the human drift

In all civilised countries great masses of people are crowded into slums and labour-ghettos, where disease festers, vice corrodes, and famine is chronic, and where they die more swiftly and in greater numbers than do the soldiers in our modern wars. Our immediate conclusion is that man is exceedingly fecund and very tough. So far as man's knowledge goes, law is universal. Bearings Lost / Drift 11. Add to Favorites . And this we know: that no matter how often these invisible hosts may be overcome by man's becoming immune to them through a cruel and terrible selection, new hosts will ever arise of these micro-organisms that were in the world before he came and that will be here after he is gone. Mr. Woodruff is responsible for the assertion that 10,000,000 persons now living in the United States are doomed to die of tuberculosis. The Big Book-to-Screen Adaptations of 2019. Not until part way down the cabin-companionway did my identity return to me. Whether it be in the test tube of the laboratory or the workshop of nature, all organic chemical reactions take place only within a restricted range of heat. Disease, from time to time, will ease the pressure. No_Favorite. Somewhere in the future is a date when man will face, consciously, the bitter fact that there is not food enough for all of him to eat. The wild and the hurtful are either tamed or eliminated. Germany, in the Thirty Years' War, lost 6,000,000 inhabitants. When man was in the hunting stage of development, wide areas were necessary for the maintenance of scant populations. One hundred and fifty years later, her population was 8,000,000. And, in spite of its magnificent equipment, war no longer kills as it used to when its methods were simpler. For many centuries the population of Japan was stationary. It is more expensive to be ready to kill, than it used to be to do the killing. The casualties of a twentieth century war between two world-powers are such as to make a worker in an iron-foundry turn green with envy. Sangiovese 8. Elements react under certain unchangeable conditions. The Human Drift by Jack London Part 2 out of 2. The Phoenicians and the Greeks, with unremembered drifts behind them, colonised the Mediterranean. From Central Europe the Aryans have drifted into Asia, and from Central Asia the Turanians have drifted across Europe. The Human Drift and Other Stories by Jack London. And after every such catastrophe the wave of human life rolls up and now millions flood out upon that precarious territory. And in this day the drift of the races continues, whether it be of Chinese into the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula, of Europeans to the United States or of Americans to the wheat- lands of Manitoba and the Northwest. The Human Drift. Return to the Jack London Home Page, or . It is undeniable that population will increase prodigiously-just as it has increased prodigiously during the last few centuries, following upon the increase in food-getting efficiency. And no matter how rapidly subsistence increases, population is certain to catch up with it. When Marryat's and Cooper's sea novels are gone to dust, stimulating and joyful as they have been to generations of men, still will remain "Two Years Before the Mast." This is another reputed bogie--the Yellow Peril; yet the men of China are only men, like any other race of men, and all men, down all history, have drifted hungrily, here, there and everywhere over the planet, seeking for something to eat. Draper says that in the twenty years of the Gothic war, Italy lost 15,000,000 of her population; "and that the wars, famines, and pestilences of the reign of Justinian diminished the human species by the almost incredible number of 100,000,000." Science; 31623 Words; Ages 0 and up; 2132; 23; Publication Date: 05-23-2008 ; Posts and Comments. Life is not so precarious. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Europe has been swept repeatedly by great plagues. It is human nature to drift away from strict procedural compliance and to develop unsafe habits for which we fail to see the risk. Publication date 1894 Usage Public Domain Mark 1.0 Topics Social problems Collection opensource Language English. Whether a bankrupt gentleman sailing to colonise Virginia or a lean Cantonese contracting to labour on the sugar plantations of Hawaii, in each case, gentleman and coolie, it is a desperate attempt to get something to eat, to get more to eat than he can get at home. Unknown and unnumbered billions of men have been so destroyed in prehistoric times. They have done so in the past. There will be more marriages and more children born. Given the food, and life will increase. Then, sixty years ago, came Commodore Perry, knocking down her doors and letting in the knowledge and machinery of the superior food- getting efficiency of the Western world. As for the great mass of stay-at-home folk, what percentage of the present generation in the United States, England, or Germany, has seen war or knows anything of war at first hand? He encountered other drifts of men, and the killing of men became prodigious. And even if that army be at the front, fighting in Cuba or South Africa, the soldier in the ranks has a better chance for life than the working-man at home. Please make sure to choose a rating. The High Sierra 3. The title piece is an essay in which London summarizes many of his ideas on the evolution of mankind and civilization. This work was published before January 1, 1926, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. The world has been chronically overcrowded. Dominated by fear, and by their very fear accelerating their development, these early ancestors of ours, suffering hunger-pangs very like the ones we experience to-day, drifted on, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, wandering through thousand-year- long odysseys of screaming primordial savagery, until they left their skeletons in glacial gravels, some of them, and their bone-scratchings in cave-men's lairs. The Human Drift. Blind, fortuitous, precarious as no other drift has been, nevertheless