was rushing towards
bankruptcy. And they were spending every year vaster and vaster
amounts of power and energy upon military preparations, and continually
expanding the debt of industry to capital. The system was already
staggering when Holsten began his researches. So far as the world in
general went there was no sense of danger and no desire for inquiry.
They had no belief that science could save them, nor any idea that there
was a need to be saved. They could not, they would not, see the gulf
beneath their feet. It was pure good luck for mankind at large that
any research at all was in progress.
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