Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1894 — MAN IN THE YEAR MILLION [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MAN IN THE YEAR MILLION

Look at the Picture Below and See What the Human Race Is Coming To. . New York World. — : ;< .. ..... .

•K OMEBODYin the Mall Budget l iaa et his fancy take wings in the contemplation of ' th® ti me all of the 65,000,000 . people in these United States will

be anything but humanity. This romancer’s theme is “The Man of the Year Million." In his introductions this writer says: “Accomplished literature is all very well in its way, but much more fascinating to the contemplative man are the books that have not been written. These latter are no trouble to hold; there are no pages to turn over. One can read them in bed on sleepless nights without a candle.” One of the unwritten volumes is a big book by Professor Holzhopf, of the University of Weissnichtwo, on “The Necessary Charters of the Man of the Remote Future, Deduced from the exisiting Stream of Tendency.” Just as the bird is the creature of the wing, and is moulded and modified for flying, so man is a creature of brain, and must live by that and not by strength. Naturally, then, that which is animal in him must gradually disappear, as* civilization, more and more, becomes a fixed habit. He doesn’t need big muscles to get a living; nor big jaws to seize his food and crush it. His jaws get smaller, his teeth and hair are soon lost; trains and trolley cars render speed unnecessary. Wit not strength is what he needs. Hence the legs will shrink up and the head swell. . Science gives him the knife and fork. There is no reason why it should not masticate and insalivate his food. Does it not now digest it with all the pepsin compounds? Teeth will disappear.

The eyebrow used to be a buffer to protect the eye from savage blows. Once exterminate foot-ball and the ridge of bone over the eye will go the way of the hair on the pate. In some of the most highly developed crustaceans the whole alimentary canal has been solidified into a useless cord, because the animal is nourished by the food in which it swims. The man of the year 1,000,000 will pot be bothered bv servants handing him things on a plate which he will chew and swallow and digest. He will bathe in an amber liquid which will be pure food, no waste matter, assimulated through the pores of the skin. The mouth will shrink to a rosebud thing; the teeth will disappear; the nose will disappear—it is not nearly as big now as it was in the savage days—the ears will go away. They are already folded up from what they were, and only a little tip fast vanishing remains to show that ages ago they were long pointed things which bent forward and backward to catch the sound of approaching enemies. But the hands grow, for they are exponents of the brain, and the great, soulful eyes. Prof. Hoizkhopf goes on to that gloomy time when all animal life shall have been superseded by mechanical contrivances, on to the time when the earth cools and the human tadpoles burrow in the earth for warmth. But the year million is far enough aw iy, isn’t it?

MAN IN THE YEAR MILLION.