460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Illustrations confirmatory of the assertion that the food resources 

 of half a century ago would be inadequate for the support of the 

 existing population of the leading civilized countries are familiar, but 

 the following are so striking as to warrant renewed presentation : 



All the resources of the population of the United States, as they 

 existed in 1880, would have been wholly inadequate to have sowed or 

 harvested the present average annual corn or wheat crops of the coun- 

 try ; and, even if these two results had been accomplished, the greater 

 proportion of such a cereal product would have been of no value to 

 the cultivator, and must have rotted on the ground for lack of any 

 means of adequate distribution ; the cost of the transportation of a ton 

 of wheat, worth twenty-five dollars at a market, for a distance of a hun- 

 dred and twenty miles over good roads, and with good teams and vehi- 

 cles, entirely exhausting its initial value. 



Forty years ago corn (maize) was shelled in the United States by 

 scraping the ears against the sharp edge of a frying-pan or shovel, or 



economic and social problems of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. While the 

 general average of the population for the whole country is 181 to the square mile, there 

 are districts in India in which a population, to be counted by tens of millions, averages 

 from 300 to 400 to the square mile, and others in which a population, to be counted by 

 some millions, rises to 800, and even 900, to the square mile. These latter probably 

 constitute the most densely-populated districts of the world, the population of the most 

 densely-peopled country of Europe — namely, Belgium — averaging 480 to the square mile. 

 The total population of India is estimated at 250,000,000. Under the old-time sj-stem of 

 native rulers, frequent wars, consequent on foreign invasions and internal race antago- 

 nisms, with accompanying famines and epidemic diseases, materially restricted the growth 

 of population. But under the conditions of peace, with protection for life and property, 

 which have been attendant in late years on British rule, the population of India is increas- 

 ing so rapidly — nearly one per cent per annum — and so disproportionately to the amount 

 of new and fertile soil that can be appropriated, as to leave but little margin, under ex- 

 isting methods of cultivation, for increasing the means of subsistence for the people. 

 Much new soil has been put under cultivation during the last century of British rule, and 

 a quarter of a million of square miles of cultivable waste yet remains to be occupied ; but 

 the fact that the national revenues from the taxation of land have not increased to any 

 extent in recent years is regarded as proof that land cultivation is not increasing in pro- 

 portion to the growth of population, and that the limits of agricultural production are 

 approaching exhaustion. An annual increase of one per cent on the present population 

 of India means at least 20,000,000 more people to feed in ten j-ears, and upward of 40,- 

 000,000 in twenty years ; and the problem to which the British Government in India has 

 now before it, and to which it is devoting itself with great energy and intelligence, is, in 

 what way, and by what means, can the character and habits of the j)eople — especially in 

 respect to their methods of agriculture — be so developed and changed that "their indus- 

 try can become more efficient on practically the same soil ? " Much has been already done 

 in the way of increasing and cheapening, through roads, canals, and railroads, the means 

 of transportation, and in promoting irrigation and education, and especially the use of 

 new tools and methods for cultivating the soil. But so many are the obstacles, and so 

 great is the moral inertia of the people, that, although remarkable progress has been 

 made, the prospect seems to be that, " from decade to decade, larger and larger masses 

 of the semi-pauperized, or wholly pauperized, will grow up in India, requiring state inter- 

 vention to feed them, and threatening social and financial difficulties of the most danger- 

 ous character." 



