THE NUMBERS OF MEN 103 



over the whole fit population as a recognized function of 

 government. 



Each individual man, woman, and child now living has avail- 

 able for its living and all the activities associated with and 

 derivative from human living, under sixteen acres of land count- 

 ing all the land, good, bad, and indifferent together, and prob- 

 ably nearer half of this number of acres of land really good for 

 anything, in the literal sense of the words. This is a meaningless 

 and fantastic average if it is thought of in the sense of forcibly 

 attaching each individual human being to a particular sixteen 

 acres of the earth's surface. But it is an average fraught with 

 the deepest meaning in a world view, when it is remembered 

 that in last analysis all the means of human living, whether by 

 the agricultural, industrial, commercial, or any other method, 

 are derived, directly or indirectly, from the inexpansible earth 

 and the energy from the sun's rays. 



In the meantime the world's population keeps on growing, 

 even if at a slowing rate, and the earth on and from which man 

 must live is not an inexhaustible source of the means of living. 

 Jacob G. Lipman, a recognized authority on the biology and 

 chemistry of soils, has recently pointed out that whereas, on 

 the average the four elements oxygen, silicon, aluminum, and 

 iron make up about 87 percent of all known terrestrial matter 

 (including lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere) these 

 elements, with the exception of oxygen, constitute only an 

 insignificant fraction of organic matter, the matter of living 

 things. The solid matter of a man reduced to ash and analyzed, 

 contains about 0.0001 per cent of aluminum, 0.03 per cent of 

 iron, and 0.005 per cent of silicon. On the other hand 54 per 

 cent of the dry matter of man— ^merely reduced to complete 

 dryness but not burned to ashes — is carbon. This element all 

 living organisms get, directly or indirectly, from the atmosphere 

 or the lithosphere, or both, each in its own way; and by their 

 vital processes all build it into their living structure, of which 

 it is the keystone of the arch. But of the total known terrestrial 

 matter, again including lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmos- 



