We may safely suppose that the ocean ships of a hundred years hence will be driven by energy of some kind transmitted from the shores on either side. It is absolutely unquestionable that no marine engine in the least resembling what we know to-day can meet the requirements of the new age. The expense of driving a steamship increases in such a ratio to its size and speed that the economic limits of steam propulsion are foreseen. Probably the ships of A.D. 2000 will differ entirely in appearance from those we know. Just as road friction is the bugbear of the railway engineer, so water-resistance is the bugbear of the marine engineer. The ships of a hundred years hence will not lie in the water. They will tower above the surface, merely skimming it with their keels, and the only engines they will carry will be those which receive and utilise the energy transmitted to them from the power-houses ashore--perhaps worked by the force of the very tides of the conquered ocean itself. The housing problem is so intimately and visibly connected in our minds with the growth of population that the more vital entanglement of the latter with the food question is hardly perceptible except to economic experts. The ordinary newspaper reader is not in a position to trace the intimate significance of prices; indeed, he often regards it as rather a good thing that wheat should fetch a good price per quarter, forgetting that low prices for commodities mean increased purchasing power for money, and a better standard of life for the people. When such elementary implications as this are overlooked, it is hardly remarkable that the more obscure connection of population with prices is never thought of. Yet it is obvious that unless the sources of supply increase more rapidly than the consuming population, prices must rise--in other words, the purchasing power of money must diminish. Wages, to some extent, will no doubt rise also, but as competition seriously affects the markets for manufactured goods and machinery, and the increase of population not only tends to raise prices of commodities, but also restricts the rise of wages, relief will have to be found in economies of various sorts. The standard of comfort in working families must improve considerably; partly because the demand for improvement, taking the shape of industrial combination and trade-unionism developed to a high degree, will be more and more clamorous; partly because of public feeling. What is currently called the growth of sentimentalism in modern life is really the development of modern conscience. No doubt the abolition of judicial torture was at one time regarded as a mark of absurd sentimentality; and the opinion has already been expressed that a vast amelioration of public morality is in store for the new age. A great element in the conflict between comfort on the one hand and competition on the other will be economy of means. That is why the new age will, among other things, be an age of economy.