-5-
formerly; and they show no disposition to get out of the
way of their younger fellows. The best authorities on
social statistics say that in 1970 the populations of all
industrial countries will begin to decline, if present
influences continue; and there will be increasing numbers
of unemployed and of decrepit folk who pay doctors good
fees to keep them alive.
Finally, under modern individual and corporate
freedom, have built vast canal systems at a cost of
billions of the popular savings. These canals were promptly
paralled by railroads which took away their traffic-
witness the Erie and the Pennsylvania canal systems. Then
the railroads were in large measure antiquated by motor
cars, buses and trucks; and now the flying machine receives
vast governmental grants for taking the nails away from the
railroads which also receive heavy subventions not to let
the flyers have their pouches. Moreover, the railroads
focussed their traffic in a few great centres; they did this
contrary to popular opinion. This increased the value of
urban land a hundredfold. The effects of these and other
influences centered all great industry and world finance in
the same favored cities; and railway, bank and other dir-
ectors of the industrial age, masters of world centres,
assumed airs of ancient monarchs and raised sky scrapers
almost beyond normal vision, which a visit to New York will
amply reveal. The result was the sale of something like a
hundred billions of railway, industrial and skyscraper stock
to a misguided public- securities which had no substantial
basis of real property. The earning power of the masses was
wholly