the islands in that waste of ocean have received drift after drift of the races. In short, socialism is an improved food-getting efficiency. Apparently, the universally-co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes--produce now an immeasurable period during which the attractive forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion--alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Nothing that Ever Came to Anything []. Surgery and sanitation reduce the fatalities that accompany the mischances of life and the ravages of disease. Author. pain of hunger, man has literally drifted his way around the. Perhaps most amazing has been the South Sea Drift. The failure of crops in Ireland, in 1848, caused 1,000,000 deaths. Behind him is a past wherein it was too warm for him to exist. And with another and greater one, we can lay ourselves down with a will. The titular essay, “The Human Drift”, explores humankind's spread across the continents throughout history and the predicted results and eventual end of this 'drift'. That is it--the most we know--alternate eras of evolution and dissolution. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Unfortunately for Doctor Jordan's theory, those ancient forebears cannot live up to this fine reputation. The only reason that the Yellow River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is that there is no other land for those millions to farm. From the time of the Norman Conquest, for centuries Europe could support no more than 25 to the square mile. Gillette, The Human Drift. Hence the importance of placing the document in context. Ahead of him is a future wherein it will be too cold for him to exist. And, sword in hand, he has literally hewn his way through the vast masses of life that occupied the earth space he coveted for himself. While man's increasing efficiency of food-production, combined with colonisation of whole virgin continents, has for generations given the apparent lie to Malthus' mathematical statement of the Law of Population, nevertheless the essential significance of his doctrine remains and cannot be challenged. migratory movements of peoples have been called drifts, and the. More destructive of life than war, is industry. 1911 eh? Book options. Subsistence will be pushed back, temporarily, an exceedingly long way. The Human Drift is a group exclusively for members of Vintage Gillette Safety Razors and The Big Shave. A bombardment by a modern fleet has been known to result in the killing of one mule. The Human Drift is a collection of odds and ends by Jack London, originally published in 1917, shortly after his death. In the meantime it sees no farther than the starry void, where the "fleeting systems lapse like foam." Unplanned, blind, automatic, spurred on by the. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. All the whole human drift, from the first ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the starry night. In China, between three and six millions of infants are annually destroyed, while the total infanticide record of the whole world is appalling. The lesser breeds, under penalty of being killed, have been compelled to lay down their weapons and cease killing among themselves. . Not only has war, by its own evolution, rendered itself futile, but man himself, with greater wisdom and higher ethics, is opposed to war. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett, Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe. Publish your eBooks now - Self-publishing with BookRix.com. Nations that faltered, that waxed prosperous in fat valleys and rich river deltas, were swept away by the drifts of stronger men who were nourished on the hardships of deserts and mountains and who were more capable with the sword. There is nothing terrible about it. This is the last word of Science, unless there be some further, unguessed word which Science will some day find and utter. Even if, as of old, man should wander hungrily, sword in hand, slaying and being slain, the relief would be only temporary. Searchable etext. Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature of temperature, strutting his brief day on the thermometer. Will he then some day be gone, and this planet know him no more? The Human Drift. EMBED. The explanation of this is that for the several centuries after the Norman Conquest her population was saturated. 1 Review . 0 Reviews. And then, inoculated with Western ideas, may she not, like Japan, take sword in hand and start forth colossally on a drift of her own for more room? A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his … The Human Drift, single channel video, 00:12:42, 2015-2016. Addeddate 2016-08-29 16:08:28 We’d love your help. Contents: The Human Drift Small-Boat Sailing Four Horses and a Sailor Nothing that Ever Came to Anything That Dead Men Rise up Never A Classic of the Sea A Wicked Woman (Curtain Raiser) The Birth Mark (Sketch) THE HUMAN DRIFT “The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d Who rose before us, and as Prophets Burn’d, Is it thither that the human drift in all its totality is trending? They were not. The more recent drifts of the stronger races, carving their way through the lesser breeds to more earth-space, has led to peace, ever to wider and more lasting peace. The habitable planet, from ice-cap to ice-cap, will be inhabited. They do so to-day. For an immense period of time China's population has remained at 400,000,000--the saturation point. But a change has long been coming in the affairs of man. User: bx.london. (Boston: New Era Publishing Co., 1894. In India, for the period of 1903 to 1907, the plague deaths averaged between one and two millions a year. The very infant mortality of a slum parish in the East End of London is three times that of a middle-class parish in the West End. This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. Welcome back. The planet is being subdued. Nor will the fecund millions in the slums and labour-ghettos, who to-day die of all the ills due to chronic underfeeding and overcrowding, and who die with their fecundity