When a population multiplies by five every thirty years it soon reaches the limits of a country, especially a small one like this.

They very soon eliminated all the grazing cattle--sheep were the last to go, I believe.

Also, they worked out a system of intensive agriculture surpassing anything I ever heard of, with the very forests all reset with fruit- or nut-bearing trees.
Do what they would, however, there soon came a time when they were confronted with the problem of "the pressure of population" in an acute form.

There was really crowding, and with it, unavoidably, a decline in standards.
And how did those women meet it?
Not by a "struggle for existence" which would result in an everlasting writhing mass of underbred people trying to get ahead of one another--some few on top, temporarily, many constantly crushed out underneath, a hopeless substratum of paupers and degenerates, and no serenity or peace for anyone, no possibility for really noble qualities among the people at large.
Neither did they start off on predatory excursions to get more land from somebody else, or to get more food from somebody else, to maintain their struggling mass.
Not at all.

They sat down in council together and thought it out.