All this seems to escape the accredited leaders and teachers of the people. The tendency shows in us as individuals. A large proportion of our people are cursed by overeating, lack of exercise and overweight. Meanwhile the unemployed may starve. Everywhere that old and absolutely sound principle of "plain living and high thinking" is surrendered for the exact opposite. In all our great cities we build palatial private residences which are more fit for cold storage houses than for human habitations. A woman pays fifty thousand dollars for a fur wrap weighing two pounds. If the most abominable whiskey at ten dollars a quart did not find plenty of purchasers, the price would be falling instead of rising. Behold the size, weight and contents of our Sunday newspapers! They need no further describing here. A popular magazine recently contained eighty-two pages of advertising, and less than twenty pages of reading matter. In whole sections of our cities natural human affection is lavished on expensive dogs. In other sections the swarming children of the poor lack food, shelter, clothing, affectionate care and education. Meanwhile we boast of both the number of children and the value of the dogs. Fatty degeneration of the heart is one symptom of giantism. If we continue in the way we are going, our future national self can be easily enough pictured. Any amateur mathematician can plot the curve of our "progress." Our wealth to-day totals two hundred and fifty billions. Pretty soon we shall be worth a full trillion. The last census of New York gives its population as 5,620,000. Of this total a single Brooklyn insane asylum contains four thousand. Several of our states spend as much of their taxes to care for the insane as to educate their young. Let us have pencil and paper and calculate how many will be shut up in lunatic asylums or homes for other defectives, and what will be the cost of their keep, when we number three hundred millions of people. If we bring all the underfed masses, all the beggars and peddlers and criminals from every country in the world, and thrust them into our over-populated cities to prey upon us, then, assuredly, we shall have soon enough more inhabitants than China or India. Some of our private dwellings now cost as high as eight millions each and the windows are boarded up because the owners live in Europe. According to our present standards that, too, may be taken as an indication of our "progress" and "greatness."