largely unrealised, die in that future day when the increased food-getting efficiency of socialism will give them all they want to eat. The old individualism is passing. planet. A heavy European drift to the New World has gone on and is going on; yet Europe, whose population a century ago was 170,000,000, has to-day 500,000,000. As time passed and man increased, he drifted ever farther afield in search of room. Men will simply be not permitted to be born. And on that drift they encountered races who had accomplished the drift before them, and they, the Aryans, passed, in turn, before the drift of other and subsequent races whom we to-day call the Polynesian and the Melanesian. We know that out of it arise diseases, new to us, that afflict and destroy man. It is to us an invisible world. To-day Europe supports 81 to the square mile. And when that time comes, it is likewise inevitable that her population will increase by unguessed millions until it again reaches the saturation point. - The Human Drift - Small-Boat Sailing - Four Horses and a Sailor - Nothing that Ever Came to Anything - That Dead Men Rise up Never - A Classic of the Sea - A Wicked Woman… And at this present rate of increase, the population of the United States will be 500,000,000 in less than a century from now. Man early discovered death. There have been drifts from east to west and west to east, from north to south and back again, drifts that have criss-crossed one another, and drifts colliding and recoiling and caroming off in new directions. Read Book Download. The famines in India of 1896-7 and 1899-1900 lessened the population by 21,000,000. Men have made for themselves monsters of battle which they cannot face in battle. We only guess its nearest confines. Rome was engulfed in the torrent of Germanic tribes drifting down from the north before a flood of drifting Asiatics. In view of this, there is something wrong with Doctor Jordan's war-theory, which is to the effect that the best being sent out to war, only the second best, the men who are left, remain to breed a second-best race, and that, therefore, the human race deteriorates under war. The human drift Item Preview > remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. I have lived!" Just as in the disputes of individuals the arbitration of a civil court instead of a blood feud is more practical, so, man decides, is arbitration more practical in the disputes of nations. And from the fear-stricken, jungle-lurking, cave-haunting creature of long ago, he won to empery over the whole animal world because he developed into the most terrible and awful killer of all the animals. This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. The Human Drift. In eternity which is beyond our comprehension, the particular evolution of that solar satellite we call the "Earth" occupied but a slight fraction of time. And immediately her population sprang up. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. And in this same country ten thousand persons a year are directly murdered. Only the monuments of these Aryans remain. The population is here, a billion and three quarters of men, women, and children, and this vast population is increasing on itself by leaps and bounds. War is repugnant to his common sense. Undoubtedly a higher quality of life will obtain, and also a slowly decreasing fecundity. Twentieth Century—which by that time was nothing like an anarchist paper, but still featured plenty of anarchists—went through a period of real Gillette-mania, putting a slogan from The Human Drift, … Man, like any other animal, has roved over the earth seeking what he might devour; and not romance and adventure, but the hunger-need, has urged him on his vast adventures. The newborn infant has a greater chance for survival than at any time in the past. The control of progeny will be one of the most important problems of man and one of the most important functions of the state. Jus Subsistence is generous these days, life is not cheap, and it is not in the nature of flesh and blood to indulge in the carnage made possible by present-day machinery. Contents. The Human Drift Résumé John Griffith "Jack" London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. And this brings us to that old bugbear that has been so frequently laughed away and that still persists in raising its grisly head--namely, the doctrine of Malthus. And for us who live, no worse can happen than has happened to the earliest drifts of man, marked to-day by ruined cities of forgotten civilisation--ruined cities, which, on excavation, are found to rest on ruins of earlier cities, city upon city, and fourteen cities, down to a stratum where, still earlier, wandering herdsmen drove their flocks, and where, even preceding them, wild hunters chased their prey long after the cave-man and the man of the squatting-place cracked the knuckle-bones of wild animals and vanished from the earth. It has always been so, from the time of the first pre-human anthropoid crossing a mountain-divide in quest of better berry-bushes beyond, down to the latest Slovak, arriving on our shores to-day, to go to work in the coal-mines of Pennsylvania. Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar regions, the Pigmy to the fever-rotten jungles of Africa. There have been drifts in the past, innumerable and forgotten, and so remote that no records have been left, or composed of such low-typed humans or pre-humans that they made no scratchings on stone or bone and left no monuments to show that they had been. I was the race, the whole human race, in its superstitious infancy. War itself, the old red anarch, is passing. Little is known of the micro-organic world, but that little is appalling; and no census of it will ever be taken, for there is the true, literal "abysmal fecundity." , blind, automatic, spurred on by the, wide areas were necessary for the period time... 25 to the Jack London Home Page, or the fatalities that the. Problems of man than it used to be to do the killing of men have been compelled to down! 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