Europeans frequently and curiously remark upon the American's prodigality of ready money. The small change which they part with so reluctantly the American flings about with a fine medieval profusion. The manner of life of the average well-todo person in this country permits of it. The average man who earns ten or twenty thousand a year invests none of it. He installs his family in a rented house in the city in winter. Several servants are kept; the children are sent to expensive schools. All the family dress well, eat rich food, and indulge in costly amusements. In summer they either travel abroad, live in a hotel at a watering place, or rent again. The man's whole income is at his disposal to spend every year. None of it is deducted to be safely stored in property. When his daughters marry he expects their husbands to be solely responsible for their future, and if they do not succeed in marrying wealth, why so much the worse for them. When his sons begin their career he looks to them to be self-supporting almost from the first, and not to undertake the responsibilities of a family until they are able to bear such a burden without aid from him. He cannot assist them without materially altering his own scale of living, which he is naturally loath to do. At his death the income generally ceases in large part, and his widow, and such children as may still be unplaced in life, are obliged to relinquish the rented houses and the way of life to which they have been used.

To a Frenchman such an existence would seem as uncertain and disturbing as is generally supposed to be that cf a person who has built upon the crust of a volcano. Ile could not contemplate with equanimity the thought of chaos overtaking the 'ordered existence of his family upon his demisc. Apres nous le deluge seems to him the insouciance of a maniac, or of a monster of selfishness. Daily expenditure is regulated within a limit which permits of a constant investment of a margin. When his daughter marries he insures in her carefully guarded dower that she shall continue her existence on somewhat the same scale to which she has been accustomed, and, in case of premature widowhood or accident cf fortune, she and her children shall not be called upon to face the desperate strait of absolute pennilessness. He may deny her in her girlhood many of the indulgences common to her American prototype, but he denies himself at the same time in saving to insure the security and comfort of her

future. The French father would think it terrible that a tenderly nurtured daughter should be suddenly thrust into abject dependence upon a husband who may possibly abuse the power given him by that circumstance, nor would he be more satisfied to think that she should during her first years of married life, while still young and encountering the strain of motherhood, be called upon to face narrow means and a perilously uncertain financial condition.

When the son arrives at maturity the economies to which he, in company with his parents, has submitted, bear fruit in substantial aid in beginning his career, and he is not obliged to put out of his mind all thought of marriage during his youth, since his parents, and those of the woman of his choice, have provided for this very contingency through all the years of his minority.

The French-with the logical inevitableness of their mode of thought-carry this view of life to its extreme limit, but throughout all Europe, including England, the responsibility of the parent is more broadly conceived than in this country, where the excuse for an infinity of cheap flimsiness is the cynical phrase, "It will last my time." Men build cheaply, and forbear to undertake work of which they cannot see the immediate result, bccause there is no sense cf obligation to the coming generation. The democratic theory is that each man must fight for his own hand; no debt is owed to cither ancestry or posterity. The mind is not shocked by sudden destruction of families, by the sharp descent in the social scale, or the flying of women into the arena of the struggle for life. The parent is quite willing to share with the child the goods of existence as far as he can achieve them, but he is unwilling to deny either child or himself that the child may benefit alone, or after he is gone.

Conditions in America are constantly assimilating themselves more and more to these existing in the older countries, where the conflict for existence is close and intense, and where the prudent, the careful, and the far-sighted inevitably crowd out the weaker and more carcless individuals and families. An almost unmistakable sign of "an old family" in America is conservatism in expenditure and modes of life. The newly rich, who set the pace of public luxury, are always amazed at the probates of the wills of these quiet citizens. They cannot believe that one who spent so little should have so much, not realizing

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that the simplicity of life made it possible to solidly invest a surplus. The heirs of this solid wealth have been bred to prudence and self-denial. Such a family survives, while in all probability the offspring of the other type may in two generations be hopelessly trodden into the mire.

There is in the breasts of many parents a half-resentful feeling that they should not be asked to sacrifice themselves to the new generation. They insist upon their own right to all that is to be got out of life, feeling that what they give to the children is never repaid. This selfish type forgets that in doing their duty they are but returning to their children what they themselves received from the past generation, and that the children will in turn pay to their descendants the inherited debt of honor with interest.

ELIZABETH BISLAND

PROGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

III. THE SOUTHERN STATES.

BY MICHAEL G. MULHALL, F. S. S.

THESE are thirteen in number and include some of the earliest English settlements in North America. They cover an area of 816,000 square miles, or more than one-fourth of the Union, their population averaging 25 to the square mile, as compared with 140 in the Middle States.

The increase of population since 1850 has been 150 per cent., the same ratio as in the Middle States, while that of the Union has exceeded 200 per cent. In the census of 1890 the Southern States had a male surplus of 2 per cent., whereas in the Middle States the sexes were equal, and New England had a female surplus of 3 per cent. over males. No less than 85 per cent. of the colored population of the Union is found in the Southern States, but even here the negro element is losing ground, as we see on comparing the census returns of 1890 with those of 1870, viz.: 1890. Increase, per cent. 11,564,000

American, white..

colored..

1870. 6,782,000

70.0

53.6

Foreigners.

290,000

404,000

39.3

Southern States......

11,251,000

18,391,000

64.2

* Including West Virginia.

In 1870 the colored element formed 37 per cent. of the population; in 1890 only 35 per cent. It is evident that there has been neither any emigration of negroes from these States since 1870, nor any influx of them from other parts of the Union, seeing that the increase of colored people in the interval showed the same ratio in these States as in the Union at large, namely, 53 per cent. Dr. Billings, in his luminous report on the Vital Statistics of the United States (1886), shows that 1,000 colored women (age from 15 to 4) give birth to 164 children, and 1,000 white women to only 127, yearly; that is to say, three colored women have as many children as four white, but such is infant mortality among negroes that their rate of increase is 16 per cent. less. The Southern States are remarkable for the small number of cities and towns, although urban population has more than doubled since 1870, viz.:

Thus urban population rose 118, rural only 59 per cent., but the latter still forms nine-tenths of the total, agriculture being the chief occupation of the people. The climate is apparently little suited to Europeans, if we are to judge from the fact that foreigners compose only two per cent. of the population: they are found mostly in Texas and Florida.

Agriculture. The improved area has more than doubled since 1850, viz. :

Here we have a farming area of 5 acres per inhabitant, against 2 in the Middle States, and yet the South does not raise enough grain for its requirements, the production of food per inhabitant having greatly declined in the last forty years, viz. :