184 



PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. — SECTION G. 



lurid light, of world-trouble, one sees^ — as by a flash — how far- 

 reaching and difficult are the necessai-y researches in the field of 

 economics and statistics, and how necessary it will be to make 

 our studies comparative. 



The fundamental questions which will require study in the im- 

 mediate future are : — 



(i) The rate of growth and the distribution of populations ; 

 (ii) The examination, forecasting and development of the 



world's food-supply and water-supply; 

 (iii) The exploitation of the various sources of available 



energy ; 



(iv) The enhancing of the efficiency of production generally; 

 (v) The relations of Capital and Labour; and 

 (vi ) The distribution of. wealth. 

 Incidental to these, though also important in themselves, are: — 

 (vii) Public health in all its aspects; 



(viii) Public education and the means of attaining to national 

 efficiency ; 



(ix) Social, political and industrial organization. 

 If will not be possible to do more than mention tliese : detailed 

 treatment is, of course, beyond the scope of the preseint occasion. 

 Touching population, it is worthy of remark that the populations 

 of the West-em world,* omitting Russia and Canada, but includ- 

 ing Australia and the United States, have grown from 1790 to 

 the present time, almost exactly as did those of China 85 years 

 earlier;! i.e., from 1705 to 1735 Graph No. 1 shows this. 

 There are, however, still great spaces yet relatively unpopulated, 

 and it is inevitable that they must be filled either by natural 

 increase or immigration, or by both, until they carry such popu- 

 lation as the state of development of the country will admit of. 



3. Difficiiltte>i which are immineiit. — In order to illustrate how 

 imminent are the difficulties arising from the growth of popula- 

 tion, let us assume an initial population of 1,700 millions (that of 

 the present time) and a rate oi regular increase — arising from 

 the excess cA births over deaths — cf, say, not more even than 1 



* Viz., of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece 

 Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Servia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and 

 United States of America combined. 



t According to the counts given in the Tung-hwa-Luh. The correspondences of the numbers 

 are striking. Thus, taking the general trend of China's population (rather than the figures for 

 individual years as given in the Tung-hwa-Luh) and the populations of Europe, &c., referred to 

 in the last footnote, we have, in millions, the following results : — 



Year . . 



China . . 

 Europe, <fcc. 



Year 



