224 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 40 



Now comes the change. Automobile steering wheels are made 

 from soy beans ; piano keys from cottage cheese ; innumerable articles 

 fashioned of plastics are produced in part from corncobs and alfalfa ; 

 multitudinous metal and rubber substitutes are synthesized from 

 various farm crops. Energy is transmitted at high voltages for 

 hundreds of miles from hydroelectric turbines. A considerable por- 

 tion of the annual budget for research is being devoted to progress 

 in the direction of using more of the renewable resources — man's 

 annual income, and less of the nonrenewable resources — nature's 

 stored capital. 



What this new policy will mean is readily apparent. With 

 progress along such lines, the pressure for political control of metal- 

 liferous ore deposits, coal fields, and oil pools is lessened. Much of 

 the physical basis for international jealousy is liquidated. At last 

 the intelligence of science may make it truly practical to beat our 

 "swords into ploughshares, our spears into pruning hooks." 



Again comes the insistent question from the pessimistic critic. 

 Is there land enough? Is there sufficient fertile soil to provide ade- 

 quate food and in addition the plant materials for the ever-expanding 

 chemical industries ? And again we hear the same reply. Yes, there 

 is enough and to spare. J. D. Bernal computes from apparently valid 

 data that the cultivation of 2 billion acres of land by the methods 

 now in vogue in Great Britain would provide an optimum food supply 

 for the entire population of the earth. "Two billion acres is less 

 than half the present cultivated area of 4 billion 200 million acres, 

 itself hardly 12 percent of the land surface of the earth." ^ And in 

 this calculation no account is taken of the increased yields that may 

 confidently be expected from the continuing research of agronomists, 

 plant breeders, and experts in animal husbandry, not to mention 

 recent developments in the new science of the soilless growth of 

 plants. Evidently, the predictions of Malthus notwithstanding, 

 mankind need have no fear that increasing populations will place an 

 impossible burden upon the available sources of food. Human 

 ingenuity, intelligent use of renewable resources, wise adjustment 

 of structures and habits to environmental conditions, seem competent 

 to dispel that dread shadow. 



But these optimistic conclusions concerning the relation of man 

 to the nonrenewable and renewable resources essential for comfortable 

 existence are based upon world statistics. Obviously they do not 

 apply with equal force to the economy of individual nations. No 

 nation, not even the Soviet Union, Brazil, or the United States of 

 America, embraces within its political frontiers a sufficient variety 

 of geologic structures to give it adequate supplies of all the various 



• Bernal, J. D., The social function of science, p. 347, New York, 1939. 



