"Still, with such an influx of low-grade people you must have a Malthusian torrent of increasing population on your hands." Again that odd listening look, her head a little on one side. "I have to keep remembering," she said. "Have to recall what people wrote and said and thought in the past generation. The idea was that people had to increase like rabbits, and would eat up the food supply, so wars and pestilences and all manner of cruel conditions were necessary to 'keep down the population.' Wasn't that it?" "You are twenty years out, my dear!" I rejoiced to assure her. "We had largely passed that, and were beginning to worry about the decreasing birth rate--among the more intelligent. It was only the lowest grade that kept on 'like rabbits' as you say. But it's that sort you seem to have been filling in with. I should think it would have materially lowered the average. Or have you, in this new 'forcing system,' made decent people out of scrubs?" "That's exactly what we've done; we've improved the people and lowered the birthrate at one stroke!" "They were beginning to talk eugenics when I left." "This is not eugenics--we have made great advances in that, of course; but the chief factor in this change is a common biological law--'individuation is in inverse proportion to reproduction,' you know. We individualize the women--develop their personal power, their human characteristics--and they don't have so many children." "I don't see how that helps unless you have eliminated the brutality of men." "My dear brother, the brutality of men _lowered_ the birthrate--it didn't raise it! One of those undifferentiated peasant women would have a baby every year if she was married to a saint--and she couldn't have more in polyandry--unless it were twins! No, the birthrate was for women to settle--and they have." "Out of fashion to have children at all?" "No, John, you needn't sneer. We have better children than ever were born on earth before, and they grade higher every year. But we are approaching a balanced population." I didn't like the subject, and turned to the clear skyline of the distant city. It towered as of old, but seemed not so close-packed. Not one black cloud--and very few white ones! "You've ended the smoke nuisance, I'm glad to see. Has steam gone, too?" "We use electricity altogether in all the cities now," she said. "It occurred to us that to pipe a leaking death into every bedroom; to thread the city with poison, fire and explosion, was foolish." "Defective wiring used to cause both death and conflagration, didn't it?" "It did," she admitted; "but it is not 'defective' any more." "Is the coal all gone?" "No, but we burn it at the mines--by a process which does _not_ waste ninety per cent of the energy--and transmit the power." "For all New York?" "Oh, no. New York has enough water power, you see. The tide mills are enough for this whole region." "They solved the tide-mill problem, did they?"