FUTURE OF MAN — ^MATHER 225 



metalliferous ores necessary as raw materials for modem industrial 

 operations. The United States, for example, must import nickel, tin, 

 antimony, chromium, and platinum if American manufacturers are 

 to use those metals in the fabrication of articles essential to what we 

 are pleased to call the civilized way of life/ Likewise, no nation 

 enjoys a sufficient variety of climatic conditions to permit all kinds 

 of foodstuffs to be grown on its farms and fields or gathered from its 

 forests, and to allow the growth of all the various plants contribut- 

 ing raw materials to industry. The United States, again the most 

 significant example for us, is forced to import all the bananas, coffee, 

 tea, camphor, coconuts, flax, jute, quinine, rubber, and shellac con- 

 sumed in this country, either from foreign countries or its own 

 overseas possessions.^ It is entirely possible that, within a few 

 decades, substitutes of domestic origin may be available to take the 

 place of many, or even all, of such commodities or that plant breed- 

 ers and agronomists may find a practical way of extending the geo- 

 graphical limits of some of the plants whose products are consid- 

 ered essential so that any nation occupying a large fraction of any 

 continent may actually be self-sufficient. But for the present and 

 probably for a long time to come it is evident that every nation is 

 dependent upon many other nations for the raw materials that it 

 needs for its own industrial prosperity. 



Perhaps the most important fact concerning the life of man today 

 is this fact of interdependence. No nation, community, or individual 

 can gain any lasting measure of security without taking that fact 

 into consideration. The resources that man must utilize, if he wishes 

 to escape the fate of his less intelligent relatives now known only by 

 their fossil remains, are unevenly distributed and locally concen- 

 trated. The techniques of discovering and utilizing them are now 

 fairly well known, but satisfactory procedures for making them and 

 their products available to all members of the human family are not 

 close at hand. 



The very solution of the physical problems which man encounters 

 in his attempt to maintain his foothold upon the earth brings him 

 all the more forcefully into bruising contact with psychical and spir- 

 itual problems that must also be solved if he is to continue his exis- 

 tence on this planet. The critical question for the twentieth century 

 is : How can 2 or 3 billion human beings be satisfactorily organized 

 for the wise use and equitable distribution of resources that are abun- 

 dant enough for all, but are unevenly scattered over the face of the 

 earth ? Clearly, the future of man depends upon finding and apply- 

 ing the correct answer to that specific but far-reaching question. 



' Emeny, Brooks, The strategy of raw materials, p. 26 and chart facing p. 29, New York. 

 1937. 



» Ibid., pp. 26-37. 



