THE FUTURE

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From the sixteenth century, with a cumulativecrescendo after the eighteenth, the great age ofscience and technical inventions began, whichsince the beginning of the nineteenth centuryhas been in full flood—coal, steam, electricity,petrol, steel, rubber, cotton, the chemical in-dustries, automatic machinery and the methodsof mass production, wireless, printing, Newton,Darwin, and Einstein , and thousands of otherthings and men too famous and familiar tocatalogue.

What is the result? In spite of an enormousgrowth in the population of the world, which ithas been necessary to equip with houses andmachines, the average standard of life in Europe and the United States has been raised, I think,about fourfold. The growth of capital hasbeen on a scale which is far beyond a hundred-fold of what any previous age had known. Andfrom now on we need not expect so great anincrease of population.

If capital increases, say, 2 per cent per annum,the capital equipment of the world will haveincreased by a half in twenty years, and sevenand a half times in a hundred years. Think ofthis in terms of material things—houses, trans-port, and the like.

At the same time technical improvements inmanufacture and transport have been proceed-ing at a greater rate in the last ten years thanever before in history. In the United States factory output per head was 40 per cent greaterin 1925 than in 1919. In Europe we are held