At the meeting of the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science at Indianopolis, Mr. Dodge read a paper on the standard of living in the United States, of which a sum- mary is given in Monday's Times. That standard is, he declares, the highest known, and is progressive. "The average con- sumption of meat in Great Britain per head is only two-thirds that of the United States, while that of France is scarcely half the latter. The consumption of cereals, by man and beast, is three times as much in proportion to the population as in Europe. The American people are no less profuse in clothing. The country produces more than half the material for the cotton factories of the world, and a third of that is manufactured and mostly consumed at home. Similarly a fourth of the wool product of the world is consumed there." This method of estimating the national well-being by the bigness of the butcher's bill is thoroughly American, and, it must be added, also thoroughly English. Those who rely upon it forget, however, the case of Scotland, where not only the Muse, as Sydney Smith said, but a great many other things have been cultivated on a little oatmeal. Good feeding is, of course, of importance ; but plenty of elbow-room, and the feeling that every man may be the architect of his own fortune, are, we expect, the chief causes of American progress and prosperity.
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