the forest.^ Soil and water can be a permanent source of wealth for human 

 beings, but only if they are worked in ways that preserve their usefulness. 



What Are the Limits to Man's Production of Wealth? 



Basic Needs- When we compare diflerent nations or different periods 

 in history, we find that people have the same basic needs always and every- 

 where. They must have food, and they must protect themselves against 

 various kinds of dangers. Many different kinds of materials serve as food in 

 different parts of the world. And with modern means of transportation and 

 preservation, many diflerent kinds of food can be had by people in modern 

 cities and towns. Shelters vary, according to chmate and according to ma- 

 terials available. In some regions people wear very little clothing of any kind, 

 aside from ornaments. In other regions they expose very little of their skins 

 out of doors. 



Supplies of food material, fibers, timber, furs, drug plants, and oth?r 

 usable plant and animal products have been made available in ever-larger 

 quantities through our new ways of working. These new technologies depend 

 upon using scientific methods of solving problems. They have made it pos- 

 sible for mankind to increase rapidly in numbers and to spread over the face 

 of the earth. Regions that were in the past uninhabitable have been made 

 into comfortable and healthy communities. We can assure our entire popula- 

 tion of whatever it needs of organic materials with a smaller fraction of work- 

 ers engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry (see illustration, p. 648). 



Human beings are unique among all living species in the many wavs in 

 which they make use of materials for other purposes than "keeping ali\-e". 

 Paper, for example, is a necessity in every industry, business, go\'ernment, 

 sport. We use it not only for books and journals, or for correspondence and 

 records and accounting, but also for lining our rooms, insulating our walls 

 and roofs, wrapping our groceries and other purchases, and for making money 

 and washtubs and carwheels. We similarly use plant and animal fibers, orig- 

 inally gathered or raised for clothing, in entirely new ways — cordage, burlap, 

 sailcloth, airplane wings, bunting and parachutes. 



Human Needs These many new uses, and the "needs" which they 

 serve, are, of course, incidental to man's other pecuUar traits — his distinct 

 kind of brain and hands, for example, his sociability and language, his imagina- 

 tion and self-consciousness. Because of these distinctive traits human beings 

 have "needs" that other animals do not have. In addition to being hungry 

 like other species, man can be anxious about the uncertainty of the next meal. 

 Human beings need to feel secure. Accordingly, they often pile up much more 



^Since all coal consists of the modified remains of ancient vegetation, burning coal as fuel still 

 means drawing upon the forest, though not the forest of our own times. 

 2 See Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 6, p. 656. 



647 



