The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    goes on continual increase of productiveness, permitting in- crease of population; and this proceeds well into the period of peace, at the commencement of which it advances with leaps and bounds. For improvement in the means of transport, by enabling provisions to be brought from greater distances, permits the enlargement of cities, which is stimulated by the attractive power of the greater and cheaper amusements there to be found, many being supplied to the poor gratuitously, while the land in the neighbourhood, being high-priced also for purposes of recreation, cannot, beyond the range of truck-farming, com- pete productively with the cheaper land at a distance, and agri- culture gives place to pasturage, and small farms to large es- tates. The cities suck up the labour of the country, and their sewage drains away the fertility of the soil. Taxes, spent in the cities, fall most heavily, in comparison with resources, on the rural districts, and while the cities grow in population and in splendour, the country is impoverished and depopulated, till at last the cities find themselves left high and dry, without support, on a soil saturated with filth; and then famine, pes- tilence, and the inroads of barbarians destroy them. But ere this, the pressure of population upon its limits has, on the whole, for various reasons, been diminishing. For, when a high stage of civilisation is reached, with security of person and property provided by the state and its paid agents, - the courts and the police, women no longer have the same need of individual male protectors, and they may now provide for themselves by their own labours, many doing so for a time at least, some throughout life. But especially, as we have seen, they may now in their own right own property, which they have. either acquired by their own efforts or, more commonly, which has been bequeathed or donated to them by their fathers and husbands; and therefore unmarried they may be as well off as married.1° Men also may now have their household accom- modations and other wants supplied by servants, or may find them outside in inns and taverns, hotels and restaurants, not to 10Tn fact, one admirer of woman’s independence. has said that “a defini- tion of civilisation might be framed as ‘the ever-increasing serait 4 of the number of unmarried females that might exist in a community,’ ” Mason, Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture, 210-11.