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Searchology Directory 16
Page 04
During the Numantine war Rome was menaced by a new danger, which revealed one of the plague-spots in the Republic. We have already had occasion to describe the decay of the free population in Italy, and the great increase in the number of slaves from the foreign conquests of the state.[59] As slaves were cheap, in consequence of the abundant supply, the masters did not care for their lives, and treated them with great barbarity. A great part of the land in Italy was turned into sheep-walks. The slaves were made responsible for the sheep committed to their care, and were left to supply themselves with food as they best could. It was an aggravation of their wretched lot, that almost all these slaves had once been freemen, and were not distinguished from their masters by any outward sign, like the negroes in the United States. In Sicily the free population had diminished even more than in Italy; and it was in this island that the first Servile War broke out.
In considering how the German people may keep up their production of food, the authors find that various factors will work against such a result. In the first place, there is a shortage of labor, nearly all the able-bodied young and middle-aged men in the farming districts being in the war. There is also a scarcity of horses, some 500,000 head having already been requisitioned for army use, and the imports of about 140,000 head (chiefly from Russia) have almost wholly ceased. The people must therefore resort more extensively to the use of motor plows, and the State Governments must give financial assistance to insure this wherever necessary; and such plows on hand must be kept more steadily in use through company ownership or rental. It may be remarked here, again, that the Prussian Government is also assisting agricultural organizations to buy motor plows. The supply of fertilizers has also been cut down by the war. Nitrate has just been mentioned. The authors recommend that the Government solve this problem by having many of the existing electrical plants turn partly to recovering nitrogen from the atmosphere.
The trees, overcrowded everywhere, far from being gigantic, are, instead, mean-looking and anaemic--not unlike the pallid, overgrown youth of the over-populated slums of a great city. Orchids? Yes, there are plenty of orchids about, but you never see them unless you go on a special search for them with a high ladder or some other such means of climbing high trees. In any case, you would not detect them unless you had the eye of an expert. It is well not to forget that in tropical climates, as in temperate zones, plants are not always in bloom when you happen to be passing. As for the butterflies, you seldom see any at all in the actual forest.
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